The Relationship Escalator

I injured my right knee at some point, although when exactly, I can’t say. It started hurting after a particularly chilly night at the picket, one in which I’d worn the wrong footwear and took turns favoring one foot and then the other. I shivered as the cold cut straight to the bone. When I got home, the chill stuck to me, particularly my right knee. As the rest of me thawed, my knee remained stiff, but I didn’t think too much of it. I’ve playfully called my right knee my “trick knee,” my “bum knee,” my “arthritis knee,” even though until this past week, I hadn’t gotten it checked by a doctor. Tuesday evening I’d gone in for work and danced like normal, but by the end of my shift, I realized I was wincing every time I had to stand after sitting. Something was very wrong.

But start at the beginning of Tuesday evening. It was slow, but I’d received a few texts from regulars promising to stop by to see me. My “T-Shirt Simp” estimated an 8:30 visit, Juan promised to pop by at 10:30, I hoped Mr. Tuesday Night would make his weekly pilgrimage, but since he refused to text me, I didn’t know for sure. The rest was up to fate. I scrolled on my phone, waiting for a customer to come in worth talking to, but the club was empty. 8:30 came and went, then 9, and 9:30. T-Shirt Simp appeared to be a no-show. I hadn’t expected him to give me a lot of money, in fact I expected him to try to haggle me and then buy a cheap dance, but it was the principle. I didn’t like getting stood up. I was in a crummy mood, crummier still because of the mind numbing boredom. I’d finished the little bit of office work I’d intended to do, editing last week’s Patreon, doing a language lesson, and answering emails. All I had left was diving into the abyss of social media, which is maybe the most isolating kind of abyss.

Meanwhile, I had a hunch that Evan was on a date with Eve. I’d asked him to keep it discreet if he planned a date while I had work, but that discretion had backfired. It can be really distracting to have a partner on a date while I have to work, but the flip of that is that my partners can be very distracted if I’m at work while they’re stuck at home. I knew in my gut that Evan was on a date, and that knowledge made me feel even more uneasy, even though I knew that there was nothing wrong with Evan going on a date. It was the combination of everything: the empty club made me uneasy. T-Shirt Simp standing me up made me uneasy. And Mr. Tuesday Night never materializing was the cherry on top of my uneasy cake.

I’d struck up a conversation with a Black man in a Howard sweatshirt when out of the corner of my eye, I saw an unexpected sight: Longshoreman. He took a seat at the bar a few chairs down from where I was standing, clearly trying to catch my attention. It had been a year since we’d last crossed paths. He’d come by the club a few times before, looking for me on the wrong days. I’d told him my schedule three times, but he hadn’t retained the information. He only came out to the club when he was drinking, and he was more or less unreachable when drunk. And yet, somehow he had made it in on the right day. I excused myself from my other conversation and approached Longshoreman.

“Want to go sit somewhere else?” I asked.

“You’re going somewhere else? I just got here.” he said, confused.

“No, I asked if you wanted to go sit somewhere else with me.”

“Ohhh!”

I led him over to a table and pulled up a chair beside him. Sometimes I take for granted how much history I have with certain clients. It’s been three, maybe four years since I first met Longshoreman? We made it through the pandemic together, for better or worse. Sitting beside him, I realized how much could go unspoken between us. I didn’t have to say much for him to understand what I meant, but of course, that didn’t stop him from plying me with a million questions. After a long break, his inquisitions didn’t bother me as much as they had when he and I were tethered together through that grueling year. I knew they came from a place of care, maybe even love, albeit a somewhat obsessive love.

“How are you? You look incredible!” he gushed.

“Thank you.”

It was hard to take his compliment, or any compliment for that matter. I was in a personal ditch of insecurity. Longshoreman scanned the room, admiring the many beautiful dancers with thinly veiled lust. Normally, I wouldn’t think anything of a customer’s wandering eye, but that night, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy creeping into even this relationship. I stole Longshoreman’s bottle of Perrier and stared into the green class, observing the absurdity of the feeling.

“It’s been so long! I finally caught you.”

“You finally caught me.”

Like a fish. Maybe he wouldn’t dine on me, but he would pay to watch me float in my little glass tank enclosure.

“I came by a few times, but then I think I remembered you said you only work Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“Yep.”

“I also started seeing someone, so I haven’t been at the club as much lately.”

“Oh yeah? Congrats. I’m proud of you.”

I was genuinely proud of him. While Longshoreman isn’t my cup of tea, he is a good person. It had always been easy for me to imagine him being an attentive partner to someone, just not me.

“Thanks, she’s a sweetheart, but it’s complicated. You know how it goes. Anyway, I want to hear all about you!”

“What’s complicated about it?”

“Well, she doesn’t quite know how close I still am with my ex, and she isn’t like you, not like, cool about this stuff.”

I felt stung by the irony of this picture of me–the person I had been not long ago. I imagined that Selena. Maybe fae had existed, maybe fae had always been a bit of a concept never quite stress tested.

“Are you and Mariana still hooking up?”

“Uh, no, not really.”

“Not really?”

Longshoreman puckered his mouth and clicked his tongue as he pondered the question.

“Actually, not at all since I started seeing this person. But Mari and I still get together all the time, and I love spending time with her family, but it’s platonic. I just love her, like a close friend.”

“You two were together for over a decade. That’s a marriage. You don’t just ditch your family after a divorce.”

“Exactly, you understand. And I’m an uncle. I can’t just stop seeing my babies.”

“Maybe she would understand?”

Longshoreman shook his head, “I don’t know. She probably wouldn’t be cool with me and Mari having movie nights or stuff like that. She probably wouldn’t like me being here either, seeing you. That’s why I don’t know if it’s gonna work.”

I thought back to when I first met Longshoreman. He and Mari had only recently decided to separate after living together for over a decade. It wasn’t for a lack of love, or a result of untended wounds festering. They parted ways because they were not married, they did not have children, they were not having sex anymore, and it seemed like without those things, there was little reason to continue. Not that they wanted the family life. They had simply reached a point where they couldn’t see what might come next. What was there to look forward to? What were they building toward? Was this it?

There is comfort in the structure of the relationship escalator: there’s always another check point to cross off, another milestone to reach and frame, and hang above the fireplace. I thought of my own conundrum of being untethered. As I faced a change in the core structure of my poly relationship, I felt as if I might just float away like a balloon slipping out of a loose knot. I knew it wasn’t just the poly, it was everything. I was different, and reckoning with the almost unrecognizable person I’d become. After pursuing a wildly experimental lifestyle for most of my twenties, lately I’ve found myself obsessed with settling down. Perhaps it’s that internal clock ticking; however, my desire to settle hasn’t come along with any vision of marriage or children. It’s just a cloudy vision of me living a quietly stable life. Looking out instead of being looked at. Living in my body rather than maintaining it for others’ consumption. Caring for people with my clothes on. It’s dull in comparison to my life now, but to me the idea is exciting.