Author: Harper Eliot

Saturday 23rd November and Molly, Michael, and I are setting the table for Thanksgiving dinner with thirteen guests. Yes, I am aware that we are five days early and, if my calculations are correct, I am also aware that this will be published on Black Friday. But what’s a young, English girl to do? We’re doing the best we can. And whilst I do appreciate Thanksgiving as an excuse to eat delicious food and enjoy good company, not to mention the barrier it forms between Halloween and Christmas, this year also marks twelve months since Molly, Michael, and I first…

So I’m working this (pretty-much) full-time job; and I’m doing my Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature; and I’m running two podcasts; and I have a weekly column; and I’m doing freelance writing work; and I’m attempting to write publishable fiction; and my family want to see me; and I have a much neglected website; and I’m supposedly a photographer; and I’ve agreed to teach teenagers to sing; and for the first time in years I would like to not be ill and to be able to enjoy Christmas the way it’s supposed to be (which I have to…

Well folks, it’s that time again. That’s right – let’s talk about jealousy. And I’m not even going to complain about it! No, let’s do that slightly more productive yet equally annoying thing of celebrating the lack of jealousy in my life at present. [insert Mexican wave here] But in all seriousness – or as much seriousness as I can ever muster – it occurred to me this week that it has been a good seven months or so since I felt real jealousy. Maybe longer. Of course I get the little pangs from time to time, but actually it’s…

Having returned from Atlanta just over a week ago, I have found myself in various states of overwhelmed emotion. There has been tearfulness and laughter, joy and pain, contemplation and kink. I have felt more loved than ever before, and been more grateful for the friends I have in my life than I could ever imagine. In my life right now, I truly do have the best people I have ever known. But for all this joy and love and celebration and friendship, there has been difficulty as well. It makes sense that a week of heightened emotion will take…

Being, as I am, not a fully fledged unicorn, I decided – in a rather lighthearted moment – that I am actually a ‘fawn’. That is to say, if the ideal unicorn is young, willing, bisexual, and female, I fail in that I am pretty damn straight – or at least only attracted to male-presenting people – and therefore perhaps I do not quite deserve complete unicorn status. But there you have it: I’m just not that into girls. So how is it that I have ended up in a relationship with a male/female couple for almost a year now.…

I think it was on that fateful Sunday when I came out to my Dad as non-monogamous that the idea of non-monogamy as something chic, cool, “up-and-coming” really cemented itself in my mind. If you read that post, you’ll remember that it was actually my aunt questioning me on love and relationships and then questioning me again on the ins and outs of non-monogamy, on jealousy, on how you can love someone who loves someone who loves someone… and so on and so forth, and that my Dad simply overheard. My Aunt is the kind of woman who, although not…

As anyone who knows me even moderately well can tell you, I have a thing for lists. I have a list for work, a list for writing, a list for housework, a list for all the bits and pieces that keep day-to-day life on the go. I do, quite literally, live by lists; and from time to time, I will write a list for myself that is not quite a collection of things “to do”, but rather a list of goals. Things rarely get checked off this kind of list, because I tend to abandon the actual list long before…

A few weeks ago, I wrote about compartmentalising; about how I (almost innately) keep certain aspects of my life very separate, and how frustrating I find this when it comes to balance and fulfillment. I often find myself wishing that the different strands of my life were more interwoven, but after seventeen years of separation I seem to lack the space in which to close these distances. Well, since I wrote that column, two things have happened: a comment and an introduction, both of which are cause for a little reflection. First, the comment. In response to my thoughts, Jeff…

This column is going to be difficult to write. I can feel it in my body, in my simultaneously frantic and vacuous mind. Shall we count words? This is thirty. I could draw some brilliant parallel between my current state of mind and non-monogamy. Well, I say “brilliant”, but I think we all know I mean “barely tangible.” Although the atmosphere around that contrast of frantic and vacuous is not altogether absent when I think about my partners. I hear lots of people talking about how one of the benefits of non-monogamy is that you don’t have to fulfill all…

One week into (should-be-part-time-but-is-actually) full-time employment and, as predicted, I have no time to spare. I miss Daddy, I miss my friends, I miss my lovers, I miss new dates, I miss reading in the bath. In fact I am writing this at work on what should be my morning off, in the 20 minutes between organising the day’s schedule and when the visitors are scheduled to arrive. And the busyness is only going to get worse when my degree starts up again in two weeks. On the bright side, the minutiae of what I’m doing is getting easier because…