Greenstorm's Journal

Last night, when I unexpectedly got a call offering me an apartment I never thought would be given me (fer gawdsakes, I answered 'do you have bad credit' with 'yes, MSP' on the application!) and accepted because someone was asking me a question on the phone so I said yes, the next thing I did was call Dave. Sure, there were maybe three minutes of staring into space, but my brain wasn't processing and I wasn't thinking so in that space I just dialed his number.

That's partnerspace.

He didn't answer, he was busy, and when next he looked at his phone he didn't hurry to call me back or keep his phone next to him in case I called again. He did make space at the end of his evening to talk to me, and I was pretty confident that he would do that.

That's him.

I'm poly because it's important to me that no arbitrary restrictions be placed on my connections with folks. Time, energy, desire: these can be shifted and bucked sometimes but in the end they are absolute restrictions. Eating together, fucking, kissing, talking until sunrise, saying good night, reaching out in a time of emotional need, walking around the city in the rain: these are intimacies and I cannot honestly set some above others, call some relationship-fodder and others friendships, and call them poison with one set of people and soulfood with another.

I can wrap my understanding around logistics, even logistics that involve emotions: I can't date everyone because time limits me, no other penises in you while we're trying to conceive a baby because I want to be sure, we don't have time or emotional energy to process extra change while we're moving so let's put off starting anything new for a few months, I'm really into this new person so I'll be a bit scarce and can you lean on your support network a little bit harder?

The logistics of dating Dave involve that he is essentially in a domestic poly relationship with his communal house. They have dinner together most nights; he has to cook dinner at a specific time. He has chores and obligations at home. He catches up on his small-talk and general socialization there. He is committed to this relationship, and often it stresses him out in ways that impact or limit his relationship with me, and often it offers him opportunities and support that, were I his full and only partner, I would probably otherwise be giving. This home-partner of his is less restrictive than dating someone with kids or someone with a sexual partner in some ways; in other ways it is more restrictive, and in still others there are striking similarities. It's a funny balance, and I have trouble keeping it sometimes.

The logistics of dating Dave involve how he swings between a general fuzzy non-focus and tightbeam searching regard unpredictably. He swings between an obliviousness so intense as to be jawdropping and a kind of casual unflinching insight into himself and general relationships that leaves me racing to catch up. He swings between casual disregard and thoughtful, care-full intimacy.

The logistics of dating Dave involve that he has never yet said anything in the heat of anger or pain to me. Instead he will say, "I'm feeling defensive, can we wait a little bit to talk about this" or "I'm frustrated right now, let's bring this up another time". I feel safe from lashing out, from deliberate hurt. In contrast to this, which makes me feel intensely cared-for, I also sometimes feel forgotten or unimportant.

It makes me nervous that he apologizes with the tongue of angels. I don't want to feel better about things; I want them fixed so they aren't a problem again. I worry that being without the sting of unhappiness, I won't fix a thing. On the other hand I also know through both experience and pure logic that things cannot always go perfectly between people, even in the best system, and so maybe I should set that aside and enjoy... peace? Being seen and understood in an apology? Either way I want to learn to do it.

To drop these yoked opposites for a moment, to burrow into my spaces of pure desire, I want to learn from him and with him. I want this self-contained competent exploratory curious caring person right there at my shoulder while we navigate whateverthefuck this life thing is. I want to see how he does the things he's so good at. I want to do things that bring surprise and respect to his face. I want his advice because, whether I accept it or not, it's always worth considering. I want to know there's someone there who'll always say 'we'll make it work' and who I can, however skeptically, still believe somewhere inside.

And I want him, the /him/ of him, biker's thighs and a rug of fur, blue-ringed gold eyes and hands to match my own in size and almost in workman's roughness, careful deliberate easy movement and eyes that crinkle just right with each smile and the smell of home on the side of his neck where it meets his shoulder and something about a voice pitched to hit a spot right behind the centre of my breastbone and the totally unconscious warmth that pours out of his whole self.

This isn't a post with answers. It is merely, as they say, what it is: a shape in my head that I do not want to forget.

In the beginning, the very beginning, I said: you're gonna break my heart someday, boy.

The title of this journal is watching the cycle: leaves to mulch to soil to leaves. It's because that's the only thing I can count on.

This week I talked to Eva about what-ifs, backup plans, and I tried to stay open and not close myself off to him in case I was wrong.

Last night I took the twenty up Victoria for 'a talk' that, when asked, he admitted I should have a friend around afterward for. I knew to ask that question. I was angry on the bus ride there, and I dreaded waiting for the bus because then I'd have to think. Luckily there was no wait.

