"A Queer Poly Triad Buys a Bed Off Craigslist"

The Toast

A bit of simple fun reading for the morning after Christmas. The Toast is an online writers magazine that actually pays.

Fit For a King: A Queer Poly Triad Buys a Bed Off Craigslist

By Jade Sylvan (in Weird True Tales)

It’s 9 PM on a Tuesday and I’m in a U-Haul cargo van with my two female-bodied romantic partners riding fifty minutes outside of Boston to look at the king-sized bed Victoria found on Craigslist that will hopefully, as Finn puts it, “withstand the force of our lovemaking.” We’ve already exhausted every possible joke involving lesbians and U-Hauls (especially amusing because none of us identifies as a lesbian, and two of us don’t even always identify as women), and are now trying to remember the words to “Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong” for an impassioned impromptu singalong....

“There are like, eagles in it,” says Victoria, who’s driving and therefore powerless to Google lyrics. “And mountains high.”

“Hold on,” says Finn, who has crammed his/her 5’3” embodiment into the open area between the two front seats that’s probably meant for a suitcase. She/he finds the song on his/her phone and we’re in business. We even manage bizarre bluegrass-style harmonies that are an affirming surprise to everyone. Finn kisses Victoria on the shoulder and it hits me. Holy fuck. We’re all buying a bed together.

...Newburyport is an upper-middle class coastal suburb that reminds me of the conservative midwestern suburb where I grew up. The woman who answers the door is everything I think of as heteronormative. Straight mousy brown hair, slumped shoulders, thin lips. The house’s interior is fifty shades of beige, and the television is mindlessly on in the living room even though no one is in the living room. Every surface is antiseptic. This is the type of place I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to forget exists....

Read on (Dec. 25, 2013). Some of the commenters take the writer to task for queer condescension.

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