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The first time it happened, Andy and Julia had come to New York for the weekend and I was trying desperately to look like a fun, outgoing person who did cool things in the city. Honestly, that time in my life wasn’t very cool. I’d gone on tour with a rock band immediately after graduating college instead of seeking out a practical career, which had been awesome at the time, but when that dried up I moved back in with my parents and picked up a dead-end job at a local bookstore chain in suburban New Jersey. None of my friends lived in the town I grew up in anymore and I felt directionless, really lonely and vulnerable. I was just sort of floating in space, waiting for my real adult life to pick up. I realize when I tell this story that I sound like the kind of person who might get recruited for a religious cult.
Andy and Julia were a cool young couple who lived upstate. I’d met them at a concert I’d gone to by myself, and I’d liked both of them immediately. As we got to know each other better, I learned that we liked a lot of the same music and shared a twisted sense of humor. I didn’t have a lot of friends at the time, and I’d put a lot of pressure on myself to make our night out as amazing as possible.
We were out at MisShapes, a weekly hipster dance party that took place at a club called Don Hills. The music was always amazing, the people at the party were always infinitely better-looking than anywhere else, and there were usually party photographers on hand to document everyone’s outfits (never mine). We’d had a few drinks by the time we got there, and things were already fuzzy — the only music I can remember the DJ playing was “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” by the Darkness. The three of us were dancing together and having a perfectly lovely time. Julia left to get us another round of rum and cokes, and at that moment I felt the mood on the dance floor abruptly shift. The energy between me and Andy had somehow gone from playful to downright flirtatious, and we were both quite drunk. When he kissed me, I pushed him away and stared, deer in headlights.
“Hey, what’s going on?! Your fiancée’s right over there!”
“It’s totally fine.” I looked up and saw Julia watching us, smiling broadly as if she were watching her two kids winning a soccer game. This was something that they allowed in their relationship, although historically it had usually been Julia casually making out with various girls. Her reaction was more amused than anything. She crossed the room, handed us our drinks, and that’s when things got blurry. Next thing I knew, I had Julia pressed up against the sound booth, and she and I were making out with an almost ferocious intensity. I’d never kissed a girl before, and I was struck by how soft her mouth was, how different the curves of her body felt. I had no idea how this had happened, but was told later that I’d been the instigator. I remember slurring some strange justification, probably a line from Trainspotting that I’ve always loved — “It’s all about aesthetics, and fuck all to do with morality.” The three of us continued making a drunken spectacle of ourselves all over the dance floor at Don Hills, on the street, in a cab, on the PATH train.
The next morning, we laughed it off — we’d had such a crazy night! I didn’t read into what had happened too deeply. A few weeks later, I came upstate for Julia’s birthday party, and halfway through the night the three of us found ourselves sneaking off to some dark corner to make out again. We certainly hadn’t intended for there to be a repeat performance, but after a couple of sly shared glances and a tequila or three, we found ourselves clumsily pawing at each other once again. At one point Julia’s lip ring got caught in one of my earrings and my studded belt left dull scrape marks along the wall. The next morning, it happened again. We began to accept that this was a thing that was happening — we didn’t know exactly why, but knew we felt drawn to it. Against our better judgement we’d fallen into an awfully volatile situation.
At the beginning, it was confusing for a few reasons — I’d never been with a girl before, and I was terrified of what that meant for me. I was 22 years old and equal parts overwhelmed and frightened by the prospect of confronting my sexuality in a whole new way. I had no queer identity or poly community or anyone to really bounce my fears off of; I felt like the only person this had ever happened to, and I had to deal with it on my own. I justified my attraction to Julia by telling myself that the situation was Julia-specific, and that she was the only girl I’d ever feel anything for. The situation was doubly terrifying because Julia and Andy had been together for over a decade and were engaged to be married. I knew that our dalliances had to remain merely that, and that nothing that transpired between the three of us could interfere with their exclusive relationship.
Of course, none of my concerns did anything to stop the whole thing from being just… really hot. There was something delicious about receiving all this attention from two people who also loved each other, and in some ways we all got off on the taboo aspect of this arrangement. We were all well aware that the situation could be dangerous, but we just couldn’t stop ourselves.
Friends who knew what we were up to regarded us with bemused skepticism. By this time, I’d moved into my first real apartment in Brooklyn. My two straight dude roommates never so much as raised an eyebrow when Andy and Julia would visit for the weekend, never questioned our obvious affection for each other, our sleeping arrangements or any noises that may or may not have emanated from my tiny bedroom. Whenever possible, I’d take the Amtrak upstate and spend a few blissful days at their little house in the country, reveling in the privacy and the pleasure of their company. Julia’s mom was a wholesome lady who played the organ in the church choir, and apparently never noticed the angry purple hickeys her daughter and I would often sport when we stopped by.
