"Officiality"

[greenstorm]

It's only seven thirty and it's getting dark. Fall's here, and with it our lovely amazing indian summer full of clear blue skies and crisp air. Walking around outside makes me feel like I'm drugged-- I suppose if I wanted to be literary about it I'd call it intoxicating. The air is clear, less of an obstacle to vision when there's light out, and things are sparklier. This weekend held the equinox.

I'm sitting in a place that feels like home, but it isn't my house. I'm over at the House of Boys- Angus, Dan, Tyler, and Nick's place. We did the cooking for Mabon, Patti's big dinner party, here, and I just finished doing some dishes. It was a big party weekend-- first Piotr's birthday, then Ty and Brit's anniversary/Ty's birthday/this place's second housewarming, then Mabon on Sunday night. They were three very different experiences but interestingly there was a core of people that showed up at all of them; Tim, Navi, Anthony, myself, Patti and Tyler that I can remember off the top of my head.

It felt wonderful to hang out with people I love again. It feels wonderful, because really I'm still here. The boys are gaming in the other room, I'm making soup with the leftovers and trying to think of how to write here.

I recently finished a book called _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay_ that was full of the most moving writing. I had forgotten how much a turn of phrase could stir me. I had not read anything in a long time that made me want so badly to call someone and just read it to them. It was a bit difficult to get into the book, the characters took a little bit before I cared about them so much that their salvation or lack thereof really mattered to me. It was a beautiful book, that said.

I feel like I'm home right now. I mean, I'm in what feels like familiar territory. If there wasn't all this food left from Mabon I'd make muffins for the gamers. You know that role, right? When Kynnin had people over to play D&D it's the same role I chose to take.

Ramble, ramble. I always approach my points sidewise, support then thesis. Sometimes it's anecdote then thesis, but it's all the same style. I'm working up to saying that Mabon was wonderful, everyone I love in the same room, and that it was a lot a lot of work. I'm working up to saying that Angus is my boyfriend again in an official sort of way. We're both smiling a lot. It's lighter than it was. It feels really good.

It's funny, you know, I was so tired of poly. It had been sort of like a cheesegrater, not always but enough that some important bits of me were abraded away. These were the bits of me that automatically expected emotional gentleness and also the bits of me that automatically gave it. I always have had the tendency to fall into hardassery.

Kynnin and I just made some mistakes from which we never recovered, and I was never out of a relationship for long enough to stop and reset-- things kept carrying over and carrying on, different iterations of the same carelessness coming up over and over. I didn't expect to get what I wanted, and that hurt me so much that I was afraid to even know what I wanted, and then I couldn't communicate it, and then of course I couldn't get it. You see the circle. Further, I was always afraid of being left, of the Kynnin thing repeating, and so I brought in a new boy for backup and distanced from the old one in preperation for the inevitable ending, often causing it.

I'm not saying this is the only way of looking at my relationships, or the only thing that happened in them; it's not the only reason they ended or began, it's not even close to the whole of my experience of them. I'm just saying, I was caught and it had gone on long enough that I was beat down.

Let's try an explanatory chronology.

A couple weeks ago I had a party at my house, and Ty's roommate Dan came to it. We ended up talking there, and have hung out since. I made him sushi one night; he made me a steak and shiitake salad another. We had a lot of fun sleeping next to each other. He initiated the STD talk before I did, the first and only person to do so. He's twenty years old. I really like him-- for all my second guessing (do I like him because he reminds me of Marvin? Is it this or that other thing?) that statement is both true and the only one I can make about it at this point. He's the first person since Angus I've both been attracted to and liked freely, like water flowing from somewhere in my chest. That's why so much second-guessing, and also why I'm so tentative. It's been a long time, and relief is always coupled with pessimist's caution for me.

I'm not sure whether it's that which drove me into this weekend. Perhaps it's also Sickle, which is something that requires Angus' presence in Seattle every Sunday, and he works Friday and Saturday nights from 8pm-3am; it's a hard schedule to spend time with him in, and now I'm starting my Master Gardener program imminently and I'm busy Saturdays and generally Tuesdays and Thursdays till late starting the week after this one- this doesn't leave us a lot of time together. In any case, I tried to break up with Angus this weekend despite the fact that we weren't dating. What ended up happening was that we had a long, long talk and we're dating now officially, and we're tentatively poly.

I had never had any of the poly talks with Angus. I had never needed to; people told me he was hardcore monogamous, and when he expressed discomfort with me being with other people I let them slide off me like water off a candle. They just slipped away. See? New boy/old boy, but it was different this time because there was no one else.

When we broke up we were by default poly because we weren't in a negotiated structure that excluded other people. When you're not in a structure, though, you spend minimal time defining that structure. We still hadn't talked. Now we have.

We're not sure what shape this is going to take but it's more intentional than last time. He's been doing amazingly at figuring out what he wants and acting to make that happen, something he couldn't even conceive of back then. I've been independent some, not leaning on a second boy but just doing my own thing. Those are both pretty important things to have done.

So. I'm happy. I don't know what's happening next. That's all.

Oh, bleeding like crazy.

Comments

[algae-al-fresco.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[andi-sunrider.livejournal.com]

This is totally an aside from your post, but I just wanted to say that I was really really grateful for your caring on Friday night. I was in a strange mood, had just had a "talk," and I was really touched by the simple acts of you actually asking if I was ok, an putting your hand on my head. Sappy, but I wanted to let you know.