Reid, Allison and Sandra

Reid and Allison at Sex Geek Summer Camp

Allison Moon
Hometown Oakland, CA

Place of Residence Oakland, CA

Occupation Author / Sex-Educator

Reid Mihalko
Hometown Oakland, CA
Place of Residence Oakland, CA
Occupation Sex and relationship educator, creator of ReidAboutSex.com

Sex Nerd Sandra
Hometown Los Angeles, California

Place of Residence Los Angeles, California

Occupation Professional Sex Nerd

Reid and Allison are primary partners. They have been together over 8 years and share a loft in Oakland, CA. Sandra and Allison are girlfriends and get to see each other about once a month.

Sandra and Allison at Sex Geek Summer Camp

Allison: The two of them[Reid and Sandra] are pretty much my only relationships. I don’t particularly like sex with randos unless it’s a really special rando. But for me I’ve just been really happy and satisfied with my relationship with the two of them. So that’s kind of where I’m at now. I’m not really actively pursuing anybody. I don’t want to date and I don’t like to date. But I’m happy with my relationship with Reid. It’s a very comfortable, it’s very lived in, it’s very nourishing.

Reid: We have threesomes every once in a while. We haven’t had a threesome in a long time.

Allison: Yeah it’s been a while since you and I had a threesome. But yeah we definitely do that. I have a couple other sexy friends. Only women. I don’t date men. I don’t have sex with other men other than Reid. I’m super gay except for this one guy. I’m straight for Reid. I’m gay for everyone else.

Reid: Two queers having sex is queer sex regardless of genitalia.

Allison: That’s absolutely true. Yeah so you know Reid and I are queer for each other. But yeah Reid is the only dick in my life …or the only guy in my life right now. Both the only dick and the only guy in my life.

Reid: But not the only asshole!

Reid making the bed

Sandra and Allison camping in West Virginia

Sandra: I always had tingly feelings for many people. And it only occurred to me recently when someone was like “my high school crush” or “my kindergarten crush.” I went “Wait, you only had one?” I went “What? What?” So I think even before one is sexual, I think I’ve been a lover and appreciator and been very happy and tingly about the people around me.

Allison and Reid having a drink after teaching workshops in NYC

Allison: I use the term ‘open’. I hang out with poly people and I feel like people who identify as polyamorous tend to, in my experience have a slightly more activist leanings. Or it seems like in polyamory they’re actively looking for more relationships. They want multiple relationships and don’t feel fulfilled unless they have them. And again, that’s just my own personal experience of people. For me I feel like I could be perfectly comfortable with one partner. Again, Reid and I were monogamish from the outside for a very long time, before I started seeing my girlfriend.

Reid: I guess “monogamish” is a good term. We were still having threesomes and stuff. And I never stopped sleeping with all my friends.”

Allison: Yeah but I feel like “in love” part of that is the difference between polyamory and other kinds of non-monogamy. Whether or not you’re actively “in love” with somebody else. And I don’t feel that was the case for a number of years in our relationship. Any that felt fine for me, which is why I don’t identify as polyamorous. I didn’t need to be in love with other people and I didn’t want necessarily to be in love with other people unless it was the right thing. So that’s why that word doesn’t work for me I just say I’m “open” or "I’m in a open relationship.”

Reid: I use “poly”. Because, I always will always follow up “polyamorous” with “slutty”. And I’m just trying to get people to understand it while I will sleep with many MANY people, I still like falling in love and being in love. And in some ways mostly what I’m distinguishing is that I’m not a swinger. And for me “queer” is really an umbrella term that means "ask me more.” It’s kind like if you were a jazz fan you meet another jazz fan and you realize you both love jazz your next question that happen is, “what kind of jazz"? So “queer” to me is just the beginning of talking about what kind of queer are you. And then “polyamory” just helps me distinguish for other people that while I enjoy my anonymous hook-ups too, I like falling in love. And I will have several relationships going on at any given time. Even if those relationships for me are friends that I love dearly. That I’ve been friends with and fucking for 15 years. We’re just not DATING dating.

Teaching the 'Rough Sex for Nice Folks' workshop

Reid and Allison having a picnic in Central Park, NYC

Sandra taking some time.

Sandra: I can’t develop multiple partnerships at once. It’s just too much– too many feelings in too many directions. So until I’m solidified in understanding and trust and some basics, and sort of worked out some NRE [New Relationship Energy] stuff. If there’s too much relational movement with too many different people and it really frazzles me. It’s very stressful. I mean come on, we still need to work and have family time and do stuff time. One of my biggest mistakes was trying to date two people I had strong feelings for at the same time when I first went through my breakup with my last monogamous relationship and that was a shit show. I really was out of integrity and in a lot of ways not being honest with myself, not even knowing that I was not being honest with other people. Because there was too much stimuli at the same time.

Reid loading the bus home from Sex Geek Summer Camp

Reid: My biggest thing is, if non-monogamy is a valid lifestyle choice, then that means monogamy is too. So I am a big proponent for, what “evolved” actually means is that you figure out what works for you, and then you date your species. That’s evolved. It’s not that kink is more evolved than swinging, or that poly is more evolved than swinging or that they’re all more evolved in monogamy. What is “evolved” is that you can give everybody space in permission to figure out what they need and to be able to ask for it, and then to surround themselves ideally with people for whom that works. That’s what I think is evolved.

Slowly, the polyamory community is getting better about not dissing monogamy. And the non-marriage folks are getting better about not dissing marriage. You know and the non-breeders ever getting better about not dissing the breeders. I would like more of that happening.

Sandra teaching a workshop on podcasting

Sandra: Now, if you had a generation of people that grew up knowing that non-monogamy were one of several choices, and had some emotional intelligence education, you'd probably have a way more chill non-monogamy culture. We're doing the best we can and I admire that.

I wish I could wave a magic wand and not see everyone make the same mistakes, because it's like everyone needs to learn the painful mistakes for themselves when they first start getting into it. I made stupid mistakes and hurt people that I love dearly, but I didn't have an embodied sense of the mistakes that people make in polyamory. But a million of my friends told me. I still couldn't identify it for myself because I didn't see it 'til I lived it. That was... not cool. I know I'm not alone, but that doesn't make it better. We need one really solid polyamory movie, you know, like Secretary for kinky people that we can all reference. We need one good poly movie that everyone sees and we can all reference that shit and then we can all know not to do that. Because we then learn, if we watch someone else go through it but we don't learn when people tell us.

Allison teaching her "How to Drive a Vulva" class in NYC

Allison: And you can certainly list all of the problems with how polyamory is perceived by the mainstream America and you will have no shortage of people griping about those things. But I do think that the whole point of polyamory; the whole point of open relationships, is that it’s just showing people that they actually have a choice as to what they want their family structure to look like. And if that choice is monogamy, Yatzee that’s great! But it shouldn’t be the default. It should be a choice that we all get to opt in to when we’re actually informed about it. That’s where I definitely get crotchety. When people just assume heterosexuality, monogamy, and making babies is the default and that everything else is abnormal. Really we should be giving everybody the choice to create the family structures however they want.