theopenphotoproject

[theopenphotoproject]

These 4 photos will be for sale at $50 for an 11x17 print only for attendees of the virtual screening tonight(if ordered within 48 hours)!  Event is hosted by Carol Queen and takes place on Zoom at 8pm EST/ 5pm PST

To register:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_vcwiK3f8Rnu_Cmvxem6K3w

Email erika@erikakapin.com to let me know which you’d like to purchase and send your shipping info!

Payments for the prints or any other donations can go to:

www.Paypal.me/TheOpenPhotoProject. OR Venmo: @Erika-Kapin

[theopenphotoproject]

Print sale! These 6 photos will be available for purchase for $50 ONLY to attendees of the private virtual screening 1/21 or 1/28, 7pm EST.

For night of purchase to attendees only. Size 11 x 14.

DM to request registration link

[theopenphotoproject]

Keira and Anthony in Keira’s backyard. Taken about 1 year ago

Keira: Well, so now I have 5 consistent partners.  My shortest relationship is just under a year.  So with all 5 of them, one I’ve been with for 10 years, that’s Mike.  Two of them I’ve been with for roughly 3 years.  That’s Kevin and Lindsey.  Sean I’ve been with for about a year and a half.  And Anthony is technically 10 months…but technically a year also.  Depending on how you define it.

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I think the other misconception I come by a lot is that the only consistent depiction of multiple partners is the Mormons.  And so I get a good deal of flack from more feminist leaning friends who don’t understand that I can date who I want. Even though I’m currently one of multiple female presenting partners for a male partner, that doesn’t inherently make it patriarchal or whatever other terms that is. It’s still very egalitarian.  That’s the one that I get most often.

Willow

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I also have lots of migraines and I have three very serious mental illnesses: bipolar 2, borderline personality disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. I talk a lot about my mental illness and I try to reduce the stigma.  One of the things I work with is in polyamory we hear a lot of the, “Don’t fuck the crazy,” or “I just don’t want drama,” or “We don’t want that crazy sort of behavior in here.” I find that very frustrating and alarming because one in five people have mental illness and mental illness is stigmatized in our country as it is.  To just be told they’re not welcome into a community because they have mental illness is so super damaging. It’s blatantly offensively damaging. It’s ablest, it’s just garbage.

Rebecca Hiles, LMSW

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Personally for me, I’m more in a relationship anarchist type thing.  I like using [the term] “partners” because it is both gender-neutral and covers a broader spectrum as far as play partners, relationship partners and it’s easier that way.  Titles aren’t exactly as important, it’s more about the relationship behind it so that’s what I like to put emphasis on.

Anthony

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Aida: So I didn’t know if it was flirting OR just friendly dancing! It could be friendly dancing…it could be flirting if you want it to be! It could be whatever! And in my head I was like, “Wow you’re cool and you also like to dance, and you also know all the songs they’re playing”—which is still my 12-year-old self, like “OooOOoOoOoh, you know the songs and you dance well? Great!” So by the end of the night I was like, “Should I say something? Should I not?” And as I’m considering what to do about it, Cal comes up and is like, “Hey,” and in my head I thought they were going to ask about someone else in the group we were dancing with. So I was “Oh never mind, [the energy] wasn’t for me” (all this happened in a split second). But then they were like, “Hey, you’re a babe and you dance really well. And if you want to do something about that, let me know.” And turns on their heel and walks away. And I’m like, "Oh Shit!" And I just bust out laughing! Cal: You did. And I’m like, “I think that’s a good a laugh?” Aida: Yeah and I wanted to clarify. So I went after Cal and I was like, “I want to clarify that my laughter was not because that was a silly thing to do but because I was wondering how do I approach it and you just beat me to the punch. So thank you for beating me to the punch.” Cal: Yea that’s really what it was like, “Hello, you’re a babe. If you’d like to do something, we can.”

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Mia: Previous to Dave, I was in a relationship with my partner of 6 years. which was a vanilla relationship.  When I met my previous partner I was not out as kinky.  At least not in an extreme way. So when my partner and I moved here to PA, I started looking for submissive men who would be interested in serving me. So we actually met on OkCupid. Do you want to talk about your OkCupid profile? Dave: Oh yes I can do that. So it was about 2 years ago. Probably started not too long after my 37th birthday.  Probably my whole adult life I had kink interests and haven't always been out in the kink community.  After my birthday, I had a vanilla dating profile on OkCupid.  I think I got the idea from seeing someone else's profile where they made an  anonymous profile and put a lot of their kink interests in it. So did something similar and put some pictures of myself in my underwear and stuff. And made the profile more oriented to my specific kinks as far as female domination and things like that.  And put as ice breakers put that I could come over clean their house naked for them if they want or something like that.  I didn't get too many takers but that is how we met.  

Mia: So I was swiping through and found this profile of this weird guy with neck down pictures of him in really weird looking underwear with his arms crossed and looking super awkward and uncomfortable with himself. Like it was a frontal view, a back view and a side view of him in his panties. Because he has a fetish for wearing slutty underwear.  And I was like, "Oh that's cool, he's offering to come over and clean naked in his underwear as an icebreaker." So I did ask if he'd like to meet. We met at a coffee shop and we did a pretty thorough negotiation of what his experience was, what my experience was and what he was and wasn't ok with doing.  And our first date was him coming over and cleaning.

