Do I Still Call You My Metamour?
Our relationship evolved into something so difficult to grasp, describe, understand.
Each week, The Queer Love Project publishes an original essay. Want to submit your essay and add to our growing archive? Find our submission guidelines and more here.
The following is a shortened version of an essay that is part of my memoir Entwined: Essays on Polyamory and Creating Home. I often describe my book as an unexpected love story with metamours—a partner’s other partners. While my initial interest in non-monogamy was about the freedom of developing sexual and romantic intimacy with multiple people, I eventually discovered metamours could become an anchor for me, and a core part of my family.
I’ve experienced powerful platonic love with my metamours over the years; a mix of friendship, fondness, intimacy, and trust that stemmed from our romantic love for the same human. But my relationship with Aly, the metamour you’ll read about in this essay, was so unique and difficult to categorize.
And as a side note before you dive into my love letter to my metamour: Another essay in Entwined will be adapted into a film, but we need your help! Learn more and support the film here.
You show up to my 31st birthday, on the farm I work at for the season in the Hudson Valley. This is Aly, my partner’s partner, I tell everyone. You’re wearing black jean shorts and your great-grandfather’s cowboy boots. I hug you and your hair smells of coconut. The farm crew is buzzing around: one is grilling burgers, one is peeling garlic to make aioli, another is making a salad with lettuce and cherry tomatoes harvested that day. It’s a little much that you put on red lipstick for a farm party, but you always wear makeup. You’re stylish and shiny in contrast with our gritty barn kitchen and my dirty jeans.
Ten of us sit on logs around the fire after dusk and share art: Someone performs a traditional Egyptian dance, someone shares a folk tale, some play music, some share jokes. I read new fragments that I’ll later turn into essays.
When your turn comes, you pull your guitar onto your lap and address the group.
“Something I admire about Alex,” you say, “is their ability to be honest and open about their emotions. They’re not scared to show vulnerable parts of themself, which is endearing, and not something I do easily.”
You shuffle on your log, turn to me. “So this song is about vulnerability.” You hold my gaze, and smile shyly. You are still a close acquaintance, not yet an intimate friend. There is a certain wall around you that I can’t crack. But for the first time, I see tenderness in your eyes. I know that you have a practiced stage banter from those years touring with your former band, but your face is softer in the firelight than I’ve ever seen it, and it seems like this is the way you express uncomfortable feelings best. By inviting you to come Upstate and stay with Don and me in my tiny farmhouse suite, and to take part in my birthday celebration, I hoped I’d send you the message that I wanted to move toward something more familial. Your words make me believe you are ready for it.
When Don tells me he’ll see you on Thursday this week, I stay silent for a moment, trying to resist the urge to question his choice. We are in bed, he’s about to read The Hidden Life of Trees aloud for me until I drift off. Even though I no longer guard weekend days for myself, Don continues to schedule his dates with you on weeknights. I’ve been with him for four years; you’ve been dating him for almost a year.
“Maybe Aly would prefer Friday,” I venture. “She doesn’t get to see you much on weekends. And I know she’s usually alone on Fridays because Jake is with Krista.”
Don later tells me I was right, that you were happy he offered Friday. It’s the first time I’ve ever predicted one of your needs; it makes me feel closer to you, like I’m a better metamour. I can’t pinpoint when it happened, but my protectiveness over my own needs has transferred to yours. I now operate from a place of abundance, as opposed to scarcity or fear, knowing that there’s plenty of love to go around.
When you and Jake decide to “move out together” and rent separate places in the same building, I come to your new apartment with rolling trays and tarps full of paint stains. Neither of us trust Don to hang a frame, let alone maneuver a roller full of indigo paint in your small studio. We crouch in the corner, and I teach you how to cut in with a paintbrush, starting with the baseboards. I move the paint roller back and forth on the grooved part of the tray, and begin applying paint to the wall. I try spreading it evenly, but the roller leaves darker stripes everywhere. I’m nervous it won’t come out even; it’s too early in our relationship for me to be responsible for any imperfections in the first apartment that has ever been wholly yours.
But once it’s dry, it looks perfect.
We sit on the floor against your emerald velvet loveseat, eating Indian food out of takeout containers. You’ve done some impressive work in your studio: your four guitars adorn the walls, your books are organized by jacket color, and you added chic-looking peel and stick backsplash in your galley kitchen.
You know, I say after I’m done reading your latest draft, it’s funny that I’m unable to write about my kinks, but I write at length about my polyamory, and for you it’s the opposite.
We try to self-diagnose. The answer is shame. It always is.
We take a hiking and writing trip Upstate, without Don. We decide to stay an extra night because of a nasty spring rainstorm passing through. On the brown leather couch in our Airbnb, we face one another, each reclined on an armrest. You’re wearing a red plaid shirt over a black sleeveless top, and your hair is tucked in a disheveled bun.
For the first time, I am struck by your beauty. I try to write, but I keep looking up to watch your focused face. I rarely see you without makeup, and you’ve never worn your glasses with me. I think everyone is alluring with glasses on. Writing together like this, in our bedtime clothes, feels sensual.
After you break-up with Jake, I send you an apartment listing in our neighborhood in New York City. A large ground floor studio with a decorative fireplace, two closets and a separate kitchen with a black-and-white tiled floor. You add two exclamation points to the link and say you’ve seen it already. I’m shocked that you’re serious about moving closer to us. Alex, you text, I’ve been looking in your neighborhood for a year. I broke up with Cara six months ago, and now that I’m recovered, I have an influx of time and energy that I naturally redirect toward you.