He was upfront and straightforward. He made no excuses. He doesn't love me, he wishes he did, but he doesn't. He's not the sort of person who can continue on just like that even so, despite my many wonderful qualities. It's maybe the second time in my life someone's been so upfront about a breakup with me, and the first time was when I was thirteen. He held me, he cried, I cried. He said in the next couple weeks I could go to him for comfort if I needed. I said don't do this to me-- I didn't mean to say it, because he was being so good about it, but I had to, just in case it helped. He said he really wanted to be friends. I said when I get over the angry phase, I'm not there yet but I'll let you know when I get to it, so yes, comfort, but please could he not do this to me?

When I first came into the room he asked me what I meant when I said I loved him. I said no, just say what you need to say, and he did. Later I tried to put it into words: he's the shining thing that my life sudenly and inexplicably organised itself to hold up, rather than just curling and tumbling in an attempt to stay up with no particular focus. He is a reason for things. He is beautiful. He is... I don't know how to describe, it's a spiritual thing, he makes me ring. It's like a flower at the top of my head with a lacework all down my spine. Still when he smiled at me it gave me butterflies in my stomach.

He doesn't feel any comfort when I hold him in my arms. When he holds me, even now, even after that, it's still the best place ever to be.

It was seven months to the day from the date we had decided was the beginning. That was the day he came over to talk about rats, after the first family dinner where things sparked and Eva brought us together. We talked about rats for a long time, then things went silent and he looked up at me. I looked back. Eventually I went around behind him in the chair and bit his shoulders, and that was that. I took the day off work to see him get his tattoo and we went to the park and made out for hours, then hesitated before going to his place.

We waited to fuck for what seemed like forever, waiting for test results to come back (I do try to keep my STD tests up to date before the fact).

It was private. I called him babydoll, puppy, my love, sweetie, Mister, every pet name seemed to fit him. He called me ma'am and my tummy did bellyflops. I beat him with a cane for the first time and he liked it. I cried sometimes, after sex or during, because it was like god coming down. His body was built for mine-- ribcage fashioned to fit the length of my arm, his arms designed to curl around me just right to trigger all my safe feelings. His cock was exactly right. I loved the little bit of soft on his belly, the way it pooled out a little. I loved the flame tattoo on his arm, and the grapes. I loved the way he looked at me when I hurt him, his eyes got so big and soft. They were usually blue eyes, with a ring in the middle the colour of his year. He's a redhead. I notice redheads more on the street now, and people dressed in construction-worker clothes.

I didn't write much about it and I regret that now because it will slip away, but at the same time I couldn't.

I don't regret the thing, because it was spring itself. I think I'll be okay. I didn't, on the way to his house; I thought of bridges and knives. I don't do that, it's not my style. When I was there, though, the network kicked in. I thought of the people waiting for me-- Mom, my brother, Eva, Bob, and the web caught me, and I couldn't just lie down and roll over.

On the way home it was a feeling of unreality, like the last seven months had been a little miracle. They're over, sure, and I'm back to my regular programming.

I wanted to have his babies. I wanted to marry him. I wanted to do all those silly things, carve his name into my flesh, you know?

I don't really know what to do now. I still want a job that I can have children in. If men are fickle, dammit, I still want to raise a child. I have work - retail today, which may be awful but better than an empty day. It's the second-last shift, and 10-8, which is long. Then there's dinner with Eva and/or karaoke. Ryan was home last night. He held me, which felt weird -- he's so tiny compared. He let me talk, and he talked, and it was diverting. That was important. Diversion.

When people said they love me to that last post-- thank you, it helped. Sympathy would be a problem for me right now though. Love, yes. Caring, yes. Sympathy, no.

I'm a bit of a mess. I hate spring.

I never showed him Secretary, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

We never had sex in public.

When he was really sick I used to hold him and he'd feel better, but later on he wanted space to deal with it. A sign, I guess. He woke up at the same time as me, in the mornings. At night he'd tell me he was going to stay up, then fall asleep. Id' poke him and he'd sit up sleepily, trying to look alert, and say, 'I wasn't asleep'. Everything he did was adorable, odd on a six-foot-something construction worker.

He _was_ my springtime. When it snowed he'd get up, all excited, and put on his clothes and go out into it. It's snowed a lot this winter, and after awhile I started to smile too when it snowed. There's more to say, perhaps -- he was in Vegas for New Years, and I still have the message saved on my phone that says he wants me to be his forever. I want to save that message, but I don't want to listen to it for awhile.

His hair is still wrapped around the ring of my black collar.

His hands were much bigger than mine, a full joint plus some. Something about his cheekbones and lips was a song, a poem. I look at him all the time, even after seven months, just for the sheer pleasure I took in it. He does his best, he feels guilty a lot of the time over not living up to his personal standards which are high, sometimes unrealistic. He tried really hard in this, and he tries really hard generally to be a good person.

I don't know. This morning before work will be long.

I've done this to other people. Jan, I remember you didn't say much. I know why now. I'm sorry. I am so sorry.

Your breathing is like a light left out, and even with your eyes closed I can hope that when I come home at last the light will brighten a door left unlocked against my coming.

