Category: Building Family

Season content notes: transphobia mention, ableism,

Long before the pizza arrived, Emeka was sick of himself and his thoughts. He needed to get up and do something. So once he finished eating and cleaned up, he closed down the computer and grabbed a handful of cardboard boxes. His parents had left a lot of stuff behind, even after the lawyers had gone through and taken whatever. Most stuff that wasn’t furniture needed to be boxed up.

He gritting his teeth, he started with a job he’d been avoiding. The hallways and stairs were lined with family pictures. Not just his mom and dad, but grandparents, aunts, uncles cousins. He boxed them all up and hoped he was boxing up the memories with them.

It was the first time he’d seen any of his family in over ten years. And most of them were strangers. Even his parents looked like strangers to him now. Which made sense. He hadn’t had a family since the day he’d walked out of this house. Once, he’d hoped some of his cousins or Aunt Alice would look for him, be there for him. But they never did.

When the last picture was packed away, a tiny scrap of hope died within him. He’d pretended not to notice, told himself that he hadn’t been paying attention, that there were more pictures around the corner he hadn’t looked at. He couldn’t lie to himself any longer. Dozens of pictures, filling two boxes. He wasn’t in any of them.

He ignored the tears as he hauled the boxes to the garage. Out of sight until he could go through and see if there were one or two he’d want to keep. Gramma and Pops maybe. Or, hell, all of them. His family. He set the boxes down and rubbed the tears off his cheeks. It wasn’t roommates he needed, not a community. It was family. And wasn’t that a kick in the nuts.

Rather than go back into the house, he sat down and let the cool of the concrete soak into him. He didn’t know if he hadn’t been missing family until his parents died, or he’d been in denial about it. If he even took Shayna’s advice to find a shrink, they could help him sort it out.

Shayna, as much as they cared for each other, wasn’t family. None of his polyam partners were. They had fun together, they cared for each other, but they never crossed that line from friends and romantic partners to family.

He let the tears fall another minute or two, then got back up. One painful job done, he might as well tackle the rest. For the first time since he’d moved back, he opened the door to his childhood room.

And winced. He’d half expected to have been erased from his room, the same way he’d been erased from every other part of the house, but this was worse. It was… what, some kind of shrine to the girl they’d tried to force him to be? It was the same, still the pink and frills they’d forced on him, even as a teenager. His rebellious posters that his mom hated were still up on the walls. The only change was propped in the middle of his desk: a single picture frame. A single picture. One of the rare times his parents had managed to get him to dress ‘properly’, which meant ‘girly’. He took a minute to take it all in, then slammed the door.

His stomach heaved as he hurried down the hallway, unable to wipe the image of that… that… fuck. They’d never accepted he was a boy, he’d known that. They spent his entire life looking for a cheat code — up up down down left right left right — to ‘cure’ him of his refusal to be the girl he was ‘supposed’ to be.

He rinsed his mouth out and threw himself back on his computer. Something else, he needed to think of something else. Family. He’d been thinking about family, about needing a family. He laughed at himself. Sure, right. Where was he going to get one? Did he think, like his parents, that there was some set of cheat codes to life that magically gave you what you wanted? He didn’t have a family, hadn’t for years. And no way to get one now.

He pulled up B&P again and found yet another Unicorn Hunter post. UHs were couples looking for a person (usually a ‘hot bi babe’) to ‘join their couple.’ They tended to lay out their expectations for the hbb in question like a job listing and give no sense of who they were or why anyone should be interested in them. This post was an example of the worst of them. It expected their required hbb to be equally in love with both of them (always) and understand their secondary position. They weren’t to interfere with the ‘main couple.’

Even the best of Unicorn Hunters didn’t seem to understand that they were sellers in a buyer’s market. They also didn’t get how even the best-intentioned and least toxic setup (which these two didn’t have) they were proposing was harmful. You can’t have a democracy of three, with a pre-existing voting block of two. Instead, they paraded into polyam groups expecting legions of women (or more rarely men) to fall at their feet. Then they got pissy when folks explained to them why it wasn’t going to happen. Ron, with the patience of a saint, was in a long comment thread with this latest example. Explaining, again why unicorn hunting didn’t work.

