Ep. 12: I Can Love Multiple People At Once
PiXXXie (Pia Monique Murray)
Love is Limitless
PiXXXie (Pia Monique Murray) is a native Brooklynite, an artist and a free woman. Growing up with a mom who loved to love informed PiXXXie of her own goddess power within and is now spreading a message of love, freedom and humanity. She’s gone from a long marriage to polyamory. She’s proud, excited and enjoying the exploration.
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Introduction by Brittney Monique Walker:
There is no limit to how much love one can give or receive right? PiXXXiie, a native Brooklynite artist and a sexually liberated woman, has always been comfortable with herself, her expression and her sexuality. In this episode, PiXXXie might challenge what you thought you knew about love, sex and friendship as she defiles respectability politics with love. This is her journey to polyamory.
You're listening to the black narrative experience.
PiXXXie (Pia Monique Murray):
Alright, so let's talk while I cook. So my name is PiXXXie. That's spelled Capital P, Lowercase I, three Capital X's lowercase I lowercase e. PiXXXie has been my alter ego for since I was a teenager, so it started off innocently enough. I think the name actually was given to me because of my hair. After I big chopped as it was in this little short curly fro.
And people started calling me Pixie and then it took on a little more of a sinister connotation As I started to smoke more weed (laughs). And then I had a little stint of selling weed one year in college. And so we used to call my wee, my pixie dust, (laughs) you know, trying to market it. So I was not really good at smoking, selling weed because I was really good at smoking weed.
And so that was a short lived endeavor. And then fast forward into adulthood, I started to do burlesque dance performance. And so Pixie became my stage name. I started off with a single X. The triple X came about when I started to do burlesque performance. And that's kind of for me was how I was distinguishing between like the childhood nickname and the the stage name and I feel like as an alter ego, PiXXXie became more prevalent when I separated from my husband.
I was partnered for 15 years, married for ten. And while it was a pretty amicable split, you know, that still completely rocks your world. And I never, never really considered myself a sexually repressed person until that moment, because it was in that moment that I realized I wasn't beholden to another person. And I could really just give into whatever sexual whim, interest desire I had, and I could just seek other people who were down for that.
My partner and I had been very open in our conversations about sex, but I wasn't a kinkier person than he was. So [we] just didn't explore a lot of stuff because that just wasn't an interest of news. And I'm not in the business of traumatizing people for my own jollies. It was just like, alright, so it's not going to put that thing in your butt (laughs).
But, you know, when I separate it from him and I, you know, it's also worth it to know that he and I got together just before my 21st birthday. So I spent my entire adulthood right in a monogamous relationship. And I have had relationships beforehand because I was a little fast. But, you know, like when we separated, I was just really curious, what is life like?
Like, what is it like to date as an adult? What is it like to date multiple people? And so once I started to do that, I was like, Oh, I really like it. But I was very tentative about meeting people. And especially like with online dating. So PiXXXie really started to take more hold in my daily life because that was my persona on my dating apps, and it was how I was meeting people in the club before I decided I wanted to share my full government name with them.
If it was going to go past one night, then maybe they would learn my actual name. But it was just going to be for a night. You know, PiXXXie is fine, but I mean, I grew up pretty. Open my mother and say my mother is like the epitome of a lady in the streets and a freak of the sheets like, her whole thing is like, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. Decorum is everything.
And, you know, so I feel like I grew up with her encouraging me to be open. But coy. Yeah. And that, like, there were always boundaries. There was always a boundary between respectability and complete promiscuity. I think PiXXXie pushes against that. PiXXXie doesn't believe in that boundary, or at least I think it's subjective. People can't shame you unless you actually feel shame about what you're doing.
Otherwise you just look at them like what’s your problem. Rough PiXXXie. PiXXXie has an agenda to like spread sexual liberation. It feels like it's been very healing so myself feel less judgmental in every aspect of life out of not believing in kink shaming, you know, as I like became more comfortable and confident in my own bisexuality and queerness like that also makes me completely open to other people in their identities.
And so even if it's not my own identity, I get it. I don't have a hard time understanding, respecting, supporting. And I think that's because I've experienced my own liberation. And I think that for all people, like if you experience, like true liberation, you don't want to restrict or oppress another person you like because only good feelings come from that.
