This is the twentieth time or so I’ve tried to write here in the last month and a half.  I’m determined to succeed this time, despite my fear of doing so.  I got a few notes from people starting to earnestly worry about me: I certainly didn’t need to make anyone worry, but do appreciate the concern.  Given my time lapse, and how complex everything is, there’s going to be a lot to read here today, and it’s going to read a whole lot like a confession, even though I’d prefer it didn’t.  I don’t really know how to do this: I expect to be clumsy, which feels like my default these days.

A lot of my silence has had to do with waiting for a very, very big shoe to drop.  The long and the short of it is that the once-primary relationship — a marriage — Blue has been in for over a decade has been troubled and deteriorating for quite some time: years before we even started talking again, let alone renewed our romantic and sexual relationship last winter.  And it has now led to his taking the first steps of a divorce.  I haven’t felt comfortable sharing that aspect of all of this until now because…well, wait.

I still don’t feel comfortable sharing, but I feel even more uncomfortable not doing so.  I don’t like keeping secrets, especially big, nasty ones.  I don’t like being secrets, either. All the same, I haven’t felt okay about even thinking about disclosing that until this point.  Both knowing (which I have for some months) what choices Blue wanted to make, and having those choices begin to be enacted was something I needed before I talked about it publicly, for everyone’s sake.

Let me get this out of the way: in general, I don’t care if someone is married, so long as it isn’t me.  However, I have always had a hard and fast rule about dating or sleeping with anyone who is married, even if it’s an open marriage by full and glad agreement: I don’t do it. The one time I was with someone who I found out wasn’t truthful with me about the status of a marriage, I put an immediate end to the relationship, even though it was an important one I didn’t want to sever.  If I went into all my reasoning around why that’s been my rule, I’d have too easy a distraction, but the crux of it is my feelings about marriage, honesty, honoring people’s existing agreements (and dating people who honor their relationship agreements), emotional availability, how much drama I’m up for and what I want and need in my life. I also have been close to too many messy, ugly divorces in my life, with family, with friends, and I want to be as far from divorce — always a possibility with any marriage — as humanly possible.

I made an exception this time, which I’ve had mixed feelings about. Because I did go outside my own ethics, ethics I tend to broadcast, I feel a need to explain why. I made that exception because of the nature of both my and Blue’s relationship, now and in the past, because of my understanding of Blue’s relationship with his wife, because of existing nonmonogamy over there for years before I was back on the scene, and because my feelings for Blue and vice-versa are very strong and enduring.  I’ll also be honest: given our long and complex history and how we have always been when together, beyond my usual bristling at the idea of anyone having ownership of someone else, the idea that Blue is “someone else’s” just isn’t how this feels or has felt.  Not to me, not to him. I made an exception because we both felt gypped at not having another chance to be together at a time in our lives when we could finally handle it. I made an exception because a lot of this — most of this — just felt right, and because in weighing my options, not pursuing this as we have felt like a choice I’d regret more than I would in pursuing it.  I don’t intend to absolve myself of any responsibility for my choices, but in terms of how it has felt and it feels, this hasn’t been one of those things where I’ve been all, “I’m not proud of what I’ve done, but….”  I’m neither proud nor not proud.  In making my choices, I consulted at great length with my heart and head, and with people close to me who I know care about me a lot, understand me, and hold me to the same kinds of standards I hold myself to. I also made an exception because we both intended the way things have been to be temporary.

The end of this marriage isn’t about me: it’s been creeping towards this for some years now after efforts to repair problems for a very long time, and also has not been a sexually active relationship for a long time. Both for longer than I’ve ever even been in a romantic relationship, which is an odd perspective to have.  As far as nonomonogamy over there has gone, they have had is what I describe as a passive agreement to active ignorance (and not the pejorative meaning).  There’s essentially an agreement to denial, rather than to an open relationship, and some interpersonal structures built to provide certain freedoms for nonmonogamy while keeping a strongly padlocked silence about it.

It has not been something workable for me in anything but the short-term, if that.  Even in that limited way, I don’t see my ever agreeing to this with anyone but Blue.  I’m not down with multiple partnership like that where everyone isn’t talking and negotiating as a collective, especially with relationships as serious and loaded as these.  I also feel conflicted with anything — even when it’s a choice one woman has made — that keeps women from connecting with one another.

However, it’s not my relationship, so I’ve tried to be a grownup and not project what I think is kosher for me or in general unto them. Suffice it to say, I can have a certain arrogance about things like this as an occupational hazard, especially if I’m not mindful about it. I’ve tried to deal only with my and Blue’s relationship and how their stuff involves me.  What I could address, obviously, is our relationship, and both what I can live with and want to live with.  I had my ducks in a row over here on my end, and my agreements with Mark sorted already; I had from the get-go.

So, back in March, Blue and I made an agreement that by fall, he would either a) create an open and fully honest agreement per he and I within his marriage — which included the honesty that he wasn’t with some random person, but with me, as well as that he wanted me to become a primary partner — b) for that relationship to switch to a fully acknowledged platonic relationship and/or for the legal marriage to be dissolved, or c) for the model of our relationship to change so that it became a platonic friendship, either permanently or until one of the other options was wanted and chosen.

It wasn’t an ultimatum.  In fact, if his marriage wasn’t in disrepair already, and it was meeting Blue’s needs, in many ways I’d have preferred the first of the three options.

The why of that is complex, but I know part of it is that I just hate any a situation where one person is chosen “over” another or perceives things that way no matter who it is getting chosen, even when it’s me.  (Maybe in some ways especially when it’s me.)  My internal sense of fairness revolts at it, as does my core feeling that we all have room for infinite love in our hearts; room for far more than one person we love in life, and I don’t understand why we accept that as a culture with friends and family, but not with sexual or romantic relationships.  This “pick one” thing just doesn’t sit well with me when it’s about people.  I also know that Blue has a lot of love for the person he’s married to, and has valued many aspects of their relationship.  I hate to see love lost.  However, this is another area in which I’ve needed to work on being an adult when it comes to what other people choose and what they want.  I didn’t have a say in their relationship, to how they structured and lived it: that was all about their choices, choices made a long time before Blue and I reconnected and renewed our relationship.

In any event, Blue wound up choosing door #2.  At this point, discussion of he and I has not yet happened between he and his wife.  I sit on that precipice very, very nervously, the same way I’d sit in the open maw of a lion.  I don’t know what’s going to happen when they get to that point, especially since it’ll mean his breaking an enforced silence on a bunch of things she/they clearly just has/have not wanted to face or address.  His disclosures around nonmonogamy are going to be one thing when talking about other partners, but most likely something else when it comes to me.

I’m not entirely sure if it’s okay for me to talk about this here, but it’s really heavy for me and no small part of all this, so I’m going to say it for now and hope I don’t trespass. I’m a very loaded person in that relationship, and that’s age-old: in many ways I’ve been the most loaded person in that relationship since it began. I started out the bad guy (or rather, girl) for them both: I was the terrible person who broke Blue’s heart, who in some ways he was treated as needing nursing from.  In some ways I’m sure that he did, of course, but there was a lot of demonization there, some of which I understand now, but still don’t like.  I, or the history of myself and Blue, seems to have been a foil for some of their problematic dynamics.  Mind, I don’t think that was fair.  I was 22 years old when I left Blue and in the middle of very terrifying, overwhelming and unanticipated PTSD that took some things away from me (or seemed like it did) that I deeply cherished and felt utterly lost without.  As well, Blue and I had some shared issues, and he had his own missteps. I had a fight-or-flight impulse, and I flew. I handled it all badly, without question, and only after finally really working through all of it together last year did I stop feeling horrible about some of what I did which I know was awful.  However, I didn’t mean to hurt him: I was trying to protect and guard myself with limited skills and a mind that was in total disarray.  So, not fair, but that’s not all that relevant: a lot isn’t fair in life and love, and it’s very clear at this point that they were probably more hurt, and will be more hurt, in creating that dynamic around me than I was or will be.

It’s a bit tough not to feel like something of a homewrecker, though, even though I know that’s not what went on, nor what is going on, and not at all what anyone intended or wanted. But I anticipate it may be perceived or presented that way, especially since it’ll probably be more comfortable in some ways to point at me rather than acknowledging tougher or more painful truths.  If it is, if I am, presented that way, I don’t know how I’ll deal with it.  If I’m honest, I have to acknowledge that I have equal parts sympathy and a total lack of sympathy in that department.  I feel some guilt around this, particularly because I know that there has always been a good deal of jealousy in terms of the strong feelings he has had for me, as well as a (obviously valid) fear he’d choose to be with me instead of her.  I would never want anyone to feel like they were in or lost some kind of competition to me for someone else’s heart: that just sounds abhorrent to me.  I don’t even want to be even a tangential cause of someone’s pain. Suffice it to say, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone losing Blue in any way: I know too well how painful that can be. On the other hand, I have to be kind to myself and cut myself a break knowing that this is not a dynamic I set up: that was someone else’s choice, not mine.   I made clear what I felt and wanted a long time ago, and that last time around, in Act II of all of this, I stepped aside without argument to allow Blue to choose to go to her when a “choose one” was their deal, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, it hurt like hell and I was the walking wounded for a couple years afterward.

It still sucks that this dynamic exists, regardless, and I still don’t look forward to facing it, but expect I will have to.  That everyone will have to.  But maybe we’ve all needed to, perhaps for longer than any of us have realized.

Okay, taking a breath.  Now another one.  One more.

I realize there’s another reason why this has been so tough for me to voice here, even once I had the criteria I thought I needed, we all needed, for me to do so.

It makes me feel small to admit it, but one benefit of having and living very stringent ethics is that it allows you a certain lack of vulnerability. In some ways, a perception of you being superhuman and perhaps not as flawed and fallible as everyone else.  Even if it’s not why you choose your ethics, certain standards of living and thinking do put you on a pedestal to some degree.  They can protect you from some measure of judgment. Of course, if that is the case, however rough some of this is, that’s very important for me to ditch, especially since it may well be part of some treatment or perception of me in life I don’t actually like and which can feel very isolating.

Let’s also face it, I’m hardly anonymous, and putting this out there does make me nervous in terms of my job and position in the world.  I know all too well that there are some individuals and groups who will relish evidence that I am the immoral, skanky harlot who is out to wreck families and traditional relationships it’s been sometimes suggested I am.  I’ve joked about it among friends sometimes, that that’s my easy out, my being everything some have said or implied I was in the first place. But my jesting there comes out of guarding how vulnerable it makes me feel and my desire not to be that person.

I’d be remiss to leave out that disclosing all of this means that if I wind up with egg on my face I can’t hide it.  (I was so close to typing “…then the yolk’s on me” instead.  I’m very sorry that I still did it.)

And that’d all be some of why I was so quiet.  Believe it or not, that is only some.

It’s been rough to figure out how to talk about Mark and I, too.  Some of what came out in all the communication around the poly agreement last winter was a level of honesty Mark had withheld from me –  and himself, really — that was so rough for me.  It wasn’t anything malicious, cruel or purposefully deceptive.  At worst, I’d say it was careless, but at the same time Mark and I have had very different lives, very different levels of experience with relationships and very different personal growth experiences. All the same, what came out hurt me deeply in some ways, and was a dealbreaker for me when it came to us having the kind of relationship we had been building, or that I thought we had.  I don’t mean to be obtuse, but it’s not my right to spill Mark’s guts for him on the Internet, so what I’ll just say is that I want and need certain things in a relationship of this depth and level of commitment that just didn’t mesh with how Mark was feeling, thinking and constructing his own frameworks.