For Julia, our situation gave her an opportunity to step outside the traditional heteronormative world her relationship with Andy had afforded her. She wanted to hold hands in public, relished the opportunity to flip the bird at passing drivers who yelled “DYKE!” out their windows. We were both pretty big fans of t.A.T.u. and had many Meaningful Moments singing along to their melodramatic lesbian love songs, preferably in the original Russian (which we didn’t understand, but felt deeply). All of this was brand new to me, and a little overwhelming. I certainly hadn’t come to terms with what all of this meant for my own sexuality, and I was uncomfortable with how strange our relationship must have looked from the outside. I once refused to put my arm around her in Grand Central Station, citing that my mom went to Grand Central Station sometimes, and I was terrified of anybody knowing what we were up to. We weren’t even really sure ourselves — we talked about it sometimes, and decided that our friendship was of utmost importance. The three of us had become incredibly close, and Julia and I talked online or through text almost all day every day. We refused to describe what we were doing as a Relationship with a capital R, and I was never ever referred to as their Girlfriend. We looked at the future through rose-colored glasses, figuring that over time, the physical aspect of our relationship would dwindle as we got to know each other better. We imagined we’d be left with a very close friendship, filled to the brim with trust and mutual respect. We failed to notice the basic reality that relationships just don’t work that way. The more we hooked up, the more intense things became, and the emotional stakes became even higher.
And then something happened that I wasn’t prepared for: I started falling in love with Julia.
I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but one day I found myself short of breath whenever she smiled, shuddering internally when she held my hand, falling apart entirely when she kissed me. I was horrified to realize that all my previous infatuations had been merely that, and that this impossible mess of a thing was the real deal. I’d never considered falling in love with a woman before — I mean, I knew it was something people did, but suddenly it had happened to me, and I was completely lost. This was a problem, confounded entirely by the very obvious truth that Andy was starting to develop some sort of real feelings for me.
I had no idea what to do with Andy’s affection. As far as I was concerned, he and I worked best as friends, and our physical relationship was merely incidental. None of us had intended to shake up the dynamics of Andy and Julia’s relationship, but this had become a very dangerous situation, and it became obvious that none of us had a particularly realistic endgame in mind. I can’t say what went on behind closed doors because I was not privy to Andy and Julia’s discussions regarding the rules of their relationship with me, but suffice it to say this new exchange of feelings made Julia extremely insecure and paranoid about her relationship with Andy, her primary partner. As she pulled away from me to focus on Andy, I became desperate and terrified of losing Julia. As my focus shifted almost entirely onto Julia, Andy worried about losing my attention, which alienated Julia further. The entire scenario had become toxic and uncomfortable, and absolutely nobody was getting what they wanted.
As I struggled to understand how I fit into our complicated relationship, I assigned myself a lower level of importance than everyone else involved. I didn’t really feel comfortable asking about the conversations Andy and Julia had about me, and they rarely volunteered information. I knew they’d discussed rules regarding which physical acts they considered off-limits with me, but they never included me in these discussions and I was too afraid of screwing things up to insist. In retrospect, we all violated a cardinal rule of non-monogamy, and I know that I should have been privy to all discussions related to the rules I was intended to follow, but I was young and dumb and thought I was being good-natured and respectful. When Andy inevitably tried to do something to me that wasn’t in the rulebook, I had no idea why Julia stopped him and burst into tears. She bottled up whatever awful things she was feeling and saved her meltdown for a time when I would be well out of earshot.
It was around this time that Andy and Julia had decided officially that they were going to move to Brooklyn, and I offered to help in any way I possibly could. As it happened, the company Andy worked for was able to transfer him to a location in Queens very quickly, while Julia was having a lot of trouble finding the right gig. We realized that the easiest solution was for Andy to come live with me for a while — we could look for apartments together while he settled in, and Julia could start packing up their house and hunt for jobs. In the midst of all this confusion, such a profound change in our relationship dynamic was probably the worst thing we could have done. Andy moved in with me in late July, under the condition that he and I were not to be physical with each other at all without Julia present.
In mid-August, we gathered with some mutual friends at Andy’s parents’ shore house in Cape May for his birthday. Andy and Julia had arrived early get the house ready, and I took the bus down there as soon as I got off work, goofy birthday present in hand, nervous knots in the pit of my stomach.
We threw a small birthday party on the screened-in porch, complete with rum cocktails and a homemade chocolate cake. We went for a group walk along the shore at sunset and took adorable photos of the whole gang jumping in the surf. It should have been a perfect weekend, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was just horribly wrong. Julia wouldn’t hold my hand or kiss me, would barely look me in the eye. When I asked her what was up, she threw out lame excuses — primarily that she didn’t want Andy’s neighbours to see us, in case they told his family. Later, while Andy and our other friends chatted animatedly, I lay catatonic on the couch with my knees pulled up to my chest, trying to work out why everything felt so different. When the three of us finally retired to the bedroom after an otherwise charming evening, Julia and Andy passed out, half-drunk and blissed out. I lay there with my left hand looped through the hip of Julia’s underwear, staring aghast at the back of her neck.
