Eros in Platonic Loverhood with Gabes Torres
A conversation on joyful political praxis, liberatory brainfucking, and co-regulating across oceans.
Hello, this is Ji-Youn Kim and welcome to Ji’s Musings. Please don't call me Ji unless you know me in real life and we're kind of close [chuckles]. I already did a little intro bit in the first conversation with Nicole in that post, so if you have not had a chance to listen to that one, I ask that you at least listen to the first few minutes.
In this second conversation, you will be hearing from my friend, Gabes Torres (@gabestorres). She has a public platform so some folks know her and people also know that Gabes and I are friends cuz we're kind of public about it [chuckles]. We like to flaunt. Flaunt?! I don’t know if that's the right word. We like to share the joys of our relationship in public, I guess. But yeah, this one was a live conversation over Zoom talking about our friendship and queering friendships. Please excuse the shitty quality of the audio. My internet has not been the greatest. Yeah, I guess that's it. Let's dive in. I hope you enjoy.
JI-YOUN: Uuuum, okay, so. I thought I could write about our relationship on my own or we could talk about it together.
GABES: I'm down. Let's do it.
JI-YOUN: Yeaaah. So, I think I will kind of start off— or, you know what, why don't we just go through these questions together? I want it to be super, super casual actually. Do you wanna just like do a little quick hello to the audience?
GABES: Yeah. Oh my gosh, you're swaying with me. Those who are listening audibly, I started swaying and then… Ji-Youn, we're now synchronized, [chuckles] swaying together, left and right. Um, hello as an introduction?
JI-YOUN: Mm-hmm.
GABES: Cool. My name is Gabe Torres. Pronouns are she and they. I am a mental health practitioner, a writer, an organizer, and currently, I'm in some parts of the Global South offering care to young climate activists and organizers… and, [I’m] always confronting and engaging with questions around the themes that we're engaging with today, which is intimacy and friendship and love, and how to be a damn good lover, especially in the revolution.
JI-YOUN: Yes. I love that we're swaying together, right now [both laugh]. I'm a swayer when it comes to regulating and resourcing. Um, yeah. And you are also one of my platonic lovers!
GABES: And you are one of mine.
JI-YOUN: Yes, yes, yes. I will start off with how we met.
GABES: Yay.
JI-YOUN: How we got to know each other. I was like, oooh, share our love story [both laugh]. Okay, but this is inspired by— so Cole and I went to a museum called the Museum of Love in LA on Tongva Land, and they were like, so how did you two meet? Who initiated? How long have you been together? And I was like, this is such cute shit, why don't we talk about the love stories of our friendships, you know? Okay. So Gabes and I have known each other for two and a half years?
GABES: Yeah, sounds right.
JI-YOUN: Oh my gosh. But we've known of each other for a little bit longer than that, I think through our mutual friend Mal. I met Mal through the woman of colour community here in so-called Vancouver. And Gabes, you met Mal through the Filipinx community on Turtle Island?
GABES: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
JI-YOUN: Mm-hmm. And Mal kept telling us separately. She was like, oh, I have this other psychotherapist friend that you should totally meet. And I would hear about you from her, for months. And she wouldn't do the intro, so then I just found you on Instagram and then I think when you were doing a live, I just like commented. I kept commenting in the live and you recognized my name.
GABES: Yes.
JI-YOUN: Um, yeah. So that's how we met.
GABES: I felt really swooned, remembering it now, I felt swooned by your engagement. Because at least for me, whenever I do lives, I would really notice the folks who would engage in ways that I, I don't know, like would invite more engagement. Your questions and your reflection stood out to me. And yeah, there's something about that. I listened to my intuition, I'm like, yeah, it feels like there's potential for kinship here. I think that some of the foundations of a really great connection would be offering beautiful questions and having that posture of curiosity, which even through text or through commenting on that live, I could already pick up on from you.
JI-YOUN: Yeah. Just swooning you with my questions and curiosity. [Gabes laughs] And excitement! I think I was just genuinely excited too. But I also totally knew I was getting your attention [laughs]. I was like, I wanna get their attention.
GABES: [laughs] It worked.
JI-YOUN: Um, so that's how we met and we actually have not yet met in person yet, due to imperial borders.
GABES: Indeed.
JI-YOUN: But I'm very good at the long-distance relationship stuff, so we've been doing pretty well.
GABES: Mm-hmm. And it's the same for me. I suppose folks who are in the diaspora who have to deal with time zone stuff and, again, imperial borders, would have to be creative around it. But yeah. And it feels like I've already met you anyway. And I have a feeling that when we do meet in person, it will feel like a reunion more than anything.
