Poly Poly There was this woman in Hawaii. I used to call her my Poly Girl, a cheap label for something I didn’t understand. Looking back now, after all the years and all the empty bottles, I realize those people, her and her husband, they weren’t immoral or broken. They were just living without the goddamn masks, unafraid to be themselves in a world full of phonies. And me? I was the one under pressure, the one shaming the husband, when the whole time, the real problem was me.
She was a strong woman, with a kind of beauty that wasn’t perfect but was interesting as hell. She was slightly on the overweight side, which was good; it kept her grounded in a way the skinny, nervous women never are. But when you took a photo of her, my God. She was photogenic. Put a little makeup on, and she had this Elizabeth Taylor thing going on. She sported a rock-and-roll sleeve tattoo and rode a goddamn Harley, selling the world on an independence she actually possessed. She lived up on the North Shore of Oahu, in Haleiwa, with her husband.
And the punchline to the whole setup? They were just finishing up their little phase of dabbling in the swinger clubs when I showed up. Just getting tired of that particular brand of entertainment. And then I walked in. The next act in their circus.
Their house was clean, the food was good. I called it the Costco house; everything in it had the Kirkland brand on it, a monument to sensible, bulk-purchased living. There was something between them, something quiet and unspoken. They’d sit at the table, and he’d just talk, and she’d listen. I’d be there, eating the waffles they made, watching them, and there was never a flicker of jealousy from him. It was the strangest damn thing.
I’d met her online. She was feisty, not really my type, but I was fresh from Scottsdale and didn’t know what the hell I was getting into. I understood the game in Hawaii, though. The tourists clear out every weekend, and a new batch comes in. If you want something long-term that isn’t going to cost you two hundred bucks every time, you have to find a local. And any local who’s single in a small town like that either has major problems or is playing a different kind of game.
I remember our first date. She took me down to the beach next to the airport. There was a strong flirtation. She explained her situation with her husband. We waited there until the sun went down, and then we did whippits for the first time. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but I enjoyed talking to her, spending time with her. She had her own cleaning business, was making over a hundred grand a year, pretty much part-time. She was a good person. A good friend, actually. That’s what she became.
I was renting a studio in the front of some lady’s house in Kapolei, and my friend, the wife, she’d drive up in this convertible Jaguar her husband had bought her. She’d come into my little studio room, and we’d hang out for hours, yelling and screaming and moaning, just to make a scene, to piss off my landlady, who had a crush on me. Then she’d get a call from her husband. She’d tell him she was just driving around the island. And he’d say, “Well, it’s been four hours, and your car hasn’t left James’s house. So what the hell are you two doing for four hours in that little studio bedroom?” That’s when we discovered the Jag had GPS on it.
It was a unique relationship, intimate and friendly. I enjoyed both. I didn’t have many friends. Her and I, we got along. It wasn’t a “go out and get drunk” type of relationship. We did a lot of platonic stuff. Hikes, road trips, dinners out as a polyamorous trio. And we made love three times a day, just like a normal relationship, whenever she was over, which was often.
When I decided to move to the North Shore, I found this little chicken coop of a place. And she, being a good friend, came over and helped me put it all together. The mosquitoes came in and sucked our blood. Termite shit everywhere. She literally helped me put up the screen windows, slap paint on the walls, put together the cheap couch and my sad excuse for a bed. Of course, it was to her benefit as well. She wasn’t just being a good friend; she was improving the real estate for her own purposes, building a better cage for our little arrangement.
With me closer now, she started spending hours at my place. Every damn day. It was physical, primal. And the “rules” of their open marriage? They were breached from the very start. You can’t put a leash on an animal and be surprised when it chews through it. It started to affect their own time together. Things with me got honest. And honesty is a messy, ugly business. She’d request a new position, something dirtier. And sometimes, in the middle of it all, she’d slip. Her voice, a ragged whisper, “Oh, James… faster.”
In that one moment, with that one name, you knew. This wasn’t just a game anymore. This was a quiet, desperate betrayal. And the poor, trusting bastard was at home, probably watching Fox News, while his wife was at my place, screaming another man’s name into a cheap pillow.
She told me once about the agreement they had. She looked him right in his calm, trusting, stupid eyes and delivered the eulogy for their marriage. “The day you agreed to give me to other men,” she said, her voice probably quiet as a razor, “is the day you died as my husband.”
