These were a few of the essays I wrote during my summer working at the Museum of Sex on Fifth Avenue. I love creative non-fiction writing (my favorite writer is David Sedaris, two years ago I got Me Talk Pretty- the first ever book I read of his- signed by him and cried tears of joy) and used my time at the Museum to not only flex my academic knowledge of human sexuality, but also as inspiration to do essay writing. 

Sisyphus and The Sex Museum

I currently work at The Museum of Sex on Fifth Avenue manning a “bouncy house” filled with giant inflatable breasts. Working the castle requires me to sometimes grab at my own breasts to communicate to foreign tourists what exactly it is that they’re paying three additional dollars for. Apparently, “boobs” doesn’t translate as easily as “three dollars extra” and “photo ID” into a foreign language.  

Formally named “Jump for Joy”, the bouncy castle sits in a large, dark room with shag carpeting and brick walls that are painted a deep blue. It’s at the end of a long hallway whose brick walls are painted a contrasting, bright red. Hundreds of small, yellow lights are screwed into the hallway’s ceiling, casting a dim glow over the entire exhibit that makes adjusting to natural light extremely difficult. TV monitors playing intervals of Victorian porn and images of carnival fun stick out of the walls. The soundtrack on a constant loop is one of jazz-fusion mixed with sex noises. Due to the dimness  the couch- which is a leather chaise from an old bathhouse- in the bounce’s waiting area resembles something one would find in a mortuary; I’ve taken to affectionately calling the space “The Crypt of Tits” to my close friends and family.

The bouncy castle itself is like the R rated version of the inflatable funhouses you’d find at a children’s birthday party or a state fair. The interior is flesh colored and boobs of gigantic proportions in all shades of human skin dot the floor and the walls.

As the day goes on, the bouncy castle moves progressively closer and closer into the small hallway space reserved for letting customers in and out. This is a safety hazard as if someone throws themselves against the inside of the bouncy castle, people waiting to use the bouncy castle can have their head slammed into the deep blue bricks. I know this because I’ve had my head thrown against the bricks quite a few times. Therefore, I find myself hour after hour, day after day, pushing the bouncy castle back and back so this doesn’t happen.

When I first started at the museum, I couldn’t push the bouncy castle back on my own. I needed to recruit the help of security guards. After a couple weeks I gained the strength to do it myself. The task of pushing it back is no walk in the park. You have to get in a lifted squatting position with your back to the castle and feet against the brick and then push as hard as you can. Your back sinks into the castles’ soft, squishy exterior making any progressive feel like no progressive. The act of pushing it can feel like hours. At the end, when the castle is successfully pushed back, there’s a feeling of both deep exhaustion but also a great deal of pride. Seeing the clear hallway space, free of any possibility of a cracked skull, is extremely rewarding. 

However, as soon as the bouncy castle edges its way back over into the space, all that pride turns into rage. My work was suddenly in vain- because here it is, again, back in the space and here I am, again, fearing for my skull.

It’s a continuous cycle. I push the castle back. I feel proud of myself. I walk safely through the space between it. Then, slowly, but surely, it creeps back into the space. My pride leaves me and I feel angry and irritated. But I have no choice I have to push it back. Beginning the cycle over, letting it happen, again and again. Push after push, hour after hour, day after day. 

 A few days ago an artist and his assistant came by the museum. They stopped by the bouncy house as the artist was planning an installation in the space. Before I could let them back, I told them I needed to push the bouncy castle out of the way. The thought of one of the museum’s potential artists getting his head slammed in the very space he was looking to use didn’t seem like a good thing. 

He and his assistant watched as I got myself in the necessary position and used all my energy to push the castle. After it had retreated and the space was revealed, I collapsed a little, obviously exhausted by the effort.

As I went to lift the rope to let them through the artist asked, “You push that back a lot? You seem good at it.”

“Yeah I’ve got to,” I told him. “Because if I let it get too close to the wall it can hurt people.”

“So every day you’re just pushing it back?”

“Multiple times a day. Every time I push it back it’ll stay that way for a little, but then just start inching closer and closer. Then the whole process starts itself again.”

 “Ah,” He said with a wry smile. “Much like the myth of Sisyphus, isn’t it?”

