So, yeah, grad school. In the span of a week and a half, my life has changed pretty dramatically. Time is such an odd thing; when you’re in a particular timescape, you feel like this is it, this is what life means, it’s all led up to this, for better or for worse. And then something changes, and things shift, and that particular timescape feels so distant and you wonder how that ever felt real. My drop into grad school has been a waBAM kind of shift, and I look back on the summer (and, for that matter, the intervening years since I finished undergrad) and it feels like this weird island-in-the-sky, this floating interlude between something real and something else real. But what does “real” even mean? I guess for me, “real” means that I feel connected to myself — to my interiority as well as my exteriority — in a way I haven’t felt in quite a while.

It’s exciting. And it’s scary.

For the past two years, my relationship with ML has been the single thing outside of my own self that has motivated me the most. I have interests, sure. I love to cook (as y’all know quite well by now). I love writing here. I care deeply about the anti-sexual violence work I’ve been doing. I’ve enjoyed setting up my home with ML and expanding my sense of community in San Francisco. Many things. And yet on a day-to-day basis the thing that’s most occupied me has been my relationship. I love thinking about it, being in it, challenging myself to communicate in more effective ways (or not communicate when it’s really just time to shut up). I like positioning myself in the context of my relationship and in the context of a greater Queer Community, however fictive such a thing might be. I’ve really found resilience in my femininity and femme-ininity, and ML has been an instrumental part of that for me.

And now, in the past week and a half, my mental landscape has re-oriented. This was bound to happen no matter what program I entered, of course. But I think this particular program has hit a nerve in me in a way that undergrad never did (and that’s saying a lot, because I loved my undergraduate experience). I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but already the reading for my classes and my fellow students and the professors have all pushed my thinking to a level I haven’t been at in a while. I can already feel my mind expanding, opening windows, sweeping out old stuff and letting the cross-breeze carry in fresh air. I fucking love this feeling. It’s the feeling of being held accountable for my thinking. And the stuff we’re learning gets to me. Social justice always does. I’m gobbling it up.

What’s scary, though, is that it’s something outside of my relationship that’s driving me in a very real way. I was trying to articulate last night to ML what it was that was making me feel a bit jumpy and anxious lately and that’s really what it is. It’s this fear that being forced/encouraged to grow and expand is going to somehow make me grow and expand away from her. I know that’s probably unfounded, and that part of the beauty of relationships is pursuing our own things but being there to support each other in them. I mean, she does music, and I go to all her shows and listen to all her recordings and offer feedback and clap and cheer (and love her music, natch). I’m a part of her musical growth to the extent that I’m there by her side. Until now, there hasn’t really been that thing that I’ve needed her support in. I think grad school is going to be it. I’m going to need her to bounce ideas off of and to support me when I have a lot of homework to do and to read my papers and be interested in what I’m thinking about. So it’s going to be a probably subtle (and definitely positive) shift in our relationship once that dynamic blossoms. And I’m really excited for that.

BUT, here’s the thing. At the moment, we are both absurdly busy. I have a weekend-long seminar this weekend, plus I’m performing in a burlesque show on Tuesday so I’m rehearsing a bunch before then. Next week, she’s taking an evening music seminar Monday and Wednesday, is rehearsing with her band Thursday, and then has a major show on Saturday. The one night neither one of us has something separate — Friday — is a mutual friend’s birthday. Then Sunday I have a new student potluck to attend in Oakland. And the following week she’s got the same seminar again, and then band rehearsal again, and then another gig that Friday. And I’m kind of freaking out. When are we going to see each other???? When will we get to actually talk about the stuff that my mind has been turning over since classes started last week? She was out of town all Labor Day weekend at a wedding on the east coast, and then she gets back and BOOM we’re both frantically running around with 8 million things to do and the only time during the day that we get to share is the half hour before bed. And usually, that involves sex. Which is, you know, important. Obviously. But … I need the rest of the stuff that goes along with being in a healthy, loving and mutually supportive relationship, too. Call me high-maintenance.

