All about me
In Alias, once a season or so they have an episode that consists almost entirely of recap and flashback, presumably to help new audience members get up to speed on the convolutions of the storyline.
As I noted in my previous entry, at least half a dozen new people have started reading this journal in the past couple months, and it occurs to me that now would be as good a time as any to do a recap entry, in which I say a little about what's up in my life and such. (Though my life isn't nearly as exciting as Alias, thank goodness.) Also, I didn't do anything for National Coming Out Day in October, and I feel more strongly now than ever that it's politically important to be out about various things.
If you just want general facts about my life, you can look at my about me pages, but those don't get into some of the more personal stuff.
So. I'll start by saying that I'm bisexual and polyamorous. Since both terms can be used to mean a variety of different things, I'll elaborate a little:
When I say I'm bi, I mean I'm sexually attracted to both women and men. (Not to all women or all men, and not necessarily to a precisely equal number of women and men; but to some women and some men.) Here's a reasonably good analogy for bisexuality: many straight men are attracted to both blond women and brunette women. Saying a guy is straight doesn't mean he necessarily finds all women attractive, and it doesn't mean he can't be happy with just one woman of a particular hair color; but he can still find women of multiple hair colors attractive.
When I say I'm poly, I mean that I'm open to being romantically and/or sexually involved with more than one person during a given period of time, with everyone's knowledge and consent. (Note, btw, that not all bisexuals are poly; many are firmly monogamous.) Polyamory is sometimes defined as "responsible non-monogamy." The basis of a good poly relationship, like the basis of most relationships of any kind, is open and honest communication.
Although I was bi and poly even when I wasn't involved with anyone, for a while now I've had two sweeties: Mary Anne Mohanraj and Kam McCowan. Today is Mary Anne's and my seventh anniversary (though we chose this date somewhat arbitrarily); for more about that, see an entry from a couple years ago. It's harder to say how long Kam and I have been involved—we were very close friends for many years before we started using the term "sweetie" to describe each other. Mary Anne lives in Chicago with her main squeeze; Kam leads a nomadic life in the SF Bay Area, staying sometimes in my guest room and sometimes with various family members, and occasionally hitting the road when wanderlust strikes.
(I've also had other lovers occasionally over the past few years, mostly old friends. That's always nice, and I don't think it's hurt the friendships, even after we stop sleeping together again. For me in those cases, the friendship is the most important thing; the playing around is mostly a lovely side benefit that may or may not be available at any given time.)
Moving on:
It would be hard to read this journal and not figure out that I'm a fiction editor for the online magazine Strange Horizons, but there are other parts of my literary life that I tend to be a little coy about. I write short stories occasionally, and have had a few published; so far I've had more erotica stories published than speculative fiction. For more on my publications, including a link to my one erotica story that's currently available online, see my new bibliography page.
I seem to be talking a lot about sex in this entry. There are other things I should probably mention; my political beliefs, for example, need a whole nother entry of their own sometime. The short version is that I'm a pacifist anarchist, or possibly a pacifist socialist ("Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself"), and no I don't have any good ideas about how to get to my ideal world from the one we've got, why do you ask? But more on that anon.
I suppose after sex and politics one should always bring up religion. I'm an agnostic, with occasional mystical tendencies. I have a bunch of devoutly religious friends for whom religion has been an immensely positive force, which makes me uncomfortable with the religion-bashing I often see in speculative fiction.
I feel like I ought to talk more about the other people in my life besides Mary Anne and Kam. For example, my brother Jay has been posting comments occasionally here (hi, Jay!), and I have bunches of great friends scattered around the world, many of whom read this journal (hi, all!), and many of whom have journals of their own. But a lot of my friends are extremely private people, and if I started trying to talk about people who are important to me I'd be sure to forget to list a few dozen of them, and anyway this entry has gone on long enough already.
So I'll stop here. If you have any questions, feel free to ask, either via email or in journal comments.