 I lifted the rope and let him through. With a thanks, he moved by and went to investigate the space. I, however, just stood there in shock. Sisyphus. Sisyphus! How had I been so blind?

In Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus talks about how we as humans are in a constant search for meaning because the world is utterly devoid of it. The search can sometimes seem futile. As a revolt to such hopelessness, Camus touches upon the myth of Sisyphus- the Greek man who pushed a boulder up a hill every day only to see it roll back down and do the same the next. In discussing this myth, he argues that meaning can be found in this world through such meaningless tasks. That while Sisyphus’ hard work isn’t outwardly rewarded by the boulder staying in place on the top of the hill, his pushing of the boulder day by day gives him a meaning, a purpose to be on this Earth, which in turn must make him happy.

I came to work at the sex museum through a series of missteps. While I was incredibly grateful for the position and enthused by the idea of being to babble about sex constantly to strangers, it was not my first choice of job. I’d ended up at the boob bouncy house not because I’d had a desperate passion to keep horny couples from copulating in between gigantic, inflatable breasts, but rather because no one else had wanted me. I’d applied to countless other editorial internships but despite all my hard work and considerable experience in the industry for a junior in college, I wasn’t desirable. So I found myself at the sex museum floating in what felt like a limbo.

The sex museum didn’t feel real to me, the time I spent there didn’t either. My co-workers, while extremely kind and protective of me, and the customers who passed through also didn’t feel real. The interactions I had, the things I heard and saw- they all felt like figments of my imagination. It was like I was wandering through a dream world, a place where things that shouldn’t happen in reality- couldn’t happen in reality- did. The museum itself began to seep into my dreams and I began to stress in my sleep that I wasn’t dealing with customers fast enough. I’d sit up at four in the morning sweating, looking desperately around my room for the customers who just moments ago had been so irritated with me. I wanted so badly to get away from it, yet, at the same time I felt a deep pull to it’s halls. The museum and the people in it understood how it felt. I was living in a limbo. A place between reality and fantasy, a screwed up, yet beautiful world whose point I couldn’t even begin to figure out.

 This made me oddly depressed.

“You should be happy. You get to talk about sex,” my friend said to me as once as I attempted to explain to her how I felt I was slowly losing my mind. 

“Yeah but...there’s just something about it that feels...so unreal, so purposeless.”

“Well shouldn’t that be the fun part?” She asked. “The fact that it’s like a break from reality. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“It’s so much different than it sounds,” I whispered.             

When the artist brought up the myth of Sisyphus the afternoon that he watched me push the bouncy castle back into it’s place, I felt a dual sense of relief and panic. First, I felt like for the first time since starting at the museum I had found a sense of reality. In moving the bouncy castle I had found a real and tangible purpose. I was doing something that had an effect on the world- even if that effect was just keeping me and the museum patrons’ heads safe. It may have seemed stupid, finding purpose in pushing back a giant inflatable tit castle. Then again, pushing a gigantic rock up a hill only to see it fall back down also seemed equally as dumb. But it didn’t matter if the action looked idiotic. Tit castle or rock- meaning is meaning, purpose is purpose and if that’s the way man can find it and not feel useless, then it didn’t necessarily matter what he was pushing.

However, this feeling was also accompanied by a deep sense of dread. As much I was happy to have a purpose, I didn’t want this to be my purpose. There was no written law that said Sisyphus and his rock had to be me and my bouncy castle. My rock could be anything. People found meaning in this world in many other ways than just pushing back a castle filled with inflatable tits. I desperately wanted to be one of those people, I craved to find purpose in something that wasn’t a flesh colored mix of vinyl and nylon. But at the same time I felt stuck. I began to grow irritated and ashamed of the purpose I found in the bouncy castle.

I expressed this to my therapist a day or so after. I’m fortunate enough to have the kind of cushioned life where I confide in my therapist about the way giant inflatable tit castles make me feel.  

“Who said that has to be your meaning?” She asked.

“But what else is there?” I lamented.

“No one is saying that you have to restrict yourself to finding purpose in just that.”