Curious Emeka pulled up a calculator and started working through a percentile calculation. He was never the best at math, but this one seemed fairly straightforward. Even if the base numbers were assumptions and estimations.

Yeah, it looked like Ron’s answer was solid. Assuming his numbers were good — and Emeka thought he was being generous — the chances of a pre-existing couple finding a local person who was polyamorous, shared both their interests, and developed an immediate interest in both of them were worse than one in a million. He shook his head and decided not to get involved in this one. Most UHs never understood the difference between a triad and what they were looking for. He wasn’t interested in charging at this windmill.

The biggest problem the UHs had, the thing that set them apart from other folks who wanted to be in a triad, was they were looking for the ‘right’ person. Lots of people wanted a triad or menage, but they understood you couldn’t order one up from the pizza shop with all the right toppings. You had to do the work, to made space in your existing relationships for new ones. Then you dated like normal people (not both of you together, not looking for insta-marriage) and you might get lucky. You might find someone everything clicked with.

UH’s wanted to know that things would ‘fit’. They didn’t want to ‘disrupt’ their existing relationship, cared more about protecting that relationship than the hypothetical person they were looking for. They wouldn’t treat that person as a partner in their own right, someone you built a new relationship with. Not an appendage to your existing relationship. Emeka was done with the whole lot of them.

Scrolling down, the intentional community discussion was still going strong. Looked like they had a good dozen folks saying they would be on board with a community somewhere if they could make it work. Emeka didn’t know how they could do it. They committed to walking away from everything so they could make a life with all-but strangers. But hey, if it worked for them.

Something about that pulled him up. The UHs didn’t expect to make any changes, they expected whoever they met to fit with them. But these intentional community folks were doing the exact opposite. They were making a commitment to each other, making all the room in the world. All they knew about the others was they wanted the same thing, to make this community happen. Could you do the same with a family? On a smaller scale, of course. Could a handful of folks come together, commit to each other, make room in their lives. Could they build a family?

I know it’s been a slow build up, but we finished the ki part of this season. Things are about to start moving.

Season content notes: transphobia mention, ableism,

Needing a distraction and maybe a few new ideas, Emeka decided to pull up the Black & Poly Facebook group. He’d never been active in B&P, but he liked lurking and learning. Even though a lot of the stuff on B&P was 101 stuff (which was how the founder liked it), he often picked up a useful nugget or two.

Today, someone had posted about land being available cheap in Minnesota, and maybe they could get an intentional community going. Intentional communities were another topic that came up from time to time. Last time had been about someone’s family plot in Texas, of all places. He hadn’t paid much attention, but this time he sat down to read the whole discussion.

The phone rings, startling Emeka. He scowled at it but answered. “Hello.”

“Hey, ‘Mek!” his friend Raul said. “Look, I know we were going to do a movie night Thursday, but I picked up an extra shift. I can’t afford to turn that down.”

“I hear you. Movie night can be done anytime, right? How about we try for next Thursday?”

“You know how it goes. I don’t have my schedule for next week yet. But we can try. What’ve you been up to? How’s the new place?”

Emeka shrugged even though Raul couldn’t see him. “It’s okay. Nice to not have to worry about rent.”

“Lucky asshole.”

Emeka didn’t know that getting kicked out as a teen and learning his parents died from lawyers counted as ‘lucky.’ But no rent was definitely a silver lining of the whole mess. “So, I was on B&P. They’re talking about intentional communities. Sounds pretty interesting, like a bunch of folks deciding to build a community together.”

“What! No, man. That’s white people shit. I had a coworker who was obsessed with that stuff. Like, building a bunch of log cabins in the wilderness and all living together off the grid. Who needs that shit?”

“Really? That’s not what I was seeing.”

Raul snorted. “Sure, they make it sound good, but it’s like Woodstock — crazy white people idea that they make sound amazing, but is actually rain, mud, and not enough toilets.”