So, we were just e-mailing back and forth (she’s at work, I’m at home supposedly “reading for class” but I’ve stretched the definition of that a bit by writing here…) and decided that Sunday evening, after my seminar, we’ll have a Date. Go to a wine bar, watch an old movie on the floor with lots of pillows and blankets, and have sex that’s not just half-hour-before-bed sex. So, yay! Step in the right direction. Breathe in, breathe out, and everything’s going to be okay.

And now I’d better get back to my reading…

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This post, changes in the air, originally appeared on alphafemme on September 8, 2010.

Part of it is that apparently one of my values is order (surprise!) and another of my values is mastery. (This I have learned from exercises I’ve done with the help of my career coach.) Reading about things and preparing for things helps me feel in control of things; creating a working system for dealing with problems helps me feel productive and confident and content. Plus, a book of seven principles? A list of ways to have a good relationship? Based on research? That produces results? Count me in. I love shit like that. It’s like a problem-solving triage. In a fight? Let’s go through our seven principles to make sure we’re not getting in a nasty shouting match flooding gridlock.

Thing is, ML gets sort of skeeved by my reading relationship self-help books. “We’re fine,” she said, “why do you need to read that?” Because I want to, because it helps me feel secure. With relationships failing all the time, I like to be sure I’m doing everything I can to keep ours on solid footing. And I want to be intentional about it, rather than one day years from now waking up and realizing that we’ve let it slide. “Ok then,” she said, “but you don’t expect me to read it, right?” No, I don’t. I don’t expect her to read it.

But then I realized I was fighting some voice in my head that was all she doesn’t want to work for this relationship as much as you do. She’s not as invested in it as you are. She just wants it to be easy, which means that when it’s not she’s going to run. And I let that little voice in my head kick around for a day or two, feeling a bit uneasy. And yet, as I was reading the book, I was learning that we already adhere to all the principles, just by accident, just because we’re awesome. And then I came to the principle about how to solve problems, and how to recognize which problems are perpetual because they’re grounded in something other than the surface problem, because they’re grounded in clashes that run much deeper… and I read how when you find a problem like that, it’s going to be one that strikes a nerve, and what you have to do is figure out what the actual problem is and relate to each other and be willing to understand what that actual problem is in order to get anywhere. And I realized that the actual problem in the whole little-voice-in-my-head-saying-she’s-not-working-as-hard situation is really this: I like to know, I like to have solutions, I like to be prepared, I like to have a system for things, I like to plan ahead. So reading a relationship book is a way for me to have all that, to appease my want for a personal sense of security. As for her? She doesn’t care for any of that, she doesn’t try to always be prepared, she certainly doesn’t have systems in place for things, and she’s not much of one for planning ahead. She just takes things as they come. In fact, for her, seeing me reading this book made her feel a little uneasy, because it looked to her like I thought there already were problems that I needed to turn to a book to fix. For her, it triggered an insecurity that she was doing something wrong that I wasn’t communicating to her.

And once I understood that that’s what was going on, I was flooded with … something. Not relief, really. Just calm. This is just the two of us, it’s the way we work. We have different values, different stuff going on in the backdrops of our minds, different perceptions of the same scenario. And with that understanding of what’s actually going on in our minds, beyond the surface tension of why-don’t-you-value-our-relationship vs. why-do-you-think-our-relationship-has-problems, it’s so much easier to value and respect our differences, and to accept them without being critical, defensive, or insecure. So, for me, the book has already been helpful. It’s already helped me see that every relationship has those kinds of differences, and the point is to handle them graciously and with a willingness to learn about each other, rather than a desire to force one another to change.

So now I can continue reading the book without her being suspicious, and I’m completely okay with her not ever reading it. And in fact? We had a really good conversation about one of the concepts I’ve picked up in it (an argument will end in the same tone in which it started, or worse, which means if an argument starts out harshly and defensively, we can’t expect it to end gently and respectfully!), and she was receptive to talking about it, and it was helpful for both of us.