 I began to get frustrated. “It’s not like I can find it anywhere else! I spend every waking moment at this museum and because of that I find myself too tired to do the things that used to give me purpose- like write. I can’t even write anymore. Because I don’t even know what I want to write about! And so I write stuff that makes me feel stupid and pointless and I hate myself and I start thinking about how no one wanted to hire me for this summer and then it just spirals out of control, my anxiety." I paused to take a deep breath, concluding meekly. "Pushing back that bouncy castle is the only thing that restores any sense of meaning, makes me feel like I'm actually doing something with my life.”

“Write about the museum,” she said. “You’re there all the time and most people, even people who live in New York, don’t even know that it exists. The fact that you’ve been finding meaning in this bouncy castle could be extremely interesting to them.”

“Yeah?”            

“Use those feelings about the bouncy castle and start writing again.”

“So you’re saying the bouncy castle is much smaller than my actual purpose. It’s only part of it.”  

She nodded.

A few days later, we got a new bouncy house. The old one needed to go. The boobs had seen better days. My coworkers and I had spent a great deal of time repairing rips and tears with this ridiculously strong, sticky taped that we had to get shipped to us from Florida. Visitors were complaining of mild injuries after falling on a deflated boob that didn’t protect them form the hard floor underneath. I had started to referring to this particular boob as “the booby trap” in order to distract from the danger it posed. Aware this could only go on for so long, management got us our replacement.

The new bouncy castle was much heavier and larger than the old one. Because of its size and weight, the new bouncy house was nearly impossible to move back. I tried my best to move it, but it wouldn't budge. It could only be moved with the help of at least two security guards.  

I panicked at first, fearing that I’d be thrust back into a purposelessness state of existence. How would I find meaning if there was no bouncy castle to push back? I then remembered what my therapist had said about how the bouncy castle could help me find my purpose, but it didn’t have to be my purpose. I eventually stopped trying to push it back and let myself find some other way to make it through the day with some sense of meaning.

Soon I discovered that the benefit of this new, impossible to push back bouncy castle was it provided me with a private space. When I was back in the waiting area with the mortuary bench, where I typically hung out when the museum was slow, I was totally hidden from the prying eyes of customers. I could see them when they approached, but they could not see me. In a museum full of chaos and oddity and constant exposure, I had finally found solitude. While that solitude was accompanied by the sounds of sex noises mixed with jazz-fusion, it was still solitude and in that I found a place to write. 

I stopped trying to push back the castle and during the museum’s slow hours I began to write instead. At first I felt stupid, who would care what I had to say? But eventually I just stopped listening to the nagging voice in my head and immersed myself in the act of writing. I found a purpose again, a boulder that I actually enjoyed pushing. There was more out there for me than just the fever dream of the museum.

Life is not all about pushing one Boulder; there’s no one way to find purpose. That’s the beautiful thing about life. There are so many different ways one can find meaning, even if it is brought on by a bouncing castle of inflatable breasts.
 

Break On Through to the Other Side

In one of the galleries at the sex museum where I work, there's currently a bunch of artifacts on display. It’s one of the more interesting galleries we have since the variety really encapsulates the diversity of human sexuality. The objects span from the benign (Hugh Hefner’s smoking jacket) to the absolutely wild (like the Lap Juicer or the ball stretcher). 

 Everyone who visits the museum seems to fixate on a different object in the exhibit. For some it's the stuffed animal raccoon that has a pink satin hole for some plushie’s penis. Others find themselves both intrigued and nauseated by the vast array of anal devices, sex dolls and molds of porn stars vaginas’. I once had a customer who couldn't seem to get past the set of old gynecological tools that gleam sharp and menacing in their glass case.

“Jesus, those things look brutal,” she said to her friend. The gallery was empty so her words carried over. “I hate Pap smears as is- but getting them done with this stuff? Hell. No.”

 Being terribly unsettled by even modern day gynecological tools, I understood her sentiment.  

My object of choice is the artificial hymen. Since the first day I laid eyes on it's tiny, translucent pink glory it has floated in and out of my thoughts constantly. I don't know what exactly it is about the hymen that fascinates me. When I first saw it on my first visit to the museum with a friend, my initial reaction was one of utter disgust.  