[theopenphotoproject]

Andy:  We've got this norm of what a family should look like: Two parents who are that are heterosexual and cisgender, who are monogamous and both biologically related to the children that they raise. And that those two parents and their biologically related children, that group is the family unit. That group lives together. That group is financially and practically interdependent, and no one else. We are taught this idea that not only is that the correct way to have a family, but that’s the traditional way to have a family.... Who benefits from us believing that the way to have a happy life is to find one person who will fulfill all your needs? And that if you’ve failed to do so, and that failure is evidenced by the fact that you have unmet needs, then the problem is that you failed to find the right person. Who benefits from us believing that? It's the state that would otherwise be fulfilling those needs. It's a state that does not want to put money into social services, and so benefits from creating welfare states of two.  And it's a culture that wants to disincentivize large-scale interdependence because communities that are interdependent and that take care of each other, are resistant to the kind of disposability that lets the state and lets capitalism decide who has value, and who doesn't.  When we exist in networks of interdependence and care, and then the state comes, or the police, and they try and tell us “this person is disposable, this person is worthless, you have to let us take them away to prison”, we wouldn't tolerate that.... So, it goes without saying that there is a queerness to the life that we’re building here.  And that that queerness is in an unbroken line to our queer ancestors. The way that we’re told that we’re supposed to live, queers have never lived that way.  And the conformity to that norm has never been something that serves as a functional lodestar for people like us.  The salaciousness of it, the weirdness of it, doesn’t apply here.  We are living in the way that our ancestors lived. So much more of this important conversation in the audio and full transcription from our interview. Available for Patrons 

[theopenphotoproject]

Cal sharing about how the intentional community of The Rêve began

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Interviewer:

Ok, talking to Cal.  While we walk through the woods.  

Cal:

Yea.

Interviewer:

It’s the best way to talk.  I was wondering if you could share a little bit about your experience with this home and this community.  How it came to be for you and maybe the process of buying the house or building the community around it.  

Cal.

Ok.  Let’s see.  I never wanted to get married.  Ever.  Even when I was small that was never what I wanted.  But I also didn’t want to live by myself.  And when I was 7, I used to get this magazine from probably the same people who make the PBS show, “3-2-1- Contact” which is an old science show for kids.  So, they made this magazine and there was an issue of this magazine that talked about earth ships.  And they were these wild, built out of recycled or repurposed material, cool houses with grey water filtration and giant plants to filter the water!  And they were built out of tires packed with earth and plastered over sort of. They were these really cool natural homes.  And I just remember seeing them and going, “Holy crap!  I want to live in one of those!” So I was really excited about that.  And the idea of having an ecological design for a house, and having more people live in it, rather than living by myself of living with one person…that sort of was the long-term plan. Even if it wasn’t an active plan.

Interviewer:

Like starting from childhood?

Cal:

Pretty young, yea…that idea.  And I didn’t know who it was going to be with, I didn’t know what the long-term strategy was. But I had a vague plan that there would be a garden, and maybe we’d have goats or whatever (here we can go this way).  The idea of having, if not the apocalypse compound thing, some other kind of, a group living situation.  That always sort of appealed to me and I think I talked it up with people throughout my life and sort of took note mentally when other people were like, “yea I also like that idea.”  So I think even subconsciously I was sort of thinking in this direction from a pretty early time.  

Interviewer:

That’s amazing.  And you’ve made your dreams come true!

Cal:

I kind of did!  It’s pretty rad.  It’s pretty rad.  The idea of buying this house was actually a pretty big compromise because I’m from Maine.  I grew up in Maine.  You can buy 300 acres for what we bought this for. You know?

Interviewer:

Oh yea.

Cal:

Right.  But then you’d be in Maine. So that comes with it’s own challenges.  But you could buy an organic farm that’s 300 acres for the same amount that we bought this house for.  

Interviewer:

Oh wow.

Cal:

Right. So I was like, “What are we doing? How are we going to do all the things we want to do?”  Now 14 acres out here is a ton of land.  But how are we going to do all the things we want to do on 14 acres?  That’s so small compared to the amount space there is in Maine.  But the only way it works is if Roo and Andy can keep their jobs in Brooklyn.  In the city.  So they have to be a little back and forth. They have to be able to pay a second rent.  We are all sharing the mortgage here but they’re also paying rent in Brooklyn for an apartment.  So they have more expenses and it had to be commutable for the train taking it back and forth to the city.  So, deciding to live here, we looked at a bunch of places in the general 25 minutes from the Poughkeepsie station area, and this was right at the edge of the perimeter but also right at the edge of our Budget.  We were like, “Ooo we can ALMOST support this!  It’s just barely doable!”  (It’s hard to tell with the trail.  We are just on the other side of the fire pit. But where are we supposed to be walking?)

Interviewer:

(I know, it’s hard to see with all the leaves.)