So like you want other people to feel that too. I think that being sexually liberated means you can comfortably explore, discuss and share what interests you and excites you sexually. Like you just talk about sex, right? You can talk about it, you can explore it, you can hear other people talk about it, too, right? I think the sexual liberation means not looking at sex as a tool or a weapon, right.
But more so as a way of engaging and connecting with people, whether you intend to make life from it or not. Like, I think that ultimately you're engaging and connecting. You're physically connecting with people, right. And emotionally, spiritually, all that stuff. I think sexual liberation also means because you have achieved a certain amount of freedom and openness, you can also bestow that on your partners, which I think so many of us, are walking around with sexual trauma because we've had partners who were insensitive, inconsiderate and just straight out abusive, or we've had people who made sex a really taboo thing for us.
So we never felt safe or comfortable or confident in talking about it and exploring it and discussing it. And then because we're not comfortable with it, we shut down other people, particularly sexually liberated people become targeted, right, because of sexually repressed people. So I think sexual liberation is really about making sex safe and fun and exciting and juicy and all those things that are really should be like it's literally the way we come about, it is the essence of a life.
It should not be a source of pain or trauma or fear. And it doesn't mean everybody's got to want to go out and fuck everybody. But like you should be comfortable in whatever your choices are.
I had a beautiful relationship, even with its flaws, and it ended because we couldn't be the partners for each other that we need it to be right. When I separated from my partner, it was the first time in my adult life that I wasn't attached to another person. And the decision I made was for me and me alone. I can move through this world completely by my own whims. And I did so as as PiXXXie because PiXXXie as my alter ego has been the person who is more selfish maybe.
I don't know. Selfish is the right word, more impulsive, and it's liberating after supporting my partner who is going through some depression and anxiety for several years before we split up. Right. I needed PiXXXie to just listen to me and to indulge in those impulses and to not feel guilty about like indulging in things that were pleasurable and felt good.
You know, when your partner's not okay, sometimes you feel guilty, right? Like indulging in those things because they can't because they're not in a good place. So I think that's how PiXXXie has been healing for me also, my mother was very human in front of me, and so I witnessed her with my aunts and her girlfriends and, you know, like I heard their conversations after they had several drinks and, you know, Tupperware parties and whatnot.
And I have very, very vague recollection, recollection of my mother towing me with her to a couple of Frederick’s of Hollywood parties. So in that sience I feel like I even though my mother's words were always be conservative in front of people. What I witnessed in her right was a pretty sexually liberated woman when she and my father split up.
I think their final breakup was around the age of nine for me. She dated a lot of guys and she had maybe like two or three significant relationships, but god there was so many dudes. A lot of them were still around to this day. I mentioned earlier about being a little face when I was younger, right?
So I was 16, messing around with this married dude who was 23, 24. And my mother knew it. She may have chosen to think it wasn't a sexual relationship, but like, you know, he was, you know, you take me to the movies sometimes and like, you know, I didn't sneak that around, but I had a friend who was staying with me and she and I fell out.
She was doing some shady shit and to deflect off of her, she told my mother that I was sleeping with this guy and my mother blew up. It was a huge like, me and mother didn't have very many blowout fights growing up. That was a huge one. But it was weird, right? Because I have been going out with this guy. And you didn’t think I think your 16 year old daughter going out with this 24 year old guy wasn’t fucking him? (laughing)
Right. I think that once my friend had outed it, like then she just had to like face that what that was right. So that happened fast forward about a year later and this guy that I had grown up with on the block, Ibu, he and I get closer I have kind of like a friends of benefit summer fling right. My mother knows about this. Ibu is a part of the crew, it will is like when the people who would come over every Friday night or movie nights at my house, we'd get Chinese food.
So like I had a good friend, Theresa, who was dating George. Georgie and Ibu were best friends. Ibu would come over with George, you know, and like other people would come over too. But Ibu was a staple, right? So the whole place my mother knew who he was. We went to some party. He walked me back home.
I bring him into the apartment and of course, and having sex and with a wakes up in the middle of the night, walks into my room, finds us having sex and freaks the fuck out, blows up, brings us into the living room, gives us the whole, like stern talking to and you like, what would your parents think? Like if they walked in and found you in your room and bought, like, all this stuff, right?
