Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Maymay and I saw the new Woody Allen film Vicky Christina Barcelona tonight in Bondi Junction. Beforehand, we drank beer on an open air balcony, swam in the Pacific, sat in the sunlight, and had something called a sacher tart (torte?), impossibly delicious and made with ingredients we could not identify.
Yes, I did suggest the film to him. Yes, I did suggest it because of the promise of hot onscreen sex. And yes, it was sexy.
It was also infuriating. Gripping my seat, digging my nails into May’s arm, biting my lip and scowling ferociously infuriating. But it’s Woody Allen. Maybe I should have expected that?
I really have a hard time watching people fuck relationships up. I realize this ruins me for about half of cinema. And I have a particularly hard time watching people fuck up polyamorous non-traditional relationships that are literally idyllic. What? We couldn’t have walked away with one mainstream representation of polyamory that didn’t involve mass marriage and teen pregnancy? That was too much to ask? Obviously, yes.
I have been writing short stories (and hopefully long stories) about non-traditional relationships and kink, of late. I find myself reluctant to add drama to these stories, because I want so badly for there to be good stories about my kind of sex and relationship that don’t end in emotional meltdown or fiery death. I want stories about kink in which the protagonists are not intrinsically fucked in the head, and stories about poly in which the relationship is not inevitably doomed.
But those stories, though lovely, are narratively boring. There’s a trick to writing them, somewhere. I’m still sorting it out.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Had a comment on my last post. The post sort of jumped the track of my wandering narrative. The question was, how do Maymay and I strike a healthy balance in our relationship?
We pay attention, and we talk a lot. We identify issues and do the work we think is best to solve them. And really, I think that’s it.
There is an idea that having a healthy relationship depends, in some way, upon finding the “right person,” but I’m not sure that’s true. I have had many healthy relationships in the past, and have many at the moment. I have even had relationships end in healthy ways. In every case, they were the right person for me at that time, for whatever it was we were doing.
And then, every relationship I’ve ever been in that was hurtful or unhealthy had issues stemming from problems in communication. Perhaps that’s why I’m so obsessed. And, perhaps that’s why I’m so neurotic, and why the self-awareness tag in this blog keeps growing.
And as for whether Maymay is the “right” person for me, right now, he is. And he continues to be, in a way I’ve never seen before. We are suited to each other in the long term, which is why we’re pushing four years together and we’re still talking, every single day.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Before I moved in with Maymay I had never shared a room with another person. I had never had a roommate, or split an apartment that wasn’t housing under the jurisdiction of an educational institution. And considering that I moved in about five weeks after I met him, it still surprises me to this day that our living situation has never gone horribly wrong.
One of our recent challenges has been working from home together. The biggest hurdle at the moment is that our sleep schedules are absolutely fucked. It has been rare for me in the past few weeks to hit my pillow before 4am. Maymay does the same. That means we miss a lot of mornings.
I sleep less than he does. And I wake up more quickly. Truth be told, had my lifestyle not unfolded in such a way that being a night owl is intrinsic to my interests and company, I would be a morning person. I like mornings. I wake up quickly. I write better in the morning. (But I write sexier in the night. Go figure.)
It’s hard for me to work and spend the day with May at the same time. And I have been feeling on the antsy side. There are many reasons we might spend time together or apart. But with living together, working together, being attached to each other, it gets a little much.
We have been scheduling time apart from one another our entire relationship. That that works well. It means that we’re assured of our own spaces. We have been doing that, of late. It works well. It keeps me balanced. It makes me hungry for him when I come back home.
He is still asleep as I write this. I am going to the beach today. (Even though it looks like it might rain.) I am tempted not to wake him up before I go; he looks so lovely in his sleep. The thing is, it’s good to go my own way for a while. But in truth, I miss him. I miss him even when he’s right next to me. I miss his skin on mine.