JI-YOUN: Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, cool. That's our love story of how we began. And then how would we describe our relationship?
GABES: [chuckles] That one's hard. The first thing that came to mind is that it's probably not in English or it's probably not expressed in words. I think of a variety of flavors and… I just feel like it's so nutritious and flavorful. There, I'm just gonna go with senses and with sustenance there in describing our relationship. It makes more sense to me to show than to tell or describe it.
JI-YOUN: Yeah.
GABES: But yeah, I think about a feast, I think about vibrancy. And again, like one of— I think one of the things that we bond over is how— I don't know if this is gonna sound really explicit, but whenever we have our brain fucks [both laugh]. Well, our intellectual stimulation and the gratification of such stimulation in our occasional brain fucks. Very few people on earth that I can talk to about—well, not just the intellectual academic things, but also the fruitfulness of life. And the fullness of life. And to do so in a way that's so um, it's almost unapologetic. I feel like I’m invited into more expression, more feasting, and more questions. I feel like your friendship has made me brave and has made me more intentional and helped me observe and notice more, check in more. I learned a lot about consent, more about consent through you and… yeah, I feel like it's a feast. A very nutritious and flavorful feast.
JI-YOUN: Yes. Mmmmm! Good. I loooove to eeaaat~ [both laugh]. Actually, I responded to Gabes, responding to your IG story the other day saying, I can't wait to make and eat food with you.
GABES: Yeeees, oh my goodness.
JI-YOUN: I was like, ohmygod, I'm so cute [both laugh].
GABES: I await the day. Oh my gosh, we will eat so much.
JI-YOUN: Ohmygod, I can't wait. Yeah, that all really resonates. I honestly think… yes, I think the words that I will usually use in the attempt to describe our relationship is platonic lover. But I mean, for one, platonic is not really platonic, like we could unpack that. Of eroticism and romance being a part of our relationship. But I think when you say, you know, words can't fully describe, I imagine people can probably hear it in our conversations…
GABES: I agree.
JI-YOUN: in the ways that we engage in conversation. Right. And I think, well, I know at least I can hear it, that it's not just academic, intellectual, mental stimulation. It's also the eroticism, and I'll just like segue into this— the eroticism that Audre Lord talks about is that life force and vitality. Right, and the expansiveness. And I think one of the most erotic things about our relationship, too, is that not only are we talking about ideas, but we dream together. I think we dream together and then we get excited about life and politics and organizing and even the possibilities of our work as practitioners too. And it's actually like, it's such a joy to have a lover with whom I can have a joyful political praxis.
GABES: Yeah. It's so meaningful cuz it's so hard to be seen and known in those spaces and that kind of discourse. Especially with the heatedness around it, the divisiveness around it, the defensiveness around it. I feel like with our own engagement with safety as well, and not assuming what is safe. And also disclosing with as much gentleness and consent about what continues to feel safe and what doesn't. I feel like that makes it flourish, the erotic, the eros in our relationship. I feel like eros also has to do with pleasure that which is preceded by a certain level of vulnerability, you know. A certain level of openness and therefore a sense of safety to be open and receive that pleasure, that exchange. The reciprocity of giving and receiving pleasure.
JI-YOUN: Yeah. And I think for me, that safety has come with a lot of intentionality and communication for us. I think something, um, I'm thinking about like how we queer friendship and the kind of the ways that we do and practice things in our relationship that might generally not be expected of in the category of friendship. Something that I really value is, um, uh… I don't know how to say this without sharing your shit.
[both laugh]
GABES: You know what, Yeah, it's okay [both laugh]. I think that is a huge component to friendship anyway.
JI-YOUN: Okay. Both of us have attachment stuff. Right, obviously. And I think when you are going through your attachment things and attachment insecurities in relationship. For us to be able to explicitly name that together and then to be able to say like, how would you like to be supported? You know, when you do go through this experience of your attachment stuff. And then I think about how do we practice together and how can I be a lover that you can practice more secure attachment with?
GABES: Right, right. And often the— as any other theory is limited, I feel like attachment theory often centers caregiver, parent experience translated into the traditional romantic, monogamous cis het partnership. But I think that with our, with you, whether that may be in our conversations around it and our very relationship itself, it feels like part of queering relationships would be just exploring the expansiveness of what attachment or co-regulation looks like. Which I think is pretty stunning, Ji, considering that we are miles and miles and time zones apart.
