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I’ve been trying to write it down, but I can’t remember how the words should go.

The Boston Boy is short, not small. Thick in his legs, round like apples and then broad like bodies of water. He has dark curling hair that twists into his ears and twines around my fingers.

Where was Maymay, the night of that party? I can’t place him in my mind, which makes me think he was at home. This piece will explain why I will never write a non-fiction memoir; I fill the gaps of my life in with fictions I create from the vapor of nothing, because the gaps themselves are huge and dark and frustrating. Last weekend I walked down the street with Maymay and said that I felt sad, and tried to explain my reasons. He turned to me and said gently, “That’s the same reason you were sad before we moved, six months ago. Don’t you remember us talking about it?” And I had to say no: I remember sitting, I remember words in my mouth, but I don’t remember why I was sad back then, in that anonymous time six months ago. I barely know why I’m sad now.

I remember the Boston Boy closed his eyes tight, and closed his face up as well. When he was finally against the wall of Rob’s little bedroom with his shirt on the floor at his feet, he stood perfectly still. I remember I ran my hands over his body.

“I’m sorry I’m so quiet,” he said, and his words came out odd in my ears. “I know you like it when there’re noises.” I think that I told him it was all right.

And then there is a gap. Trying to fill it with fiction makes me lonely, so I’m going to leave it unfilled.

Later, I grabbed the meat of his shoulder and wrestled him down onto the floor. He went down easy, and when I sat on top of his chest and pinned his elbows to his sides I could feel the muscles of his arms flexing and relaxing as he grabbed at the waistband of his shorts.

“What are you doing?” I leaned over him softly.

“Just trying not to fight back,” he said.

And I remember I asked him what he meant, and then I said, “Let’s try that, then,” and I kept hitting him.

I hit him until he wrenched his arms from under my body, flipped me easily and pinned me to the floor. I struggled a little, then looked him in the eyes. “All right,” I said then, “that’s enough.”

And I remember he threw himself backward, put his back to the corner and curled in a ball with his hands over his head. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He cried it in something that sounded like fear. I almost melted away.

And then, another gap. Writing like this makes me frustrated, makes me miss the golden sheen of the bubble I’ve capped over my time in New York. I don’t know if capping it makes things better or worse. A few days ago Maymay and I sat in a cafe, and I said maybe I want to move back to the States. No more guesswork, no more tentative movements or subtle disconnections. My life feels faded, fragile, incomplete.

“Let’s go to San Francisco,” I said.

I remember toward the end of the scene with the Boston Boy I pressed the pointed tip of a knife between his eyebrows, and he sank against the wall and made one low noise, without opening his lips at all. I remember deciding that noise was enough, and I remember it so clearly because I keep it wrapped in my head in a bit of tissue paper, that one beautiful noise.

I’m trying to write it down now, how the scene ended. Did we sit on the floor? I think we did. Did I put my arms around him? I hope I did. Some of this piece was fictional, but my hope in that hypothetical moment is real.

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In many ways, laying my cards on the table is necessary for me. It’s one way I manage my decisions about other people, and I need the little bit of protection bluntness provides in my relationships. It’s my way of saying, “If you’re going to hurt me, I want to know in advance. In fact, right-the-fuck now, if you please.” But of course I don’t say that specifically. I say other things instead. It’s very late. I’m not sure this post is making sense.

That protection is important because, you see, when I think something’s right I go for it. I almost always make decisions fast, reassess, and think my way back to my first conclusion. When my instinct and my reasoning says that the relationship is good, I am a no-holds-barred, hell-or-high-water, second-date-with-a-Uhaul person. I mentioned in my previous entry that I moved in with May three weeks after we started dating, which was five weeks after we met. To most people, that’s insane. Insanity didn’t occur to me at the time; I just moved in, and three years later, here we are.

And it worked because we knew where we stood, even when where we stood was shaky ground. So in some ways, being as rude, straight-forward, blunt, direct as I am is not just a personality quirk. It’s how I keep my decisions conscious, and how I make connections, and how I learn, and demonstrate, trust.

