I never mentioned the bizarre love triangle

“When I was growing up, my mother was a dominatrix,” a friend of mine says, “so we were used to having slaves around the house.” I am very good at nodding and agreeing – yes, of course you were! – but oddly enough my own background was plenty more sheltered than that. A couchsurfer I hosted recently is completely out about being a sex worker, and sought advice from her second-wave feminist mother when, as a teenager, she realised she was a submissive: “it’s about what you choose,” her mother taught her, whereas I can’t even begin to imagine having that sort of conversation with a parent, and chances are you’re in the same boat. A lot of the time, we don’t feel that we need to, or we feel grossed out at the prospect, but these friends of mine have the scope for more honest and open dialogue than the rest of us do. When my father asks me if there are any males on the horizon, I mumble something about not really, and my own questions hang in the air unspoken: like, did you forget that I came out to you ten years ago, or did you consciously phrase your question like this because you don’t want to hear about any women? If I was seeing more than one person, would you want to hear about it or would you be horrified? I operate a need-to-know policy when it comes to my dad, and I’ve told him about most of my significant relationships. But on the other hand, I never mentioned the bizarre love triangle, which quite possibly qualified as a life-changing experience, not only for myself but for the others in it. That’s pretty damn significant, just not in the standard heteronormative way.

It’s a case of treading a fine line between being honest and needlessly causing worry or shock. It’s entirely possible that my dad could deal with some of these things better than I give him credit for. On the other hand, he’s in his seventies and fairly conservative, we have a good relationship, and I don’t need to rock the boat. Somewhere along the way, I’ve reconciled our two standpoints and found a happy medium, and anyway, he’s pretty aware that I’m by no means the marrying type. So I’ve got just one goal left: someday, I’m going to get something published in a book that isn’t porn, and I’ll happily lead him to believe that it’s my first time in paperback. Give him something to be proud of.