It’s not an honesty I regret, and it was a brave one on Mark’s part that I’m exceptionally grateful for.  I think when this kind of stuff comes out of poly — as it tends to since you’re usually deepening communication a lot — it’s so convenient for people to blame the poly, and this just isn’t poly’s fault.  A lot of good things have come out of us opening the relationship up at the end of last year: I’d number those tough truths among them, even though the outcome of that truth led to a split.  I think, though, it’s probably also going to lead us both in directions that will result in both of us getting what we really want and also coming to whatever our best relationship is.  Mark still feels like my family: I have a hard time imagining Mark will ever feel like, or be, anything but. Mark’s family feels like my family, and they’ve made that clear on their end, too. Mark also remains, however sticky some things are right this second, one of my very best friends in the world.  Visualizing a life without him in it makes no sense to me.  And some of all that is why it’s been tricky to talk about what went down with us: I’m a ferociously loyal person with those near and dear to me, and can be very protective.

Over the years, I have kept finding that one area where it gets tough to write here about my personal life is all about loyalty.  Sometimes, it’s hard to be truthful about the not-nice stuff interpersonally, not just around protecting the privacy of other people, but because I also know that how I talk about someone, how I present someone or a situation with them creates a representation of them a lot of people read here.  I never want anyone I care for and love to be disliked by anyone — heck, even if and when I dislike them, which isn’t the case here, but certainly has been in a couple previous relationships of mine I’ve journaled about.  I absolutely don’t want anyone to think someone in my life is a jerk because of what I say, or because people who know or read me feel a loyalty to me, rather than to that other person.  Talk about unfair.  I can see how, over the years, from an outsider’s view it probably looks like I’m with someone and with someone and then BOOM: I’m not.  I can see how it probably presents a lot of my relationships as a bit one-dimensional, since I tend to talk more about their strengths than their flaws.  But again, I’m not anonymous here, and often, neither are the people I’m involved with.  I think being responsible around that inevitably means presentations that are often fair-weather.

That’s played a part in both of these relationships and my silence around them of late.  That loyalty made me want to withhold that Blue was married because I felt protective about anyone leaping to cliched notions about him and thinking he’s a bad person: I know he’s not and I have loved him dearly for nearly all of my adult life.  That made me want to withhold some things about what has been going on with Mark and myself because I love and care for him deeply and hate the idea of even someone he’d never meet having a fleeting thought that he’s a jerk because it’s so easy to do with only slices of a picture or only my own words.

To keep you in the loop with more practical stuff, Mark and I have stayed living together throughout, which has been okay sometimes; not so okay at other times.  It’s come to the point where we both clearly need some more space.  That means one of us leaving the big old house that we rent, and based on a bunch of issues (I’ve done much of the work to it, it has things I need or like but Mark doesn’t, it’s trickier for me to find a good place because I don’t have a car, etc.) we’ve decided I’m going to stay here.  I still intend to try and move to the islands, so Mark may even come back here and take over when I can do that (probably not until next summer, mostly due to the health stuff and its expenses).  And Blue is planning to move to Seattle to be with me in the next few months, which most likely means moving in here.

I keep going on tangents which I know are coming out of left-field — a very defensive left-field, no less — but I’m going on them all the same.  I feel the need to say that this is probably, from an outside perspective, seeming a bit fast.  From the inside track, though, it feels like something we have both waited for for close to two decades. We were also Olympic Gold U-Haulers when we got together in college.  Our first “date” lasted three solid days and we moved in together right on its heels.   It’s probably the most stereotypically dykey thing I have ever done, and I did it with a guy.  Figures.  All the same, we loved living together, it never felt too fast, and we lived very harmoniously for a few years at a time in our lives when we barely knew how to live alone.  We figure we’re probably better at it now. To boot, when we were together the first time we always basically headed these small collective households.  They were lovely — I often miss our shared house with Becky and Thai and all the kittens a ton.  However, the idea of actually being able to live by ourselves for the first time is pretty exciting.

Where things will go from there, where we’ll want to take them, we don’t know. We’re not there yet and don’t feel a need to be there yet. It’s been one of those things where you just jump.  You don’t have to, but you so want to and you can, so jump you do.  We’re still mid-air, so who the heck knows where we’ll find ourselves when we land.

The timing of all of this has been seriously rough, or maybe perfect, depending on how you look at it.  If Mark had not shared with me what he did, and our relationship hadn’t changed markedly because of it, then we’d still probably have been negotiating switching from primaries to secondaries a few months back.  We’d probably also still have been doing that even if Blue had wanted to choose for he and I to stick to a friendship, or if Blue was going to stay in his marriage.  Hell, the this of this has been rough.  Even from when Blue and I first just started talking again, I was endlessly checking in with Mark because he knew how I felt about Blue: he knew in the first six months we were dating, as I told him about the relationship way back then, before we got to Act III of it.  But of course, I didn’t tell him about it with any expectation that that relationship was anything but over. (In hindsight I’m glad of that: I never had to wonder if I was honest about my feelings.) I never thought any of this was going to be easy, but I do think all three of us thought it wasn’t going to be this hard.  We’ve all been clumsy, we’ve all had our moments of thinking and feeling we have loused everything up or taken missteps.  Maybe we have, any of us, all of us, but all things considered, I think we’ve all done alarmingly well in caring for everyone involved.  And that’s not something I’m simply saying out of loyalty, either.

On a strangely bright note, my parents, who got along for five whole minutes of my life and have agreed on things less often than the fingers I have on one hand (the one without all its original fingers, no less), have both been incredibly supportive.  Oddly enough, my father was the one with some issues at first — usually, it’d be my mother with the finger-wags — but at this point, they’ve both been great. And that’s been a real and unexpected source of comfort.  My friends have also been totally amazing.

On the health front, for the last two weeks, I have finally gotten feeling in my left arm and hand 100% back.  I also have been almost entirely without the constant pain in that arm and shoulder.  I cannot begin to tell you how amazing it is to have months of that be over, even though I am still enormously behind in everything from the months it went on for.  I’m still having weekly therapies for that and some of my other symptoms and issues — muscle work, acupuncture, nasty-tasting herbs — and we still don’t know why it happened, or why I have some other things going on.  But to be plain, the pain and numbness being gone, having full use of that hand back, is enough for me for right now.  I can live without that question answered at the moment.

However, in a lot of ways, all this health business has been a bit of a straw breaking the proverbial camel’s back.

I need to accept, I’ve been trying to accept, that I simply can’t do 60+ hour workweeks anymore. I need eight hours of sleep a night. I need to take plenty of breaks during the day, especially breaks to play outside where I can move my body around and turn off the incessant furnace of my brain.  I need downtime in the evening, and I need something close to two days off a week, not two hours.  I turn 40 next year, not 20.  I need time for my freaking art, including creating things I have no intention of showing or selling.  I also need more flexibility to call it a day when I’ve worked with someone in any given day who has just emotionally tapped me out: the longer I work in the fields I do, the more easily people very deeply connect to me, the more rough stuff they disclose and ask me to help them hold.  Sometimes I can hold it and move through the rest of my day, able to hold more.  Sometimes I just can’t.  That needs to be okay: I need room for that to be okay.

And on top of all of that, with as much diplomacy as I can muster, have to say that I want to be able to have the time when all of the preexisting context of all this is sorted (which may be a seriously long haul) to simply enjoy Blue and being with Blue.  Without attaching any sort of hierarchy to any of the relationships in my life, including my relationship with Mark, I am on the precipice of being able to spend a lot of time with someone I have loved for an age, and to be with him in a way that it seems we are both finally ready for.  In so many ways, there was an unwieldy enormity to our relationship and chemistry the first time around, and for us individually in terms of dealing with very difficult issues in our own lives.  It was a LOT of relationship, a crazy-quick depth of connectivity, some very strange fateful details, and no small measure of drama; a lot of for two relatively young and very passionate people with poor relationship modeling growing up to handle. At this stage in our lives, we are much more capable of both handling it and appreciating it for the rare, mighty thing that it is and always was.  Then, it felt like trying to be out in a thunderstorm holding nothing but an umbrella, more likely to get you electrocuted than it was to offer any shelter. Now I think we’ve both got handfuls of thunderbolts and a far greater strength, care and power to use them wisely and without so much fear.

The both of us, albeit in different sorts of ways and on different schedules until the last year, have been hoping for a chance again for a long time. The only things I’ve waited for this long in my life have been health insurance, world peace, the passage of the ERA and a perfect vegan donut (I at least got the last when I moved here). That it seems we’re going to have it feels pretty miraculous and incredibly unlikely.  I get to find out what happens when you get, and take, the second chance you never thought you’d get but always wanted.  Strangely, this is one of the few times in my life where I find I am not worried about what happens after, not even thinking about what happens after.  I don’t know why I’m feeling that way, especially about something so huge and potentially disastrous, but I don’t particularly care.  I’m just delighted TO be feeling that way for a change.  It’s very freeing.

So, sometime soon, I need to sit down and figure out what has to go in my life: which projects, which jobs, which way I use my time.  Some things simply have to go or get cut back to make room for everything else or I’m either going to lose my mind or do myself in with sheer exhaustion.

Okay.  So, that’s what I’ve got for now.  It’s a lot, I know.  Believe me, I know.  The funny thing is, it feels like I’ve only addressed a little, just kind of opened the door a sliver.  But I had to open it: the longer it sat closed, the more uncomfortable and dishonest it felt, and the more was going to bust out of it when I finally did open it.

I have some silly, light stuff to tell, but putting that here before I just spit out some of the other stuff felt disingenuous, so I can get to that stuff soon now.  Writing those trifles is easy as pie.  The other stuff?  Not easy.  And perhaps not graceful either, but at least it’s done.  I’ve got trembly fingers, but I’m going to push that button that says publish, even though “save” seems more fitting.

P.S. I think the most gracious way to handle this per saying so much, including about other people’s private lives as well as my own, is to password this entry in a little while.  So, I’ll leave it up for all for around a week, then it’s going somewhere more protected.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, my fine romance, family, sex/life, heart work, a boy named Blue | permalink | comments (12) »

My poor dog.  Everytime the last few days I’ve taken her out for a walk or let her out back, she’d had to effectively try to learn to ice skate or swim.  The remaining snow here — which is of course, everywhere, since no one in Seattle owns a shovel — is so hard, and she weighs so little that when she walks on it, she either slides right over, or her little feet fall in an inch or so, leaving her stuck.  Her other option is to try and swim in the huge pools of melting snow which are the other half of the landscape right now.

She also did not get our annual ritual of an early yule morning walk, something we both (well, I can only assume) have enjoyed in the past here.  Ballard is total Goyville, so pretty much everyone else is in their homes celebrating Christmas, which leaves our usually bustling neighborhood beautifully silent and empty.  But it decided to rain here much of yesterday, so all she got was a round of toy-wrestling in the living room followed by the daily ear-cleaning she despises.

I’ve been fairly lazy here the last few days, only working half-days, and spending the rest of my day in the tub, reading, cleaning the closet, writing for myself, and starting to go through some photos.

When I was at my mother’s earlier this month, we sat with a big box of some of my childhood art and schoolwork, some of which is completely hilarious, so I have a bunch of those shots to edit.  I also left home with a handful of photos, mostly from childhood, and some slides (most of what we have from my childhood is on slides, because that’s the age I am).  I say some of which because looking at things like an earnest will written at the age of 12, not long before my first suicide attempt, is not hilarious.  Suffice it to say, things like that are not going to be making it into the archives.