“Alright, alright. I’m not going anywhere without enough toilets,” Emeka laughed.

They talked a bit longer, until Raul had to leave for work.

Emeka went back to B&P and the discussion about intentional communities. It sounded like Raul knew a bit about them; more than Emeka did after reading part of one conversation. God knew coworkers with obsessions could talk your ear off. So if he thought it was a bad idea, it might be. And this talk of buying land in Minnesota or where ever wasn’t reassuring on the toilet situation.

Still, Raul had a tendency to dismiss a lot of things as ‘white people shit’. As if white people coming up with a thing or doing it a lot was a reason to dismiss it. Besides, if folks in B&P were talking about it, it obviously wasn’t ‘white people shit.’

Hell, some people’d told him polyamory was ‘white people shit.’ Which was ridiculous. If anything forcing monogamy on everyone was white people shit. Lots of places around the world didn’t do monogamy before Europe came conquering. If prejudice about what a black person could do was going to stop him, he’d never have transitioned.

Fuck it. He pulled up DuckDuckGo and ran a search on intentional communities. There was a lot of info, and he settled in to read. It was on the third website that he found a reference to Freedom, Georgia. 97 black families had bought a chunk of land to start a new community. White people shit my ass.

Emeka started reading up on intentional communities.

A while later, movement out of the corner of his eye distracted Emeka. He looked up to see two birds — sparrows maybe? — flying around right outside. He took a closer look. They had a nest tucked into the bush right below the window. He’d never been much of a bird watcher, but curiosity had him turning away from the computer to see what they were up to.

There were a trio of chicks in the nest, and it was feeding time. Each of the grown-up birds dropped something — bugs? worms? — into one of the babies’ mouths, then flew off.

Emeka waited a minute or two and was about to return to his reading when they came back with two more morsels. For the next several minutes, they flew in and out, feeding the babies until the little mouths stopped gaping.

A shadow skimmed across the grass.

Suddenly, the grown-up sparrows turned into, like the Red Baron, dive-bombing a crow that must have come too close to their nest. They were tiny next to the blackbird, but they didn’t stop. They were defending their babies, and nothing was going to drive them away.

It wasn’t long before the crow was driven off, and the show was over.

Emeka went back to his reading, but it didn’t seem as interesting. He couldn’t really do an intentional community, could he? He was just as tied to this place as the birds were to their nest.

He has a job, polyam partners, friends. Oh, if he needed to, he could pack up and move. Maybe to Connecticut to be near Bertina. But not on a whim or because he didn’t like the goddamn free home he got.

He pulled Facebook back up and was relieved to see that the Whovians were finally settling down. It would probably flare up on and off for a couple of days, but it wouldn’t take over his feed again. Until the next feeding frenzy. He was glad his friends were Whovians. When GoT fans got going, they had gone on for days. Those folks really loved their shows.

He thought about that love and excitement and realized that was what he’d been missing thinking about intentional communities. He wasn’t excited about them, wasn’t in love with the idea. Whatever he ended up doing about the house or roommates or whatever, he came to one decision right then. He wouldn’t move away unless he’s as excited about moving as the fans were about their fandoms.

Season content notes: transphobia mention, ableism,

Emeka knew he was on the right track. He needed to find someone (or several someones) who’d want to make a home with him. Finding that person was the challenge.

He had three polyam partners. Jenna was a casual partner he saw every few weeks when their schedules meshed. Shayna was a fairly serious partner — they had a weekly date night and tried to spend a weekend each month. And Bertina and he were comets. They ‘flew’ in and out of each other’s lives a few times a year. Bertina would visit again next month for a couple of weeks.

He hadn’t ever talked about living together with any of them. Becoming nesting partners hadn’t seemed in the cards. Hell, Bertina lived in Connecticut, so it wasn’t even a reasonable question. Right? Things changed, though. Just because it hadn’t been in the cards when he was living in a crappy apartment didn’t mean it wasn’t worth asking now.

