Do you have any of those friends that you used to be so fucking tight with, and you just adored, but then as you got older, you drifted apart to the point that you really don’t have anything in common anymore, and you can’t even really stand each other’s company, but you remain friends anyway?

You know, the kind you go without seeing for months and months, and then you start to miss them, and all the cool shit you did back in the day, and their many, many, many faults start to seem smaller in the unique rosy light of nostalgia, and you think to yourself, “God, I miss them.  Why don’t we hang out anymore?” so you arrange a hangout, and ten minutes into the hangout, you think to yourself, “Oh yeah, this is why we don’t fucking hang out anymore.  Because they’re fucking idiots.  Why can I never remember what colossal idiots they are?”

Yeah, that happened today, at a lunch date with two friends, who I’ll call, for reasons that will become apparent, Feminazi and Christian.

But first, some info on my attitude towards monogamy, and idiots in general.

I’m not a fan of monogamy.  The majority of people in my life, even the muggles, are aware of my attitude toward monogamy, and toward its most vocal supporters.

It’s like with veganism.  I don’t have a problem with veganism.  I don’t have a problem with many vegans.  Not my thing, but it’s cool.  People like it, let them do whatever makes them happy.

What I have a problem with are idiots.  Like the idiots who try to feed their pets (carnivores, such as dogs and cats) a vegan diet.  The idiots who take every opportunity to tell you how awesome it is being vegan.  The idiots who loudly judge you for eating meat. You know the type.

Those idiots are not exclusive to veganism.  They exist in every area, and monogamy is no different.

If, when you find out I’m poly, your response is to scoff and say, “Well your relationships just won’t last,” I want you to know I think you’re an idiot.  Like, a big one.

Interestingly enough, now that I think about it, the vast majority of the people who have said this to me were single at the time.  But what I really love is when people who are divorced say it to me.  Especially the friend who said it to me today.

The friend who, as it happens, is literally on Husband Number 4.

“Oh wow, really?  You’re obviously the world’s foremost expert on how to make relationships work.  Please, tell me more about how you made your marriage(s) work.”

It’s fun when I get to let my inner spiteful, petty bitch out to play.  And if you get on my nerves enough, I let the petty bitch loose and just sit back and enjoy the show.

I’m not afraid to burn bridges, y’all.  And actually, I burned one pretty spectacularly here recently with Red.  And it was satisfying as fuck, let me tell you.  After months of him toeing that line between loveable asshole and straight-up asshole, he finally pushed me past my breaking point.

I fight dirty when you push me past my breaking point, and I hit him with every low blow I could think of (and I’m a very creative individual.  There’s not a lot I don’t think of).

I’m serious, I doused the fucking thing with rocket fuel and took a flamethrower to it.  It was an explosion that would’ve made Michael Bay jealous as fuck.  No one can make shit blow up the way I can (figuratively, anyway).

Push me, motherfucker.  See what happens when I lose my temper.  I dare you.

I inherited my dad’s psychotic temper, with my mom’s ability to just tear people the fuck down.  Combine that with my emotional self control and the fact that I never say anything I don’t mean, and it’s one hell of a combustible combination.  When I decide to burn a bridge, it’s not a decision I’ve come to lightly, so I don’t regret it, and I will make the biggest explosion I can.

I will fuck a motherfucker up.

Red underestimated my ability to do that.  And he really shouldn’t have, he knows that now.  I know way too much about him.  I know what he takes pride in.  I know what his insecurities are.  I know what his fears and his dreams are.  All of that shit becomes a weapon that I use to make grown men cry.

Manipulating someone’s thoughts, feelings, and headspace is what I do.  And I’m very, very good at what I do.  Nothing is off limits once I decide to burn a bridge.  Nothing.

Needless to say, he doesn’t like me anymore.  Needless to say, I’m totally fine with him not liking me anymore.

But that’s not what this post is about.  This post is about relationships.  My relationships.

Because monogamy may work for you.  It works for a lot of people.  It doesn’t work for me.  And take my current and previous relationships as an example.  My first marriage, which was monogamous, ended in divorce (granted, monogamy wasn’t what ended it.  But it sure as hell didn’t help).

