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Over a late breakfast of salsa scrambled eggs, toast, and sliced strawberries, we’re listening to NPR and sipping breakfast tea. Occasionally, we murmur commentary to each other on what we’re listening to. My mind wanders from the latest Energy Bill updates, and I look across the table and suddenly feel absurdly lucky. Her head is tilted, her eyes askance as she listens to (and grows indignant at) the radio, and I fleetingly feel like I just woke up from a long dream and this, this, is what is real. Out loud I say, “I’m so lucky,” and her focus shifts to me. She shakes her head affectionately and cracks up. “You’re a weird one,” she says, “I love you.”
***
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.
When my parents separated last fall, I learned a few things. Having been together for 30 years, their marriage was finally crumbling, and my siblings and I were witness to it. My first lesson: people don’t change. You can’t get together with someone and think, “I could be with this person forever if [fill in the blank]. I could love this person if she resolved her anger issues. I could be happy with this person if she learned how to give me compliments once in a while. If.” Because my mom married my dad with some major “if” clauses, and guess what? He didn’t change.
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.
Amidst all my excitement about this summer and all the potential it carries, I have one nagging worry. I’m worried that my copious amounts of free time, most of which will probably be spent by myself, will put a strain on my relationship, that when she’s home I’ll be wanting to hang out while she may often have other things to do. Maybe this isn’t so much a worry as it is something to look out for and be mindful of this summer.
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.”
After a lovely day together (brunch, farmers’ market, working quietly together on separate things, fucking, cooking*, listening to apodcast on Anna Karenina which we just read together, and general fun), Lady Love went out tonight to a friend’s birthday, leaving me at home to ostensibly bake brownies and do my statistics homework. First goal accomplished. Second goal … I’m working on it.
[*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 Ifeel 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.
So, we’re talking about moving in together in a few months. We’ve been talking about it in vague terms for the past several months already: “maybe next summer, if we’re still together, we’ll want to live together, and then I’d NEVER have to be mad about dishes piling up in the sink because you’re good at doing dishes!” and “if we’re living together, we’ll be paying less rent, so maybe I can afford to leave my job a few months early.” That sort of thing. And neither of us had really dared to bring it up in a serious way, until this past week, because, well, it’s kind of big and scary. And also vaguely far away. Someday. (Doesn’t summer always seem far away in the middle of winter?)
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?
As I mentioned a few posts ago, I really love Valentine’s Day. I love it when I’m in a couple, I love it when I’m single. I’m not one of those people who gets bitter and resentful if I’m single for Valentine’s Day—I know that’s common, and this isn’t meant to be preachy, it’s just true: it just makes me happy to see happy people together, celebrating their love for each other. Also, when I’ve been single, I’ve always had someone else in my life who was single at the time too, generally several, and it can be really fun to celebrate the holiday with loved ones who aren’t romantic partners. Just sayin’.
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.
Still sitting on the post I was tweeting about yesterday, the one in response to all the Mary Daly stuff that’s been floating around. That should come tomorrow, hopefully.
In the meantime, see this reaction to my posts on growing into my identity as femme (see here and here), and my response to it in the comments. (As of this posting, my comment hasn’t yet been approved, but hopefully it will be soon.)
She writes about how my definition of femme, and my femme fantasy, are not hers, as a femme domme, and it seems that she equates her version of femme with being both feminine AND powerful, and my version of femme with being … not powerful. Which I take issue with. I thought it was pretty clear in those posts that (a) I don’t think my version of femme is THE definition of femme, and (b) coming out as (my version of) femme was EMpowering me, and the way I am femme continues to empower me, rather than (as she seems to think) DISempowering me.
So, I just wanted to reiterate that for me, being femme and being a nurturer/submissive type IS being “utterly feminine and unquestionably powerful,” as she puts it. That’s where I get my power. And, also, I do not live as a full-time submissive, and I do make my own decisions and do make sure my needs are met, whether by mi’lady or my family or my friends or me, and I’m very capable, kind of a control freak, pretty assertive, and of course feminine and powerful. Femininity does NOT equal submissive. But for me, the two are increasingly intertwined.
My femme fantasy is not to be the Betty to Don Draper. On the surface, it might seem that way. But their relationship is my femme fantasy gone horribly wrong. Betty Draper does not get her needs met, and she doesn’t have any space to even communicate what they are, because it’s her job to be the perfect housewife. That is not remotely what my fantasy is, to be disempowered and living solely for and under another person, unable to stretch my legs and meet my own needs. But I do, in a weird way, want to be a Betty Draper. I want to be perfectly put together yet delicate, host dinner parties like the Heineken one in season two, be a perfect socializer, make my husband slash whoops I totally mean my wife look totally put together, be the quiet engine in her background (who makes noise when called upon… ahem) because it’s all so effortless. Those things make me feel immeasurably powerful. But that’s the extent of the way I want my relationship to resemble Don and Betty Draper’s. That’s IT. Because Betty doesn’t have any power. And I do. (I could also do an interesting discussion on how I relate to Joan, but I’ll save that for another time.)
Apologies for those of you are are not totally obsessed with Mad Men and have no idea what I’m going on about.