The fire alarm started blaring, interrupting his thoughts. Emeka opened his eyes to see smoke pouring off the pot on the stove. “Fuck!” He pulled the pot off the stove, then rushed to silence the fire alarm. One advantage of living in a house — no neighbors complaining about the alarm going off. Of course, that didn’t help with dinner.

Disgusted, he dumped the charred remains of the pasta into the garbage and grabbed the menu for the local pizza place. Looked like it was going to be delivery again.

Some things never changed — his ability to burn anything among them. Wanting it wouldn’t make him a better cook — or, he realized, change the course of his relationships.

He’d have let it go at that, but he needed to try something or he was going to fall into another funk. So he kept turning the idea over. No, he’d never talked about living together with either Jenna or Shayna. But that meant they’d never said anything about not wanting to live together. He could at least have the conversation.

The last time he’d seen Jenna was shortly before his parents’ lawyer got a hold of him. She’d been having troubles with her landlord. Jenna’s apartment building was a mess. Not quite as bad as Emeka’s old place, but it was going to get there if the landlord didn’t start making repairs. The asshole had been dodging her calls about a leak in the ceiling — not something you wanted to ignore. She said she was sticking it out because she liked how close it was to downtown, but no one needed a ceiling coming down on their head.

The smell of burnt past permeated the kitchen. Emeka opened a window the clear the air and retreated back to his computer. He could still smell the smoke there, but it wasn’t as bad. He flipped through the menu for the pizza parlor, even though he knew what he’d order. Hell, he’d been living on take-out the past two weeks while he got his stuff moved in and settled.

The last time Jenna’d cooked for him, she made a stir fry. Beef and onions with chopped peppers. He had no idea what she seasoned it with. The onions and peppers had been dotted with black bits from the spices she’d tossed in the pan. It had tasted amazing. God knew when he’d have food like that again.

With a sigh of regret, he dialed the pizza place. 30 minutes and he’d have something to eat for dinner.

Pizza ordered, Emeka decided he needed a distraction. Something to get him out of his head. He pulled up a new browser tab and hopped on the Big Blue. Facebook was a steaming pile of shit most days, but you could always count on it to distract you from your own troubles. Or at least that was Emeka’s opinion. Shayna had closed up her account last year and swore she’d never get on again. As soon as the page loaded, he glanced at the top corner and froze. 68 notifications. What the fuck?

Top of his feed was a picture of a long-haired white guy wearing fancy sunglasses, suspenders over a dress shirt (only half-buttoned), black slacks, and bright blue socks covered with jumping sheep. Emeka had never seen the guy before. No caption, no description. It wasn’t until he looked at the comments that it started to make sense. Someone had leaked a picture of Dr. Who’s next Companion — whoever he would be.

Whovians — a fan group that included a good chunk of his friends — were going wild. Speculating like crazy about what the character would be like, where he came from, so on and so forth. Usual fandom feeding frenzy. Having a suspicion, he clicked over to his notifications. Yup, he was being tagged in dozens of Dr. Who posts. That’s what most of those 68 notifications were. Watch a show for a single season and never hear the end of it.

He read the first two or three posts just to keep up with what his friends were into. Then started scrolling. It was a couple of pages until he saw the first non-Whovian post. Jenna had shared a long-ish writing. Looking forward to seeing her thoughts, he clicked on ‘Read more’ to see what she’d been up to.

Looked like someone a polyamory group had been talking shit about solo polyamory. It happened from time to time, assholes who thought anyone who didn’t do it ‘their way’ was doing it wrong. Jenna, also as usual, didn’t take shit like that lying down. But this post was different. Instead of defending sole polyamory in general, Jenna was claiming it. She was solo polyam, and no matter how committed she was to a partner, she would always need her own home and her own space… Had she ever told him she was solo polyam? He didn’t think so.

By the time he’d finished reading, he had another half dozen notifications filled with Whovian chatter. He had tried to get into the show a few years ago; it would have been nice to share that fandom with his friends. But he just couldn’t care.

However much he might like the idea, asking Jenna about moving in would be a mistake. It would be like one of his friends trying to get him into Dr. Who again. Landlord problems or no landlord problems, he needed to respect her needs. But where did it leave him?