“That is…absolutely repulsive,” I said to my friend.  

 She turned around. “What is it?”

“It's fake hymen,” I said.

When she came over and looked at it she was slightly disgusted, yet unimpressed. “I mean it's gross looking, I'll give it that.”

It was gross looking. Whatever manufacturer had produced it, they'd done an excellent job making it look as if the hymen had been taken, fully intact, from the body of some “virginal” woman. The flesh was thin, translucent and veiny. The center was a bright pinkish red that promised a release of a blood colored fluid upon impact. With the exception of its grotesque appearance, the perplexing nature of the fake hymen was lost on my friend.

Maybe it should have been lost on me as well. But it wasn't. I couldn't get it out of my mind. Even when I eventually started working at the museum, I'd find myself staring at it everyday. Whenever the museum traffic was slow, I’d wander over from my post at the bouncy castle to stare and think. What was it about this thing that left me so perplexed, yet disgusted? Why couldn't I stop thinking about it? What exactly was it about this fake hymen that made it so much more compelling than any other object in the museum? I couldn't tear myself away from the hymen.

I only ever met one other customer who was as fascinated by it by it as I was. He was a middle-aged man visiting the sex museum alone. These are usually my least favorite type of customer as most of them are pervy, but he wasn't bad. A little creepy looking yes, but non threatening.

 “What's your favorite object in there?” He asked as he put back on his shoes after spending the designated two minutes in the bouncy house.

 “The artificial hymen,” I replied, expecting him to ask what that was like most other customers.

 “Yeah that thing is nuts,” he said. “Absolutely nuts. The fact that it even exists just shows how screwed up we are about the whole concept of virginity.”

 I was shocked by his eloquence and understanding. While you’d assume the people who come to this museum know a lot about sex and are comfortable discussing it, most of them actually aren't. In fact in my time spent working there I came to the conclusion that most of the people who visit are actually conservative and this museum is there first glimpse into the reality that sex is more than just a heteronormative, missionary style business.

 “You think?”

 “Totally,” he said, tying his last shoe. “Where I come from they have these creepy purity balls. You ever heard of them? They are these dances where fathers like celebrate their daughter’s virginities. It's messed up.”

I had heard of them. Even seen pictures, too. As I recalled the images of fathers in tuxes posing proudly with their daughters in prom type dresses, purity rings on their fingers, I shuddered.

 He gestured with his thumb towards where the gallery was. “That hymen in there just speaks to all that. The fact that it even exists shows how much virginity is desired- that some woman would have to fake it just so she could seem pure. It's so medieval and disgusting.”

 “Yeah,” I said. “It's insane.”

 “Why does the hymen bother you?” He asked.

 “Sorry?”

 “I mean your must have your reasons for being so perplexed by it as well.”

“I guess the same reasons as you I think,” I said.

“You don't sound so certain.”

“I'm not,” I said honestly. “I haven't gotten to the bottom of it yet, truthfully. I just know that there's something about it that...gets to me.”

He chuckled. “Well, I hope you figure it out. For your own sanity at least.”

After I got off work that night I did some deep hymen thinking. In many ways, the fake hymen did disturb me for a lot of the same reasons it did the mysterious, sexually informed gentleman. Especially considering the whole hype around the real hymen that exists in a human woman’s body is utter bullshit. I knew that many women could be born with no hymen at all and that the hymen was so fragile, it could easily be broken long before sex.

Therefore the hymen’s indication of virginity and purity were irrelevant. If there was no hymen at all or sex wasn’t the only thing that could break it- then how could we use it as a valid indicator? Furthermore- and more importantly- who cares? What does it matter? Why did we even place so much emphasis on this little piece of flesh to determine whether or not a girl had been good? Boys possessed no such thing, so their “good” sexual behavior could never be questioned. I realized in that moment, emphasis on the hymen not only presented an issue with society’s obsession with virginity, but a sexual double standard: it was okay for boys to be experienced, but not for girls.

 I saw exactly where his frustration with the hymen came from. It represented, pushed for something that was, exactly as he had said, medieval. The idea of a woman needing to preserve her purity and that there needed to be proof of this preservation was something that would make any logical person lose their temper. The fact that there was a place out there that produced fake hymens so that women could ensure their purity to their sexual partner (or most likely new husband in this case) even if they weren't “pure” spoke to how ridiculous it all was.

