Mark is finally home.
Road-weathered and bruised, to be sure, but home. Poor guy: not only did he have to wait for an age to have the car fixed after the accident, be trapped in Ohio throughout, then drive cross-country in the same car, but he had to do it during some of the worst storms many areas he drove through had seen in a long time. At one point, having literally just missed a tornado and seen it on the horizon — and thus, already in a panic — he also had the misfortune, at that moment, of driving by a billboard stating “Prepare To Meet Thy Maker!” Yipes.
But he got himself home, and it’s amazing to have him back here: by the time he got back, we hadn’t been in the house together for a solid month, which is lunacy. It’s funny how much another person’s energy can change a place. Don’t get me wrong: this is the nicest place I have ever rented in my life. Loved my last one-bedroom apartment in Minneapolis, but for the same rent, to be able to get two offices, a wood stove, a huge kitchen and a big place to garden in a far quieter ‘hood is quite the boon. But it feels different here when I’m living here alone, and not just because it’s far too big for one person to live in. The air in here is different: the vibe in here is lacking, almost as if the house was asleep when it’s only me inside it.
Being able to have him come home — flowers in hand for me (as well as an awesome t-shirt from Iowa’s minor league team), new Uglydoll in hand for the pup — and be able to walk to the market together, cook dinner together while dancing around to the 70’s rollerrink tunes we share a shameless love for, eat on the front porch, and then find ourselves making out on the living room floor before bringing it upstairs was idyllic. Getting to wake up this morning and see him all soft-morning-faced and smiling at me was a rush.
And thankfully, being in the headspace to have any sort of sex last night was a godsend. Earlier this week I was on the phone with my Dad, and he’d mentioned that we must really miss each other. Then, unfortunately, he took it one step too far and mentioned we both must be as “horny as hell.” SQUICK!
Look, I hate the h-word already. It’s always been seriously yuck-making for me, and is one of the few single words that a person could say to me to make me not only not want to have sex, but make me not want to THINK about sex again anytime soon. And your Dad saying it — however open you and your Dad have always been about sex — is well beyond one step over the line. I wasn’t sure I would be able to think about sex for a solid week.
Top that with the fact that I’d spent most of that same day getting caught up with Scarleteen advice questions. I’m never kidding when I say that the work I do is one of the best methods of birth control I know. Listening to/reading/conversing about people’s sex problems and crises all day is about as un-sexy as it gets, and on any given day, just plain borders on — or outright is — tragic. Now, every now and then, it’ll be SO tragic that I crave some sex, likely just so I can be tangibly reminded that the healthy, happy sort does exist. But most days, I have to basically find some time between work and play to exorcise my brain.
It’s all the worse when we get teen users who want to get very explicit about the sex that they’re having. I’m not an idiot, I know full well there are adults out there who cruise Scarleteen and read the posts to get off. I’d love to think there weren’t, because it’s really invasive of the users and what they intend in posting, but there are. And I gotta confess, I either think they’re just not right in the head, or, more likely, that they’re projecting so much of their own fantasy unto those posts that they’re not seeing or feeling the reality of them, because I’m pretty immersed in it and I often feel like I need to wash my eyes afterwards, and remind myself that that’s not anything even marginally related to the sex I have myself.
But thankfully, none of that was in my head when Mark came home last night.
Or this morning, for the hour I stepped away from writing this to crawl back into bed and do a little more making up for lost time.
(Yep, still having times when it boggles my mind that we’ve been together for around two and a half years now and the spark hasn’t dimmed at all. It’s just really surreal. Fantastic, but surreal.)
August 25th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
I’m so glad he made it home safely! That sounds like a hell of a trip.
August 26th, 2007 at 7:43 am
Glad Mark is “home in the house”. Now, when are YOU gonna be in Mpls?;-)
August 26th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
welcome home, Mark!