What Vanilla Looks Like

How does a liberal, bisexual Pagan in a very red state end up being "vanilla?"  I started by being liberal from childhood in a working class household.  My parents brought home Democratic bumper stickers which we stuck on the sides of our bunk beds, framing our boy band posters and cutouts from Teen Beat.  It wasn't until my thirties, heading for a divorce, that I realized there was a word for the sexual feelings I had for both men and women.  And, at the same time, my struggles with spirituality crystallized as I discovered that what I believed in on my own had a name as well.

I emerged from a difficult divorce broke but with new awareness of myself as a fully-realized adult.  Progress is never easy, though, and no amount of self-recognition gives you foresight of where life will take you.  Dating for a few years led to finding many wonderful friends who have become a chosen family for me.  A family that gave me even more strength to self-define and learn the path to happiness.

And *that* got me to this point in time, where I'm engaged and living in a home in an upper-class neighborhood, planning a wedding that still seems unreal for both the happiness of it and the fact that it's landing me smack in Vanilla Land.  Or, at least that's how the comparison appears in a world where more and more people speak about their open relationships and claim ideas like Sex Positivity for themselves.

So.

Does vanilla and monogamous have to equal bland or Sex Negative?  I hope not.  Yet, where are the voices from Vanilla Land that embrace something beyond the church social and reality TV?  We need to be heard from.

This is what the view from the vanilla side of things looks like as I experience and figure it out.