At the same time though, one could argue that the artificial hymen could be used in a consensual fetish. While yes, asking your partner to wear a fake hymen so you can pretended to take their virginity is not only a little creepy but totally perpetrates the toxic culture of emphasizing the importance of virginity. The act is also, if consensual, not oppressive but empowering. If a woman wants to “re-Virginize” herself temporarily for not just the thrill of her partner, but for her own pleasure, then who says that’s not liberating? It's choosing to be a virgin rather than feeling like you have to be a virgin- almost a slap in a face to the mentality the pressure to remain virginal.

 The hymen itself was a true dichotomy of sexual oppression and empowerment; it could keep someone terrified of sex or allow another one of the most exciting sexual experiences of their life. As I began to notice the conflicting uses to this minuscule piece of faux flesh, I realized that the reason I was probably so enraptured and confused by it was because I’d spent so many years being conflicted over my own.

I was made aware of the existence of a hymen in my body at a relatively average age for learning about female anatomy. The subject of my hymen, however, did not arise in a sex talk but rather was presented to me because of my pogo stick. 

“You could break your hymen on that you know,” my mom said one day before I went out into our driveway to pogo stick. “I've heard of that happening to girls.”

“‘What’s that?”

“It's this thin strip of flesh that covers up the hole to your vagina,” she informed me bluntly. Neither of my parents had the patience for a dance-around-the subject sex talk. “But it's not a big deal. If you don't break it on this, most likely you'll break it when you get your period and put a tampon in for the first time.”

I was instantly aware of my own vagina. All along I had known my vagina was there- I could see it, I could feel it- but until the mention of the hymen I wasn't really aware of it. Suddenly the area between my legs felt like it was a danger zone. I had this fragile thing there that I could very easily tear it to shreds. The idea of ripping or tearing any part of my body sent chills down my spine and in that moment, I developed a deep fear, yet intense protectiveness, of my own hymen.

I gave up pogo sticking about two weeks or so later.

When I got my period in late middle school I was faced with the task of actually having to break my hymen. This absolutely terrified me, but my mother wouldn't budge when it came to using tampons rather than pads. She believed it was best to begin with tampons right away, so the day after I got my period I found a box of Tampax accompanied by a bottle of KY Lube on the floor next to my toilet.  

“Don't be so dramatic,” she said.

“But I don't want to do it!” I protested, tears welling in my eyes as I thought about the dull edge of the tampon’s cardboard pressing againstand tearing that thin, vulnerable flesh.
“Oh get over it. Do you really want to spend your period waddling around with blood between your legs?”

While this thought nauseated me, the pain of my hymen breaking seemed way more severe.

Following the exchange, long hours were spent on the toilet. It was always the same series of events, repeated over and over till I got tired.  I’d take a deep breath, put a little lube on the tampon (the KY had been recommended by a pediatrician friend of my mother’s) and put the tampon position. I'd at first push ever so gently, then a little harder and then I'd wince, pussy out (pun intended) and throw the tampon into the garbage.

 By the end of my first period, I'd gone through at least two boxes of tampons without actually using a single one.

The pressure to break my hymen increased greatly when that summer my family decided to take a trip to Hawaii. As the unspoken law of menstruating women goes, I got my period two days into the vacation. At this point, I had no choice but to suck it up and push a tampon up there. It was either that or potentially attract sharks with my period blood while snorkeling. 

I remember sitting on the toilet in our rental condo’s bathroom, tampons scattered across the jade green tile floor. I spent most of the time in that bathroom not actually trying to put a tampon in, but alternating between panic attacks and sob fests. Occasionally some member of my family would come by, knock on the bathroom door to see how I was doing and I’d scream, “GO AWAY!” like the misunderstood teen I was.