When I was looking at those photos, there was a whole lot of bittersweet that started happening, and then some outright meltdown, some of which has continued since.  Most of what that comes down to is that I actually had a pretty good childhood, despite a lot of tumult (some of which I didn’t really know about until later in my life), and when I see photos of myself as a kid, I’m looking at a kid I really like.  But I’m also looking at a kid whose childhood came to a crashing halt due to a confluence of events — my mother’s second marriage and the nightmare of a man she married, my pre-teen assaults, some other things.  Seeing, for instance, a photo of me at 11 the other day, seeing what a baby I was with my shirt covered in rainbows, barrettes in my hair, I realized I was looking at what some vile man in his 40’s decided was ripe for the picking and it just left me floored and furious.  I cut my hair after that primarily to try and cut him out of it.  So, while in some sense, I love seeing me and aspects of the childhood I cherished — and honestly, thank the powers that be I had, otherwise things that happened later may well have left me a vegetable — in another, I find myself feeling angry at the world-at-large for taking that kid away so fast and so suddenly, and, in some sense, robbing me of enough of her left over.

I’m not going to get too into it, because so much of it feels so private, but my visit with my mother this last time was exceptionally healing for me.  I got the chance to tell her something I have simply needed to for some time.  That was that while there are things from my late childhood and adolescence I just don’t think I can ever forgive, and certainly cannot forget — some of which she was part of or very much enabled — the older I get, the more I understand not just the greater context of her life, but the lives of so many women like her, and can see the bigger picture of what landed her and us there and fed so many of the dynamics at play.  I was able to tell her that the more I understand, the more I accept, the less I blame, and that no matter what, she’s my mother and I love and accept her.

Being able to say that was a huge deal, and also had an unexpected impact on her: it seemed to make her feel safe enough to finally ask — just outright ask — about some of what had happened to me in the last handful of years before I left home at 15.  She was able to be honest enough to say that she didn’t think she could handle hearing all of it — an honesty I really appreciate, particularly since it reminds me that that’s some of why there was so much denial about what was going on with me then.  And we were able to talk about some of it, and she was able to really listen, to hold what I was telling her, to take responsibility for some of the things I have very much needed to.  Mind, I found out some things which were in some sense a relief, and also in some sense had already known or strongly suspected, but which were also tough for me to hear: for instance, finding out that it truly was only me who was the object of my stepfather’s malice made me glad that my mother and sister were not done any real harm.  It also validated how totally alone in everything I felt then, how singled out and victimized. But at the same time… well, it wasn’t a pleasant truth.

That process also invoked her to tell me some things about her life I hadn’t known, particularly in my early childhood, when my mother, at only around 21, wound up the head of a household that included 2-year-old me, my Dad (who stayed at home with me while my mother worked), and my fathers two teenage brothers who survived the accident that killed the rest of his family.  Unbeknownst to me, my mother even had to be the one to identify the bodies — my Dad just couldn’t deal — and this image of my so-freaking-young Mom with too much already on her plate having to literally look at bloody heads in bags just gutted me. (Not to mention that both of us having to deal with bloody heads and dead bodies at a point in both of our young lives was just eerie.)

Again, not going to get into too many details here, especially since a lot of it is about someone’s life that isn’t mine.  But I think this may have been the first visit I have ever had with my mother that left me feeling even remotely like this: it was intensely liberating, very healing for the both of us.  We’ve even made tentative plans to, for the first time ever, try and take a vacation together somewhere in the next two years, something which, before this month, would have been a daunting, rather than pleasant, prospect for me.

* * *

On the home front, Mark is back in Ohio visiting family after getting waylaid in Philly on Christmas Eve.  While I usually enjoy the time to myself when he goes home for the holidays, having him leave this time was a bit sad, because it drew our all-night conversations we have been having on the couch every single night since I got back from Chicago to an end.  He was just saying the other night that he has never felt closer to me than he has in these last couple weeks, and indeed, while I didn’t think we needed a turning point in our relationship, we seem to have landed at one, and it’s so, so good.  I feel like we wound up going to this totally new place that’s really exceeded where we thought we could go, where we thought we would go, which is seriously huge since I already have thought we’ve got something really damn good.

Next week, we both have dates: Mark has one out where he is, and Blue is coming to see me for a couple of days.  In our heart of hearts, we were hoping for a magical harmonic convergence during which we could both be in those things at the very same moment, but alas, it didn’t quite work out that way.

All of this moving into a much more tangible and physical reality is all the things one’d likely expect: exciting, nervewracking, anxious, exhilarating and more with the anxious.  Obviously, it’s a bit like a moment of truth is coming, where we’re going to find out if everything that seems like it feels so right to all of us involved really is.  I keep having these small moments where I second-guess what we are are saying and feeling, how harmonious it all seems to feel so far for everyone, and then I second-guess (or is that third-guess?) my dismissal of those moments, worried it is coming from a selfish place because exactly what I want appears to be something I can have that is also in alignment with everyone else’s wants, even though we all seem to have such different sets of needs.  When I voice this to either, the both of them effectively sigh and suggest I start trusting all of us — and myself — more, which is apt advice.

Having such history with both of the people involved on my part vacillates from being a total comfort to being completely daunting.   But I just got off the phone with Mark (clearly, we both want to continue our couch-conversations, even without a shared couch), and one thing we noted that seems to make this such an unusual scenario — and which I actually think makes it an easier adjustment for all — is that the person who is my domestic partner is also the newer person in all of this.  In other words, he’s already well used to Blue being in my heart and  being a part of who I am: when he walked into my life, that existed before he and I, and he obviously has coexisted with it just fine.  I can’t figure out if I envy Mark that, for now, anyone he’ll see is likely to be very new to him, or if I wish he were in my position on his end.  I do envy him some for having the ability to just ring Blue up and talk together, and I can’t say it wouldn’t be nice to have the same opportunity, but hey, maybe I will at some point.

This is one of those times where I wish I knew a bit less than I do, particularly about sex and love and relationships.  I was sitting last night in a stack of books from the shelves which addressed open relationships, and feeling very much like it was all so 101, and of such very little use to me.  I wanted the AP versions — even though I don’t think we really need them — and they don’t seem to exist.  I sat scrolling through my head with my own history with things like this, save that I don’t really have anything like this in my history.  Anything remotely close has felt like splitting before, or sharing, and it doesn’t feel like that, perhaps because both of these people have been in my heart already: no one is taking up any new real estate here.

I’ve also gotten to the point in my life where I know I am big enough, wide enough, AM enough for this.  Oddly, I think working at the clinic has been part of that: keeping a lot of distance is so typical in anything remotely medical that my being very open to clients, really kind of letting them in has occasionally worried my co-workers.  And yet, the way the clients have been with me, the way they want to disclose so much and have me hold so much while they’re in with me stands counter to that. I’ve heard more than once that I “just can’t” be as open to them as I have when it comes to kind of holding their truths and their feelings and really being in it with them for that brief period of time and possibly deal with it…and yet, I know full well that I certainly can, and that it’s one of my gifts as a person.  It’s not one-sided, either: it doesn’t just benefit others, but it also deeply enriches and expands me, too.

* * *

And I suppose that’s my rather random set of bleats for the day.  A Scarleteen once-user, since-volunteer and someone who feels very much like family to me is moving into the neighborhood next week, and will also be housesitting for me with her kid while I’m staying downtown.  They’re coming over the evening before for some hangout and dinner, and our place is so far from toddler-proofed, it just isn’t funny.

Thankfully, this week of the year is always exceptionally slow at Scarleteen, so it’s one of the few times where I feel able — without guilt or worry — to take some time for myself and work a short shift.  So, I was able to spend some time just talking more to Mark and Blue, and can now go spend some time housecleaning (which needed to happen anyway: bless houseguests for making you have to hop to it), maybe going through some more of those photos, doing some languid yoga, writing a bit more just for myself about everything going on with me, taking another bath and setting up a new computer that needs setting up.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, my fine romance, family, history, Ballard, heart work, a boy named Blue | permalink | comments (2) »

Several weeks ago, on the way home from the movies, Mark, Heath and I drove by a shop with this hat in the window, which caused a great squealingy ruckus on my part.

A couple weeks later, Mark surprised me with it as a gift.  Much leaping followed.

I have named it Gerald and taken him in as a permanent guest.

Since that time, Mark has made what will go down in history as one of my favorite Mark-quotes to date.

“I want to snuggle up to a woman who wants to jump in puddles with a monster on her head.”

And with that, Gerald and I are heading home to Chicago together.  See y’all next week.

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, home, my fine romance, apropos of nothing, simple joys | permalink | comments (4) »

For the most part, I usually do one of two things on Thanksfornothing.

I either a) wind up cooking a meal for people who do celebrate the holiday but who are, for any number of reasons, sans a place to go and sad about it , for I cannot stand to see people I like both sad and hungry, or b) get to spend the whole day by myself, enjoying the relative quiet that happens when a great many people are very busy doing something that has nothing at all to do with sex.

I like the latter best, and was very much looking forward to having a quiet day this year.

I did a bit of work that morning, and had my living room floor spread with OB/GYN texts for some extended research I was doing so we have some better material on yeast infections.  It was a bit chilly, so I started a fire.  At a certain point, it started to die down a little, so I opened a pack of wood from the front porch.  It was pretty moldy, but I didn’t think anything of it, save that it may well not catch.

However, within just a couple of minutes it did catch. Well.  A bit too well.  As I stood in front of the wood stove, I noticed that, in fact, what had minutes before been a slacker of a fire seemed to have become quite the overachiever.  The flames were going a bit higher in the back of the stove than they ever had, and then I heard a strange sound, something which sounded a bit like some kind of something had fallen in the exhaust pipe.

Then the flames got big.  Very big.  I went from wondering if maybe this wasn’t a little weird, wasn’t a bit larger of a fire than was such a good idea to knowing, for certain, things were very much not okay.  The exhaust pipe started to glow red, and little sparks could be seen at some points.  Then the fire in the stove started licking out of the stove altogether.  Shortly thereafter, the iron grate that sits under the exhaust pipe fell into the fire, sending out another whoosh of flames.  My dog — smart little thing that she is — ran out of the room and vanished, clearly considering it was every pug for herself.

My first thought was to grab the ceramic garden gnome on the stove — Save the gnome! – which had been sitting there since Mark got it for me, as I had not yet decided where it should go in the garden. Then I pulled the top log off the pile: that didn’t seem to help.  Then I began running back and forth between the kitchen and the living room hurling pitchers of water into the stove, since (something I have voiced concern with for some time) we are sans fire extinguisher.

In the midest of all this, there was a knock on my door, and I ran to it, threw it open, and probably scared the bejeezus out of the neighbor as I stood, breathless in blue zebra pajamas, face half full of soot with a pitcher in my shaking hand. He casually — as if I were not in the midst of fighting for my life — asked if everything was okay, as their apartment next door was a bit smoky from our chimney.  As, “I am in the middle of trying to keep the house from burning down right now, lovely to see you, but could you please come back later?” did not seem the right thing to say, and as I am terrible with other people in the midst of a crisis, and my brain was a bit addled, I said something about a log just sparking (what that meant, I do not know) and it made a hotter fire than I expected but I’vequitegotithandledrightnowthanksforaskingbutIreallyHAVEtofuckinggonowBYE.

And I think I basically then slammed the door in his face.  This from the woman who complains that Seattle sucks for having any kind of relationship with one’s neighbors.

I got back to my water hurling, and finally got the damn thing to go out.  Then I resumed breathing for the first time in a good ten minutes.