I held my lips over the skin of his throat and growled, feeling my lips peel back from my teeth. I climbed on top of him and ran my fingers through the air around his skin. He writhed upward, trying to make contact somewhere. Anywhere. I hid my laughter in his curls. He moaned. The bright pink tip of his cock slipped out the waist of the satin, and waved back and forth in the air.

After a little while I caught him up in a little ball, his legs folded close to his chest and my arms around his entire body. He tucked his chin down to his collar bone and looked up at me. Red eyelashes. He has red eyelashes. His mouth was trembling open, his eyes enormous.

“I love that look,” I murmured to him, just to watch him being sweet and coy. He flutters those eyelashes sometimes, when he’s pretty, when I compliment him. It goes right through my chest like a dart when he does that. I pressed my lips to his cheekbone, right at the corner of his eye. I smiled in his ear.

“You are so beautiful, precious, precious boy.”

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I am moving to Sydney, Australia in exactly four weeks. I get the feeling, from emails and the like, that perhaps this information has not reached general consumption.

Caught on the tight-wire of leaving my friends and family, packing my life into two suitcases, managing my relationship and handling my financial concerns, I am, as they say, stressed. If I were a guitar string I would be so tight that a gentle pluck would snap me.

That I am actually picking up and leaving my social life is a realization that comes in little waves. I’ll be in my kitchen, thinking I’m fine, pouring coffee, and then discover that I’m sitting down very quickly and my breath is making little gasping noises.

This weekend I packed almost all of my possessions into storage. My walls are achingly empty. My crafts are missing. Can one have a psychic connection to the comfort of things? I barely know who I am without crafts on hand.

I find myself counting the change in my pocket. I catch myself questioning whether to buy food, and have to speak sharply to myself.

I have been thinking about writing here for days. I want to dig into these recent posts and see what I turn up. It keeps not happening. I am too stressed to bring myself to care.

I had a panic attack last night. This will make the second panic attack I’ve had in my life. I know how terrifying they are to watch (from much experience), and I’m sorry for that, my love. I forgot how terrifying they are to have.

I’m calling a break. I’ve tried very hard to keep this blog kink focused. This is not my personal blog, and right now, frankly, my life is inappropriate to be written about here. Bloody Laughter will update regularly again when updating is something I do for pleasure. I feel that at the very minimum, you all deserves that consideration.

In the meantime, I’ll be around. I’m always around. It’s never as bad as it sounds.

Edit: Yes, Maymay will be joining me.

I leafed through the pages of the book on the subway, headed home with Maymay on New Year’s Eve. On the lower right-hand corner of one page, written in blue ink above a snapshot of a couple clapping, were the words I miss when you were just proud of me.

I started sobbing right there on the subway. I had to laugh at myself, I felt so foolish.

I spent eight days visiting family members during the Christmas holidays. I had enormous trouble organizing my thoughts while I was there. Much of my time with my family was nourishing, and content. I enjoyed Christmas. I ate cinnamon rolls and watched my cat pounce on wrapping paper, high on catnip.

I spent some time alone with the family member I shared that painful conversation with back at Thanksgiving. Seeing them was both relieving and difficult.

We did not have the beautiful, moving conversation one might have thought we’d have. I was not expecting us to. There’s a part of me that is amazed we talked at all. We sat in a crowded lunchroom over chili and hot chocolate, and built a small, sparse bridge of words.

“I’ve put passwords on my blog,” I offered, uncomfortably.

“That’s good, I suppose,” they answered. “I know you’ve been writing, but I haven’t read it.”

I wasn’t sure what to think of that. I turned a spoonful of chili over, contemplating. Eventually I answered. “You don’t have to read what I write, you know.”

“I know that,” they said. “But I’m always going to want to read what you write. You’re a part of me, what you do is going to last.” They paused a moment. “Your dust is going to be my dust too.”