And I feel like the co-regulation that we have, even though we're, you know, sometimes pixelated and we have to adjust through time zones, I feel like with the intentionality, with the checking in, even with the bravery, I feel like a lot of my emotional needs are met more than [in] my in-person relationships, encounters, which again, like says something.
And maybe I'm going too specific around this, especially when we're talking about our shit. But for me as a child of the diaspora and always living in the in-between, in liminal spaces and having to adapt so much to what feels like is socially acceptable or “normal”, like I feel like that is a form of hiding. And part of my healing in terms of attachment—like we can only be seen when we allow ourselves to be seen. And that is to choose to bravely not hide. And so I feel like part of queering friendships or relationships would have to address those contexts and those specificities, like the specifics around being a child of the diaspora. And I feel like we have some of that shared experience and knowledge that makes our capacity to queer relationships a lot higher. Because we had to. We had to see the expensiveness and the fluidity because we don't, we automatically don't conform in [them].
JI-YOUN: Mm-hmm.
GABES: You know, whenever I hear people talk about high school friends that they have grown up with to this day, I have a curiosity and also a little bit of envy around that, where they have a vision of rootedness Yeah, that I have missed out on and most of the time I miss out on it. And that's not out of choice. It's out of circumstances that are forced and involuntary. So I feel like with those conditions or those circumstances and a lot of the legalities around, you know, involuntary enforced migration, etc. it feels like— okay, how then do we find connection? When a lot of our connections are banned? Are criminalized and violently severed?
JI-YOUN: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the really intriguing thing for me is that, and I said this out loud in one of our recent conversations is that I actually know… there's such a depth to our relationship and vulnerability and like witnessing each other and co-regulating and holding each other and practicing together. And at the same time, you and I have done a lot of differentiation between deconstruction and co-creating. But like, I don't know your history and you actually don't know mine, right? Yeah. Like we haven't— and I’m so used to connecting with people in an intimate way through a kind of trauma dumping [chuckles]. I'm [usually] like, this is my full life story of all the shit that I went through. But you and I actually, we have glimpses of each other's history through conversation and happenings, but we actually don't know each other's full ones. So our intimacy and vulnerability have not been about knowing what happened to each of us in the past. But it's been about healing and practicing differently together, moving forward in the present. And while there's definitely grief, for sure, it's been mostly joy for me. It's been joy-centered, I would say.
GABES: Yeah… I feel like crying [both laugh]. We'll see, we'll see how they'll fall and when they'll fall. But I feel a little tear constipated [both laugh].
JI-YOUN: Your turn!
GABES: Oh yeah, I know.
JI-YOUN: I also wanted to speak to, I think the particular eroticism. A friend of mine was asking when I was telling him about my relationship with you and my relationship with Nicole. He was like, oh, so do you flirt with them? Is there that kind of romance? And I actually don't flirt with Nicole very much, but I flirt with you constantly [both laugh]. I feel like the swooning started from day one, where I'll send you all the memes, I like to send you Pisces memes. I like to call you spontaneously when I'm driving home. I've called you from the ocean on this side of the Pacific Ocean. Um, and then… I can't remember the specifics, but when we're voice noting or on a call and you have your morning voice on [Gabes laughs] being like, oh my god, your morning voice is so hot. But then I think you've said the same thing to me too! [laughs]
GABES: Oh, yeah, definitely. You have that speaking voice.
JI-YOUN: I love the ways that we're explicit about all of that. It's fun and playful, you know?
GABES: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's so much with play and openness too. And when it’s play, I feel like the stakes are not as high, to be able to disclose. How friendships can be formed, how friendships are malleable. See how this goes. In play, we get to experiment. We kind of like take a few steps further than what the norm looks like, and that is, you know, blur, to say your voice sounds sexy in the morning and just see… [both chuckle] How boundaries would look like and how fluidity could look like, with regard to that. Yeah, I didn't think that that would be possible until we took those risks and experimented a bit and see what works. And it really does defy a lot of the hierarchies around relationships given that nuclear family, romantic partnership, especially cis het monogamous ones that are at the top is that hierarchy when there's a lot of fullness and aliveness in the play of this.
JI-YOUN: Yeah! Like, go flirt with your friends [chuckles]. In the not trying to get together with them, or not trying to get into their pants, but like just a fun, playful kind of way.
GABES: Yeah, write love letters. Sing to them. Oh my gosh. There was one time when I was particularly down one season and then a friend of mine… they are part of the Filipino diaspora, and they were singing a Tagalog song, like one of my favourite Filipino love songs. And I felt so damn swooned and romanced. It exceeded a lot of past lovers’ gestures, and that immediately lifted me up.