Then I sat in front of the stove trembling and covered in cold sweat for something close to two hours, willing my heart rate to go down, enjoying some lovely post-adrenaline nausea, and feeling generally betrayed that fire, so often my BFF, had not only decided it didn’t want to be friends with me anymore, but had apparently also determined that my number was up and it was time for me to die.

When my knees finally stopped knocking, I spent another hour or two walking around upstairs obsessively, sniffing the floors, the closets, the walls, because it occurred to me that I did not know the exact path of the exhaust pipe from stove to chimney, and there may well be a fire still somewhere in it that would burn the house down.  It’s taken me until today, to be honest, to feel pretty certain there is not some sneaky little fire brewing somewhere in the innards of the house that’s going to burn us all to a crisp in our sleep.

Mark was back with his ex-roomies in south Seattle that day eating dead things, but I resisted the very strong urge to call him.  For one, I don’t know what on earth he could have done from 45 minutes away.  But more than that, I had this flashback to the time a few years ago when I was here visiting, when he was making his second short film, and when I got the migraine that wound up literally freezing my body up to the point that I had to call him in the midst of movie-making to let him know I had something of a concern about…well, part of my body seeming to be paralyzed.

So, I then had this extended solitary sob session about how I couldn’t call Mark and ruin his day, or give him the impression that if he went somewhere out of reach all hell would break loose.  Silly, really, since he’s been quite out of reach many times without incident, but welcome to my dysfunction.  Suffice it to say, we had a very interesting, “Hi, honey, so how was your day?” conversation when he got home that evening, save that we mostly had to have it in the morning because I wasn’t yet ready to relive the events of the day at that point.  It says an awful lot about our relationship that I can say something like, “I think I almost burnt the house down, but can we talk about that in the morning?” and get an easy nod.

After I finally told him my tale of woe the next day, he went out and bought me Wall-e (which I consider the film Pixar surely made just for me, since no one loves an apocalypse with a gender-neutral romance as much as I).  The boy’s the bee’s knees, I tell you.

So, the wood stove is currently closed for business.  I solemnly shut the doors Thursday, and I have no idea when I will open them again. We’re going to get a chimney-sweep out here, but even after that, I’m not sure how comfy I’ll be with a fire in here without not only the much-needed fire extinguisher, but perhaps also a flame-retardant suit to wear, as well.

I’m off a bit later today to another homeless youth drop-on center, to see about adding them to my outreach roster.  The beginning of the week is going to be business as usual (save my morning fires, sigh), Thursday I go to the clinic in the morning, and then within a few hours, will high-tail it to the airport for a visit back home to Chicago, as well as to see my sister in Indiana.  I’ll be with my mother and sister for the first few days, then have a couple of days to spend in-city to see my Dad, my friend Erika, maybe a couple other folks, and a possible meeting with someone I’ve been sorting through some old stuff with and forging a relationship anew (yes, I’m being obtuse).

The fact that I expect to freeze to death, not having gone back to Midwest during the winter months since I moved here, is something I’m trying to keep from having ruin my trip. I pity the poor soul who kindly suggests making a fire to help warm me up.

(Oddly enough, the fourth fire of the year in my father’s SRO happened not the day before, on the floor right beneath his room.  He told me this the next day on the phone and I immediately thanked myself for deciding it was best not to tell him about my own little flaming adventure.  He, no doubt, would have considered it prophetic as he does nearly anything anymore.  Hell, maybe he would have been right this time.)

posted in Heather Corinna, home, my fine romance, wah | permalink | comments (5) »

This is shaping up to be a seriously crazy week: I’ve already done two days of clinic time, and on Monday, we had new protocols, new paperwork, and one counselor out with the flu on one of the busiest days I’ve seen there so far. My first chart showed up at 8:15 and the last one I pulled was just before 5:00, with only a half hour break for a quick lunch in there. It also included a client to whom I had to break the news that she was too late for a termination, which always seriously sucks, to say the least. Yesterday, I went downtown (a MUCH better commute: I’m only a 20-minute bus ride away, tops) and did some BDI logic model training for the sex ed outreach arm of the clinic which was awesome, but that meant last night and continuing through today, I’m racing to finish a piece past a deadline for something else, and then have to do a bunch of work for extra training in Options Counseling for Friday. Tomorrow I’m probably going to want to just take my coffee in an IV since I have to counsel all day then jet over to a public health clinic at night to do some sex ed work. Then, over the weekend, I need to do some prepping for our bi-monthly all-clinic staff meeting Monday because I’m teaching a self-defense piece to staff, and I’m a bit rusty when it comes to teaching self-defense. Somewhere amidst all of that I have to try and at least do some of the usual Scarleteen work.

So, yeah: still exhausted. It’s old news, I know.

When a little bit of time shows up, I’ll write more about this is depth because I have a lot to say, but over the past couple of months, I’ve reconnected very strongly with an ex, and it’s been tremendously powerful. This is someone who I had hurt, made amends with over ten years ago after a five-year-period where we didn’t speak, then the amends and what all happened in the one-week-period of time around sent me into a massive tailspin which had legs for years of my life. We only started talking again after this recent reconnection, and we seem to finally have found a place that really works for us, and that’s just incredibly fortifying and restorative for both of us. We had a very intense and highly charged relationship — and it was one of the rare one for me where I was with someone very similar to me; I tend more often to get involved with people who are a contrast to me — and while we loved each other immensely, and knew one another very deeply, I don’t think we ever really had a real friendship in all of that. A lot of that had to do with both of us being so young for something so big, and also both being so post-traumatic in various respects, but I also think we just weren’t in the space in our lives yet to manifest what we had as a friendship. Being able to forge one now feels like the rightest thing ever, and it’s been amazing to really feel that, especially getting close to almost 20 years after we first met.

On the other hand, last week someone I went to Jr. High with managed to track me down, and the group of friends from back then have apparently all reconnected and been looking for us stragglers. While it was awesome to hear from that person, that reconnection — especially with everyone from then — isn’t something I want to pursue. That spanned a period of my life which was easily the most traumatic I have ever had, where for those years, I had to invest energy every day in outwardly projecting a person who…well, wasn’t me. I had so many horrendous things happen to me during that period of time, my home life was so awful, and having no history with those kids since I had only moved to that area once the bad got started, there wasn’t a single friend then who really had any idea of what I was really grappling with or trying to survive. Meeting up with them again, even just via email or the phone, would be so surreal for me; seeing people who felt like they knew you and feel warmly about the shell they knew, but who you knew didn’t know you at all, on top of a 24 year-lapse of any contact just strikes me as sad and strange. So, I’ve had a few bittersweet moments around that over the last couple of days: it stinks to be reminded of a childhood you were robbed of, and it’s not something I choose to reflect on often, to say the least.

Mark got home from Austin late Monday night, and last night we got to reunite in the somewhat ritual fashion we seem to have: we crack a bottle of wine, take turns sharing everything the other one missed while we were apart, start collectively cooking while blaring some music so we can dance in the kitchen at the same time, enjoy a meal, gab some more, then head upstairs to get all sweaty, juicy and melty. Paired with the fact that I could sleep until 8 this morning, it was a bonafide luxury, one I very, very much needed. I even got to wake up with some serious bedlocks from a lot of happy thrashing, which Mark would have had himself if he had any hair.

And with that, back to the grindstone go I.

Addendum: Piece finished. Man, I love writing manifestos. That was tough but supremely gratifying.  Now on to a quick bath, homework for the training Friday, and if I get really lucky, to bed.

posted in Heather Corinna, my fine romance, history, apropos of nothing, workworkwork, heart work | permalink | comments (2) »

Mark finally came home yesterday, and it’s really nice to have him back.

When we travel apart, I don’t forget about the good stuff, but when we come back together, I’m usually reminded how good the good stuff really is; how much I value it as a very unique and individual expression of who we are together.

Because of what I do, I see a lot of people, daily, who are impatient for that stuff between each other to grow, and motivation for sex can in part be from a desire to make that stuff — very individual, unique expressions of who you are together — happen sooner than it might otherwise. I don’t think it’s a terrible motivation for sex, mind: it’s not like it’s destructive or unsafe. But if it’s the only motivation (especially when sexual pleasure isn’t part of that for one party), or if that’s the only place anyone’s relationship has or is nurturing this stuff, that’s not so wonderful.

Anyway, I love the way that via cooking together, Mark has grown to love cooking, not just be proficient at it. When we met, it was about him learning how, but it’s developed to the point where he is in love with it. It’s been an interesting process, especially with him often asking why a given alchemy happens the way it happens and wanting this in-depth chemistry of the thing, and me being all Italian and goony about it and pleading, cajoling with him, while pouring a glass of wine and handing it over, to just enjoy the alchemy and emotionally connect with the flavors and smells.

He came home yesterday toting a box of hot sauces and spices he’d gotten while away he was all geeked out about, and last night, using some of what he brought back, we each cooked together making our two separate pots of chili (Mr. Price is a massive carnivore), and he was hopping around the kitchen like a gleeful mad scientist, rubbing his hands together. He also did that thing he does a few times while cooking, where when he’s thinking deeply, he’ll stick his tongue out of his mouth a little, not realizing he’s doing it.

I love that we often spontaneously dance in the dining room. In fact, having decided that we wanted to do NYE at home this year, we may even go the extra mile tonight and dress up to dance in the dining room. Probably to the Journey box set I got for Mark, no less.

I love that when he gets a new piece of clothing he likes, he has to catwalk back and forth a few times; he is that delighted with his own dapperdom.

I love (even if sometimes it’s a bit frustrating) how sometimes, we’ll go upstairs with an eye towards having sex, and one or both of us will get so silly about something, and keep the goofy rolling for so long that we wind up feeling utterly unable to have sex because things have just gotten too damn silly. Of course, it’s also very nice when that does not happen and the original plan delivers.

I love that our major time to regroup and reconnect always happens sitting together in the bathtub, and that if I brush my teeth afterwards, I have to try and look away from Mark because otherwise, he giggles at me the whole time since I tend to move my eyeballs in tandem with the way I’m moving my toothbrush.

I LOVE sleeping together. Which is always very weird, since previous to dating Mark, I can count on two digits the other people, including friends, I have not only enjoyed sleeping with, but have not done bodily harm to during the night because my subconscious self was SO annoyed and frustrated with having to share my bed.

And I love the fact that I’m the natural early riser here and that at times like these, when he’s still sleeping, I can creep back into bed after my morning coffee, find him all naked and warm, and wake him up.

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, home, my fine romance, family | permalink | comments (2) »

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.)

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, home, my fine romance | permalink | comments (3) »

I’d like to think that when Dorothy was in the middle of that tornado, that if when the wicked witch biked by, her skirt happened to fly up over her head, revealing a bright red baboon butt, she’d have to have laughed, even while her house, her dog and that poor old Auntie Em were floating away and her life hung precariously in the balance.

Because, you know: you just gotta crack up sometimes. Long before any sort of work strife, political struggle, flirtation-with-previous-states-of-poverty, breakup, illness or whatever will do you in, if you stopped being able to laugh and have some joy somewhere in there, you will have gone down way earlier and far more painfully than you would otherwise.

I’ve been the warrior I’m reputed to be this last week, and I have been busting my rump to think even outside of MY box (which usually isn’t much like a box at all: it’s more like one of those inflatable rumpus rooms you rent for some kid’s birthday party or a street fair — and yes, I mean outside that OTHER “my box,” too), and step outside my comfort zones to do my damndest to make this all better in a way where it’s hopefully better from here on out. No progress to speak of in terms of the results of my efforts yet, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t want to talk about that stuff today, anyway.