That's the time. Like, the only thing that I could say. And I mean, this was freaking 22 years ago, and to this day, I still hold this argument. I was like, But it's sex. And human beings have sex. And like, you already know I'm sexually active. Would you want me to go to a park? Aren't you happy I'm in the safety of my home with the guy who I've been having sex with all summer long.
Like, you know him. And I just. I. I mean, I crossed that threshold anymore already, right? So it just seemed too weird to be upset at me.
There were sex talks when I was much younger. My mother talked about body parts and all of that stuff. I got the what's happening to my body book for girls that was so popular at that time.
I feel like a lot of the like the most open conversations we had were not particularly about me or about her, right? But we could talk about sexual situations and an interesting thing is, while I was in high school, my mother had gone back to college and she was getting her master's in social work. And I remember a semester she was taking child psychology and like she was analyzing all of my friends, everybody.
But like, everyone would love to come over and talk to my mother. And so a lot of the open conversations were like with friends who were bringing their issues to my mother because she was really non-judgmental. And I think it was easy for her to do that with kids who weren't her own kid. You know, I never felt that I couldn't go to my mother with stuff.
But, you know, I was also my mother knew I was human. She knew that, like, I did my shit. But she also had a really high standards. And so I don't think it was necessarily a fear that I couldn't tell my mother this thing. She couldn't hear it, but like, I just didn't want to disappoint her, you know?
But I think that that fear, disappointment also just guided me to be more cautious with what I chose to do, because another one of my mother's great lessons is whatever you do, be the best. Like whatever you choose to do, just make sure that you can own up to it, You can admit to it, you can talk about it right if ever asked.
But we're more open now since I've separated from my husband, about everything. And that's because I just want it to be that way. So I just moved back in with my mother. She already knew that I smoked weed, but it was always something that it was like we just do separately now I'm like, hell no. Now listen, lady, we just going to have to be open about weed in this house because I can't live here like blowing smoke out the window.
I mean, I'm not doing it at 38. I'm not. So I sit at the kitchen sink and I clean the glass pipes out while I'm talking to her. And. And I'm like, All right, I'm on my way downstairs to get my delivery and you know all of that to make it open. I've been open with her about being polyamorous.
And that's really funny because she's she, like, looks at it like it's such a crazy thing. But I'm like, lady, you been doing that? You just didn't have a label on it. I would say it's been about a year of my official declaration of being polyamorous. The title was actually brought to me by a lover who had been reading up on polyamory, and he approached me one day.
He's like, you're a solo polyamorous. And I was like, what the hell is that? And so he explained it as someone who maintains multiple parallel relationships, but they pretty much move like as an individual unit versus couples who might date a person together, right? Or triads, which would be three individuals, all dating each other. And I was like, that sounds interesting.
Sounds like you're probably right. But I started to read up on it, joined some Facebook groups, and I found that, you know, this has always been who I was, I didn’t necessarily have language for it or really very many examples of people who lived this way. But I've always known that I had the capacity to love and deeply care for multiple people simultaneously.
I have and I do love and care for multiple people simultaneously in an intimate way. The difference now is, you know, I was in a monogamous relationship before with someone who agreed that monogamy wasn't natural, but, you know, we just fell into that pattern. And so even though we said all the words, you know, even like the one time that we attempted an open relationship, within two weeks, my partner, like, didn't want to do it anymore.
Like his. He felt like his ego couldn't handle it. I wasn't fazed, but he was more important to me than having the possibility of seeing other people because there wasn't a particular person I was interested in at the time. So I agreed to go back to a monogamous relationship and that's how we continued. But now that I'm living this way, it feels so much more natural.
It is actually not difficult to meet people that you can say, Hey, I'm polyamorous, I have other lovers, I have other partners. They all know that I see other people. I would also like to see you, but they aren't going anywhere. Is that okay with you? And there's lots of people that are actually like, Sure. And I think I might want to live this way too. Can you tell me more?
So it's so interesting that like people think it's really difficult, but it's not like I don't necessarily have a goal that like I want a harem of men or people. I mean, it's not bad on some days let me tell you. But that's never been an explicit goal. I just and I'm really grateful. I look at it as really like just blessings that I just met so many beautiful people, caring people, lovely people that like they want me in their lives and I want to be in their lives.
