jacktellslies

To celebrate Parker's having started T, Carla and I threw him a surprise, ahem, tea party. There were cucumber and watercress finger sandwiches, artfully arranged platters of meats and cheeses and smoked fish, ladyfingers, and little cakes with fruit. There were also, of course, several thousand varieties of expensive and exotic teas. As I'm sure you've noted, it was intensely manly. In fact, following a discussion regarding the strange ability of those sphinxes, women, to pick at the tiniest quantities of food and rely on the clever application of pauses in order to appear delicate and half starved while secretly consuming entire galaxies, we decided to hold an experiment. We embarked upon a quest to prove our virility: twisting their deceitful feminine ways to our own purposes, we nibbled away at entire pyramids of watercress sandwiches, cheering one another onward to still greater feats of gluttony, more daring displays of masculinity, leaving naught but pure machismo and crumbs in our wake. Debbie brought a gift of beard grooming products, and at the end of it, as a ritual acceptance of adolescence and, eventually, manhood, we took Parker out into the woods and circumcised him with a straight razor while chanting the following:

( Gentlemen, behold! )

We'll host a sausage party when he's a bit further along.

I shall never again forget that Parker used to work in a porn shop, and is really quite good at making choices. We tend to appreciate a good deal of the same things, which is a factor, but she is simply better at interpreting the covers than I. Proof of this is that two of the queer fetish films we rented last night involved HUGGING. Nothing could possibly be hotter than people who like to beat each other up making it clear that they know one other and care about each other. Also: I always think that bears and leather daddies are adorable. I want to hug them, too.

(I asked her to be my boyfriend again. She said yes.)

We are not together again, exactly, but we love one another, and I suppose that we are in love. When people ask, we tell them that we are Super Best Friends and refuse to clarify further. She is taking time to herself. Supposedly we'll be more than this again, at some point, but not what we were. We'd like space, please, and to learn to/continue to be reasonable. I'd worried that she wouldn't learn from any of this, but she is learning. She is taking time, and she is taking space. And I am proud of her, and glad that she has willpower enough for the both of us, although, being what I am, to be honest, I would, perhaps, prefer it if we were beating one another senseless and spending a bit more time atop the freezer in the basement. The fags all tease whenever we enter a room, though, and that is almost like real, quite regular contact, isn't it?

I have felt conflicted about much of it. Of course. I'd thought the whole time, you see, that I'd been envious, that I'd only wanted the things I could no longer have. But I was jealous, too. I told her, today: She is the first thing. I am not really emotionally available to anyone but her. And that would likely be true regardless of whether or not she felt the same about me. But there is part of me that wanted so desperately for her to feel the same. And I did not really know if that was acceptable. Was I wanting something that I simply could not have, and being selfish, and trying to have too much of her, and not practicing detachment, and asking too much? And is that dangerous? So I asked. And that is what we would have been the whole time, had we not stopped. And that is what we'll be. That was all. That is what she said. And she said that there was no question of that, to the extent that she barely understood, at first, the question that I was asking.

I believe that one can make the same mistakes over and over, or that one can find new and interesting mistakes to make, new problems, new lessons. We have learned things from one another, and we would seem to be in this together. And my body, and my head, and my mouth are thankful. My heart is thankful, and full, and waiting to be filled. There are new mistakes out there. There are new ways to ruin this and one another, and, I hope, new ways to find our way back.