(And seriously? You can only answer “How are you?” with “I still suck,” so many times before you just want to respond by begging people to just put your mopey ass DOWN, for fuck’s sake, you know?)

Instead, I’d like to have a giggle at that witch of the west with her crimson baboon butt, or, in my case, over the needed eviction of Philip Glass.

* * *
As far as the rest of my life goes, it’s been a pretty okay week. A handful of nights back, for instance, I was workingworkingworkingworking, as I’m prone to do, and Mark kept coming downstairs — with less and less clothing on — trying to get me to go upstairs with him.

You know how it is when you’re depressed: even though you know sex is a nice balm, it does a number on one’s libido. And in my case, that’s usually just about me: in other words, I’m down with getting my other person off, but I know myself well enough to know that when I’m seriously down, orgasms for me just are not going to happen and I don’t want to trouble myself or anyone else with trying. Thankfully, even though my sweetie is a bio-boy, our sexlife is blissfully free of most hetero dynamics. For instance, I’ve never had to let go of the very nice queer thing where you sometimes will have a few sessions where you just take turns getting each other off, at different (and extended) times the same night, or on different nights altogether. In fact, in some of my life when I’ve partnered with men, one of my biggest bitches has been that bizarre heteronormative idea where folks seem to think that people are supposed to come from the same thing — especially when it’s the stuff women don’t usually come from in the first place, and men often don’t even find that interesting — or at the same time, or even on the same night (you have no idea how many times in a day when answering advice questions, for various reasons, I find myself sighing and saying out loud “Oh, poor straight people.” For real, and yes, I know that’s patronizing and I’m terribly sorry). While that’s all groovy when it happens, and plenty of times I do want to get off when my partner has or will, too, there are also plenty of times where I just don’t want to be distracted by my own desires for orgasm (or vice-versa), and I’d rather focus all my attention on my partner or have them focus all of theirs on me.

Plus, being naked is my happy space. In other words, part of the reason I’m so damn naked all the time is because I’m generally feeling pretty groovy so I want to run around without underpants like a hyperactive four-year-old. But when I’m feeling crappy or hyper-vulnerable, clothing is an armour for me, and I like to keep it on.

So, eventually, I headed upstairs, clearly getting the more-than-subtle hint that Mark wanted to get it on, with the hope that he was cool with a for-him-only turn.

Mr. Price is not a light the candles, put out the flowers, cover the bed in rosepetals for sex kind of guy — neither am I. We’re more usually the kick the laundry aside and hope you land somewhere near the bed for sex kind of people. I’d made clear the day before, however, that the bedroom was SUCH a freaking disaster that I couldn’t even think about sex in there: I could only wonder when the hell someone was going to call the health department and hope Sofia didn’t get forever lost in the piles while we were sleeping at night. So, I got led by the hand into his office — we both have our own rooms/offices here: it’s a strong cohabitation rule of mine — and there were blankets and pillows on the floor, a clear space around them, incense burning and lo, little flickering candles.

You know, for whatever reason, if that had been about seducing ME to be the receptive partner it would not have been half as darling and cool (it probably would have felt like guys way too old for you when you were in high school offering you a backrub): but since knowingly or unknowingly, it was about seducing me to seduce HIM, it made it not only really charming and sweet, but also very nicely genderblurry-scrumptious hot. So, by all means, that night was all about him, but there were a few days there where the very pleasant image of my naked boyfriend and his candles and pillows and not-naked me was the gift that kept on giving for this girl. MeOW.

And the wonderful afternoon-that-turned-into-evening picnic my friends Ben and Joriel hosted for a handful of us; vegan lunchies, plenty of hula hoops, sneaky liquor and all yesterday were just completely brilliant. The weather was to die for, and a whole day out in the sun, hooping and hollering with friends was just the thing.

But the best giggle I have had in a while was because I found the notes I took after my dentist’s visit in Minneapolis over my last visit.

Allow me a little backstory and an admission of the type I don’t like to make often, because it always feels like setting myself up for more hell than I have to deal with already in terms of some folks ideas about my suitibility as an educator for young people. But it’s essential to get the beauty of this.

When I was in my teens and early-to-mid-twenties, I very much liked me some hallucinogens. Very. Much. For an ungodly number of times I dropped them, I only had one bad trip, ever, and a WHOLE lot of exceptionally nice ones. (Go on now: tell me how women “aren’t visual,” I dare ya.) There was a while there…well, let’s just say the primary reason that I said toodle-oo to LSD and her chums was because I very easily could have blissfully drifted into a shiny, sparkly acid oblivion quite gladly for the rest of my life. Lucky for me I don’t still do them and haven’t for an absolute age (sigh!) or else I couldn’t really talk about this stuff here at all.

So, you can imagine my surprise and delight when, while in my dentists chair, settling in under the gas mask, it became clear from the taste in my throat, the fog in my head and the auditory and visual hallucinations that my hygenist perhaps took my talk of my high tolerance for chemicals a bit TOO seriously and dosed me GOOD.

Mind you, they’re pretty liberal with the gas over at my dentist’s, to the degree that the first time I visited just to have them look at my teeth, as I set in the chair, I was asked if I wanted gas and replied, “Umm, for a consultation? I mean, sure, but I think I’ll be okay without it, too.” They said they didn’t know I was there for that, butcha know, I don’t believe them. It’s been very apparent that they love their nitrous there to me, every time I’ve gone in. I should also note that before the mask went on, she and I were telling some mighty funny shared stories about my high tolerance in being a McDego compared to hers as a Native American, and determined we wound up with the same blessing and curse: we bonded, man. I also know for a fact that she knew what went down with me with that gas, because the next day, she greeted me the way people greet do when you had a good one-night stand with the night before. When I came in that next day for more work (not with her, alas), she — who I had never met until our lil’ trip together — rubbed my arm, winked and said, “Hey, I know you….”

(I tried not to think about why she was THAT familiar with me, since heaven freaking knows what I might have said or done while under all that gas. But what happens at the dentist stays at the dentist, right? Well, unless you put it on the Internet, that is. Ah, well.)

Once I started to get the feeling that I was somehow (legally!) tripping in my dentists office, I first had a moment where I wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating, or if I was hallucinating that I was hallucinating. When I figured out it was bonafide, I then had a few moments of extreme paranoia realizing I was going to lalaland, but thought it through: in a safe place, with a medical staff, everything is legal, I have a drug buddy sitting right next to me. Okay! Let’s go! So, float away I did, and an hour turned into a couple of days, and I walked out of there feeling as well rested as I would have with a full month of sleep, and as centered as the Dalai Lama.

I left there (gawd bless the rapid come-down powers of nitrous), took a long walk to the cafe where I was meeting a friend for lunch, and immediately 1) Googled the hell out of this to verify that it was even possible (and yes, it is, it’s just pretty uncommon), then 2) typed out copious notes in the hopes of making something profound out of the experience. I pulled up the notes today thinking maybe there would be something inspiring in them to jettison me this week.

And those notes net me something about as profound as the scribbles and cartoons I’d make while dosing in high school, hoping to later express my profundity, did.

(Italics are my additions from today. That’d be why they actualy make some sort of sense.)

* * *
Squares of ceiling, squares of ceiling, dots inside the squares make other squares, make other dots. Mmmm, negative space. Need more negative space.

Did Dr. Tye (my very odd, but very nice Hawaiian dentist for a few years before my teens) use gas on us? Is that why dropping acid felt so homey? Is THAT why he was always playing the Cocteau Twins when no one even knew who they were and most of his clients were little kids — Cocteau Twins are very nice when floaty. Was very nice dentist: maybe he hit the gas, too.

She was saying “close” and “open” but they sounded exactly the same. Why?
(That poor woman trying to clean my teeth and me likely looking at her like she was speaking another language while I drooled all over her. Ugh.)

Paranoia first/inner peace/deep acceptance/sense of balance — teeth in better shape than one thinks, even before work? More important to mental health?
(I sat thinking about that one for a while after making that note before my friend came, convinced that having perfectly clean teeth was this totally undiscovered path to perfect health and happiness. Then I sat thinking that maybe this is why people went into dentistry in the first place, having that insight themselves, and thinking they needed to be some sort of spiritual teeth gatekeepers. Then I had a cup of coffee and found my sanity again.)

SUNNY!

Need to defrag brain or nervous system? (Shit, apparently.)

Nerve endings in teeth and mouth: link to spinal nerves, brain? Changes feeling of temperature? Did not feel warm or cool - like sitting in bathwater where temp. is same as body temp. Limbo-zone between chakras? Why?

Do same things tomorrow: breathe deep, maybe pant, let go earlier, don’t worry (be happy!): find way to say thank you.
(I was SO hoping to be able to have the same sort of experience the next day when I went in for fillings, rather than just a cleaning, but alas, it was pretty obvious once I started the gas that I wasn’t inhaling anything close to the amount I was the day before. On top of that, idiot-me had decided that given how great gas could really be, I’d try and get filled without any novocaine. Not only did that immediately conjure up very vivid memories of having had that done nonelectively when I was little, it also hurt like a MOTHER. So, if I was even going to get a mini-buzz from the gas that second time, I pretty much killed that outright. Bummer.)

* * *

Anyway, ummm…yeah. Some seriously profound stuff in there, as always with post-drug-induced notetaking. Some things never change, including how utterly silly they remain.

posted in Heather Corinna, my fine romance, subconscious life, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (5) »

Just to keep y’all up with upcoming promotional book events:

In Minneapolis:
Sunday, May 20th, 3:00 - 5:30 PM
Minnesota Book Release Party!
@ The Bryant-Lake Bowl (in the theater)
810 West Lake Street, Uptown Minneapolis
(If we run past 5:30, we’ll just move the shindig to the bar.)

Thursday, May 24th
Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, 7:00 PM
4755 Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis

And a reminder about tomorrow evening’s soiree here in Seattle:
Tuesday, May 8th: 7:00 - ?
The S.E.X. Book Release Party
Karma Martini Lounge & Bistro, Seattle
2318 2nd. Avenue, Belltown (206) 838-6018

I’ve since been informed by several natives here, for the record, that many Seattleites would die of shame from having public sex question Q&A, so I’m going to wing it, but my planned approach at the time being is just to work the room and let people ask whatever one-on-one.

Amazon.com finally got the “search inside” stuff listed on site, too, which is awesome since folks can finally get a good idea of how very much it’s not just a reprint of the site: I’d say that only about 50 pages tops are rephrasing or reprinting of site material.

You’ll be oh-so shocked to know I’m in the midst of a busy few days here. Just spent all of yesterday with a friend’s teenage daughter in need of some support, have lunch with a reporter from the P-I today, have to go get some supplies for tomorrow night, do a pile of luandry, finish a graphics job for mark, finish a pile of graphics for the Scarleteen upgrade and prepare myself not to be a complete spaz at the event tomorrow night (which I was feeling very chill about until I found out newspaper photographers would be there, alas).

* * *
On a not-really-related note, I was reminded last night that the older I get, the more and more mushy what “sex” is defined as for me gets.

For instance, I can’t figure any other way to define those evenings we head up to bed wanting to have sex, and end up pretty much just rolling around naked, whispering a lot of sweet nothings, stroking various parts (which may or may not be genital), but without any eye on orgasm for either party. Because we leave the scenario with the same glow on, with the same heightened intimacy, with the same feeling of having taken time out to deeply connect. Given, we also leave it with a few more brain cells intact than some of the other varieties, but I don’t think that changes anything.

