Anita didn’t know what she was doing in this place. This wannabe den of “iniquity.” In truth, it was just another sex club where people could tell themselves they were “free spirits” by indiscriminately sticking their junk into an array of orifices. Or, on the flipside, have their orifices indiscriminately stuck into. But of course she knew what she was doing in this place. She was here because of him. Her “libertine” (just an elegant term that meant “amoral asshole”) boyfriend that she was trying desperately to hold onto despite the constant reminders that he wanted to fuck as many other people as he could. Or as many that would allow him to.

In accompanying him to this club, she was facilitating this long-standing desire of his (a desire that, only up until recently, was entirely unknown to her). Not just because Anita was effectively “supporting” his “dream” by showing up to participate in it, but also because other women were always more “responsive” to a man when they saw that there was already a woman patently willing to fuck him. This is perhaps why she shouldn’t have conceded to appearing at this accursed event—even if it was masked. Because, for Anita, it wasn’t about being masked or not. It was about being appraised and pawed at by gross strangers of both genders. That really wasn’t her goddamn cup of tea. In fact, she hated tea in general. She was a much bigger fan of coffee.

Rodrigo—who went by, sleazily enough, “Rod”—would only tell her that such a disdainful reaction was yet another sign, somehow, of what he been calling out repeatedly during the fourth year of their relationship. That something being: said relationship was on its last legs thanks to Anita’s refusal to “explore.” And that refusal, Rod warned, was becoming too much for him to deal with. Mainly because he finally decided that he couldn’t “do” monogamy. And, offensively enough, trying it yet again with Anita was what had tipped the scales in favor of polyamory for him.

He had the audacity to tell her, after wasting so much of her time, “I thought it would be different with you, but it isn’t.” Was that, in his mind, supposed to be “conciliatory,” she wondered. Somehow “flattering”? That despite knowing his true nature, he tried to go against it for a “normie” like her? How fucking touching, she fumed. Indeed, she wanted to scream this at him in return when he delivered this line to her. But of course she didn’t. It was useless showing emotion to him, or trying to talk him out of his feelings with “reasoned” arguments. There was no “reasoning” against polyamory these days anyway. Anita could see, all around her, that she was apparently the last of a dying breed. The last “romantic” (hell, the last monogamist, full-stop)…or whatever other reductive word there was for it. Since, for some reason, it was considered “romantic” (read: naïve) to want to spend your life with “just one” person. Anita hated when people put the word “just” in front of “one,” automatically indicating that one somehow wasn’t—couldn’t possibly be—enough. But, for Anita, it was more than.

In truth, Anita failed to understand how anybody could possibly juggle more than one romantic relationship. It seemed like such an unnecessarily complicated, quagmire-like feat. How (and why) could anybody want to bother with all of that in lieu of enjoying a lifetime with “the one”? Oh sure, it was possible (more like expected, really) to take a “misstep” in love and end up getting a divorce, but, at some point, the divorcé(e) was capable of finding their “true” lifelong person afterward. After the initial big mistake—huge—that made them wish Lacuna Inc. (or, as Ariana Grande calls it, Brighter Days Ahead) was a real business.

But if you were someone like Rod, the caveat of “lifelong” meant having multiple other relationships at the same time (whether of a purely sexual nature or, worse still, of an emotionally entangled variety). And the definition of “true love,” for a person of Rod’s “nature,” applied to many people—not “just one.” This, along with several other things Rod had told her of late, stung Anita deeply. Yet here she still was. Trying. To accommodate. To “make it work.” Even though nothing about this alleged relationship was presently working for her. So why keep “clinging”? The word that someone like Rod would use to describe loving a person who didn’t return that love in the same way.

