Follow us. All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission. The jigsaw depicts an early modern map of the world. Tentacled sea monsters snap the masts off ships and helmeted goddesses recline in the top corners, each with a single breast bared and the other draped in an off-white tunic.
There are three of us: me, and let's call them Daniel and George. Daniel is shuffling through the box. He is searching for parts of the European continent. George is searching for the arm of the top left goddess. The pieces rattle against the cardboard as Daniel shakes it about. Lana Del Rey is crooning from the speaker. Daniel and George sing along softly to specific lyrics. They are good at the jigsaw. They have developed a system in which George finds the parts with a red line and Daniel finds the parts with a brown line.
I am feeling sidelined. I want to be proactive. Earlier, we watched a travel programme in which Joanna Lumley sails down the Nile on a cruise ship. I want to go back to that. She drank the milk of a camel, posed next to the Sphinx, got drunk with Australian pensioners who did the same cruise every year. I let others take the lead on what to watch or where to eat.
Our relationship was an open one. We became polyamorous like this: it was summer. Daniel and I were on holiday. One day, we took a walk along a cliff. He paused by a tree to examine its foliage, also to examine the spider which had lingered on its bark, also to take a photo of the spider and upload it to an app which would identify its precise genus.
I had taken my fair share of walks around the polyamorous block and, at 30, had been ready to settle into my twilight years of relative monogamy. Every gay guy I knew was in an open relationship. Everyone was fucking everyone else. Soon, the casual hookup would want to be treated as a proper boyfriend, and someone would often get hurt. I knew from experience. I had been the casual hookup more times than I could count. Again and again, I had fallen for boys with boyfriends, which was not without its pleasures: the decadence of always being left, lolling about in bed with too many feelings to put into words.