Related to that, though certainly less erudite and potentially TMI, remember those little “Love is…” cartoons? Couldn’t help but think last night, as we began our snugglesex, and both discovered as Mark rolled around on my back that a few glasses of wine had left me uncharacteristically burpy (I generally can’t burp, no matter how hard I try — been the case my whole life, which was very frustrating in childhood when great status was affixed to being able to belch operatically on a whim). This resulted in rolling burps being pushed out of my system, and my partner effectively burping me for ten minutes by bellysurfing my back.

Love may not be doing that for someone else, but I don’t know what the hell else on earth could have caused both of us to actually find that charming and cute rather than utterly mortifying.

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, my fine romance, s.e.x., events | permalink | comments (4) »

To provide some needed levity and lightness following the last entry, Mark and I found ourselves in the great conundrum last night of not having a simple name for the sort of sex we wound up having at the end of an extended at-home date last night.

You’ve got your makeup sex and your breakup sex, but what’s it called when you have the-reasons-we-both-were-reluctant-to-have-sex-even-though-we-both-wanted-to-because-we-were-worried-about-resolving-issues-the-wrong-way-no-longer-matter-because-we-both-resolved-them-and-suprisingly-bridged-gaps-we-didn’t-even-know-we-had-and-sweet-jesus-do-I-freaking-love-you-baby sex?

Because that’s kinda unwieldly, I think.

It really was an entirely unplanned, unexpected and remarkable date here last night. Initially, I was just happy to be able to have Mark come home to someone other than a complete invalid and not have to play nursemaid to me for another night. Not that he complained at all: if there were an award for being the best Tender of the Incoherent Sickie, he’d win, hands down. While I was particularly thankful for the care and patience, and I have over time discovered he may be the one person, ever, who I can feel okay about allowing to care for me when ill (my usual tactic is to tell whomever to leave the soup at the damn door and get the freaking hell away from me: yeah, I’m a wonderful patient), I still want that care to be limited, for everyone’s sake.

As it turned out, we had this date that was kind of like the best dates you had in college or your first apartment, where you sit on the floor with takeaway for dinner and a bottle of hooch, shared favorite music playing (Over the Rhine albums, in this case), and you just share and share and share as the night turns into morning, talking without there ever being any pauses or silences, learning new things about the other person throughout, waxing existential at times — Isn’t beauty beautiful in the first place because it is relative, momentary, and un-ownable? Or, why is it that you had these similar experiences to me, and yet, we processed and internalized them completely differently? — to the silly, but seemingly important at the time — Where the heck has that highfalutin, flimflam, lollygaggin’, fuddy-duddy, ol’timey slang of yore gone, and why can’t we have it back? — becoming a bit more vulnerable than before just because it feels so right at others. And this when it all started with talking about some tricky, uncomfortable stuff, with me already feeling a bit emotionally drained from the day: quite unexpected and heartily welcomed, to say the least, especially in a year when both of our creative work lives are full-throttle, and time together is at a real premium.

Times like these, I’m reminded of the profound closeness that I experience between us, how exceptional it is in my life experience, and how very dearly I treasure it.

Plus, the whatever-the-heck-you-call-it kind of sex, which resulted in one of those brain ’splody orgasms where you can’t remember what you even call yourself, let alone anything else, was a particularly fine finish to the evening, as was us waking up today crushing particularly hard on the other a fine start to a new day.

posted in Heather Corinna, my fine romance, sex/life | permalink | comments (2) »

So, two years ago, a casual girlfriend of mine was supposed to be my date for a wedding up in Bellingham. There’s no need for me to be shy about it: I’m not a proponent of marriage, so while I dig my friends being happy, and I can support that, weddings aren’t exactly my favorite thing. On the other hand, as Miz Ariel made a point of mentioning in her book, I do — excuse my utter lack of class here — tend to score at weddings, pretty much as a rule, which may well be the way I’ve found to enjoy them, horrendous as that may sound.

In any event, at the last minute, my galpal had to cancel, and I was left dateless when I really was in the mood for a date for this particular event, even if just for some committed company throughout, rather than a bump and grind. On a lark, my bride-to-be friend suggested we ring up an acquaintence of hers who was coming, figuring that we’d either really like each other, or drive each other insane, but that either way, we’d be unlikely to be bored. Plus, I like blind dates, always have: I’m always up for an adventure and a surprise.

So, ring we did, and had an immediate whiz-bang back-and-forth conversational chemistry which was some fun. I suggested we make a date of it, and the deal was struck. Said date would be male, which would have been iffy: I’d only recently found myself re-attracted to men again at that point, and it remained a rarity. However, even from the phone call, it was pretty clear I was talking to one of those fabulous dates who seemed likely to be a great date even if the whole works remained platonic, so.

It’s not a lot of people who wear their personalities so much on their sleeve that without having any idea of what a person looks like, you can tell they’re the person you talked to just by how they approach you. Such was the case with my date.

And such was our instant connection and ease that within ten minutes, when I was about to go up and nervously speak (I hate public speaking), my date knew that the rightest thing to say to me was an incredibly sensitive, “Don’t fuck it up.”

We lasted about a whole fifteen minutes mingling with others after the ceremony before we noticed we both were clearly restless pacers, and started roaming circles around the atrium, babbling away. We only lasted about another half hour or so doing that before we nicked a bottle of wine in one of our circles round, found a vacant stairwell, and save a couple trips out for more stolen bottles, spent the rest of the event talking nonstop on the stairs.

By the time the event wound down, neither of us noticing until…well, everyone was leaving, I found myself in an unusual position. Essentially, I either had to end the date there and then a catch a ride with someone so as to have a place to sleep, or commit to grabbing a hotel with my date, who I hadn’t even yet kissed, and wind up in a situation which very well could be incredibly awkward.

(This, for the record, is not like me, period. If I dig someone in thatway, or anything even resembling it, and they make it all of fifteen minutes without me just smacking them with a smooch, it’s a miracle. Hey, I love kissing, and for me, it’s not about appearances, it’s all about chemistry, so knowing I like how someone looks is never enough. This is also a chick who often won’t even bother with a second date unless I felt the need to try out the sex on the first. Of course, at least one of us has to shut up at some point for a kiss to happen, and there wasn’t even that much pause in the conversation.)

Ah, the great dilemma. That so wasn’t.

As it turned out, it was an easy call, and Mark also fielded me asking him, in large company he wasn’t familiar with, if he was fond of sleazy motels, with great aplomb. After more gabbing, more bar-hopping for gabbing, and at long last, some truly phenomenal kissing, that’s where we wound up until the crack of dawn, at which time (around 5 AM) my date had to exempt himself to drive three hours to work. And said goodbye not once, nor twice, but four times, running in and out of the door before he left.

I fell into a brief nap with a smile on my face. One that’s stuck around for the last two years.

Eh, y’all know much of the rest of this giddy tale of rather unusual and certainly unexpected romance. I suck at keeping secrets period, and while in the interest of my pride and dignity, I perhaps should not have made public much of the whole of our history, alas, it was all here in gory detail, like everything else.

Long story short, we had many more dates, albeit over a 1600 mile distance that first year, so we had even more phone calls that lasted far too many hours. Then there was a move, and since there’s been a happy shared household — something I would have sworn no one could have ever forced me to do with someone again — full of a lot of pacing, laughing, wine-drinking, snuggling, goofy dancing, whiz-bang retorts, creative woo, kissing, sex, running-in-and-out-of-the-door repeated morning goodbyes, and a whole lot of babbling.

And neither one of us has fucked it up.

For the last two years, I’ve had a partner really committed to being my partner in the same spirit I intened partnership to mean: with a very real weight, but balanced with a very spirited lightness. It’s rare a day passes when he doesn’t make me laugh out loud, and equally rare a day passes when the boy doesn’t melt my heart, challenge me (usually in the best ways, but come on, it’s been two years now: we challenge each other in the oy-you-make-me-nuts ways, too), and remind me of all the best parts of myself and how valuable they are.

Obviously, I could write a whole novel about this relationship: I already have, really. But I’ve got this date with this guy in a little bit, I’m up for an adventure and a surprise. I can assure you, we won’t get bored, and that we’ll really like each other and drive each other insane. I’m also 100% certain this time I’m going to score.

So, babe? Happy sneakerversary! I love you, love you, love you. You know already — every day, if I manage to get things across to you as well as you do to me — that I love you like nobody’s business and I (still!) couldn’t ask for a better partner or someone I loved to spend every minute with as much as I adore spending every minute I do with you. You remain, as ever and more, my great surprise, my cherished friend, my devoted family, my delicious lover, my brother, Harold-to-my-Maude, Wallace-to-my-Gromit, Mary-to-my-Rhoda, Bert-to-my-Ernie and the great, great love of my life.

posted in Heather Corinna, my fine romance | permalink | comments (7) »

Every now and then, when Mark and I settle into bed with the idea of having sex… something completely different happens. Like, in the Monty Python way. On crack.

Often, it’s when he’s anxious about things — right now, he’s getting ready to direct his first paying freelance gig — or overtired or a little loopy or I’m not entirely in it yet myself. Now and then, I see it coming. Sometimes, like last night, I don’t.

There we are, all naked or half-naked, in or around bed, we’ve got sex on the brain or as a plan, and then it’s like — POW! Boy mysteriously and immediately regresses to half his age and has this sort of spaztastic “Gadzooks! Cowabunga! AIE! It’s a naked GIRL — right next to ME!”

This reaction is generally demonstrated with what I can only describe as interpretive dance. Last night, it began with a strange sort of Robert Crumb-esque cling to my lower body and sheet-spelunking and evolved into what I could only presume was Mark’s best impression of a jellyfish: arms flailing, wiggling on the bed like a lunatic nonstop, the making of squiggly-face. Usually then, too, as was the case last night, some series of one-liners or funny face-making comes into play, and it all only gets worse the more I laugh.

(At some point too, I always feel I should check in with Mark to be sure he absolutely didn’t want to have sex, because there comes a degree of silly which, while I quite enjoy it, goes past the point of no return when it comes to my getting turned on. I usually try and ask this when either in my head or outta my lips issues the first “Oy gavalt, we’re going to go HERE.”)

These episodes always, always end in some ginormous gigglefest where neither one of us can stop laughing and breathing becomes a serious issue.

Oddly enough, it ends up serving the same purposes sex does, just via a different route: it’s pretty darn intimate to make a total arse of yourself naked in front of someone else, and to have someone else feel free enough to do that with you. If you’re all stressed out, pent up, all that laughing is one helluva release. You get your ednorphins, you get your dopamine. And quite in spite of myself, I have to admit, it’s fun as all hell and always an unexpected surprise. Sure, you have your moment where you’re all “Oh damn, that orgasm I was looking forward to so isn’t happening.” On the other hand, there’s always another day, and while it’s pretty doable to plan to have sex, it’s nigh unto impossible to plan to be an all-out naked goofball. I mean, you can’t exactly say, “Hey sugar, you wanna get silly tomorrow night?” I mean, we all have our things we can do to get in the mood to have sex, especially when we’re with a partner we know and who knows us well, but there’s a pretty specific space you have to be in and can’t make happen to be a giant freaky spaz.

That said? Um. I’d like to cash in my raincheck for that orgasm now, please.

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, my fine romance, sex/life | permalink | comments (5) »

Even if you already knew what a wonderful, incredibly thoughtful and totally you-centered gift your sweetheart having your piano tuned for you was before…

… it’s all the more perfect on a late, insomnia-laden night when the world is utterly hushed. You and your throat have been mellowed with a fine glass of bourbon. You also have the luxury of being alone in a big old house, not an apartment where you have to be mindful of the sleeping patterns of others.

