MC: I think that it’s an unusual setup on something like HGTV, but it’s not that unusual in the wild. If you ever go on an alternative dating app, there are apps specifically for throuples. I’ve been in a few—quite a few, actually. I don’t find them as successful as a quartet, because with throuples, you have the potential for really intense triangulation. That’s just the natural impetus when there’s an odd number, is that you’re going to have people ganging up on other people. It’s strange, but it seems to be inevitable. But when you have a quartet, there is an equanimity. If it’s two couples, then there’s a sort of an agreement that happens. I think it’s more long-lasting. It’s also much more suburban and easily closeted, because nobody questions two couples on vacation. It’s very pervertible. Like a convertible, but a pervertible.Something that I found in my experience as polyamorous person—not so much anymore, but in my younger days—[is that] you do have to have a lot of energy to do all of that. You need a lot of iron supplements, or maybe wheatgrass. Take your vitamins if you’re going to be engaging in a polyamorous relationship—or more than one! But I do love the fact that you have a throuple on this house hunting show! It’s not like when shows like Donahue or Ricki Lake would have shows about “unusual arrangements.”AVC: Totally. MC: They would have these people on, and the whole thing would be about the relationship. But this was actually a very practical show about, “We need to figure out how we’re going to fit our family—which is basically a blended family—into a house.”AVC: When you see depictions of polyamory on TV, you often see the two women-one man throuple, which on the one hand seems to me, as a bisexual woman, like living the dream. But on the other hand, I wonder if it reinforces the stereotype of bisexual women where, like, you put a quarter in and a threesome comes out. You know what I mean?MC: That somehow it’s performative homosexuality for the male’s pleasure. And it really isn’t like that—although also, on those dating apps, everybody is looking for a “unicorn,” which is a slightly younger bisexual woman who will not be threatened by the alpha female in the relationship, but will be there to pleasure everyone. And I think that that’s a myth, too. I don’t think that there are that many unicorns in the wild. I think that it’s actually this au pair fantasy, a nanny fantasy come to life. I don’t know very many [arrangements like that], despite being in alternative sexual communities for my entire adult life. But I do think that polyamory is something that is becoming more mainstream. I think people are realizing the finite nature of monogamy, and as they always do, they look to the queer community for what to do. That’s always what’s happened. And so again, for me, polyamory is always centered within queerness. Just the practicality of it, I guess. Or the nature of it. You’re thinking differently, so you’re going to live differently.