My second marriage, which is poly, has already lasted longer than my first.  Hell, my relationships with both Steel and Sounder have already lasted longer than my first marriage.  It works.  Despite all the people telling me it won’t, despite all the people wanting me to fail, because if I succeed, then somehow that means that their way isn’t the only way, and it actually is possible to have healthy, happy, stable relationships that don’t conform to the societally accepted norm.

Now, I understand my privilege is showing, and all of my gay readers are probably rolling their eyes.  They’ve only been dealing with the same thing since…. Oh I dunno, how long ago was the Bible written?  Somewhere around there.  I’m probably not going to be beaten to death in a back alley for having poly relationships.  Judge-y looks and snide comments by bored soccer moms and lonely single people are about all I’m going to get.

And I don’t know if any of you are aware of this, but I’m just a teensy bit on the argumentative side.  Go ahead.  Try me.  Say your snide comments and open that door right up.

What’s really hilarious is that the kinda-sorta-friend of mine, recently a born-again Christian, and I had lunch with another friend, a psycho-liberal feminazi.

Of course Christian is as annoying and idiotic as you’d expect the average born-again Christian to be.  There’s really no surprise there.  Two-dimensional and flat, there’s really not much to her personality anymore.  She used to be entertaining as fuck to be around.  Now, she just judgmental and preachy.  Add to this the fact that I’m Catholic, and it’s like a requirement for all non-Catholic Christians to hate Catholics (I think it says so somewhere in their Bible.  Because theirs is different from ours.  Quick, someone ask a born-again Christian why the Catholic Bible is different.  The hipocrisy is strong with the padawan), and the conversation gets annoying fast.

But she’s easy enough to deal with on her own.  Mostly because she actually knows very little about Christianity, and the history of Christianity, and why we do what we do, and why we believe what we believe, and she’s never actually read the entire Bible (Catholic or otherwise), and I mean really, she just makes it too easy.  Not even worth rambling about, really.

Now, the feminazi is a bit different, mostly because she’s a walking encyclopedia for male-on-female crimes.  Do you want to know how many women were raped in Chicago in June 2014?  She fucking knows that shit.  Want to know how many CEOs were women in New York in 2015?  She fucking knows that shit.  Want to know how many action movies pass that… whatever that test is, that is supposed to show whether a movie is sexist or not, I absolutely refuse to look up the name of it?  Yeah, she knows that shit.

Oh, and quick rant about that damn test.  Action movies are generally geared towards men, and are marketed towards men, for literally one reason, and it’s not to be sexist.  That reason is because a business owner, looking to make a profit on an action movie, will fail if they market it exclusively to women.  I’m a feminist, m’kay.  If I owned a movie studio that was going to make an action movie, and I looked at the data objectively, I would have to accept the fact that women are not my target audience, and I have a goddamn business to run.

I know that people don’t watch movies for social commentary, unless that’s the point of the goddamn movie.  They watch to be entertained.  Shallow, attractive characters are entertaining.

Women bitch about it all the time, and yes, they may be justified.  But you’re not going to change anything by bitching about it.  You’re going to change it with your goddamn wallet.  Show that with hard data.

We did it with a comedy, and the studio took notice.  It’s what they did/are doing with another movie that was geared toward women, and blew past expectations.  Maybe you heard of it, Trainwreck.  That one did great, because people, men and women, paid to see it.  Women loved it.  Women went to see it in the theater.  Women showed the business owners that yes, this is a good fucking idea, and they should give us more of it.

But when given the opportunity with an action movie, we were too busy bitching about Star Wars being sexist or some shit to care.

The new Ghostbusters flopped, for a number of reasons, but you want to know the biggest reason it flopped?  Because no one paid to go see it.  And because no one paid to go see it, they’re not doing the sequel(s), and no one is going to rush to do another movie like it.  Yeah, you can kiss the idea of an action movie with an all-female cast goodbye for a few fucking years, at the very least.  You blew it.