We rolled home in the sunset, cool soft air pouring in through the windows, and I got the shivers and butterflies in my stomach when I saw my ecozone again. In Iowa the soil is so so deep and black, being stripmined by corn, and there's no wild in it. Across the Dakotas it rises up, gets drier, rolls rocky through Montana, and then crisps through the near-desert heart of Washington, leaving only brown and irrigated fields in stark dots. We came through the rockies, a mere pile of variably-sized gravel with trees poking through, and finally into real mountains that created the platonic-ideal crags and cones which live in my mind. Here you're cradled by stone and tree, the air is gentled by the ocean, and everything grows like gangbusters.

At the border they didn't ask to see ID, they just knew we were supposed to be here, and through we went. Gone eleven days, no shopping.

From US border to US border we travelled 6500 km, from Blaine, Washington to Lytton, Washington via Twin Lakes, Iowa. We went across on the I90, and back on the I94 and then the I90-- I recommend the latter troute, it's green and lovely as god's own garden in North Dakota, and there is a line in my trip log that labels part of that ride right before the edge of Montana as the most beautiful place on Earth. I could live there. The hills are low and rolling, things are green and rich, and startling shapes of hill and rock ride up - I would say, as Kim Stanley Robinson does of Mars, that the feng shui is strong.

We did all the driving in five days. That's a lot of driving per day. On the way back, the time zone change helped us. At the border we suddenly became giddy, on the way back, laughing and laughing, because the weight of being somewhere else was off us, and we were home.

Here we call it 'The US'. There it's 'America'. My family is there. I am here.

At one point, Justin was pretty drunk, and we were talking, and he says plaintively, "I don't speak Canadian, can you translate that into Iowa?"

It's morning now, and I've come back to sticky bits, confusion and chaos and pain that I knew would be waiting when I left. I need to put my house in order. The weight of obligation, of being a part of things and thus of both giving and recieving, of moderating and of pushing, is back on my shoulders. It was good to set it down for a bit and be a child again.

It is good to be back.

See you soon.

Nine Days.

Don't you know that I go crazy
But I've nothing left to give
Though I'll miss you for a while
Don't you know that I go crazy
But you're on your own tonight
Though you know I'll miss your smile

That album is so completely meshed with Jan and Kynnin in my mind, with a very specific time period in my life. I remember.

It's fall. Fall is when I fall in love. I remember talking with Jan via computer with the neon red cherry leaves blowing wildly in through the windows, whipped from the sidewalk to settle in the corners of the stairwell. Exultation; that's the word for that feeling, for falling in love in the middle of a windstorm with an anchor to curb the worst excesses.

I remember walking down the hill from high school to Kynnin's house and all the colours were a watery, muted yellow. That was closer to winter than fall. Better, I remember hurrying up the hill to school, holding his hand, and we were both late because we'd been up in each other's arms talking and woke late in front of the fireplace and were sticky with sleep. I never looked for the leaves, that first couple of years with Kynnin, because my eyes were locked so completely on him.

I fell in love with CrazyChris in the fall. It's that quality of light that does it to me, I swear it is, where the air itself is lucent and watery. When I went to meet him for the first time he was sitting in Grandview park, all blues and tidy corners, and I thought, 'british schoolboy'. I could see the edges of his face so clearly. We lay on the grass talking for so long, and I was shivering. I remember his hand.

I love those people still, you know. Not like ghosts, not like memories, but with a clear and present feeling of openness and caring. I haven't talked to Jan, not really, for years; he's in Japan now again. I haven't talked to Kynnin for months; it's not important to him to keep contact right now. Blessedly, Chris and I speak with reasonable frequency, but he remains the closest to me in temperament and so he cherishes the way we work together too. Fall and spring stir up memories in me, for some reason, and the feeling of love is much stronger now.

And now I'm falling in love again, speaking in the car late in the night, with someone I've loved all along but who, after the beginning, backed off to keep me at arm's length. It didn't stop me from loving him, but it did slow it, back it off, so that this is a little bit rediscovery but also very much just discovery-- because who is ever the same twice, and how are we ever to find the little paths, once trodden, in the vast wilderness of a human's soul? Even if they remain unchanged?

So here, these are the morning thoughts I give you. They're heavy thoughts for the morning, brought about because it's warmer under the covers than outside. The heat of my body is not so different from the heat of two bodies, after all; we're still preposterous fires burning, all soft on the outside for all the fury within. They're thoughts brought about because the light, slanting in and under the blinds, is just that particular shade of lucent yellow across my monstera delicosa, *just that colour* that I remember so well.

I am not lonely, though I'm alone, but I hurt in some obscure way. My cup is full yet still filling, and it overflows and the contents pass from my knowledge. The things I love are bigger than I am, and they extend out into the infinite in ways I'll never see, never know of, but am connected to because I have loved them.

I want to be a poet, and write something that begins, "and I have known your smile."

Instead, I will be a dancer, and an actor, and a playwright, and I will write a life.