Helen Zuman - Mating in Captivity - A Memoir

Coming together as a tribe meant confronting the lust to possess others, especially as lovers. “Possessive attitudes about sex,” Wulf wrote, “lead to jealousy, hostility, hate, violence, murder.” And such attitudes were vestigial if, as Wulf and Arol did, you defined love as interest, which didn’t have built-in limits—just as you could be interested in multiple ideas or art forms, you could be interested in multiple people.

In 2006, Swan, nearing thirty, would offer this description of her parents’ arrangement to a reporter from the Washington Post : “I grew up very strangely… . Mom and Dad, their relationship was sexually open from the beginning. They always had other lovers. I never remember them sleeping in the same bed. I grew up with Mom and Dad as Mom and Dad, and they were never together.” That is, they were bound by a tie more advanced than monogamy: devotion to each other’s evolution. The dauntless pursuit of Truth. Determination to create a cooperative, honest culture for Swan that would one day embrace all children. Their union—which lasted till Wulf’s death in June 1999—was the nucleus of a relationship revolution that would heal humanity and the planet. It was the only example we had—the first instance in history—of Friendship unto Love.

If we followed it, we could help end the war between the sexes, wars among nations, the war on our precious web of life. We could hope to know enduring love. And we could expect to struggle long and hard: Wulf and Arol had fought their Deathculture conditioning for decades.

Of course I would balk at the thought of talking to Jayd about Estero. I’d been absorbing “possessive attitudes” for nearly twenty-three years.

The morning after I vented to Loria, I caught Jayd in her bat cave, applying makeup (wasn’t makeup, like hair dye, the stain of the Deathculture?). Hunched at the lip of my bunk, I spilled out my envy: how rough it was to watch Estero climb her ladder for a kiss, how agonizing to fall asleep knowing they were naked nearby. Engulfed by my need to tell , I cast aside consideration of what she might want to hear . “Do you ever feel like that?” I asked. “Do you know what I mean?”

She lifted the hand mirror resting in her lap and resumed squinting into it. “Not really,” she said, rimming her eyes with black liner.

I withdrew to the rear of my cave and gazed up at the ladybugs. They didn’t doubt their desires or hang back in sacrifice. They crawled over and around each other if they had to. Plan B hatched as I watched them.

A couple nights later, I was back on Eile’s bed, peeling a once-black tube sock off my speculum. (Finding no pretty scarves in the laundry-room giveaway bin, I’d settled for the faded, mate-less sock.) Earlier that day, Estero had said yes to my request for a date. A real date. Complete with nakedness. Not a walk.

Eile drew a Q-tip out of my box and switched off her flashlight. “Open and stretchy! No fucking for you tonight.” She sat down on the bed. “But you wouldn’t be ready to ball yet anyway, right? It’s gonna take a couple months for us to get to know your cycle.”

“Right,” I said. “I was figuring we’d just make out and get naked and stuff.”

Eile grinned. “This is your first date, right? Are you nervous? Excited?”

I nodded and grinned back at her. But “nervous” and “excited” didn’t begin to describe how I felt. More like in every cell electrified, tingling with desire to touch and be touched, gobsmacked by my glorious good luck.

On one score, though, I was not feeling lucky. I’d hoped to get together with Estero in one of the three tiny cabins—“date spaces”—the Zendiks had built especially for dates. Each cabin—just big enough for a double bed and a nightstand—was sided with mill ends and tucked among trees. I’d helped clean two of the three—the one by the Music Room and the one behind the horse barn (the one behind the Addition, I sensed, was off-limits). I loved the tie-dyed cotton curtains, the curlicued iron candleholders, the lengths of sateen and velveteen draping the walls and ceilings. I could imagine Sleeping Beauty waking in one of them, to the kiss of her prince.

Alas, that night in early December, all the cabins had gone to couples whose combined seniority trumped Estero’s and mine. We’d been assigned to the trailer, a ratty clash of white metal parked a few paces from the woods, downslope from the Farmhouse. The interior pulsed with shades of red: maroon walls, crimson carpet, burgundy curtains. An overhead bulb shone through a lens littered with dead insects. Estero switched on the heater, lit candles, and darkened the bulb while I shrouded the stained gray mattress—resting on the floor—with my flower-print, queen-size “date sheet.” (Each Zendik woman kept one of these and made sure it got washed between dates.) The reds receded into shadow. We removed our socks and shoes and dropped to the bed, where we sat—cross-legged, awkward—facing each other.

I was expecting Estero—Kore Zendik, fairy-tale prince, seasoned lover—to slowly, sensually undress me, kissing and caressing each newly revealed curve and crevice of my body. Instead, after fifteen minutes or so of kissing and groping, he asked, flat out, “Do you wanna take our clothes off?”

This was not the best use of open and honest communication, in my opinion, but I agreed anyway. We each disrobed separately.

It was a relief to be naked, to press the length of my limbs against the length of his. Twined together in bed, we traded sexual secrets, dissolving their shame in laughter. He confessed to fucking sheep in the fields of the farm where he’d grown up, and I recounted how I’d achieved my best solo orgasm ever: by blowing up one of those sausage-link balloon-animal balloons (using a special handheld pump) while it was inside me. (As a sculpture student working in the medium of inflatable latex, I’d taken inspiration from the art materials cluttering my dorm room.) I’d never told this story before, yet I didn’t mind telling him. He had perversions of his own, and no clothes on, and we, like Arol and Wulf, were pushing each other to become more honest.

After a while we fell silent, and Estero slid down to my crotch to give me head. Again, I was expecting to be transported by his sensual powers. Maybe, despite the release of sharing secrets, I was too tense for pleasure; my orgasm that night was a blip, compared with the one I’d summoned via balloon and hand pump. Still, I was thrilled just to laze in Estero’s embrace, to smooth the fine tangle of his hair—unbound, for once—and trace his elbows with my thumbs. I could not imagine ever growing tired of lying with him.

Again, he was the one to end it. Around midnight, after drifting off for a moment, he yawned, stretched, sat up. “I think it’s time to turn in,” he said.

As I dressed, I stiffened. By the time my shoes were tied, I’d lost the grace of feeling wanted. I hadn’t prepared myself for this moment. Maybe deep down I’d been hoping that baring ourselves to each other would show Estero he was meant for me and wean him off polyamory. Even as I aspired to the ideal of a soul union transcending possession, I craved a love that wove through every day. A bond not snipped at the end of each date. I sensed that shared regard—despite the supposed supremacy of honesty—took the same forms here as it did in the “square” world: sitting close at meals; finding ways to work and play together; persevering even if the group disapproved; pausing to hug, kiss, talk.

Walking back to the Farmhouse, we stopped at the unfinished Bathhouse so Estero could test some wiring he’d installed earlier that day. I didn’t care about the wiring; I did want to prolong our last moments alone. So I followed him up the makeshift cinder-block steps into the dark building, minding the wide gap between the threshold and the top block.