It had to be annoying that I was answering every question with such uncertainty, but anything more confident would be inaccurate.

“Marriage is a vestige of the slavery mindset, people as property.” Which was why she and her fiancé had very bespoke vows. “I told him, ‘I want to be married to you for my whole life. I love that idea. And I want to have sex with other people; I find that exciting.’ ” “You said that?” “Why should I be ashamed about what I want? Shame says: ‘I’m

Here’s what humor was: syncopation.

And now in this lifetime we only felt right when we were saving a life together, fixing a flat tire by the side of the highway; we only became us against insurmountable odds. The rest of the time we respectfully forgave each other for utterly failing to be what we felt we deserved and then some of the time we were fucking furious about this and it

“More hormonally one-note,” Jordi said, referring to the graph. “Imagine what it feels like to be a man. No cycles. No deaths-within-life. No transformation from one kind of person into another.”

For me lying created just the right amount of problems and what you saw was just one of my four or five faces—each real, each with different needs. The only dangerous lie was one that asked me to compress myself down into a single convenient entity that one person could understand. I was a kaleidoscope, each glittering piece of glass changing as I

Some customs have remained—monogamy—but not all the microtendrils that actually made it possible: the community, the dances, and God knows what else.

If birth was being thrown energetically up into the air, we aged as we rose. At the height of our ascent we were middle-aged and then we fell for the rest of our lives, the whole second half. Falling might take just as long, but it was nothing like rising. The whole time you were rising you could not imagine what came next in your particular,

Harris and I are more formal, like two diplomats who aren’t sure if the other one has poisoned our drink. Forever thirsty but forever wanting the other one to take the first sip.