Unfortunately, though, Anita couldn’t control her heart, couldn’t make herself stop loving Rod even though her head knew better. At the same time, Rod seemed to be working very diligently—doing his absolute best—to make himself repugnant to Anita in every possible way. This being most glaring with regard to his hygiene. Never one for brushing his teeth very often (forget about twice a day—Anita was lucky if he did so once a week) or showering more than twice a week, the only “minor flaw” worse than Rod’s sudden adoption of the polyamory “philosophy” was the odor he typically emanated from every pore and orifice. And yet, Anita knew he still wouldn’t have trouble attracting other women, what with the veritable straight man desert on this Earth. Because, to the surfeit of straight and straight-leaning women, even an “attached” straight man was better than no man at all. At least it was “something” to play with. To wet their whistle (read: pussy), so to speak.

And at this godforsaken “libertine” club, Anita was forced to reckon with just how sobering (regardless of how many drinks she knocked back) that reality was as she watched all manner of “tits out” women ogle and approach Rod. It was by design that Anita chose to back away from him so that she could watch all of this unfold from afar. From some dark corner of the room where she could observe him without his full awareness. That way, she could see what he was really like. Not just his aura, but how he flirted with and inveigled other women. Now that they had all seen him walk into the place with her, it was enough to attract them like sharks to a drop of blood. But the only biting being done would be that of the “love bite” variety. An image that made Anita shudder to think about. Oh Christ, what am I doing here? she asked herself for the umpteenth time that night. It seemed that the man sulking in her same corner area was having the same exact feelings as he drowned his sorrows in another martini (the debris of his five previous glasses still uncleared from the table).

Empathizing with his sadness, Anita decided to go up to him and ask if he was all right. Ciarán, as he told her his name was about five minutes into the conversation she didn’t know she was stepping into, confirmed for her that not only was he most definitely not all right, but that he had no desire to be there whatsoever (dragged to the “event,” as Anita had been, by his significant other). Thus, immediate common ground was established. And from there, it just kept escalating, with Ciarán revealing to her his favorite books (The Picture of Dorian Gray being at the top of both their lists), movies (Casablanca being at the top of both their lists) and hobbies (reading books and watching movies), and Anita confessing that she shared all the same ones. This was more than slightly refreshing to her since trying to get Rod to engage with anything cerebral was a constant uphill battle, and usually meant that they both ended up doing most of their activities separately (yet Rod still insisted they spent too much time together).

Before she knew it, almost an hour had gone by. She had gotten totally lost in her dialogue with Ciarán in a way she hadn’t since the early days of being with Rod. This realization turned her happiness into sadness as she briefly reminisced on those initial months of her relationship with a man who had now taken her to a place like this.

But Ciarán’s kindness and, for all intents and purposes, innocence, warmed her heart in a way that Rod had never been able to do even once during their four years together. Something she was surprised to find after all this time spent, well, devoid of any emotion. Talking to Ciarán, she fathomed that she had been numb up until this point. That her numbness had been a form of self-protection, a cocoon. And one that Ciarán had made her see she desperately wanted—needed—to come out of. In fact, as a result of talking to him, she was made to comprehend that, up until tonight (barring the environmental circumstances), it had been ages since she felt this much like herself. For once, not merely a watered-down version of herself who was trying to please Rod, or worrying about what he might think of her when she expressed an unvarnished thought or opinion. In a word, the feeling was extraordinary. Suddenly, she felt like she could control her own heart again. And she owed it all to Ciarán. Ciarán, who, like her, didn’t want to be there either. All he wanted was the same thing as Anita, which was to be at home on the couch…monogamously.

And that’s when it dawned on both of them: they should leave the party and go do just that…together. So it was that one last monogamist met another at a polyamorous “libertine” club. Well, let them all be libertines, Anita mused to herself, walking out of there without so much as a single word to Rod. In a way, though, she couldn’t totally despise him for having “predilections” that were anathema to her. If he didn’t, she would have never met Ciarán. A man who (while watching Casablanca with him that night) she hoped wouldn’t “spontaneously” realize he was polyamorous a few more years down the line. After “too much” time spent trafficking in monogamy. That most illicit of substances in the twenty-first century.