I’m continually in awe of our capacity for loving and understanding each other.

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This post, two birds of a different feather, originally appeared on alphafemme on August 13, 2010.

***

We’re at a giant thrift store together, sorting through all the junk to find a few things to take home. She heads for the t-shirts, I dive into the sundresses. Ten minutes later, I’ve scoured the racks, have a few picks, and the first thing I do is stand up on my tip-toes, crane my neck so I can see over the racks, and look for her. I don’t see her right away. But after a few seconds, her purple hoodie catches my eye and I feel a wave of … I don’t know what, exactly. Familiarity, comfort, warmth, affection, love, security, and (dare I say?) a mild surge of arousal, all wrapped up in one feeling that doesn’t have a single name but it should. All of that, just from alighting my eyes on her in a crowded room. Do other beings have the capacity to feel this way? If not, why do we humans? Where does it come from?

***

I’m lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. I have to get up in the morning to go into the law firm to do some contract work, so I couldn’t go out with her and some friends. That’s fine anyway, because I read a bit, watched a bit of a movie I knew she didn’t want to watch, ate nutella out of the jar with a spoon, and took a bath. It was nice to have the evening to myself. But I can’t sleep without her in bed next to me, big spoon to my little. I slip in and out of half-consciousness, restless, unsettled, waking with a start at every noise, thinking maybe it’s her. She comes in, finally, around 2:30. She sits down on the bed to take off her shoes. “Hi,” I say, mustering all my sleepy energy to squeak out the single syllable. “Awwww you’re awake!” she says, “hi cutie!!” She goes out to brush her teeth, and I prep myself for Sleep Position, turning onto my side and curling up. Soon she’s curled up behind me, and I finally feel the heaviness of sleep settling in. “Did you have fun?” I ask. “Yep!” she says, “but I missed you the whole time.” Not melancholy, just a sweet matter of fact. “Me too.”

***

This is my life these days. Sometimes I think conflict (in my relationship or just in my life in general) is what most moves me to write. If that’s true, then that’s too bad, because moments like these are just as worthy of being captured.

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This post, vignettes, originally appeared on alphafemme on August 2, 2010.

You know what, though? I’m amending that lesson now, because I’ve finally figured out that people do change. People can change.

I changed.

I realized it yesterday evening. I had to go in to my old office yesterday, somewhat last minute, to do some highly confidential translation work that couldn’t be done on my home computer. I was able to leave around 5, stopped at a market for a few things on my way home, and started right in on cooking dinner when I got home around 5:45, expecting that ML would be home shortly thereafter (she typically gets home by 6). At 6:15 I get a text from her that she’d run into a friend of hers in the neighborhood of her office and was just finishing up a drink with her, and would be on her way home soon, and did I need her to pick anything up at the store?

My reaction: Oh that’s lovely that she ran into her friend! What a pleasant surprise. Let’s see, do I need anything? Nope… I already picked up what I needed. So I guess she’ll be home around 7 then… so I can pause dinner and take some time to find a B&B for our one-night city escape next weekend!

A lot of you might be sitting there thinking “ok……..” but trust me. Having that reaction without trying, without needing to convince myself of it, and without even being conscious really of what I was thinking — that’s huge for me.

You see, even just last year, my inner control freak would’ve been freaking out at that situation, and that reaction might’ve looked something like this: Wait, what? She’s having a drink with a friend? And she didn’t even tell me right away? So here I am sitting at home waiting for her and she hasn’t even left North Beach yet? Why didn’t she tell me 45 minutes ago? Is there something wrong? Is she pulling away from me?” etc. etc. etc. That’s probably a bit exaggerated, but it wouldn’t have been out of the realm of possibilities.

