Just as my fearless reader “Blah” reminded me that my blog should deal with sex and not terrorism (at least, sexless terrorism), a question came through the email pipe that I am thrilled to answer. What are your favorite books about non-monogamy?

Well, my top three favorite books about non-monogamy are as follows:

#1. Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino.

Tristan Taormino, whose anal sex writings I’ve reviewed on this site in the past, has interviewed over 100 people about their various open, nonmonog, poly relationships, how to deal with all the issues sure to come up: managing time, jealously, new partners, styles, parenthood, etc…Her book is the least didactic and the most pragmatic, comforting, and pleasurable.

#2. The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Adventures by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy

As much as Taormino’s book isn’t didactic, this one is. I much prefer Easton’s The New Bottoming Book and The New Topping Book; however, if you’re wanting to read a classic book with great information for people in various styles of poly relationships, or at least an opinionated piece of poly-propaganda with loads of pragmatic tidbits, check this one out.  It’s a brilliant, pioneering, and a pleasurable read.

#3. Because I have a penchant for sweetness and a love for psycho-semantic play, Redefining Our Relationships: Guidelines for Responsible Open Relationships by Wendy-O Matik is an incredibly touching, lovely book about figuring out new ways, more sensual ways, to look at all our various relations. It’s less slutty, and more touchy feely, but hell, I like that kind of thing.

For those of you looking at my list and exclaiming, “urgh, how passé,” I wanna know what your favorite non-monogamous, polyamorous reads are too!

Lots of love (to each of you),

QR

Out of the way Joe the Plumber, Joe the Terrorist is the conservative movement’s new man.

Whether or not Joe Stack had anything to do with the Tea Party, and I suppose he didn’t since his manifesto celebrated the communist value of mutual aid and criticized not just the banks, but capitalism as a whole, the celebration of the “heroism of Joe Stack” in certain sectors of the extreme right wreaks of a reactionary rise of fascism willing to grasp onto any act of white male extremism as a revolutionary deed, the revolution celebrated by the charming grand dame of ignorance and thuggish brutality, Sarah Palin.

When teleological, dialectical Marxists and other crisis-loving leftists long for the economic pain felt by millions around the world to catch up with the white middle class to unleash a revolutionary, anti-capitalist, pro-environment, pro-labor social movement, they’re missing one major factor. The American middle class consists of many white racists who hates indigenous, black, and Asian cultures, and is more than willing to mobilize against poor white people’s basic needs to avoid income taxes and to keep the government from spending money on social services for the poor.

Many conservative sectors of the American Middle Class happily watch the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq murdered by drones, bombs, and chemical weapons, delight in seeing educational programs defunded, yawn as thousands of people are expelled from hospitals to die untreated in the streets, chortle as the soil, water, and air are irrevocably contaminated and snooze while this “Freedom-loving” country maintains the world’s largest prison population. Suddenly impacted by the perceived threat of a higher income tax, these dull middle class Americans finally found something to care about—keeping the rich from being taxed.

Of course, rich people don’t get rich simply by “working hard.” Rich people get rich coercing other people to work hard. Their wealth is built on the backs of working people around the world. This is a brutal fact of capitalism.

So despite the fact that Joe Stack was advocating communism, against stupid wars, for health care, and against the misappropriation of public taxes into bailing out Wall Street rather than the global poor, what thrills the fascist right about their newly adopted “Joe,” is the old-fashioned fight over “big-government” and “taxes.”

And such, it is a bitter irony that by protesting taxes on the rich, the Tea Party is aiding the very corporations and bankers whose bailouts they oppose. With bailouts or ridiculously low taxes, the corporations and bankers win.

As for me, I’m not one to celebrate upper-middle class plane owners smashing into the bureaucratic offices of the IRS. The earth is dying. People are suffering, really suffering, from ecological contamination, new forms of slavery, the criminalization of disease, and the brutality of capitalist thugs. There are real targets to be hit: the direct actors of global corporate rule.

When the thug right stops caring about their middle class salaries, stops acting like racist extremists, and unites with the global front against capitalism and for mutual aid, human decency, health, education, and community safety, I’ll be the first to join them in their protests. As long as they fight for their petty, middle-class interests and they continue to turn their backs on the global poor, their fascist tendencies will not go unchecked. Their brutality will be fought. Their senseless celebration of terrorism and violence will be revealed.

Once again, the American conservative movement has proven to be the world’s #1 supporter of the use of violent extremism rather than civil social engagement. From the corpses they’ve piled in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan to their Tea Party celebrations of Joe Stack, the American conservative movement continues to demonstrate their long-standing desire for violence, patriotic fervor, contempt for the global poor.

From the grassroots, fascism is rising in the United States and taking on a new tone. The extreme conservative movement’s celebration and promotion of Joe Stack’s politically ambiguous domestic terrorism will likely continue at the grassroots level and could persist until it has re-united with state policy and evolved into a violent, extremist state whose military might is regularly deployed to continue the imperialist attack on the global and U.S. poor, public health and education, and the grassroots, democratic potentiality we aspire towards.

