My Wives And I

My Wives And I

Karen and I talked at length about expanding our household. Lisa was the sister she always wanted.

What about jealousy? Karen and Lisa share clothes, groceries, the washer and dryer, and me. But never ever would they be willing to share a kitchen. One kitchen per wife keeps the peace around our house.

By Citizen Correspondent Martin, Karen and Lisa , Washington

Date Posted: 05/21/08

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My wives and I lead pretty normal lives, so I don’t see what the big fuss is about polygamy. I put my pants on one leg at a time, toe first, like every other man I know. I go to work to put food on the table, and come home each night to my wives, who bring me my slippers, one slipper each. Actually, they don’t, but we do sit together and ask about how the day went, and what the kids are up to.

But I haven’t introduced us. Karen, 64, is a retired biology teacher, who I met in the pre-arthritic days of competition ballroom dance. Lisa, 49, is a housewife extraordinaire. We met at an accordion festival. Karen knew I might be bringing something home, but was somewhat taken aback when she found it was Lisa. “Can I keep her?” I asked. Just kidding. Karen and I had talked at length about expanding our household, and Lisa was the sister she always wanted to have.

Me? I’m a writer, 62, and an ex-teacher, ex-dancer, heck, ex-a lot of things. I have old-fashioned values, like driving a PT Cruiser “woody”, playing the accordion, and opening doors for women. And I keep a blog about our family and polygamy at polygamynow.blogspot.com. Why? Because a lot of people find polygamy to be either fascinating or repulsive, and I’d like to open them to the possibility that polygamy makes good sense for some people.

But what about the child brides, the lost boys, the welfare frauds? Simply put, this kind of polygamy is rare and getting rarer. Many American polygamists live pretty ordinary lives in pretty ordinary neighborhoods. But wouldn’t you know that the worm holes in the bad apples get all the publicity? You don’t get to hear from the good apples because most of them are in the closet. Polygamy is a felony in most places, just like homosexuality used to be.

We live in a compound, but not the kind you would recognize. It’s white collar, high-tech, democratic, leaderless, and cooperative. You could drive through it (if it weren’t a dead end) and never know it, except for the odd placement of the houses around a common structure, hence the word “compound”.