I’m a few days late (hello 2010!), but, well, as they say: better late than never.
(Funny aside: when I was visiting visiting my family for Christmas, my brother and sister and I one day decided somehow (don’t remember why) that we would talk to each other only in cliches, idioms, and proverbs. Easier said than done! Ha. Ha. But certainly provided some entertainment.)
Anyway. I’m not usually a fan of reviews and resolutions, but I figure I’ll do one this year because (1) this has been quite an eventful year for me, and some of it’s made it on my blog and some of it hasn’t, so this will be a good way for y’all to come up to speed on my life where it’s at (Cliff notes, if you will), and (2) I’m hoping that 2010 will also be eventful and transforming for me, and so I’d like to make note of some of the changes that I’d like to see. Not so much resolutions as goals.
So, in 2009, I:
- fell in love with mi’lady. We started dating in November of 2008, but I definitely consider the falling in love part to have happened in 2009. It’s been my best relationship yet, without a doubt, and the sex has been the best sex I’ve had too. With her I feel safe to be my best and also sometimes (unfortunately) my worst, with the confidence that we’ll come out on top. With her I can communicate better than I’ve ever been able to communicate, and she inspires and motivates me to be the best person and lover I can be. There are ups and downs, of course, as there always are in any relationship, but I am deeply content and very, very excited about what’s to come for us this year.
- moved out of my former flat in the Outer Sunset in San Francisco, where I was living with a friend from college (a rocky situation at its worst, but absolutely lovely at its best), when she left SF to go to medical school in July. I moved into a tiny flat in the Mission with a wonderful roommate who has become one of my best friends here. Living with roommates I think can be very tricky, and our roommate relationship has its sources of tension and frustration, but we communicate through them pretty well, and I feel very lucky to be here.
- started taking anti-depressants for my PMDD (pre-menstrual dysphoria disorder), which was diagnosed in July after a particularly scary episode during which I was afraid I would actually do something really dangerous. I’ve had an interesting time with the medication, which I’ve discussed a bit on here, and I’ve actually stopped taking it temporarily because it was interfering with my orgasms (!!), but it was a really important step in my self-care regiment and in my acknowledgement that sometimes, it is really, really important to seek outside help.
- learned that my parents are getting divorced. Still processing this one, and I imagine I will be for quite some time.
- started coming to terms with my identity as femme. This has been thrilling! I don’t think I need to elaborate on this here at all, because I’ve expounded on it quite a bit on this blog already — just check out the archives.
- have been at the same job all year, and have become increasingly dissatisfied with it. I almost decided to leave it recently, and then realized that even acknowledging to myself that it is in fact my choice to be there (and that there are major advantages to being there, such as: the income, the fact that it’s a job I can leave behind when I leave the office) was enough to help me feel un-stuck for now.
- applied to several graduate programs in both public policy and cultural anthropology. I’ve yet to hear back from any of them, and don’t expect to hear anything until March at the earliest, but this is exciting for me and has also helped me feel more direction and purpose in my life.
- started working as a volunteer crisis counselor at a local rape crisis center, which has been deeply gratifying (while certainly not cheerful), has helped me feel more rooted here, and has been the catalyst for several new friendships. I haven’t written here too much about the processing I’ve been doing surrounding my own sexual assault(s), but I do plan to do so in the (near?) future, as it’s been a pretty profound influence on my life and my thinking and my sense of direction. It’s hard to write about, but it’s so so so important to me that I can’t imagine not doing so at some point.
- erased most of this blog and more or less started over! Writing here in the latter half of this year has been a source of comfort, comradery, introspection and motivation for me. Thanks y’all so much for reading!
And in 2010, I hope to:
- continue to fall in love and deepen my relationship with mi’lady. I’m looking forward to more great sex, more power play, even better communication as we learn each other through and through and more and more, mini-retreats (that hopefully won’t be too expensive), accompanying her to her sister’s wedding where she’ll be outing herself to all of her extended family and family friends, and maybe even moving in together (!) (but we’ll wait to see what my grad school plans are before we really talk about that seriously).
- start graduate school (speaking of).
- leave my job (which should be concurrent with grad school, but in case I don’t get into any of the programs I’m hoping to enroll in, I STILL would like to leave my job).
- continue to take care of myself and be strong enough to seek help in taking care of myself, from medication and therapy, but also from intellectual, spiritual, and physical mentors, as well as friends and family.
- come out to my grandparents. There. I said it. I made it a goal.
- continue to write here and use it as a platform for airing my relationship-, life-, and self-processing, and continue to strengthen my internet bonds.
Happy new year! In German, they say “guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr,” which means “good slip into the new year” and I love that, it makes the actual moment, the ball-drop at midnight, seem less critical and stretches it out, makes it seem softer and more gradual and a little whimsical, whoopsydaisical, and allows for some glitches and mess-ups. So, I hope you all have a good slip into 2010!
Just brought her to the airport; she’s on a red-eye back to Vermont for Christmas with her family. (I’m here another few days until I fly to New York.)
Parting was hard, even though I’ll see her again on New Year’s Eve when we both fly back. I had tears in my eyes as she walked away from me to go check in.
