At the beginning of the summer, when we were finally able to get together, my lovers and I, we hit the the road for a few days to make up for the weekends that we should have spent together.
We hadn’t prepared much, but one thing was certain: Étienne had to pick us up, David, David, Romain and me, at Clermont-Ferrand station, with his van.
Once on board, all we had to do was move out of town to find a place to put our tents for the night, before the stroke of midnight struck. A little before arrival, we received a message from Étienne: “Finally, get off at Riom!”.
We repackaged our fans that were saving us from the heatwave, and we jumped out of the train, into the station parking lot, which was as quiet as the night above us. Just before midnight, we saw the famous red van arrive, brave despite its age; Étienne opened his arms to us, then the doors of his rolling castle, and we left, two in the front and three in the back, in search of our we-do-not-know-yet where to sleep.
It was pitch black, we could see the stars. The van was rolling, bumping and noisy, on the roads of Auvergne. One goal: to pass by as far as possible from the villages along the big city, slowly climb the hills in the forest, and find the best place to put the tents.
In the back of the van, on the bank that Étienne had not had time to fold up, I was sitting between my two lovers (Romain, with whom I spend most of my time, and David, with whom, too, time is preciously in love). Everyone had put a hand on mine: they caressed my palms with their fingertips, very gently. I rested my head on the shoulder of one, then the other, and I didn’t just feel lucky to be surrounded by two boys who loved me: I totally felt that at ease.
It was midnight, we were driving without really knowing where we were going, we had nothing else planned than to find a place to sleep, the stars were shining on us and our voices barely pierced the interior of this van that had been driving barely a quarter of an hour; and I felt like there was no other place I needed to be right now. It’s a feeling that resembles to my feeling in front of an ocean.
A feeling of being where I need to be that I had rarely experienced with so much certainty. At the time, I couldn’t think of any other way to express it more clearly than by pressing their hands a little harder. We didn’t say much. We were content with the sound of our breathing tuning in.
And deep in my stomach there was me as I was two years ago. Somewhere there was the memory of the first time I met David and David two winters ago. I think back to those first months with Romain, to stomach aches and knots in the brain, wondering what it meant, exactly, to be polyamorous, and if I had the right to say that I was polyamorous, even if I hadn’t even fallen in love with a boy before Romain and that everything was still new, brilliantly new.
It was at the end of a manifestation, at the start of winter, Romain was with David and David, his other lovers, and we had crossed paths, a bit by chance. With Romain, we hadn’t even said that we were in “the main relationship” yet, in fact we hadn’t even said “I love you” yet (it was there, in our stomachs, hatching); but chance made things happen, and here I am, all feverish, as excited as anxious, facing these two lovers of whom he had already spoken to me.
And, when I said hello to them that early winter Saturday, I felt this thing that I had never felt before: I already loved them a little. It was a certainty: I already loved them a little, this feeling that we call “metamour”, meaning what we feel for the lovers of our lovers. And when I think of everything what happened between this manifestation and the start of the road trip, I can’t help but feel lucky, once again, but also very much aligned with myself, to the idea of the moments and the “I love you” that came afterwards.
In the van, between Riom and our we-do-not-know-yet where, I still did not think about all that because, a few minutes after midnight on that early summer Thursday evening, there isn’t much else that matters than the present moment. But now, when I will be fine, I know I will feel around me the jolts of the roads under the wheels, and two warm hands on mine: when I will feel completely in my place, I will be, just a fleeting moment, back on the bench of this van fleeing to the horizon