It’s been half an hour since I sat down and wrote this entry in the pile of pillows, and the shakes have hit me now; I’m shaking so hard I can barely get my fingers to strike the proper keys and typos abound. My stomach has turned itself into a knot, my breathing has grown ragged, and my muscles so recently relaxed by Ryan have cramped back into a tangled mess. I realize this is just stress, but I also realize how miserable this makes me.

Why must I? Because it seems it would be misleading to tell him it was all fine and okay if it wasn’t, and it seems that if this will make me unhappy, I need to take my own steps to be not unhappy. The sad question seems to be not “what can you do that will make you happy” but “which option will make you the least unhappy.” I do not want to be here, in this situation. Physically, I am having a hard time being here, in this apartment.

I’m sitting here quietly thinking about lines and where I draw them. This will be transcribed later – I don’t want to risk the computer waking him. He lays across from me, in the futon, snoring gently. We went our own way Saturday night – me to a D&D disaster, he to a party. An ambient party where many drugs were consumed. Where clothes were shed, and there was skinny dipping, sensual massages, cuddle piles and kissing. He tells me about all of this, and then says at one point “I didn’t have sex with anyone…” I told him I thought he would have told me if he did, since he was mentioning the rest. I also told him that the kissing bothered me, and asked about the massages. I asked about how erotic it was, how much fondling and stroking. He said it was sensual, arms and legs and scalp. I believe him because I must, but I find myself considering boundaries; I am [obviously] bothered by him kissing other people.

It seems like there are so many boundaries one can draw:
1) touching/friendly massage
2) hugging
3) friendly kissing
4) sensual/erotic massasge
5) erotic kissing
6) fingering, stroking, fondling
7) oral sex
vaginal/anal intercourse

And it seems to me that it is back to the tricky business of trying to decide what sex is. My definition apparently starts somewhere around item #4; his starts somewhere else on the list. Right now, without having asked him, I’m guessing it’s around #7 or #8.

Then you add in the drugs and lowered inhibitions, and I wonder “well, maybe this isn’t normal…” and then “does it really matter if it’s normal?” Do I “excuse” things because of drugs, a [semi]normal part of his life?

I cannot help but think this is not going to go well, a conversation about this. I think I thought I had more time to mentally prepare for him being sexual with other people – apparently I didn’t.

I’ve moved off the futon as a concession to my twisted emotions that want to pack up and leave this apartment; I only hope they calm down enough to let my bruised body find a bit of sleep on the floor.

… I want to lay beside you in a warm bed and feel your heart beat in my throat…

I woke this morning to cheery blue sky, bright sun, warm coffee smells and three screaming alarm clocks. It’s certainly one way to gurantee being up “two hours before sane.” I’ll admit, I actually decided that since I am not on Central time, there was no real reason to do much more than groan at the alarm before turning it off and rolling over to the dark side of the bed. (Of course, the justification for this was needing to call Volt before heading in to work, and being unable to do that before Pacific business hours.) The bright and sunny side of the bed was claimed by a groggy, coffee-sipping, powerbook-toting programmer who seemed to agree with my basic premise of “legs-twined == good.”

A fun morning full of rapid phone calls culminated in me panicing at the time and needing to leave while he was still on one of those calls. A muted phone and a few kisses later, I raced out the door to stumble in to work late but happy.

I wanted to claim more than a few kisses over lunch; cell phone problems ensued and I decided driving home to see if he was on that cell phone from my bed was worthwhile – alas, he was not.

Hunger unsatiated, I have hopes for tonight.

It amuses me sometimes, how two people can have the same wants, yet fear keeps them from saying it to each other.

I walk into my apartment and see clothing scattered on the floor, falling from the bag it had been so hastily stuffed into Monday morning. I drop my current armful of computer bags, clothing bags and purses on the floor next to the already established pile.

I glance to my right and see a scattering of papers and wrapped condoms, hastily pulled from my purse Tuesday before heading out. I walk to the left and see the ferrets perk up to see me. I scatter them a few treats and sit down at my computer. Web mail showed it had last been checked from here on Tuesday the 12th. The ferrets cage needs cleaning.

Walking into my dining room, I notice remnants of dinner many nights now passed, still needing to be washed, wiped and put away. The floor needs to be swept, ferret food scattered from haste across the grey linoleum.

I dig my toothbrush from the bag and walk into the bathroom, I attempt to scrub the taste of inhalers from my mouth. I walk back to the computer and check my eMail – nothing. I wander upstairs and check the phone messages – nothing.

I pause on the stair landing and listen. I hear nothing. I don’t hear the quiet steady sound of the Bay breathing, I don’t hear the humming life of the harbour or the sound of steelbelts on the blacktop. The silence is not punctuated by a foghorn or the scream of a siren racing off to some distant emergency. I don’t hear the sound of another breathing nearby, I don’t hear gentle rustles from moving paper or the light tap-tap of fingers across a keyboard.

I move, not down the stairs but back to bed. To rest under heavy covers, to close my eyes and wait for motivation to overtake me. To hear the phone ring and reach in eager anticipation. To sleep. To hear the sound of footsteps on my stairs, unlocking of a door, steps winding their way to me, to hear clothes drop and blankets lift, to feel a body near me once more. If only in my dreams, to hear these things. If only in my dreams.

It’s a dreary Monday afternoon. It’s grey. It’s damp. Instead of releasing the promise of rain, the clouds loom low in the sky. I’m coughing, throat raw and having a hard time breathing on top of that. My appetite is noticably suppressed, the mere thought of swallowing makes me wince. There is a 10 pound rock sitting on my chest, making me work for every gasp of air.

Amazingly, given all of this, I feel wonderful. I had a lovely weekend, and didn’t realize until I sat down to reread the last few posts that I completely neglected to mention it… I had a long bit typed out, detailing what I did with my weekend. Reading it over again, I realized that it only gave the mechanics of the weekend, it didn’t convey the essence, the magic.

When you were a child, did you ever have one of those days, the days filled with magic? Where you were convinced the afternoon would last forever, where the sky was a perfect cornflower blue and the grass green and sweet? Where there were toads behind every bush, the ice cream man came on time and you had just the right money for your favourite treat, which he actually had in the right flavour? Where the gloaming extended for several hours, instead of just a few minutes, and as you stopped and stood on the pedals of your bicycle you knew, you were convinced that if you exhaled you would scatter the magic to the four corners of the earth and it would all end?

That has been my life, these last eleven days. Only yesterday, standing on pedals looking out at the magic in front of me, I realized I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, I had to exhale and then, then the magic would scatter to the four corners of the earth only to stay with me as a memory. But I couldn’t breathe and had to let go, had to exhale.

And when I was done blowing, when I inhaled and opened my eyes, the magic was still there.

Thank you for listening, for letting me face my fears and paint them into objects I can see and conquer. Thank you for, in the face of your own weariness and frustration, letting me cry and trying to understand what I was feeling. Thank you for talking to me, thank you for asking me to stay another night, and thank you for what you said on the corner of 2nd and Pike. I will gladly miss another thousand lights to hear those words from you again.

I love you.