I smiled at that.

“It was very painful for me, saying those things to you,” they said.

I teared up a little. “I know it was. I wrote about that.”

“This isn’t a good place to talk about it,” they said.

“I know,” I answered.

Later we drove home together. I watched the trees meld together in blurred shapes as we passed.

I drew a helpless gesture in the air with my hands. “I don’t know if you want to talk about . . . all this, if you want to learn about it or have me explain things to you.”

“I don’t think . . . I’m never going to think that violence is okay,” they answered. “I told you what I think, and I know you’ll do what you want.” They paused, staring at the road ahead. “I’m trying to let you go,” they said.

I thought about that for a little while.

Finally they spoke again. “Is there anything you really want to say?”

I turned the question over in my head. Was there anything I really wanted to say to them? About violence, or kink, or being an adult? About decision making, about work and energy and dedication? About criticism, constructive or otherwise? About Maymay, about how much I love him and how good he is for me?

I’m trying to let you go.

“I really think you could have handled the situation better,” I said at last.

“Maybe,” they answered.

We drove on, for a little while, in silence. Eventually I fell asleep with my cheek on the window.

Is that it?

I don’t know.

I think I’ll always disappoint my family in ways, and there will always be things we just don’t talk about. I think I will always live, as I have always lived, with this undercurrent of criticism and distance, and love.

I think I’ll relish the day I can see in the distance, the day I make decisions without my family.

I think that right now, just in this moment, that’s okay. I think that it will still hurt. I will cry on subway cars sometimes, and then occasionally, and then, hopefully, not at all.

Like I have been every other time my life was broken, in the end I will be okay.

Have I brought this painful span of words and weeks to an end?

Perhaps I have. I don’t know.

I do know that for the first time in weeks, I want to write again.

How can my life be simultaneously so fucking easy and so fucking hard?

I have a family I love, who loves me. I am overwhelmingly grateful. And yet, thinking of my travel plans for the holiday makes me feel ill.

My discussion with my family member broached a topic that I have not yet touched upon. A large, I might even say central topic. A topic with soft skin and red hair.

Yes, of course. Mixed up in this whole damn mess is the boy I love.

There was a question broached, some months ago, about whether May would accompany me to my family’s for a portion of this holiday season. I broached this question, I believe, in early September. I understand now why I never got a straight answer.

I was told at the time to make my own decision. This infuriated me; I felt it entirely unfair to be asked to make decisions about other people’s homes and lives, in a potentially explosive situation, with absolutely no input from the people involved.

Last Sunday, in the afternoon before May and I talked, I called my family member’s home. After some brief, friendly conversation I asked the question.

“Should he come up with me? It’s okay if he shouldn’t,” I added quickly. “I just want to know what you think, and if he shouldn’t then I’ll just go home to New York a little earlier, so I can spend the holidays with both of you.”

I felt as though my heart was choking me, asking this question. I thought of the email, that stupid joke that made me laugh. I thought Maybe it’s really all right.

“I know you said it’s my decision, but I really think it’s unfair to ask me to make that decision. I would appreciate some guidance.” I closed my eyes.

They paused on the other end of the line. “I guess you should go back to New York, then.”

“Okay,” I said. “I will. Thank you. That helps. That’s all I wanted to know.”

When I hung up the phone I pressed my hand to my forehead for a second. Silly girl, you knew better. Nothing has actually changed.

It didn’t actually hit me until I was sitting on the subway platform. Suddenly I curled up in a ball and started crying, leaning over the hard bench. May made a distressed noise and rubbed my back.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. He walked to the booth a few feet down the platform, bought something, and came back. It was a fashion magazine; one of my silly guilty pleasures. He smiled as he handed it to me.

“Here,” he said. “A distraction.”

I smiled, then laughed slowly. I thanked him, kissed him.

You stupid shit, I thought to myself as I flipped through the pages. It was far too soon to ask that question.