Cal:

(Yea, we got to rake it.  But, it’s Winter.)

So it was a matter of doing a LOT of research. Houses around here are kind of expensive because the market is doing an, “up and coming thing” or whatever.  I don’t know.  So we looked at a bunch of places and we were always looking for places with at least… We wanted a decent amount of light.  Roo really wanted a place that had running water.  They ideally would like to live by the ocean.

Interviewer:

Ooohh running water!  I thought you meant in the home.  But water nearby. [laughter]

Cal:

Oh, haha yea yea.  Being able to run the shower is a plus.  Ok.  Fair. So we have that.  So we have the stream that runs seasonally.  It doesn’t run all the time. They were hoping for moving water on the premises.  (I think I walked us in a strange direction but that’s ok.)

Interviewer:

(It’s still a nice walk.)

Cal:

(It’s very leafy.)

Interviewer:

(It is.)

Cal:

So yea.  We were trying to see how many bedrooms we could afford.  I feel like the way that this place worked out was mostly they were selling it as a 3 bedroom which it Definitely isn’t.  And that's why we were able to get it.  We came to look at it on a day that another family was coming to look at it.  (Let me see, yea this is the path.  I have led us astray). And they had kids, I think. There was a couple of kids and they were like, “Oh 3 bedrooms.” But you come to look at this place and it’s not 3 bedrooms!  There was a basement that was kind of finished, Andy’s room.  But there was no heat down there.  We had heat put in.  There was the upstairs which is open to the whole house.   And then there’s my bedroom which is in the back. Which probably reads as a study or something.  Two bedrooms at absolute most.  So, yea they were not going to sell it to the people who were looking at it.

Interviewer:

So you worked out that you were able to make it work because your needs were different from other people who might be looking at it.

Cal:

Exactly. We were like, this isn’t what you’re saying it is, but we have kind of unique needs.  And Andy does not mind having a subterranean lair.  So Andy and Roo are sharing the downstairs and I have my room.  And Roo has their own workstation in the upstairs so they have a spot that’s theirs too, but they have their own bedroom in the city.  So, it works out.

Interviewer:

Yea.  Awesome.

[theopenphotoproject]

Andy: We're taught from the cultural messages that we receive that there's only so much love to go around, and you have to be worthy of it, and you have to fight to be better than other people so that you can deserve love because not everybody's going to get to, because not everybody deserves love. And it's not true. But it's as true as it's believed. So, trying to create a world where that's not true and where that's not believed, I feel like the only way to try to bring that world into being, is to live as though it’s already here. And that means dealing with the things that are abundant from a place of abundance, and dealing with the things that are actually scarce, from a place of compassion and generosity.

[theopenphotoproject]

Roo: The intentional community dreams, right now, it’s just Andy, Cal and me living here.  And Cal is the only one who is here full time. Andy and I go into the city for work.  But this really, like I said in my Hearthwarming vows, “We’ve done what we set out to do!” Which is a Muppet reference.  The last line of The Muppet movie, from the final song is, “Life’s like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. We’ve done just what we set out to do. Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers and you!”

We have a house that we own, in our non-monogamous group!  The three of us bought a house.  And we have our loved ones come visit.  It’s REAL nice. 

[theopenphotoproject]

Andy:  When Roo and Cal were getting together, I was feeling all of this really uncharacteristic jealousy and fear.  And that’s not usually how I roll so I was like, “What the heck self? You’re in favor of this happening. How come all these bad feelings?” Cal: This is why I try to get to know people if they’re dating the person that I’m dating. Because otherwise I could make up things about them and be all freaked out. And if I’m like, “Oh it’s that person. They’re nice!”   Andy:  I was like, what I’m going to do is get to know Cal and learn that they’re not the embodiment of everything I fear but actually a human person that wears socks and eats tacos and is scared of stuff sometimes. Cal:  I do eat tacos and wear socks and I am scared of things such as, the dentist. [laughter] Andy:  And it worked out so much better than I could have anticipated. And then we were bros for  like, 5 years. And then we were like, “No, we’re bros. It’s not gay. We’re bros”.  And the we were like, “Oh heck, it’s gay.” Cal:  Yep, that is what happened. That’s exactly what happened. Everyone was like[singing], “I can see what’s happening. And they don’t have a clue.” We were like, “It’s fine! There’s nothing gay oh FUCK it’s gay!”

[theopenphotoproject]

But, I, so as far being out about being poly, it's also new and I... It's only a couple months old so I don't see the point of telling fucking everybody, but the reason that I have such reservations about being out to everybody is because everybody at work knows our other couple and technically it's a Christian-based company and I'm worried that there's not... I don't remember if I signed an equal opportunity employer situation, you know. I have those.... and their business is right in front of where I work, so...

[theopenphotoproject]

All I want to do now is share photos of people connecting in person. Like this one of Brittany and Lynn

[theopenphotoproject]

Just send out an email to the community. If you don't receive it and want to, you can sign up on the website.

Also can read it here:  https://mailchi.mp/df2a9c61d76c/the-open-photo-project-lives-of-consensually-non-monogamous-people-2454037

[theopenphotoproject]

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