It wasn’t until I’d gotten home that Julia worked up the nerve to tell me that she and Andy had decided (or rather, she had decided) to end our physical relationship altogether, “for the good of our friendship.” She hadn’t told me all weekend because she didn’t want to make things weird or ruin the birthday party. Of course, she’d done both of these things, but I already felt too powerless to feel any sort of angry. Instead, I was wracked with self-loathing and blamed myself for having added unnecessary stress to their relationship. I assumed all the blame for the entire disaster, and the weight of my guilt absolutely crushed me. I listened to “Exit Wound” by Human Waste Project on repeat for hours and cried until tears streaming down my face felt as natural as breathing. Through all of this, I kept repeating to myself Julia’s promise that this decision would help preserve our friendship, and prayed that eventually I’d come to believe her.
Of course, Andy was still living with me, a fact that made Julia horribly uncomfortable. He was no longer allowed to sleep in my bed, and Julia had taken to texting both of us constantly, demanding continuous updates, begging us not to have any fun of any kind without her. Left to our own devices, we perused restaurants we knew Julia would have hated, drank vodka lemonades on my roof and had really beautiful, honest conversations about the state of our friendship. I was still navigating my heartbreak and was something of a fragile mess, but Andy was dedicated to being a supportive friend. He helped me hold things together, and he made me laugh.
On the weekends, Julia would come down to visit, and I found it difficult to be in the same room as or even look at her. We’d go out dancing together and I’d always end up alone, feeling like an awkward third wheel. She’d spend most of her visit trying to steal Andy away so they could be alone together, and I’d let the two of them sleep in my bed while I slept across the room, pining miserably. I began to experience frequent panic attacks. I agonized over Julia’s perception of me, worried about being avoided, and even though I knew it was ridiculous, I started to resent Andy for commanding so much of her attention.
It’s important to know that at this time, I was living in a pretty big loft apartment in Bushwick with a couple of charmingly oblivious straight guys. The building was an old converted factory, and although our common area was gigantic, the individual rooms were actually quite small. My bedroom was lofted, which meant that upstairs, I had 5’ high ceilings — a grownup treehouse. I kept a wardrobe on the ground level, but in my actual sleeping space I only had room for a small dresser and a mattress on the floor. When Andy first came to live with me, we shared my bed, but after our triad situation came to an end, he good-naturedly built himself a little blanket nest on the other side of the room. When Julia stayed over for the weekend, I slept in the nest. It was terribly uncomfortable. I have no idea how he even made it through a single night. One night as we were getting ready for bed, I thought fuck it, why should he suffer? I told Andy he could sleep in my bed with me. We were friends, right? Everything would be fine.
Everything was fine, until the very early morning, when it wasn’t.
Nothing really happened — we didn’t get very far before I burst into tears. We stopped ourselves and sat up, guiltily staring at the ceiling, the walls, anywhere but at each other. Obviously someone had to tell Julia; I couldn’t keep this from her. She was my best friend, and he was her life partner. We were devastated by what we’d done , but we knew we had to be honest. After much deliberation, we decided we would tell her together.
I made it about an hour before I caved and told her everything myself.
I slept on the floor in the living room for a couple of days. After that, Andy transferred back to his old job upstate, packed up his things and left my apartment forever. I mailed him a couple of shirts he’d left behind, wrote Julia a few desperate and miserable letters (and even sent a cringe-inducing mix CD), but I never heard back. I spent the next couple of months crying alone in my little loft, listening to Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” ad nauseam. I couldn’t stop shaking, and I could barely keep food down. I could not begin to imagine a time when I might feel better, and I found that feeling better wasn’t something I was particularly interested in. All I wanted to do was punish myself. When I finally left the house, I was a drunk, sobbing mess. None of my friends understood what I’d been through. They wondered how I could have grown so attached to two people who were very clearly never going to end up with me. They told me they’d known this was all a horrible idea right from the get-go; what was I thinking? I had no answers.
Seven years later, I met Julia for coffee at a tiny coffee shop off Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. We’d chosen Philadelphia as a neutral halfway point between our two respective cities. I arrived early and trembled nervously over my Americano, nearly spilling it all over myself when she walked in. In the years since we’d seen each other, she and Andy had gotten married and lived in four different cities. New York City was not among them. I’d moved twice myself, changed jobs several times, dated my way through a series of disasters of various genders and ended up writing about music and sexuality for a queer website. I was twenty-nine years old and they were in their thirties.
She told me that she and Andy had never repeated the experience of sharing a girlfriend. I told her about how I’d dabbled in poly situations, but had learned through unfortunate trial and error that I just didn’t have the emotional constitution to withstand them. I’d also learned that we had done poly all wrong, and that better communication and clearer boundaries would probably have changed a lot of things, but it didn’t change the way my gut clenched when I imagined sharing a partner or being shared ever again. It took us seven years to have that talk, or to even reach a place in our lives where we could be in the same room.
Later, on the Chinatown bus back to New York, I stared out the window and wondered what I’d expected to get out of our encounter. I’d always imagined that burying the hatchet would feel like some huge revelation, that a weight would be lifted from my shoulders. Turns out, I didn’t feel much — only the same sort of peaceful satisfaction that comes from organizing a long-neglected drawer or untying a complicated knot. From seven years’ vantage point, the emotional wreckage seemed much less daunting, and the closure I’d been so desperate to grant myself no longer felt urgent or even necessary. Some things don’t end neatly or well, and by the time you’re ready to face them, it turns out you already have.