Even if it sucked for other reasons (which it did), if enough people had shown interest in an action movie with an all-female cast (and by people, I mean you, ladies), then the studio, which is a business with the goal of creating a marketable product and earning a profit off said product, would likely have taken a closer look at what mistakes were made and how to fix them, so that they would have a more marketable, more profitable product.

It doesn’t even matter what men think/thought of the movie.  Die-hard male fans of the original were going to be skeptical of a reboot with an all-female cast, anyway.  It wasn’t geared to them, because most of them just weren’t going to be interested.  It was geared to us.  And we proved that marketing action movies primarily to us doesn’t make good business sense.  The studio isn’t going to forget that 70 million dollar loss anytime soon.

Congratufuckinglations.

Oh, but you want to know a movie that did so well, it not only spawned an originally-unplanned sequel, but a live national tour and a fucking Broadway musical?

Magic Mike.

Magic.  Fucking.  Mike.

But wait, that’s not sexist because it’s men who are naked and are attractive, shallow characters (and don’t tell me they’re not shallow.  After I found out they were planning a national tour, I decided to sit down and find out what all the fuss is about.  Yeah, all of them are two-dimensional, shallow characters lacking any real depth or complexity).

Yeah, I don’t want to hear you bitch about how Pick-a-Movie is “sexist.”  Your wallets speak louder than your words.  And yeah, your wallets have spoken.  Don’t like it?  Fucking change it.  Stop bitching about the movie industry being sexist and fucking change it.

When movies like The Ghostbusters start making more money than Magic Mike or Sex in the City, and the movie industry still caters action movies exclusively to men, then I’ll be willing to listen to a damn word you have to say about that stupid test.  Until then, I’m just not interested.

I don’t fucking care.

Feminazi is the reigning queen of bitching-about-shit-but-not-getting-off-her-ass-to-do-a-damn-thing-about-it.  Because then she’d have nothing to bitch about.  And then she’d starve, because bitching is her primary form of sustenance.

She’s always annoying when she gets on her feminazi, down-with-the-Patriarchy, all-men-are-sexist rants, and I’ve gotten pretty good at telling her to shut the fuck up (or just tuning her out), but since the election, she’s gotten just impossible to be around.

No you guys, I’m serious.  She spent half the time at lunch criticizing the waiter because he said, “Good afternoon, ladies.”

She said that calling us “ladies” was sexist.  I didn’t pay enough attention to her to figure out why.  I was too busy imagining what the waiter would look like naked, tied up, sprawled out across my lap with a red, well-paddled ass.

Again, normally, I tell her to shut up, or I tune her out.  But now that the other one is a super-conservative, born-again Christian, it’s actually entertaining getting the three of us together.

The two of them argue about everything.  And 99% of the time, it’s annoying as fuck.  Like, to the point that I really don’t understand why I keep agreeing to hang out with them.

But when they start talking about me, it’s wildly amusing.

Because here’s the thing.  I’m a Dominant, poly, bisexual woman.  I run all of my relationships, and I have relationships outside my marriage.  Feminazi loves this trait in me.  Christian hates it.  She says (and I’m not making this shit up) that I’m “desecrating the sanctity of marriage.”

Bitch is on her fourth goddamn marriage.  It’s great.

So anyway, Christian always inevitably brings up my relationships, usually with a snide sort of, “So, Jen.  How is your husband doing?  Have you spent much time with him lately?  You know, since he has to share you with so many other people?”

And she says this in front of my kid, which is hilarious because she thinks a) I keep the fact that I’m poly from my kid (which I don’t), and b) I won’t answer frankly and honestly in front of my kid (do you have any idea the shit my kid has heard?  This is nothing.  And besides, she’s always too busy playing on my phone to hear a damn word that’s being said.  Which is why I only let her play on my phone in certain situations.  It frees me up to say shit I couldn’t really say if she was paying attention).

Today, I replied with, “Actually yeah, I spent some time fucking him in the ass with a strapon last night.”

The look on her face was priceless.  The look on Feminazi’s face was priceless.

After this point, with these two idiots, I don’t have to say another word.  Feminazi just can’t resist “jumping to my rescue” and defending me to Christian.