Smells are powerful—body odor, sweat, garlic, onions, body fluids, perfumes, incense, cigarettes, and all the other aromas that make some folks quiver in delight.

I am in love with the smell of armpits, grass, the manly stink of my Granddaddy’s aftershave, the sweaty bodies of lovers, and the lingering stench of cigarettes on naked, hairy skin.

Smells are nostalgic, painful, sensuous, nerve-wracking, and home.

I love walking up the street and smelling the old, familiar smell of punks, knowing I am near a safe space, close to friends. The chlorine and musk of public pools and bathhouses, the yeasty breeze of fresh-baked bread or homebrewed beer, and the pine-tree, dry air smell of the Rockies enchant me.

I long for a world where I no longer smell money, pollution, disease, and gunpowder. I long to be overwhelmed by the scent of decay and rebirth, soil, water, fire, and life.

Sadly, for now, our fights continue, our wars go on. The stench of murder, greed, patriotism, and ecological destruction drowns the sweet-salty smells of endless creation and destruction, uninterrupted by the machines of human greed.

Today I heard a rumor that some people think bookish people aren’t sexy, librarians are homely, and nerdy people aren’t hot. Let it be known, I find librarians, nerds, bookworms, geeks, freaks, brainiacs, radical academics, intellectuals, and any other person who likes to read a lot and defend the rights to privacy, information, liberation, and self-determination unconditionally, irrevocably, and absolutely worthy of the greatest emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and sexual pleasures available under this brilliant fucking sun. Bookish, academic, intellectual librarians, teachers, artists, intellectuals and other cultural workers turn me on. Let’s get it on.

Out bowling tonight, I was charged. The big thuggish bouncer, the guy bowling next to us who was either threatening me or seducing me, cuties abounding, the couple fondling each other in the elevator as J, S, and I walked back to the car, the night was filled with erotic energy and it felt good.

How do we deal with desire? Where does it go when it’s fuzzy and confused? What do we do when we can’t decide if somebody is threatening us or seducing us? Big questions for my queer little pea-brain.

On the one hand, I say live with it, enjoy it, feel it, and when the mood strikes, run with it. On the other hand, there is a certain danger in the desires of strangers—a fear of the unknown, the repressed, the violent, and the grotesque.

I love love.

I love life.

For me, I’m running with it.  The risk is worth it. The structural violence of the world, the state, society, ideology, all that pain, deserves creative acts of pleasure, love, and open-minded adoration—even when the threat of violence exists.

Bold acts of love, desire and sex are the building blocks of liberation.

Food, water, shelter too.

“The plenitude of history is only possible in the space, both empty and peopled at the same time, of all the words without language that appear to anyone who lends an ear, as a dull sound from beneath history, the obstinate murmur of a language talking to itself – without any speaking subject and without an interlocutor, wrapped up in itself, with a lump in its throat, collapsing before it ever reaches any formulation and returning without a fuss to the silence that it never shook off. The charred root of meaning.” –Michele Foucault, History of Madness

…I’m weary of ideologues. Tonight I pray for a bit of peace and quiet. I need a break from rants and manifestos. I know I’m guilty of delivering them myself, but Jesus Fairy Christ, I need just a few minutes of peace from the loud-mouth post-Left LEFT, the anti-activist ACTIVISTS, and the anti-intellectuals who’ve spent their lives reading theory and have come to the conclusion that it was a waste of time.

Oh, Fuckbuddy in the Sky, how I long to see people heal from the wounds of war, death, destruction, disease, and depression. I know some people rant that this makes me a liberal. But how I long for joyous orgies of love and possibility in a world without human-caused suffering.

Yes dear non-deity, sweet something other than this, I wish so badly, that when we queers tried to manifest explosions of joy and liberation, we didn’t act like such fucking assholes.

Speaking of assholes…

Oh Daddy (the one with the leather cap and boots), I pray to thee, give us peace, pleasure, and prosperity.

And when the motherfuckers responsible for this global catastrophe walk down the street, let them tremble in fear and surrender their power to everybody else just trying to get along in life.

But in the meantime, can we please just enjoy the dance?

Love from your humble servant in queer politique,

QR

The Democracy Now reports coming in this morning from Haiti broke my heart. Hearing that people are having their limbs amputated without anesthetics, that surgeons are going to hardware stores to get hacksaws to perform said amputations, that so many are dead and so many are suffering and dying without care horrifies me to no end. Furthermore, the fact that resources for a 10,000 soldier, U.S. military occupation of a country with virtually no unrest is occuring while people are suffering from crushed bones and infections without adequate medicine outrages me. There is nothing like a dose of U.S. military intervention and arms while people are dying. After decades of U.S. intervention and occupation destroying democratic process in Haiti, no wonder the country has been deprived not only of the resources it needs to survive this catastrophe but more so the resources to rebuild.