Because you can play, play, play to your heart’s delight — with no reservations about driving those keys and swinging those hammers for all they’ve got. You can loudly sing lovesongs for said sweetheart in abstentia, feel that mental exhale, and feel about as at home as you get.

(I have, by the way, met one other person in the world besides myself who gets that the Talking Heads This Must Be the Place is about the most romantic song about truly deep love in the world. It’s even better, I have to say, when it’s got a perfectly in-tune Wurlitzer Spinet to sing its praises.)

posted in Heather Corinna, home, my fine romance | permalink | comments (4) »

Know what is supremely nice?

To be away from home for a couple of days, come back more than a little tired and stressed out because in your absence, anti-feminist trolls decided it would be a good time to make a mess of your message boards, something you discovered at midnight the night before; to have to spend all day when you got back cramming 30 hours of cleanup into six because at a young adult board, mob mentality always makes any acrimonious dynamic even worse, and to finish by crying your eyes out with a close friend whose relationship busted up in a really harsh and painful way, all while you have yet another early period (with The Bad Ovary™, no less: though I suspect it’s really the bad tube, but whatever) because there was no way you weren’t going to cycle-sync with a house with four women in it.

That’s not the nice part.

The nice part is to have your day finish with your partner coming home and giving you the biggest hugs ever, listening to your venting, setting a lovely table and making you a glorious meal (despite the fact that you’re eating it in your smelly pajamas post-Vicodin-induced haze), sharing a few sips of their whiskey and snuggling you into a cozy stupor on the couch until you fell asleep.

It’s not as if I forget it often — I really don’t — but now and then, I just have to say, yet again, that there are areas in my life in which I’ve got it mighty, mighty good.

Addendum: Topping all that off with the surprise gift of sending a tuner over so that I can play my piano? Nice touch, Mr. Price.

Addendum 2: Topping all THAT off with two nights in a row that resulted in several very tasty orgasms for me? Boy hit this week right outta the park.

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, home, my fine romance | permalink | comments (4) »

I really don’t know if it gets any better than a solid hour of morning snuggles with your sweetheart, especially when you’re just awake enough to really appreciate them.

There’s something about slightly-more-than-barely-awake snugglefests, when you’re both naked and warm, when it’s so easy to just melt into the other person because your limbs are still all relaxed and heavy.

For two insanely creative people, Mr. Price and myself are awfully utilitarian in our naming of snuggle/sleep poses. There’s Position A (head-in-underarm), Position B (spooning, which for us, more often than not, is him behind me, because of the…erm, rather opportune places it provides certain convex and concave appendages), Position C (which if I recall right is face-to-face scissoring) and Position D (which is how we often fall asleep, side by side, holding hands). I’m always a bit fuzzy on C and D because we tend to revert to A and B.

We lucked out in the snuggle department. Sparing Mark being a handful of inches taller than I am, we’re basically the same size and we fit more nicely together than almost anyone else I’ve been with. (And I have to say that one advantage — silly as it sounds — to having a male partner versus a female one is that while with any couple, you always have that one extra arm, you at least don’t have two sets of breasts that can sometimes make very tight snuggling a little more tricky, especially when both sets are substantial.) But more importantly, we’re both insanely demonstrative snugglers together.

In my long slew of casual and serious partnerships in my life, somehow, more often than not, I always managed to wind up with people who were less demonstrative than I. Sometimes this was a bummer, other times it wasn’t: my claustrophobia has often been profound with many people, especially considering that for all the bodies I’ve put mine next to, I’d guestimate that I’ve only felt 100% close and trusting of a small handful of them. And I confess that in many (maybe even most, I’m on my first cup of coffee and not inclined right now to try very hard to count back) of my intimate encounters, I’m that jerk who wanted everyone to get up right away all abruptly in the morning and get back to their own lives and their own skin, if sleeping overnight was even something I made an option. Having a cup of coffee and talking was usually okay: endless snuggles? Not so much. More sex? Maybe. After all, morning sex is the serious good stuff.

If I could only pick one time of day to have sex, it’d be in the morning. Of course, if I could pick only one time of day to do anything, it’d be in the morning. I’m one of those annoying morning people, as we all know by now.

I have real objections to these strange divisions made with physical intimacy: as in, this is sex, this is snuggling, or the ever heterosexist (and sexist, really, if you think about it) this is sex, this is “foreplay.” The morning snuggles are strongly intimate: sometimes far more so than when one or both parties are chasing the orgasm dragon, and you’ve got to think a little more, rather than just melt in, be a pack animal, and babble the sweet nothings as you please. It’s hardly asexual: I’m turned on throughout, and when it manifests itself as genital sex, I don’t decline, and I usually come in three minutes flat.

But it’s not a highway, it’s an old, misty, quirky side road. You’re delighted to take the long way, stop here and there, enjoy the drive, and sometimes you enjoy it so much that even if you had a particular destination, it’s become unimportant. Maybe you’ll get there, maybe you won’t: just enjoying the drive is the real order of the day.

I’m really glad it’s not just me in this partnership who can’t figure out why 99% of the time, this is all still so easy for us, still so exciting, still so freaking fantastic after all this time. I’m glad it’s not just me who can’t figure how things that have been big problems in nearly all our other relationships don’t even rear their ugly heads in this one: even the fact that I am cohabitating with someone and not panicking about it 24/7 is nothing short of miraculous.

And I’m really glad it’s not just me who could while a whole morning away just wrapped up in warm skin and blankets, whispers and grins, because I always have loved those side roads best.

* * *
P.S. I keep seeing about 2G in errors on my site logs since the switch to wordpress. Doing the math, I’m wondering if some users aren’t having an issue with the navigation bar loading? Can you tell me if you’re missing things on the page, or getting errors? Cheers.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, my fine romance, sex/life | permalink | comments (4) »

Holy mother of god.

Now THAT (though we were at the one in Lynwood, not the Tacoma one) was one amazing afternoon. Actually, an amazing afternoon which led into a doubly amazing evening.

If there has ever been a time when I need a stretched out afternoon where I soaked in several tubs, steamed in several rooms, had every square inch of me vigorously scrubbed to a baby-soft sheen, had my hands massaged and hot wax soaked, had a lovely facial, and got to spend the day with my friend AND got to spend all of it in those sort of happy, comfortably naked, all-shapes/all-sizes body-positive women-only environment I love, it is this week.

I was trying to explain to Mr. Price the other day that the whooooooooosssssh I felt come off of me Wednesday night wasn’t just mental or physical exhuastion (certainly part of it), nor simply finishing something that long wanted finishing. It’s also about the fact that, especially over the past couple of months, the level of personal responsibility I have been carrying has been MONSTROUS. It’s not like I don’t weild enough of the stuff with everything I do already, but with the ACLU/COPA case on top of it and the book and all it is supposed to do, who it all needs to aim to serve, all the heavy issues weighing it (and me) down?

It was an awful lot of responsibility for one short person to carry, even for someone like me, who doesn’t have a problem dealing with responsibility. I can do it, for sure, but I’d prefer not to do it at that level very often.

In any event, by the time Ariel and I got back here from the bath house and had some chow, hung out and imbibed a bit with the aforementioned boyfriend (who was, when we got home, a bit in his cups), this girl was feeling pretty darn lusty. Mind, only the night before Mark and I had a very spontaneous roll in the proverbial hay, a good thing, since it had been around a week during deadline hell of no sex, which for me, is a tremendously long time.

(Yes, I’m the asshole everyone hates who, when single, if I’ve gone without a date for a month or two, will prattle on relentlessly about my terrible dry spell while my otjer single friends who haven’t had a partner to play with in a year shoot daggers at me from behind their eyes. Absolutely, a year is nightmare, no argument there. But two months IS a long time, okay? It is.)

By the time I was home I could NOT stop touching myself post-scrubby goodness and would bark out every two minutes “Feel my arm! Just touch it!” and “You will not BELIEVE how totally soft my butt is. I have baby butt. Baby butt!” All of which, of course, meant that within mere minutes of Ariel going home, it was, “Bloody hell, can we just go upstairs and have sex already?”

Before we lived together, when we shuttled across the country to see each other, we’d (obviously) often have the super-extended sex sessions. Now, when you do the math, we still have them just as often, it just seems like less often because we’re seeing one another every day, not every month, and there’s more of the shorter trysts in between the biggies.

We got to have a nice, long one.

It was seriously delicious, even for multi-orgasmic me (which is why I will ever stick to my guns when I tell people having trouble with orgasm to go get some bodywork done, on top of some other things, because not only do common sense and the basics of physiology support that approach, if it makes a testosterone-fueled chickadee like myself even that more high-key and that more blissed-out…well, come on, people).

One of those fabulous romps where all the stuff that’s only occasionally on your sexual menu, you bring in: all of it, all in one sitting (or standing, or squatting, or bending over, or….). One of those where if either of you has any tiny hangups at all, they’re just on vacation for the night. One of those where you only remember that you live in a 100-year-old wood frame house that is in very close proximity to the ears of others after you’ve wailed like a bean sidhe and yelled out things with your ex-opera-trained lungs that probably other people don’t find as enticing as you and yours.

I feel intensely bad for our neighbors. If I was a meat-eater, I’d deliver a pot roast, but delivery of a lentil loaf just seems like adding insult to injury.

What a fine, fine way to usher in my now-begun month-long sabbatical of sorts.

posted in Heather Corinna, my fine romance, Happy!, body/mind | permalink | comments (4) »

One last COPA-related nod before I set it down for a bit, do a quick interview for an Aussie mag about the All Girl Army, then bury myself in the big endgame of my book edits accordingly. My deadline is exactly one week from now, and between now and then I need to finish the initial edits on three more chapters and an appendix, then write a short summary, do the resource list, the dedication, the acknowledgments, update the TOC, then go back through the whole thing front to back for one more spit-and-polish before turning it in.

I expect to sleep and leave the house again sometime next week. I expect to eat infrequently, and when I do, to be unable to discuss anything but Chlamydia, breakup ethics, gender identity and how the hell to address pornography properly in this context.

I just have to say, before I plunge full-stop into this last stretch, that on that whole adventure, my boyfriend was such a rock star.

It’s really not easy to go somewhere as someone’s partner — and really, as nothing BUT someone’s partner — and have absolutely everything be about them and how awesome and important they are. I’ve been in that spot once or twice, and even as someone who dislikes having the spotlight put on me (which is very much not the case with Mr. Price), it’s still been tough.

But you’d never have known it was anything but easy-as-pie for Mark. He was a total pro in dealing with the awful flights to get to Philly and me, with discussions about nothing but this case, with the courtroom time and my moments of neurosis before, with the crazy celebration after. It may as well have been all about him for how damn cool he was about it all.

And really, sparing very old, very good friends, I can’t imagine being comfortable having taken any partner I have had before to this juncture. Anyone who was anything less than My Real Deal, would have felt strange, like taking someone you’ve been dating for a week to a family wedding, you know? It was also so, so cool to have everyone love him so quickly and immediately. All in all, having my very real partner with me made a whole lot of difference throughout. Sure, this love-of-my-life stuff still totally freaks me out sometimes, but most of the time, it is just the absolute thing.

After the trial, after I grabbed a couple drinks with Moe, I headed back to the hotel and we had this utterly awesome couple of hours just curled up under the sheets, gabbing and gabbing amidst many, many snuggles. We lucked out, in general, with both of us being complete snuggle-bunnies as people: these snuggle-fests have happened more than once, to say the least. In this particular instance, the fest culminated with some ungodly good sex, to boot. Bonus!