Eventually however my family turned on me as their patience was limited. They laughed at my cowardice. My dad developed a running joke in which he sang, “Break on through to the other side…Break on through! Break on through!” in his best Jim Morrison voice. This caught on with the rest of my family and soon the knocks on the door were accompanied by “Break on through to the other side… break on through, break on through…”

Suddenly, my fear and protectiveness of my hymen turned to a deep revulsion and hatred. I despised it. It was a liability! It made me a running joke in my family and kept me from enjoying the crystal blue Hawaiian waters. No longer did I care or fear ripping it's flesh. About a day or so after my family started singing at me in all their different Jim Morrison impressions I shoved a tampon up there, broke my hymen and got the whole thing over with.

I never missed my hymen. In fact, if I had gotten the opportunity to bury my hymen I would have spit on its grave. Something I had once felt so protective over now thoroughly pissed me off. I hated that I’d let a little, lame piece of flesh make me afraid of my own body and doing normal thing with my own body. I was embarrassed it had taken me so much to learn how to use a tampon. So I relished its absence and reveled in the glory of its defeat.  Every time I put a tampon, I felt a great sense of pride.

 Years later as a sophomore in college, I lost my virginity. By that time, I'd spent a considerable amount of time as a hymen-less woman. I entered the encounter with little fear of pain, but extremely high expectations. I’d romanticized losing my virginity for the longest time and stupidly expected it to be one of the most romantic, memorable moments of my life.

However, like most women upon losing their virginities, my expectations weren't necessarily met.

I remember lying in bed next to the boy to feeling an immense sadness in how non-monumental the experience had been. I expected my body would feel different, that something would physically shift indicating I was no longer virgin that I was starting a new chapter in my romantic life. Instead I felt nothing.            

 In that moment, I felt a longing for my hymen. The thing I’d once feared and then detested was now something I suddenly wanted back. I wished it had been there, had broken during sex so something, anything would have indicated that this experienced happened, had been something.

 When I saw the artificial hymen for the first time a year or so later, all these feelings rushed to me. Not just the juxtaposition it’s power to be sexually oppressive and liberating, but also all the feelings about my own, long gone hymen. The way I'd feared it, protected it, hated it, been proud of breaking it and then found myself missing it in some sick, twisted series of events. Since working my feelings about the artificial hymen through, it's become like a horror movie you’ve watched a few times where the plot is much less scary. But while I no longer agonize, I’ll sometimes pause on my way out of the gallery at night to marvel at how such a flimsy piece of fake flesh can enthrall me so deeply. 

The More The Merrier

A few days ago I met a polyamorous triad. I was working in the Museum of Sex’s erotic campground exhibit, wearing a park ranger’s uniform whose khaki chafes and clings to me in odd places. When they entered the exhibit, I assumed they were either a couple and their friend. Possibly a couple and their niece or daughter, since the one woman was significantly younger and more energetic. They seemed normal, verging on underwhelming. The only thing really notable about them was the man’s small, deformed hand that was the size of a baby's.

“If you have any questions while working your way through the exhibit- please let me know,” I said amicably, restraining myself from making impolite eye contact with the baby hand.

The older woman looked me up and down and smiled. She resembled any other middle aged woman I’d expect see behind the wheel of a Subaru in a Whole Foods parking lot. “Now what are you supposed to be- our sexy park ranger?” 

I blushed furiously. “Just a park ranger,” I said awkwardly. I've never been to take a compliment. 

“Yeah? Well you're hot so don't forget the sexy part.” She then nudged the guy with the baby hand. “Isn't she?”

Baby Hand smiled and laughed. “Yes she sure is. But my plate is full?”

My face resembled a giant, creeped out question mark the second the words left his thin lips.

The younger woman, seeing the look on my face, quickly blurted. “It’s a joke because we’re all married.” Paused and then added “To each other.”

 “We’re a polyamorous tripod. Or triad, if that term makes more sense to you,” the younger woman clarified. My face softened and any sense of slight terror that had welled within me began to fade, curiosity replaced it.

 The younger woman picked up on the genuine interest in my expression and her energy amped up. “Yes! We are! We’re also what you would call a unicorn because we’re so rare. That why I have this t-shirt! She got it for me!” She said, gesturing to the baby blue t-shirt she wore that displayed three cartoon unicorns with rainbows blasting out colorfully behind them.

I nodded.