So what’s happened in a year? I’ve changed. Primarily, I’ve learned a lot about trust, and above all I really trust that she loves me, and that that isn’t changing. So I don’t need to have freak-out reactions, because I know intuitively that they’re baseless. And I’ve learned that by trial and error, by having freak-outs and being proven wrong because she loved me enough to be steady even in the face of my insecurity. I’ve learned that it’s better, more productive, to coax myself out of the freak-out before she even sees it, because it’s not worth bringing her down. I love her too much for that. And by learning how to do that, I realized yesterday that I’m not as much of a control freak anymore. I can let things go. But not only can I let things go — because that implies that it’s something I’m holding onto in the first place — I realized that there are some things that I’m just not even holding onto anymore. They don’t matter. Being the master of every detail in every situation doesn’t matter.

And wow, people. I can’t even tell you how happy and proud it makes me that I’m gradually becoming a better person. Don’t they say that people in a healthy relationship will bring out each other’s strengths and help make each other better people? I don’t think I ever really knew how true that could be. And it feels so fucking awesome.

So, that lesson one. It’s not “people don’t change.” It should be “you can’t force people to change for you.” Because I am living proof that people can, people do change. It just has to come from inside.

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This post, people do change, originally appeared on alphafemme on June 29, 2010.

As it is right now, I do sometimes feel as though we don’t have enough together time. I work a lot of hours, take burlesque classes, volunteer on the crisis hotline, have family obligations once in a while and statistics homework to do, and have various appointments that sometimes inevitably take up evenings and weekends. She, meanwhile, has band practice generally one evening every week and one full day into the night every weekend, plus the occasional late evening at work or evening/weekend appointment. All this PLUS spending time with friends at least weekly means that … we really don’t have that much plain old hangout time. We spend a lot of time together, but it’s often just in that hour before bed when we pop in the latest disc from our Netflix queues, watch for a bit, and then have a quickie before going to sleep. It’s been even tougher lately with her new work schedule, which has her (and thus, often, me) getting up at 6:15am, rather than 7:35 as it used to be — a change which necessitates an earlier bedtime, obviously. But since my work schedule hasn’t changed (yet! ha!), and I’m still getting out of work at 6 or 6:30 on a good day, our evenings have been shortened.

And, to me, it doesn’t feel like enough. To me, it feels like our sex has stopped progressing — we do the tried and true, rather than the new and unknown. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, I realize — hell, we’re still having sex at least 3 times a week, usually 4-5, and it can’t always be new and unknown (nor would I want it to be! familiar is often exactly what I most desire). But it’s at a point now where I do feel like we don’t have the time to spend with each other working on our relationship. The time we spend together gets filled up with having our relationship — watching movies, fucking, cuddling, cooking/eating, giving each other footrubs, talking about our schedules, decompressing after our respective days, sleeping — because those are usually the most pressing wants. We want to relax after work, we really want to hear about each other’s days and all the things going on that are bothering us or exciting us. We want to zone out and watch movies and curl up together just feeling each other’s bodies. And we want to have sex, to connect physically, erotically.

But I think a lot of that stuff is very short-term gratification. It’s what we think we want to do right NOW because NOW I’m tired and want to relax and chat about regular stuff. It’s comfortable, and cozy. But to me, always indulging that immediate sense of relationship laziness starts to take a toll. Sexually, I start to feel like many of my more elaborate or scarier desires are slipping into the realm of “fantasy,” rather than the realm of “to do this weekend.” Other than sexually, I start to feel like the more we do the same things with our time together, the less able we are to do other things. So maybe this is about spontaneity — making sure we keep infusing the Regular with the New and Exciting. And this spontaneity has to be something that we work on together.

I’m not sure how to start bringing more of an Our Relationship Is a Project that We Work on Together mentality into our routine, especially because (1) we’re both so busy doing our own personal projects that we really love and that really fulfill us, and (2) I think the Project Relationship mentality is more of something I want than something she wants. She, I think, is perfectly happy to just go along the way we’ve been going along. She likes comfort and routine, and doesn’t like feeling like she has to work on yet another thing in her life. I, on the other hand, really like to have relationship check-ins, and to discuss what’s working and what isn’t, figure out how to fix what isn’t and congratulate each other for what is, and to set little goals, and to be intentional about things that we do. In fact I start to feel anxious and unsettled if we don’t do those things. And I know that because that’s not a high priority for her there will always be some give and take on that front. But it’s starting to feel more pressing for me lately.