I texted her from the train back to the city.
Me: ”Miss you already and love you so much”
Her: “I miss you too i love you too. It was so hard to walk away from you. I was sad”
Me: “But you’re walking TOWARDS your family :) it was hard to see you walk away too though…”
Her: “Yeah yr right but they’re not my girl”
I love her so goddamn much.
Tomorrow brings some house-cleaning and preliminary packing of my own, a trip to Chinatown to get tea for my brother’s Christmas present, and maybe even some baking (no more sweets though, but maybe some Parker rolls?).
We started talking a few days ago and continued talking last night about how to make sure sex is a central part of our relationship, and not just an incidental part.
What I mean by that is this:
When you first start seeing someone, it’s allaboutsex. Or mostly, anyway. Obviously you’re attracted to her as a whole person; she makes you laugh, you have conversations about God and past relationships and what your favorite drink is, you share an interest in music and books, you can rib on the northeast, since you’re both from there originally. But if you get right down to it, it’s about the sex. Every gesture of her hands, every toss of her hair, every sideways glance makes your heart thud and your pussy pulse. And when she touches you, even casually, accidentally, you swoon. You’re liquid in the lap of Eros.
Luckily for you and everything else in your life, this isn’t indefinite. The time returns when you can be in her presence without feeling completely dysfunctional, you can exchange emails at work without the rest of the day becoming a fluster of distraction and desire. It’s lucky for your relationship, too, because you can finally get to know and trust and love each other deeply, talk about difficult things and fun things, share stress and anxiety and joy and excitement, unwind together, and (perhaps most importantly) get some sleep. With your bodies warm against each other, of course.
But a side effect of this natural progression of a healthy relationship can be, if you don’t pay attention, that you forget about sex. Or rather, you don’t forget, but sex becomes The Thing You Do In The Bedroom When You Want To Be Intimate Or Just Want An Orgasm. It’s The Thing You Do At The End Of The Day When Everything Else Is Taken Care Of. It’s like “recess” for elementary school kids. A regular occurence, but distinctly separate from everything else you do. For kids at school, it’s workworkworkworkworkPLAYworkworkwork. For you two sexy partnered people, it’s workworkworkworkworkSEXworkworkwork.
And, YAY!, we have great sex. It’s not boring, it’s not mediocre, it’s not slowing down, it’s not tired or old or mechanical or artificial or put on or anything like that. There are days, sure, when it’s kinda like “ok we’re both super tired, let’s just make out a little and get each other off” but even those days are intimate and binding. We desire each other.
But, I guess that rather than the workworkworkworkworkSEXworkworkwork model, I’d rather cultivate a model that looks more like sEwoRXkeskoRseoSEXworsekWORKkerweX.
Um, does that make sense? I definitely still want there to be uninterrupted, undistracted, maybe even scheduled SEX time. Time when there’s nothing on our minds but fucking. And, to that end, I want there to be time for just “work” (and that doesn’t just mean “job” work, but anything else, too, like writing, or doing music, or cooking dinner, or fixing the heater, or whatever it is that we do). But I also really want sex to be integral and fully integrated in my day. So that it’s not just cordoned off into its own little section of the day. In other words: I want to practice eroticizing the daily grind.
For example: cook in a corset, garters, thigh-high seamed stockings, and four-inch heels. Why not? Rather than the more typical “I’m feeling horny, let’s do some role-playing, how about I’m your submissive wife and I cook whatever you want while you boss me around,” let’s make it “I’m feeling hungry, so I’m going to go put on some lingerie and head to the kitchen.”
Another example: get a piece of jewelry that designates a particular role, so that if I, say, wear a particular ring on a certain finger, it means that I’m sexually available the whole time I’m wearing it, and so I’ve got a constant physical reminder of “SEX!” on my body during the day. Or even a gesture, a particular innocuous gesture (biting my lower lip?) could be re-identified as meaning “I want to fuck you hard” or “I want your giant cock inside me.”
I think Sinclair‘s idea of homework is a perfect example of this, too, because it sends the erotic outside of the we’re-fucking-here-and-now, extends it beyond the moments in the bedroom, and builds it into the regular structure of the day.
The reason we’re talking about this is not, I repeat, because our sex is getting boring or tired; it’s not because I want to “spice things up.” It’s because I think our mainstream culture has a way of stifling sexual energy – we’re not supposed to talk about sex in public, with anyone other than our closest friends (if even them), and sex is supposed to take place privately and discreetly. (And, hypocritically, it’s simultaneously obsessed with sex.) But that’s not what I want. I want to cultivate an active sexual energy that isn’t constrained by the bedroom door or the time of the day, and that can be nurtured and activated throughout the day by various things. That way, when I finally do get to have sex, I’m not starting at 0 (or 5 or 10) and going to 60; rather, I’ll already be going at 30 or 45. That’s a whole lot easier to manage, frankly, when I’m tired and stressed and anxious and the thought of needing to find the momentum to get from 0 to 60 is daunting.
And on that note, I’m going to go write mi’lady a dirty email ;)
, 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.]
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:
