Category: Poly Love

“It’s complicated.”

Love is a beautiful, dangerous, inspiring, and complicated kick in the ass. I’m in open relationships. In the past I was non-consensually  non-monogamous… aka I cheated, a lot. In the past five years or so, I’ve been learning how to communicate honestly, which included being more truthful to myself. That might be the hardest part — knowing what you want.

Every month or so, I go to a group meeting with my friends and lovers, and listen to what others have to say about love. Last night, we shared these two lists, which I’m completely fascinated by. I thought I’d put them here, in case they’re any use to any of you — sometimes I get questions about being poly, though issues around open relationships (time management is a big one) pertain to anyone regardless of our relationship style.

Six Basic Needs

We each have a desire to meet our basic needs; how we meet them is up to us. Will it be sustainable? Attainable? Destructive? Healthy?

1. Certainty – relates to security and safety

2. Variety

3. Connection / Love

4. Significance

5. Contribution (to something larger than ourselves, to community, etc)

6. Growth (personal growth, self-actualization)

Everyone has a different threshold for where this need is met. Ultimately, it’s about how the need gets met.

(Adapted from Tony Robbins and Vanguard Leather)

The Five Love Languages:

1. Words of Affirmation

2. Quality Time

3. Receiving Gifts

4. Acts of Service

5. Physical Touch

(www.fivelovelanguages.com)

Last night our performance art duo twincest met our timely death at the hands of a drunken mob.

Shawn and I performed at CounterPULSE Theater, with piñata replicas of our twin-like selves. It was a benefit for Jess Curtis/Gravity who will be performing their full length show in March. Jess introduced us. We invited the audience to come down and take a whack. (After a swig of Bicardi and 5 spins of course.) Our weapon of choice? A blue whale penis replica dildo appropriately titled Moby Dick that we found in the Castro.

(That’s a 4″ base, folks. Real whale’s dick is 8 feet long.)

We ordered custom papered piñatas (I do believe the original design of them were Dora the Explorer…) from a FANTASTIC shop called Rainbow Custom Made Pinatas (Yelp) and fashioned them to look like ourselves in our first work Limerance. 

Soon we’ll have a video of the performance. Basically the audience circled around us, taking turns beating us down with the dick. Inside the piñatas were goodie bags with pieces from past performances; a retrospective souvenir. 3-D glasses, plastic gun pellets, slide images, ping pong balls, postcards, glittered bacon, panties, and much more. (Unlike our past performances, there was no blood, no urine, and no poop.)

By the end of it all, the audience got to take home a piece of our art, and the twins had been pulverized.

Legendary performance artist and academic Keith Hennessy followed our performance with an improvisation where he removed his own undies without removing his shorts, and then put on a pair of our undies he had grabbed from the broken piñatas on in the same fashion. To the audiences’ amazement, he was able to do it! 

Twincest may do our last performance in November (a funeral) so keep your eye out for that by emailing info (@) twincest (.) net to be added to the mailing list, and be sure to follow us @TwincestFuckArt on twitter.