To bring that back around to my worry about this summer, the worry I have, I guess, is mostly that I’ll have a whole lot more time to devote myself to our Relationship Project than she will (I mean, I’m hoping to write here every day, and oftentimes, even this is, in a way, part of our Relationship Project), and that that will start to build up in me as this tension that isn’t getting resolved because there just isn’t time.

(What’s a good balance, anyway? How can you find the spot between co-dependent and over-committed to other things? Is it better to spend a lot of time on our own things so that we’re whole complete individuals without needing the other to complete us? Or is it better to spend a lot of time on each other, so that we feel unity and affinity? So that these anxieties don’t surface? Clearly I think a balance is necessary, but what is that balance? And at what point do we have to start sacrificing one thing or the other in order to strike it?)

So, I think it’s good that I’ve identified this issue as something that might come up for me this summer. I still have enough time to work on coming up with ways to avoid that surfacing, and strategies for combatting it if it does. Like if I set goals for myself every day, enough to keep my on my toes and sufficiently busy, then that should help. Spending time actively out and about with other people will help, too. And I think I’d like to bring up with her the idea of committing to eat dinner together whenever possible, shutting off all our other projects at least an hour before we go to bed whenever possible, and identifying and scheduling Together time as separate from time we’re together but working on separate things, so that we can make sure we’re staying attentive to each other and our relationship. And I just need to remember, too, that it’s much more of a relationship Want, for me, to be intentionally thinking about this stuff than it is for her, and that that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about the relationship as much as I do.

Last night, we climbed into bed much later than we’d planned, both tired and already bracing ourselves against the Monday morning alarm clock. We settled into what we call our Sleep Position: big spoon (her) and little spoon (me), her arm wrapped around me. It’s become so much of a habit that I hardly think of it anymore. But last night, after a few moments, she pipes up: “Do you like sleeping like this?” “Yes, baby, I do.” “Why?” “It makes me feel safe, and snug, and warm.” “Okay. Just checking.”

Snug as two bugs in a rug.

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This post, our relationship project, originally appeared on alphafemme on April 12, 2010.

[*For those interested, I made a swiss chard gratin and an asparagus and green pea ragout from Alice Waters' cookbook The Art of Simple Food, which is one of my absolute favorite cookbooks ever and which I highly highly recommend. A pleasure to read, pretty to look at, and, living up to its title, simple.]

But I got distracted, and this is why:

Fifteen minutes before she left, I mixed us each a cosmopolitan (“I can’t arrive sober!”), she put on Madonna (Like a Virgin), and we danced along giddily in the middle of my living room until she had to rush off to catch her bus. My flat felt empty after she left. This always happens, when we’ve been together and really having fun, and then we separate — there’s a sort of transition period of listlessness for me. Once I adjust, I’m perfectly happy to go do my thing, whatever it is, but for 10-15 minutes I often, well, miss her. Silly as it sounds.

So there I was, sitting with two empty martini glasses (cosmopolitan glasses are on my wishlist; until then, I’ll have to masquerade my cosmos as martinis), figuring out what I was going to do with myself, when I got a text message:

LL: “are you still listening to madonna and being cute”

Me: “yep :)”

LL: “I miss you”

Me: “I miss you too. We’re so silly.”

LL: “no we’re not silly. we’re just a little team.”

And it’s true. We are a team. We were talking earlier today about how, aside from just loving each other, we also really support each other. We have managed to strike a good balance of each doing our own thing and doing things with and for each other. And it just seems so easy right now. We listen to and hear each other, and do our best to clear up misunderstandings with an open mind and a willingness to forgive. We let go of most of the little irritations and instead bring things up for dialogue when they seem more important. We have fun together. We have fun fucking together. We continue to be open to learning from each other. We tell each other more than daily that we love each other, and frequently say things like “you’re beautiful,” and “I love when you look at me like that,” and “your ass is fuckin’ hot.” And we support and encourage each other to do the things we love to do and the things that make us tick. Her: music. Me: cooking. Her: socializing. Me: writing. Et cetera. We’ve finally found a stride that works for both of us. If we were in a three-legged race (did you ever have to do those on Field Day in elementary school? just me?) we wouldn’t so much as stumble; we’d beat every mofo on the fuckin’ field!