Until….

The conversation always inevitably turns to the fact that I’m a stay-at-home mom.  Which Christian loves.  And Feminazi hates.

I’m serious, she always has something to say about it.  Like I’m single-handedly going to lose women the right to vote or some shit.  She and I have had tons of arguments about it, and she’s a very, very slow learner, but she eventually figured out that it’s a bad idea to start arguments with me, so she generally keeps her mouth shut about it.

Especially since her 7-year-old son is completely impossible to be around.  Like, you literally cannot take that little shit to a restaurant.  Or a doctor’s office.  Or anywhere in public.  He’s a fucking terror.  And whenever she can’t get a sitter, and gets stuck with him, she spends literally the entire time scolding him, and my kid and I just look at each other, and we’re both thinking, “Would you take a look at this little shithead, and his idiot mother?”

Okay, maybe those aren’t her exact thoughts, but judging by the things she’s said about him and Feminazi in the car on the way home, it’s pretty damn close, okay?  The kid is a fucking nightmare.

Unless, interestingly (and satisfyingly) enough, I babysit him.  He’s a fucking angel when he’s with me and his mother isn’t around.  I’m serious, I’ve actually videotaped him playing nicely and quietly with my kid, just to rub it in his mom’s face.

And she can’t understand why he’s such an asshole to her.

I’ve tried repeatedly to tell her that a big part of it is that she thinks he’s going to grow up to be a rapist, and kids pick up on that shit, and it kinda fucks with them hard.  And the other reason is she’s just a shitty parent.  She shoves him off on the cheapest, crappiest, most overcrowded daycare she could find, and then gives him no attention or structure when she gets home from work.  Because she’s too tired from her job.  The poor dear.

But no, that’s fine.  Her financial security is more important to her than her child’s mental and emotional well-being.  He’s going to end up in prison, or a sociopath, or, in the best-case scenario, with major, crippling intimacy issues, but she can afford to get her hair done as often as she wants.  Yay, go her.  She should be so proud.

So anyway, she gives me shit for staying home to raise and educate my daughter, I give her shit for actively destroying any chance her son will ever have at a normal adult life.  Give and take, you know?

And eventually she learned to just shut the fuck up.

Unless we’re with Christian, who can never resist bringing it up.  And once she does, Feminazi can never resist shitting on it.

But I don’t knock her down when Christian is around.  I don’t say a damn thing.  Because Christian will always jump to my defense, talking about how I’m doing “the Lord’s work” by raising my child.  And they’ll argue about it for awhile, with Christian passionately defending me and my family values.

Until the conversation turns back to me being poly, and having a number of successful poly relationships.  Then both their tunes change, and Christian starts attacking me for desecrating the sanctity of marriage and emasculating my husband (oh she has no fucking idea), while Feminazi passionately defends me for being a strong woman who breaks the bonds of traditional female roles.

And occasionally, if I’m bored (which I usually am, hanging around with such two-dimensional people), I’ll keep it interesting, if say they’re arguing about me being poly, and Feminazi looks like she’s winning the argument, by switching it back up and turning the conversation back to me being a stay-at-home mom.

It’s hilarious, it really is.  And at the end of the hangout, I still can’t figure out why I’m still friends with them, when I can’t stand either of them as human beings, and the only entertaining part of hanging out with them is pitting the two of them against each other (I never claimed I wasn’t a manipulative bitch, okay?) and watching them get more and more heated over someone else’s fucking life.

Like, come on, that’s just funny.  They just get so passionate about the decisions I make in my life, that in no way affect them.  It’s great.

Eventually, though, I’m going to remember why I don’t like hanging out with them, and hopefully I won’t repeat the same bullshit over again six months from now.  But I’m not always the quickest learner, so we’ll have to wait and see how that goes.  Maybe now that I’ve written a post about it, the next time I start thinking to myself, “Man, I miss Feminazi and Christian.  We used to have so much fun together.  Why don’t we hang out anymore?” I can look back to this post and think, “Oh yeah, that’s why.  Because I can’t stand the psycho bitches.”

Hopefully.  We’ll see.