They had this online dating war. The rule was, if he gets a date, she gets me. He’d met some Australian woman flying into Honolulu.
So that was my cue. She had me sleep at their house, in his bed. I remember feeling odd about it, lying there in the sheets of a man whose wife I was about to fuck. We spent hours in that bedroom. Did weird, crazy shit. She had toys they’d bought together, and I was just a replacement part. And she’d make me have her say these disparaging things about him while we were going at it. A sick, twisted little game that, for some reason, was a turn-on for both of us.
I remember waking up in the morning, doing it all over again, her screaming so loud I was sure the neighbors could hear. When we were done, she opened the bedroom door that open as a loft, overlooking the living room, and there he was. Her husband. Sitting on the couch, watching the news, acting like nothing was happening. It was just another Tuesday for them.
I couldn’t understand it. One day, I was out kayaking, and the husband paddles up to me. We go out to the first buoy. And I just had to ask him. “How do you do it?” I said. “How do you let your wife get used by another man? It’s bullshit.”
“I’m not the jealous type,” he said, all calm.
“It’s not about jealousy,” I told him. “It’s about commitment, intimacy.”
He just shook his head. “I don’t see it that way. I just see it as physical.”
I almost wanted to grab him and scream, “Look, you dumb bastard, what your wife and I have been doing, it’s not just physical. That’s why she’s at my place all the time.” The rules they had? We’d pissed all over them. I was trying to hint to him, trying to find a nerve. But he wouldn’t bite. I kept waiting for the punch, for him to finally snap. But no. He just helped me put my kayak on my car, we shook hands like a couple of businessmen, and he went back to his Kirkland house. And I went back to my chicken coop, where his wife was waiting.
Looking back now, I see the truth of it. These people, they weren’t bad or immoral. They were just living without masks, unafraid to be themselves. I was the one under pressure, shaming the husband, judging their whole setup. It was me.
There was a time when the game started to change, when she started to feel like something more. When I started to feel like the primary, not just the side piece. And right then, of course, I wanted to date some tall Brazilian model. It didn’t pan out. But the real problem was this: I felt like I couldn’t bring that other woman home without having somebody’s wife waiting for me at the door. I was the one who couldn’t handle the freedom. I was the one still trapped by the old rules of possession and jealousy.
Once I made it clear I wanted to date other people, that’s when the “friend zone” kicked in. Her husband decided they needed space alone. They got an apartment on a hill by the Army base. She got on Plenty of Fish and got all the attention. He tried, didn’t get anybody. Which is quite funny, in its own way.
Her son, with her husband’s help, joined the Air Force, became something special. They sold the house. Not quite a divorce, but something close. The husband moved to North Carolina, she moved to Texas. Separate, but still connected.
Now, she’s armed with a beautiful, a tattoo,across her cheast, riding a motorcycle, going to biker bars, loving the bad boys. She found home.
It was a shit show at the end. Or maybe it was always a shit show. But the masks were off. Those people, they didn’t live in our comfort zone. They were being realistic. The husband just couldn’t maintain the energy level the wife needed. And the wife wanted something, but she knew she didn’t want to leave a good friend. At the end, I thought distance was needed. My communication got down to nothing.
When I found out she got cancer, I sent a couple of childish texts, just to keep things light. I felt like she needed people around her that actually loved her. I do. I wasn’t playing mind games. It took a while for it to get to her. She’s still a sexy woman, dealing with a freash shaved head.
She was a good friend. I enjoyed her. And I think the world enjoyed her as well. I need to find a couple more like her.
When she finally passed, she’d lost all that weight she was always trying to lose. She’d fallen hard in love with some red-headed biker dude named “Red” near the end. Even with death knocking at the goddamn door, all her tattoos still looked great, and her good looks, they outshined that new chemo bald head of hers.
Don’t let anyone tell you she wasn’t scared. Of course she was scared, and in fear of that great, black unknown. And she was pissed. That “why me?” kind of anger that fuels a special bitterness, the kind of grit that lets you spit in the devil’s eye right before he takes you.
But at the end, I think she finally slowed to a halt. Just long enough to feel it. To feel how incredibly, stupidly loved she was, how special she was to so many of us broken bastards, myself included.
There are very few people in this world who can make a man like me scream into the dark of the night, with tears streaming down his face, cursing the god that would have the balls to take away a soul that burned that bright.
They’re not one in a million. They’re just once.
And I’m glad as hell I found one.