“We’re not like a cult or anything we just don't believe in monogamy,” Unicorn T-shirt said quickly. “I could send you a lot of information about polyamory that would make you totally see it in just a completely different light. One that's not what the public paints it as.” Then as an afterthought she added, “Then again, you work at a sex museum so you must have a mild understanding of it.”

“I'm actually studying gender and sexuality studies at NYU,” I explained. “I do understand polyamory, I think it's fascinating.”

This piqued the entire triad’s interest. The Older Woman spoke next. “We actually have a really interesting story if you’d like to hear it,” she said softly.

 The crowd in the exhibit was small. It was a slow day and I was slightly starved for social interaction of any kind. “I’d love to hear it if you're offering,” I said.

The older woman began their story. Baby Hand and The Older Woman had been married for 19 years, they had kids together. Baby Hand worked at an airport, The Older Woman stayed home with the kids. First, they got into various fetishes and going to sex dungeons. When they hit 19 years together, they realized that as much as they loved each other and wanted to be together, keeping their marriage felt extremely limited and suffocating. One night at a sex dungeon, Baby Hand met Unicorn T-shirt and the rest was history. Even after marrying, they didn't keep their triad exclusive. Each member dated outside of the triad. Unicorn T-shirt was pansexual.

It was an unusual situation, of course. To the average American their relationship threatened the sanctity of marriage and the standard definition of marital bliss. But Unicorn T-shirt, Baby Hand and The Older Woman said they were happy. Even their kids, who had been naturally confused at first, were happy.

Unicorn T-shirt then proudly showed me a locked leather cuff on her ankle. “I’m also a sub,” she said. She gestured to Baby Hand. “He’s my dom. He's supposed to be the only one with a key to this thing, but I’ve got a copy because when I go to visit him at the airport I’ve got to be able to take this thing off to go through security, you know. It’s really, really not typical of a sub-Dom relationship but it works for us.”

“Sometimes, I really get locked up,” she then added. “Like cuffs and everything. Excuse my nudity in this photo, but look you can see here how it works.” She casually pointed to a shot of her nude body, bound and chained on her phone. Her bare ass was visible.

It was an extremely odd conversation to be having with a stranger, but they all spoke of it in a casual manner. They continued to discuss their sex dungeon trips, fetish message boards, fire and needle play as if they were you average dinner and a movie date nights. Nothing about it was weird. It was their world, ingrained in the daily routines of their lives- why should it be weird? To them, talking about this was like any, average boring couple confiding about their routines.

The conversation ended with Unicorn T-shirt giving me her number.

“If you ever need a west coast source for anything,” she said with a smile. “Text me. I don't like phone calls.”

I nodded and they wished me the best and headed off into the next gallery.

 After they left I began to process my conversation with them. They were different, that was certain. Their fetishes and their relationship dynamic were absolutely alien to me. I knew I could never been in a polyamorous relationship like theirs. The jealousy I’d experience, the idea of sharing someone I cared about so deeply, it all seemed so unpleasant to me. But did I have a right to judge them? No. After all, they’d been exceptionally kind. As kind or kinder than any of the hetero-normative monogamous couples that passed through the museum.

 I thought about how much toxicity they must experience because of their choices. The looks, the unspoken and spoken judgement. I remembered how initially nervous and fast Unicorn T-shirt had spoken when trying to explain away the misconception of their relationship - that they were some cult of horny people who couldn't be in a monogamous relationship without cheating. The fact that she had felt the need to instantly defend her way to love saddened me. Even their eagerness to speak openly when they saw I wasn’t judging them, like they’d never been able to discuss their love candidly easily without someone outside their world, made me sad.

 But despite my sadness, the polyamorous triad seemed happy. They were all happier than a lot of the other couples that passed through the museum. There wasn't any bickering or jealousy. In fact, the sense of sec

 Forty-five minutes or so later, I left the museum for my break. As I exited the employee entrance and made my way out onto a busy Fifth avenue, I saw the triad. They didn't see me as they were standing together, pouring over a New York guidebook, deep in conversation. Baby Hand used his tiny finger to point to something the three of them started laughing.

They were happy, the man with his baby hand and his two wives. Happier than most of the other people around them- and there was a great beauty in that.