By Louise Head
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Consensual but reluctant polyamory
When Alice and I got married, she wore a cheap dress that we’d purchased from a Catholic thrift store called Holy Cow! She wrestled it from a rack of hideous gowns sporting puff sleeves, frilly lace, and plastic beading and while I thumbed through a book titled, Are You a Contagious Christian, Alice zipped her curves into the polyester ensemble in the dressing room. She came out and gave me a spin.
“Oh God, Alice,” I said. She looked like a frosted cake.
“Holy cow!” she said, “I’m buying it.”
Alice was great with a sewing machine, and she fixed up the dress so that it looked stylishly eccentric. We were married in a pretty library in the summer of twenty-fifteen because it became legal and when she walked down the aisle, I cried even though I didn’t expect to.
Two weeks later, she altered the dress for the stage. She replaced the zipper in the back with eyelet snaps and tore the whole thing off in one confident gesture during a burlesque performance. Underneath she wore bridal lingerie. Her white, lace corset and garter cost double what she’d paid for the dress. The audience loved it. She spilled out of everything she wore. Butt, boobs, tummy, thighs. The crowd screeched for more, showing no self-control.
Alice had this bit she’d do during her act if I sat alongside the stage. Sometimes, I showed up at the venue an hour before the show to make sure I got the right seat, even though Alice didn’t ask me to. Toward the end of her number, after she’d taken off her top and after she’d strutted around blowing kisses, her eyes would find mine and she’d make her way over.
Standing in front of me, she’d lean down suggestively. The audience would laugh. Then she’d grab me by both ears, and shimmy her tasseled breasts against my cheeks, burying my nose deep in her decolletage. When she thrust me away, the audience would scream, and I would flush with delight and pride.
“My wife!” She’d shout, gesturing to me theatrically. But barely anyone could hear over the music and the crowd, leaving most people with the hope that if they sat close enough to the stage, perhaps they’d be up next for blissful suffocation.
In the fall, Usha Ultraviolet, a lovely, long-haired performer with dark eyes moved to town. She was known in larger cities for appearing on the burlesque stage in a fine, tailored suit and pulling at the corset strings of the femmes, making both the performers and the audience blush with real desire. We’d seen her the year prior at Harry Denton’s Starlight Room in San Francisco where I’d grabbed a pocketful of dollar bills and thrown them messily at her muscled body. Apparently, a career opportunity had landed her in our smaller town, several hours north of her previous home.
In early October, Alice announced to me that she was planning a doubles act for the next show, adding, in a forcibly neutral tone, “With Usha.”
I saw that Alice could not meet my eyes when she pronounced Usha’s name and I felt a flash of something painful which confused me, but I kept quiet.
I sat in my usual place by the stage on the night of the next show, their Halloween spectacular. At Alice’s number, I grew anxious. She appeared from behind the curtain, in a prim, Victorian dress. She threw me a great smile and began her series of expert wiggles and dips. Then came a break in the song followed by a dramatic rise where Usha threw open the curtain and strutted out along the stage flashing plastic vampire fangs to the roaring audience.
The rest of the number was torture with Alice teasing Usha and then fleeing her advances in mock fear until, at last, in the final crescendo, Usha captured Alice, tearing open her bodice dramatically. I was horrified. The two struck their final pose—Alice arched back over Usha’s knee, Usha’s mouth at Alice’s throat. When Alice was released, fake blood ran thickly down her neck, staining her collar. They ran offstage holding hands. At no point during the number had I been motor-boated into Alice’s lovely chest. Of course, I was distraught.
In the weeks following, I started to notice Alice’s phone lighting up with Usha’s name, some ongoing, text-message conversation that was never mentioned to me.
I’d always loved Alice for her strange and fervent whims. Most recently, she’d become attached to the tiny cups of dark sipping chocolate sold at our neighborhood bakery. For weeks, she woke up at six in the morning, a gross departure from her usual habits, so that she’d have time to walk over to the bakery and purchase her drink before going into the clinic where she worked as a medical assistant. Usha, I told myself, was the flavor of the month, soon to be replaced by something like cross-stitching or croissants.
Alice and I were at that very same bakery on a Saturday afternoon in December. She had moved on from the sipping chocolate. We were sharing a tea cake and a pot of Lady Grey and looking quietly at the rain coming down outside.
“Have you ever wanted to date other people?” Alice asked.
“What?” I asked.
“Other people. Like what if we were with other people? But still together.”
“By other people do you mean Usha?” I asked.
Alice sighed and forked at the remains of the cake. “I do.”
“I like us how we are,” I said. As jealous as I felt imagining Alice doting on someone else, more frightening was my inability to imagine the shape of my life without Alice. I wanted things to stay the same.
After this conversation, Alice was silent on the subject, but she grew withdrawn in small ways. She seemed distant in conversation. She sat on our couch with earphones in and she took naps frequently.
One afternoon, Alice arrived home from work. “Here,” she said, handing me a pastry bag, “I got these for you.” Inside were two croissants.
“Thanks,” I said.
“They’re chocolate inside. I know you like those.”
Holding the croissant bag and watching Alice taking off her boots, I felt an overwhelming tenderness for her.
“Alice? You can do it. You can ask Usha out.”
“Excuse me?” She looked up at me.
“If it’s important to you, then I trust you.”
I could say more about this conversation, but not much of it matters. Sometimes a host insists you take the last cookie on the tea tray and, of course, you’re obligated to decline once, maybe twice, or, in some cultures, three times, before you can finally accept the cookie that you wanted the entire time. Even then, you must be restrained about the whole thing. That’s what this conversation was like.
Once permitted, however, Alice didn’t delay setting this new relationship in motion. By Thursday, she’d arranged a first date with Usha, and I, too slow to secure my own plans, watched her get dressed. She applied a subdued lipstick and put on a frilly, spotted blouse that showed some cleavage. She grabbed her keys and said she’d be back later.
“Have fun,” I said, kissing her cheek.
“You’re a dream,” she said, turning to leave.
“Alice,” I said, stopping her, “Please don’t sleep with her.”
“Oh my God, of course not,” Alice said quickly, “We’ll, you and I... we’ll talk about all that before it happens.”
And then she was gone.
I stood aimlessly in the hallway for a long time, unsure of what to do next. The unease that had filled my previous weeks was unexpectedly lifted, replaced with an odd relief that, in an instant, my fears had moved from the hypothetical to the real, and my body was still here, materially unchanged.
Eventually, I went into the living room, laid on the couch, and put on a home renovation show. The interior designer was in the middle of revealing to a couple that she had housed a secret beer keg behind a set of lacquered, cabinet doors in their new kitchen. I wanted to make sure the remodel wasn’t just about your wife, the designer explained to the husband, her bracelets jangling audibly in the shot as she gestured with her long, thin fingers.
I could do this. If only I could unstick my heart from its tiny cage and allow it to grow much bigger, I could wait for Alice, one minute at a time, until she returned.
Louise Head is a queer writer of white and West Indian descent who enjoys creating fiction about humans navigating their competing desires for stability and novelty at different stages of life. She is a graduate of Tufts University with a specialization in art history. Outside of her writing life, Louise produces a queer strip show, @sacqueerpole, featuring performers of all genders, sizes, and skill levels. Louise, born and raised in Ohio, now lives in Sacramento, California with her partner and her elderly, rescue dog. She puts her feet in the ocean as often as possible.
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