JI-YOUN: Yeah. I remember you wrote me, I think you wrote me a poem. I don't know, you just speaking is poetry [Gabes laughs]. But I screenshot messages that I get from friends and I'll save them in an album on my phone and look through text messages from friends when I'm feeling down to remind myself of how loved I am.
GABES: Yes, yes, I love that.
JI-YOUN: Yeah, just cute shit like that. I also remember, I think the first time I said, so I've been thinking about our future. And we shared a laugh there. Just dreaming our futures together, right? What do we wanna do in our futures? And I think that's quite different too, where we plan out futures with the traditional monogamous life partner, but we don't do that as much in friendship.
GABES: Yeah. And same with endings too. Like starting to expand our conversations around friendship breakups or pauses or the extent or the proximity of how much we interact, of how much we don't interact, of what topics we engage with and what topics we don't engage with. It's interesting. When I bring up that framework of, what seems is a framework that's only applicable in partnership, monogamous partnership… Whenever I bring it in circles beyond my close ones, which is a circle that you're a part of, they get a little weirded out.
It's like, is this necessary? This is kinda awkward, you know? And in other cases, there's like a sweet surprise to it where they say, this is how much I mean to you? That we have a process of, I mean, it doesn't have to be technical, but in a way, it's an informed consent process. That way, I get to honour… whenever we check in and see what closeness and also set-apartness looks like, it feels like I get to respect you more.
JI-YOUN: Yeah. And sometimes it's literally just naming the distance that currently is. And being like, hey, I noticed that this is where we're at in our relationship. How are we doing with that? Do we wanna shift? Do we wanna do something different? Or is this just where we're at? I really appreciate that.
I was talking about this with another friend recently. Our relationship has an elasticity to it where we're able to ebb and flow and we check in every so often about every time we ebb and flow to be like, is this working for us? How often do we wanna see each other? In what ways do we wanna interact? Like who's putting in more labour? In what ways to make this friendship work and actually have conversations about that? Yeah. Friendship doesn't just happen, right? We're really cultivating relationship in friendship. And honestly, I think being able to have those conversations in my friendships is what has allowed me to practice those things in the more traditional romantic relationships too.
GABES: Mm-hmm. That's good.
JI-YOUN: Yeah. Hmm. Any last thoughts on queering friendship? Advice, tips, opinions?
GABES: [Chuckles] Advice and tips. Well, we did mention the honourable Audrey Lord earlier, so yes. Read on, read the Uses of the Erotic (or listen). Read it again and again. Reflect on it again and again. I think there are a lot of reflection prompts. I can share with you this questionnaire that was used to engage with the essay. You can share it with the folks who are listening.
And I suppose there's a lot of self-intimacy that impacts, that influences intimacy with others. I feel like if I met you at an earlier time when I hadn't developed that sense of self and that sense of self-love and intimacy, learning how to find ways to expand love… had I met you earlier and not developed that yet, I don't think we would've enjoyed and relished in the depths and beauty of a friendship that we have now. Not that it's always gonna be a progressive, linear process, but to know what it's like to develop that. The practice of romancing oneself, of stepping into desire. And I feel like Audrey Lord also talks a lot about that. What is it like to not give into fear, but to step into power and desire?
JI-YOUN: Yeah, in all aspects of your life.
GABES: Yes, the fullness of life, not just romance, not just sex. Although sex and romance do have to do with, have so much to do with eros. But it's far more than that. So engaging with some form of self-intimacy and having an ecosystem or kind of like a circular experience with self-intimacy and others-centred intimacy. Whether that may be human beings or beyond human species as well, like being near the water, I feel like I've developed an intimacy with nature that I can co-regulate with the ecosystem. That I can have trees and the water as an attachment figure in a way. So really expanding on what intimacy looks like. Yeah.
JI-YOUN: Yeah. And I think being open to expanding intimacy, what intimacy and romance and pleasure and desire, what all those things can look like. And then, engaging and exploring and playing with that curiosity in relationship, right? As we explore self-intimacy, we're also in relationship with others who are exploring self-intimacy. And we get to learn all that together because I definitely didn't have this approach to friendship when you and I first started talking. But I think I grew with you in our exploration of being romantic and cute and flirtatious and erotic. It wasn't the plan when we first connected. But it was something that I was exploring for myself and our relationship was a space where I felt really comfortable to try it out.
GABES: Yeah, that's good. Continues to be malleable, shapeable and evolve. Yay.
JI-YOUN: Yay.