This is a particular bonus, by the way, when one is going out for a night of drinking. I explained this theory to a couple of our cohorts, but I’ll explain it to all of you out in the cheap seats as well, should you be unaware. Alcohol really inhibits the arousal cycle, and not just from a male not-getting-it-up standpoint: for everyone. It makes it a bit easier to want to have sex, for those who have a hard time sober, but it makes it a lot harder, physiologically-speaking, to bring all the bases home, if you get my drift. So, when you know you’re going to go tie one on, you simply have sex before, rather than after. Takes all the pressure off, and lets you go out already feeling good and looking all glowy. So, from me to you, sex first, sloshiness after. You’ll thank me later.

Boy raised the bar, is what he did. Next time he has something of crucial importance, I’ve got to seriously step it up and give back as much of a gift as he did me this time, or else I’m going to feel like a total slacker, especially since the last time he had something hugely important and all about him (making his last short film) I ended up getting the funny paralysis on the set and scaring the hell out of everyone.

I owe him, big time.

posted in Heather Corinna, copa, Mr. Price, my fine romance, Auntie Heather's Helpful Hints | permalink | comments (2) »

And now for something completely different…

Too. Much. Heavy. Stuff. I’ve been so emotionally and intellectually overwhelmed the last couple of weeks following the last entry (which so many people were so beautifully responsive to, thank you so much). With the events in both Colorado and Lancaster, the latter of which is doubly haunting for me, since it’s where we spent the first six years of my life, and the ridiculous media and general public approaches to both. With stories like this (if there was some award for the most sickening, disturbing thing said about rape in a given month — and how fucking sad it is so many disgusting things are said so often that I don’t feel able to say in a year — this one would win it, no contest). With editingeditingediting, and then spending two weeks of concentrated time going back and forth and forth and back between my editor, the publisher and the marketing folks desperately trying to hit upon a title for the book which everyone could agree on so we can take it to the bloody distributors already, dammit. With a couple of the girls from ST and the AGA in deep crisis. With conflicted feelings per the feminist community as usual; per having others around who do the sort of work I do at ST who can really get it, per just needing some intellectual communion I cannot for the life of me seem to find anywhere. With being annoyed at all the grunt work I have to do,and the fact that over the last couple months, I cannot find even an ounce of time to do some artwork, which is generally the salvation of my mental health and my often sore heart. With just really feeling like it’s possible that the way I have worked over the past decade, at this constant, breakneck pace, I have accumulated a need for vacation time worthy of all of that, as in, if I could take a whole year off right now to lay on my back somewhere warm and stare at the sky? I would. Would that I could.

I felt uncomfortable, with all that’s been going down in the world over the last month, having any entry up but the last one, which now permanently lives here. But I need a small respite into the land of silly, especially since I went and got myself some brand of sick this last weekend, to boot. I tell you, it’s a very hard balancing act sometimes having one part of you be a very silly, light whimsical person and having the other part, and much of the work you do — largely because of the world you live in and your efforts to keep constant awareness so you can try to fix it — be the other side of that coin.

So.

Sometimes Mr. Price and myself head to bed early to go roll around in it, get sticky, and make lots of happy, guttural sounds. Other times, we go to bed early with an eye towards an extended snuggle period in which we whisper back and forth for hours like little girls up late at a slumber party.

A week and a half ago, it was the latter. As it was, we were both so tired, we ended up falling asleep record-early, around 9:30.

And were woken up again not an hour later, quite suddenly.

Mark grew up in the quiet ‘burbs of Cincinnati. I, however, grew up in the third largest city in the states, and spent a good half of the life I lived in Chicago in a damn noisy ghetto, right at street level.

I can sleep through ANYTHING. I once slept, for weeks, through a building janitor letting himself into my basement apartment at night to creepily watch me sleep (the one night it did wake me found me breaking my lease the following morning). I have slept through car crashes outside my window, through domestic arguments next door, above or below, and through two floods, waking only once I was literally bubbling to breathe. When I moved to Minneapolis, I couldn’t sleep for weeks because the quiet was so freaky: I’d wake up and have to go outside to double check that the world hadn’t ended while I was napping.

Considering that I now also sleep with one snoring pug and one snoring boyfriend, back in a major metropolitan city, though getting to sleep is ever still a challenge at times, once I am asleep, the girl is dead to rights.

So, when, say, a car horn is wailing endlessly right below, I might toss and turn a little, maybe mutter “mrrrmmma urrrshle” (literally translated as “what an asshole” for those of you who aren’t fluent in sleepy-Heather-mumblese), but I’ll sleep through it.

Even when it’s Mark’s car, in our driveway, right below our bedroom window.

THE MARK PRICE GUIDE TO CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Find a dyke. If you have one nearby, wake her up. Plead with her to do something, anything, to remedy the situation like magic. Because this is what dykes are apparently made for, to fix shit for everybody else.

I’m asleep. Dead-to-the-world asleep. It’s warm under the covers. I’m all snuggled with the pug and — I thought — my sweetie. Sugarplums probably aren’t dancing in my head, but it’s likely that Otis Redding, reborn just to give me a private show, and lots of vegan donuts are. In a very layered, festive Bugsby Berkely number. With Tom Waits. And there’s enough cigarettes for all of us, even with me and Tom around.

Some horn is blaring, and somewhere in the maze of my subconscious mind, I hear it and do a good deal of annoyed, murky muttering, sputtering forth some form of incomprehensible gaelic curse involving a brassed-off hedgehog and malevolent cornflakes. But I stay asleep: I can do this, see, I’m an awesome multitasker.

But then there are lights on. Bright lights. My blind boyfriend is running around the bedroom like a lunatic waving his hands around. I don’t smell fire, the dog appears to be alive and well. Sparing whatever stupid ass is outside laying on their horn, I do not understand what all this fuss is about, especially since without my glasses, he appears to be doing some sort of dance akin to what I’d expect to see at a Pentacostal gathering. But he’s not Pentacostal. Did he convert? When? Why? Did they offer him film funding?

Just because some drunken bonehead is playing with his car is just no reason to get all fussy. Go to bed, hope it ends: if not, sandwich one’s head with pillows and suck it up.

Clearly, Mark disagrees. Sofia and I are still adjusting to the light and the noise, both (I feel I can speak for her) blearily looking at the veritable madman spinning in circles, naked, in the bedroom, stricken by a sudden case of Tourette’s barking, “Horn! Car! Help! MY car! Pants! Help!”

In my sleepy mental fog, I only understand one part of this.

Know where your pants are at all times.

“Where are my pants!”

Umm, I dunno. Why do you need them? It’s not like I haven’t seen your stuff before, babe, and you know already I think it is tay-sty. Yum-yum. Bring it back to bed, wouldya? Oh! Are you cold? Here, have a blanket. It’s warm and cozy. Mmmmm. Toasty blanket. Sleepy goodness.

“PANTS!”

Okay, he’s having a moment. But maybe pants will fix it and then I can go back to sleep. I mumble that unless we had sex, he never takes his pants off in the bedroom, so they’re probably in his office. (When Mark is screenwriting, his process generally involves removing more and more clothing as he goes on: I do not understand this process, but as a casual onlooker with a hearty appreciation for his backside, I have no complaints.)

However, I only mutter this after several rounds of “I don’t know, turn off the fucking LIGHTS!” and after he’s already found the pants and since left the bedroom. Oh well. I did try and help. La-di-dah. Back to bed. ‘Bout time.

Then I begin to hear voices. They’re not happy voices. Then there is a loud knock downstairs at the front door.

Be on the lookout for lynch mobs.

Apparently, at this point, Mark had come to several conclusions:

1) That awful horn was HIS car. Even though it’s an old car, without any alarms or the like that tend to go off when they want to, and even though he wasn’t in it, but was sleeping upstairs.

2) That those voices and the knock at the door are everyone in our neighborhood, waiting for him with rope and a nearby tree.

3) That he is living his worst nightmare, in which he has not merely been rudely awakened by a crisis he must manage, but by public humiliation of the worst variety.

4) There is simply no time for one’s anal-retentive complexes at a time like this.
Suffice it to say, my sweetheart is far more obsessive-compulsive and anal-retentive than I. Of course, everyone is, which explains the state of my kitchen.

So, for instance, whereas I would walk in the snow barefoot (and in high school, once paid the price for that with a bad bout of pneumonia when, one hit of acid over the line, it seemed really wonderful to take a long hike in the middle of a Chicago winter in one’s sundress and bare feet), Mark would go to bed with his shoes (and the two pairs of socks he always wears) on if I let him.

The only time I ever see his feet are when we’re having sex or taking a bath. Otherwise, I’d have no idea he had toes.

Mark would also sooner die than go out in public with his glasses rather than his contacts.

You will never see Mark naked in any photograph I ever take (no matter how much I beg to have a historical monument of the nicest bottom I have ever seen, even just for my own personal use).

So, you can imagine my surprise when, in stumbling out casually with my pug in tow, I saw Mark under the hood of his car — a strange enough occurrence all by itself, since the only other time I have seen this happen is when I insisted we go under there since clearly, the strong, smoky smell emanating from within was Not A Good Thing — quasi-shirtless, shoeless and in his glasses. It was like someone honked the horn to call us out into an alternate dimension.

Thankfully, for Mark, who was utterly convinced that every neighbor we had was outside with rope, stones and flaming crosses, it was but one neighbor, who had no intent to lynch.

Be bald, and call upon your bald brothers in your time of peril.

It was, rather, one of the neighbors in the multi-unit building next door, also bald, and also apparently once the owner of a wayward car which liked to yell in the middle of the night.

So, when I finally stumbled outside — having since woken up enough to figure out that the asshole leaning on the horn was the invisible driver of Mark’s car, which is an entirely sensible conclusion to reach while barely awake, for the record — with a couple of tools in hand just in case, I found two baldies under the hood. As it were.

Know your tools. Even if you don’t know what they’re called.

He needs to work the nut off the battery connector, since myself and Bald Guy #2 have explained that this will assure that the wily, strangely self-directed horn will not have the capability of shouting to the rooftops again while we sleep.

He asks if I have a pliers. I’m too out of it to explain that he needs a wrench, which I hand him.

He does not know this is not a pliers, and clearly thinks I gave him what he asked for. But that’s okay.

When all else fails, stamp your feet, pound your fists, and verbally abuse the once-inanimate object in question.

As it turned out, the mechanically minded of us were actually of little use with this fiasco. Because what finally made the horn stop yowling, well before we disconnected the battery, was simply Mark — in his great strife of having been woken to, by his perspective, giant public humiliation — pounding his fists against the horn, yelling at it to shut the hell up.

Go figure.

After this entire adventure, the poor guy was so hyped up with adrenaline from having been woken up like this and, again from his perspective, almost drawn and quartered by the neighbors, it required much wine and much sitting on the couch watching (the unpredictable choice of) “American Movie,” to feel secure enough again to brave bed and sleep, knowing now that somewhere outside in the world there were cars — maybe even yours! — who had minds of their own and could torment you while you peacefully slept, without warning or mercy.

Given that horrific nothing, it’s shocking, really, that some booze and a flick were enough. Then again, he also had a dyke and his pants.

Oh, be good: I said AND, not in.

Caveat: Mark is actually generally WAY better in a crisis than this. Do not take this to be a testament to his skills, nor mistake my exploiting Mark’s traumas for our entertainment as an accurate representation of how he normally behaves in crisis. And yes, this caveat is here because I’d like to sleep somewhere tonight that isn’t the couch. I’m no dummy.

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, home, my fine romance | permalink | comments (2) »