Which isn’t to say we haven’t had our rough spots. Oh we have. We’ve had our nasty blow-out go-to-bed-feeling-hollow-wake-up-feeling-ill meltdowns. Not many of them in our year and four months of being together (two? three?), but when they come they’re not pretty. Our last one was just a few weeks ago, and it was over something small that became something big because we weren’t being responsible about communicating, and I fell asleep crying and woke up feeling ill. Except that I quickly realized I wasn’t actually feeling ill, I was just feeling stupid. And that, I realized, was progress. Each time we pass squarely to the other side of a meltdown, I feel safer. Each time we end up still together and still ridiculously in love with each other, I learn even more that the meltdowns aren’t necessary. Because this one treats me right. She does the work. She pulls her weight. And she’s willing to go back and talk about what went wrong, why, how, and what we can do to manage it better next time. And my love and trust for her pulses through my body and I feel so fucking lucky to have her.

We have our differences. I’m particular, she’s easy-going. I’m tidy, she’s messy.  I’m somewhat guarded, she’s much more outgoing. But we’re a team, and I’m steadily learning what that means. “She is the wind beneath my wings,” the saying goes, and though I’ve always scoffed at it, I think I’m beginning to understand.

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This post, team spirit, originally appeared on alphafemme on March 28, 2010.

But the truth is, it’s not all that far away. I’ll know about grad school within a month, and I will probably leave my job by two months later, and will be starting graduate school (hopefully) within three months after that. And my calendar is filling up already for things happening in May, June. And it was when I realized that I’ll be in New York and Massachusetts for 2-3 weeks at the end of May/beginning of June for my college reunion and some family and friend visiting that I realized, um, yikes, maybe we’d better actually have that serious conversation about moving in together. Because I’m not going to be around for a large chunk of May, rendering a June move-in difficult, and she’ll be gone for part of July, and then we’re both travelling to her sister’s wedding in August, and then my classes start… which leaves May 1 and July 1 as our options, really, and for several reasons I won’t bore you with here, May 1 seems a better fit for me.

And, well, May 1 is kind of soon. Not omg-we-need-to-start-apartment-hunting soon. But soon. Omg-we-need-to-really-consider-what-we’re-getting-ourselves-into-and-are-we-ready-to-take-this-step-and-what-does-this-mean soon. I think we’re both simultaneously really fucking excited and really fucking scared. I feel a bit like how I feel about maybe leaving my job if I don’t get into grad school (and thus face immense uncertainty). It feels so right, and thinking about it makes me so happy and so excited, and when I really think about it I want to do it, like, tomorrow, but then I freeze up, like, but what if it doesn’t work? Things are fine the way they are, aren’t they? You’re not unhappy or anything, why tempt fate? It could be disastrous, what if you’re really not as ready as you think you are…

I don’t know, you know? I worry about some of my tendencies, and wonder whether really I need more time to work them out living separately before I’m surrounded by her and us all the time. I worry about my control-freak micro-managing ways; I worry about her messiness. I worry that those two things are a horrible combination, and wonder if the reason they work alright now is that we each have our own space and so I can be the boss of mine and she can be the boss of hers. I worry about my tendency towards co-dependency, and if I don’t have a space to call my own, will I lose track of my self? Will we be able to make space for our selves and for each other? I worry about being able to strike a comfortable balance of shared responsibility for our space, given my high attention to detail in household matters and her relative leniency. And, I don’t know, what if we lose the spark? What if we get boring, stop being interesting to each other? I’m afraid of taking each other and our time together for granted. I want it all to still be special.