“Are you a couple?” the comedian on stage asks, pointing at you and me. We are sitting in the first row at a queer comedy show at Dixon Place on the Lower East Side. The performer wears striped overalls and stands in front of green velvet curtains, speaking into a mic. The ten people in the audience sit on mismatched wooden chairs. Six of them are performers in the line up, and I feel uncomfortable under observation in such a small crowd. I stop breathing, smile crisply, and turn to you. We look at each other for long seconds, unsure what to say.
“OK, no then,” the comedian declares, and pivots toward the only other pair in the audience. “What about you two, are you a couple?”
I exhale. The answer isn’t yes, but it feels incorrect to say no.
I pull into the Price Chopper parking lot Upstate, in the village near the old farmhouse that we all plan to move into. You’re in the passenger seat, and Casino, your dog that is now partly mine, is on the back seat chewing on a squeaky rainbow llama.
“I hate large grocery stores,” I say, looking at the massive building with a blue tin roof. “But I guess in the country, it’ll be our only option.”
“I like going to chain grocery stores,” you say. “It’s soothing.”
I am aghast. I shift the car in park, unbuckle, and turn to you. “Soothing?” I ask. “How can it be soothing?”
“I think it’s because, when I was touring, I found it comforting that all grocery stores were the same.” You unbuckle your seatbelt and pull on the beanie I gifted you for Christmas. “I would often take my time and go through every aisle, listening to music on my headphones or talking to a friend from home.”
“Just thinking of a grocery store makes me anxious,” I say. “Too many people, too many sounds, too many choices. And the fluorescent lighting is depressing. It tires me in a weird way.”
“Do you want to wait in the car while I go in?” you ask.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to make it sound like I was asking you to go,” I say.
“No I know, but I’m happy to. Grocery shopping can be my thing!” you exclaim before opening the door. “Text me if you think of anything else you want.”
My heart melts, and I thank you. I stretch to pet Casino’s head in the back, then reach into my backpack on the floor and pull a book out, The 2000s Made Me Gay. I rest it open against the wheel. I glance up as you disappear through the automatic doors, and recline my backrest a touch.
Alone in my bed, at six in the morning, I feel a familiar intrusive thought emerging, but this time I don’t push it away. I roll on my side and hug one of my pillows, closing my eyes again. I have to admit to myself that my feelings for you have been evolving, and what I thought was purely platonic love may be morphing into desire for a more physical love. I think about our coffee shop outing from yesterday, in the village nearby, and how nice it would have been to hold your hand when we walked to the counter, past the mismatched tables and antique coffee pots, and ordered your vanilla oat latte and my decaf Americano. And after you gave the wired barista your rainbow mug that I gifted you, I could have pulled you toward me and raised my chin slightly to kiss your lips, and maybe your fingers could have brushed the shaved hair above my neck.
I flip on my back and pull the wolf quilt to my chin. I press the side button on my phone: It’s now past seven. I don’t want to be attracted to you. I've been preaching that metamour relationships are the best thing in polyamory. I've been telling people that not all polyamorists end up dating each other. But here I am, longing for a girlfriend and missing sex with women. And I know you miss queer sex, too. Are we living a romantic comedy cliché, when two close friends take the whole movie to realize they have been looking for each other? Our relationship has evolved into something so difficult to grasp, describe, understand.
You enter my bedroom at three in the morning, your hair in a messy ponytail, your eyes half closed. Canned laughs and comedic voices play on my phone at low volume.
“Don is snoring so loudly,” you say grumpily, sliding under the covers.
I pause the sitcom and put the phone on my nightstand between the white noise machine and my bottle of sleeping pills.
You press your back against me. I fold my left arm under my pillow, and my right arm pulls you in tightly. You drift to sleep in less than a minute. We breathe in unison; your back and my chest expand and press into each other at regular intervals. My left arm is falling asleep, my cheek is itchy, but I stay put. I usually never fall asleep without a show, but I do this time.
Your legs are crossed under your classical guitar, and your russet boot moves slowly in the air to the rhythm of your melodic finger-picking. It’s an old song of yours, but you chose it for me, for my 31st birthday. A wistful and haunting arpeggio draws everyone in, closer to the warmth of the fire. Everyone is completely still on their log.
and when the storm rolls through
I wanna take care of you
Shelter you
I no longer hear the fire crackling or the crickets chirp. Your voice is soulful, your gravelly lows are rich, alluring. You pluck your strings and gently rock back and forth. I notice a slight ache in my cheeks; I’ve been smiling at you during the whole song.
won’t you come inside
Rest your head here
Lay on by the fire
Cause you could come inside
There’s nothing to fear
Just lay on by,
lay on by the fire
We’ve got nothing to fear love
Alex Alberto's book, Entwined: Essays on Polyamory and Creating Home, is available now. Alex is also working on a film, titled Coming Out Polyamorous for Thanksgiving, but they need your help. Learn more and support the film here. Plus, Alex's metamour in this piece, Aly Tadros, is also on Substack.
Each week, The Queer Love Project publishes an original essay. Want to submit your essay and add to our growing archive? Find our submission guidelines and more here.
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