I’ve been noticing some funny contradictions in our delightfully queer social movements–those of anarchist stripes and those of progressive stripes. What are they you might ask? Well, I’ll tell you–I’m getting mighty grumpy with the eternal return of fetishizing tactics over strategy. I don’t give a damn what the tactics are–letter writing, sign holding, window smashing, straight-baiting, and protest after protest after protest. What’s the fucking strategy?

So, as queer radicals hellbent on liberation, desire, pleasure, and a multiplicity of identities flourishing without asshole thugs beating, harassing, or otherwise annoying us (fuck “us,” let’s talk about people the world over being screwed by capitalism (eco-destructive or eco-friendly to boot),, I think we need to reflect on the successful queer orgy as a model for social change, liberation, and coordination.

You might wonder who this universal “we ” is that I’m describing? I can’t really tell you. We’re plural. Some of us identify as pacifists who can’t help but smile when bulldozers eating up forests are torched and fascist C.E.O.s are shot, others identify as militants who rarely leave our desks or armchairs. Some of us work within the system, engaged daily in the drudgery of consensus building with power-mongering politicians. Others spend most of our time dishing out bowls of soup to hungry people. I happen to make movies, tell stories, and fetishize the lovely contradictions within our possible collaborations.

What makes a queer orgy hot, you ask? Not to sound like a liberal human resources worker, but DIVERSITY! Yes, that irritating word that neoliberals borrowed to eradicate cultural specificity and create a blob of so-called racially, ethnically, and socially diverse consumers lapping up what remains of natural resources under the unifying banners of gluttony, entertainment, and McCulture. Someone hand me a tissue, I’m tearing up.

Back to the point.

A queer orgy is hot because people who like fisting can fist. People who like cuddling can cuddle. Pretty much anything goes. That doesn’t mean everybody has to engage in everything. Nobody whose into buttplugs is sitting their whining about the people across the room in furry gear. The furries don’t judge the frotters across the way. Why? Everbody knows they have the same goal. What’s the unifying principle of the queer orgy? Getting off. Pleasure. Community. Love.

Sound familiar?

Hell, these are the things I want everybody in the world to have. What’s that? A common, unifying, ethical principle geared towards consensual pleasure, community, collaboration, and satisfaction. Fuck the government. Fuck the corporations. Fuck the exploitation. I want people to get off and get satisfied when they want to, how they want to, without a bunch of greedy fucks imposing their values the world over, without violence, and without exploitation.

Everybody feels good. Nobody whose into buttplugs is sitting their whining about the people across the room in furry gear. The furries don’t judge the frotters across the way. Why? Everbody knows they have the same goal.

So before we worry too much about tactics–particularly judging each others, we’d do well, as queer radicals (diverse, complicated, and often curmudgeonly horney), to figure out what the fuck we want and pick the appropriate targets. For example. Do we want gay green capitalism? I don’t. Do we want ecological sustainability and resilience, a diversity of homes in various geographies from the rural South to the Urban West, gift economies, community self-determination, food for all, health for all, no more cops bugging us, and no more politicians determining our fate based on political expediency and big business lobbyists, et, al? Yippee. Do we want to see corporations such as Lockhead Martin, Blackwater, Newmont Mining, and others eat it? Yes.

How do we get there? Pick our targets and hit them in a variety of ways. Build some cool shit.

Some people like nipple play. Others like fireplay. Nice. Let the nip-fetishists tittytwist the C.E.O. before the friends of fire torch the bulldozers knocking the forests down. But if you like fireplay, don’t keep those who like nipple play from getting what they want (assuming they play into a larger strategy of creating a culture of beauty, desire, satisfaction, and resillience). If you like nipple play, have respect for the furries. AKA, let everybody get to our big queer goals using a diversity of tactics.

Yum. I can taste liberation now.

My fetish for hot, hairy men started in preschool. I had a dream. In it, I was running around at Children’s Palace, an oversized 1980s toy store, presumably bought out by Toys R’ Us.  A tall, middle-aged man with a gut, a thick, brown beard, and short hair wrapped me up in mummy gauze and gave me a cigarette to smoke. I felt frantically fascinated by this scenario of strangulation and nicotine and frightened by the older man’s rough actions. Moments before suffocating in hallucinatory mummy garb, I woke up. Ever since, the idea of being bound by a hairy, older man has had considerable appeal.

In elementary school, one of my fellow Boy Scouts’ dads was an older, cocky guy who wore a Waylon Jennings t-shirt tight against his lanky figure. He sported a cowboy hat and sat around like a real man, legs casually crossed, cock pressed against the crotch of his form-fitting black jeans. His moustache and goatee accented his dark, chiseled features. He smelled like sweat and Old Spice and if I saw him now, I’d give him a dashing, long gaze, take him behind a bar, and get my hand into those tight black jeans.