And as I was writing all that there was the other little voice in my head saying “but! but! but!”, countering everything there with other (happier) thoughts. Like that if we can deal well with our current situation (and we do), then of course we’ll be able to handle living together, and in fact much of what’s hard now might (even probably will) be easier. Right now, though we each have our own individual space, we don’t have our own couple space. We can’t just come home from work and cook dinner and chill, read together, watch a movie while cuddling, then get distracted and start hooking up in the middle. We can’t do that because there are always roommates around. So in a way, our sexuality is quashed. Then, also, living out of two separate apartments is a drag, to say the least. I always have to be thinking a day or two ahead when I know I’ll be over there, and even though I generally have clothes over there, there are still shoes and makeup and computer and whatever my plans are the day after (burlesque? dinner with friends? show?) to be thinking of. And toting around. Cooking is harder to plan ahead for, and is more expensive, because we’re dealing with two pantries and two refrigerators.

Mostly, and maybe this is boring, but I don’t care if it is, mostly I just want to be able to spend time together not doing anything. I want to be able to come home late after an evening of being busy and have her there, working on her music, and I want to kiss her hello, throw some leftovers on the stove, and plop down on the sofa with a good book or some writing ideas and each do our own shit together, and then eventually get distracted by each other’s presence and fuck on the living room floor before crashing into bed and briefly sharing the highlights (or lowlights) of our days with each other as we drift off into snuggly slumber.

That’s what I want. I guess I’d like to take the leap of faith; we’ve done well so far with circumstances that aren’t always easy. Living together certainly won’t be easy either, I’m sure of it. We’re two people. There will always be conflict. It will be different conflict from what we have now, to be sure, but won’t that also be fun? Figuring out how to navigate a whole new set of situations? An adventure. In love.

Scary as fuck. But honestly, I think the thing I’m scared of most is that I’m less scared than she is. I want her to want this and believe in this as much as I do. What if she doesn’t? What would that mean?

I guess it’s probably time to have that conversation, yeah?

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This post, a leap of faith (and love), originally appeared on alphafemme on February 23, 2010.

BUT, this year I’m not single, so I will be celebrating the holiday with mi’lady. Last year, we had a lovely day that involved a trip to Guitar Center to buy me a digital stage piano, a 5-mile walk along the San Francisco western coastline and up to the Legion of Honor, where it was one of their free admission days PLUS there was a free organ concert in the atrium, and then an impromptu tapas dinner in the Mission followed by lots of sex. Last year, we were still just entering, cautiously, the phase of “relationship” after a few months of dating, and so neither one of us really wanted to plan anything huge and romantic.

This year’s different, obviously: we’ve been together now a year and a few months, and we’re continually growing in our love in ways that challenge me, comfort me, hold me, and strengthen me. But we had such a delightful day last year that we were reluctant to plan anything huge and romantic again this year. Not to mention we don’t have tons of cash to blow. And anyway, the point is to spend quality time together, not quality money.

So, here’s our plan:

I’ll cook brunch at my house; I’ll keep it simple: cream biscuits that I’ll make the night before, fried eggs in heart-shaped toast, veggie sausage, some sort of fruit concoction. Then, we’ll go to the Apple store to get her new computer (keeping in the tradition of making big purchases on Valentine’s Day… but not on each other!), maybe walk around a bit downtown or in our neighborhood, I’m thinking maybe go to Buena Vista park or something, get our blood pumping. Then come home and fuck the afternoon away (it’s so much better before dinner than after! when you have an appetite in more ways than one, the sex is better–livelier, hungrier (literally), and you’re not in that stupor you’re in when you’re full) before an 8:15 dinner reservation at Blue Plate on Valencia. And finally, we’ll come home, put on Gilda (what’s better than Rita Hayworth on Valentine’s Day? or any day?), and sip wine with chocolate and strawberries. And then snuggle into bed and fall asleep, of course.

How about you?

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This post, “it’s undeniably true: I’m irresponsibly mad for you”, originally appeared on alphafemme on February 12, 2010.