And we also have really good sex together
Brittney:
Is everybody’s sex good?
Pia:
I would say, well, I am not with anyone if the sex is bad because sex sexual compatibility matters like we might be friends, but we're not going to continue a sexual relationship if I am not feeling that and I've ended flings with people because we were not sexually compatible.
For the most part. Yes, the sex is good. Everybody that I'm partnered with, they come with they A game.
It's I don't know. I've always had a lot of friends that I've always had a lot of people who like maybe we just spent a lot of time together, like in concentrated period of time. This has to happen when you work on like a lot of projects and things like that, you know?
And so because of that, like I can get close to people fairly quickly and then maybe I don't see them for a really long time, but we're still like really close. So I mention that only because it hasn't been difficult for me to manage having a lot of close relationships and I haven't found it to be additionally challenging with sex being involved.
And maybe it's because I don't really distinguish too much, at least emotionally, between my close friendships and my sexual relationships. Maybe people have like this relationship with this and this relationship, this or that, and with this partner I do that and I think like me in a manner that happens naturally, right? Like I relate with my partners differently.
And so, of course, there's going to be certain activities or whatnot that I do with some partners that I don't do with others, but I'm not building these relationships with the premise of like, you're going to solve, like you're going to solve this problem for me and you're going to satisfy this urge for me like this, meeting people that I like and figuring out how we relate.
I have also been pleasantly surprised at the relative ease of finding particularly open minded, cisgender heterosexual Black men who are open to being with the polyamorous woman, particularly guys who have only ever engaged in monogamous relationships before me. But they met me, they heard what I was about, how I was living, and were like, Yeah, I'm into it.
Particularly the group of friends that I'm dating. They're a group of like they're four men, their friends that hang out together. I met two of them separately and then met the other two little by little. The first two that I met, you know, we met together on some kink shit. So it made sense that that kind of, like, clicked and worked easily.
But as I met the other two, like, they were just like and like, curious about me being polyamorous, but also like, very open and supportive to, like my interest in group sex and having sex with multiple men. And that was really important to me to be able to vet those partners. I don't think I even need to explain the like the flags and triggers and fears right around that and how difficult it is to feel safe.
And so I really do count my blessings that I've met you like these group of men that didn't necessarily live this way before they met me who are open to it, have been comfortable, able to relate. There's zero jealousy. Like every time I hang out with them separately or together, like they still can't get over how easy it is to not feel jealous, at the ease of it all.
And I relate to them on more levels beyond just like sex. You know, we're growing in our friendship and our support of our individual careers and aspirations. And I mean, it's pretty dope. Like, it's hard to find one person, right, to connect with in that way. So to be able to find multiple people to connect with in that way. I do wonder is some of what helps these relationships to grow organically and without any stress or pressure is that there's no expectation of where the relationship has to go, right?
Like there's no goal that we're trying to reach. We're not trying to buy houses together. We're not trying to children together, like you're just trying to enjoy our company
I want more. I mean, not that I want more people to live this way because I feel like they just live the way that they want to live, right? So I'm not like trying to spread polyamory, but within polyamory, there still is such a prevalence of relationships centered around like men having multiple female partners. Like I want more women to hear that, like you can date multiple, then you can have sex with multiple men.
They can all know about each other's existence so you don't have to sneak. It doesn't make you like all the freaking negative names that, unless those names empower you, like great, own them, but like you are just the person who enjoys sex, right? Who relates to people who's had the great fortune of meeting multiple people that you can relate with.
And we should all be so lucky to have so many great people in our lives and like these dudes hold me with the utmost respect. Like I never feel disrespected by any of them, ever. We go out on group dates, we got group chats.l I want to talk about. I want to normalize it. I don't want it to be something that I like tiptoe around or I'm weird about.
Like I'm saying I just want it to be normalized. I think that's the key to to liberation of any kind. Like, does being comfortable in your own skin and like the way that you tell us to live, particularly when you ain't heard nobody. Yeah, like you mad that I love more people? That’s weird.
Brittney:
You can listen to more stories or read core essays at the black narrative experience dot com original music for this production is created by Achebe Music.
photos by PiXXXie (Pia Monique Murray)