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When we first started dating, I didn’t know we would fall in love. It sounds melodramatic but at the time I didn’t know if my heart would be open to loving again. Being leaveable had made me question whether I was loveable.
We took things slowly. Neither of us wanted to rush. I wasn’t sure how ready I was for a new relationship. But somehow all the other people we were seeing melted away, and you remained.
You’d told your friend that you’d wanted to woo me and you had. My nervous queer heart fluttered when you smiled. We kissed for the first time in the dark, like an Arcade Fire song.
When you first told me that you’d never had an orgasm I said something stupid. I think I asked about how much your vibrator had cost, as if a cheap gadget could have been the cause (or a more expensive one the solution).
You’re lying on my chest and hiding most of your face. You say that you think it’s really common but people just don’t talk about it. You say you’ve tried but you don’t say how, for how long, with what regularity or enthusiasm (my mind is swimming with questions, clarifications). You think it could be The Depression. I’m nodding and trying to take it all in but part of me is already strapping on my running shoes.
The other, quieter part says to wait. It isn’t relevant to now — we aren’t having sex yet. Why worry about something that isn’t present?
So I said more stupid things — like how great orgasms are and how I really wanted to help you have one. You smiled and said, “feel free.”
When I first told you I loved you it was just after you’d helped me move to the city. Exhausted and lying on my new bed felt like the right moment I’d been waiting for.
I needed to say it.
And you needed to hear it.
And for the first time — we had sex, made love, fucked. Fully. It was new and strange and amazing. I felt both out of this world and totally in my body. I’d always loved sex but this was something else. Something transcendent.
I came. You didn’t. I’d kind of expected it to happen because of our connection – hoped egotistically anyway. I was disappointed but figured I’d give it time.
Fast forward three years. Afternoons get measured out with coffee spoons, like a Crash Test Dummy song, and mostly we try to love each other the way we need to love and be loved. You try to stroke my back as much as you can before your arm gets tired. I try not to be lazy and instead go for walks with you or get up early and make you breakfast.
You lovingly tie me up and spank me and I lovingly fuck you with a strap on. All these things and more, with love.
Sometimes I feel like there is something building in you (like an orgasm builds in me) but maybe you’re not ready to let it overwhelm you yet. I think something is holding you back so I kind of wish it would just happen so you know it can. I wish it was that kind of non-issue. Sometimes I nearly cry with happiness when I think it’s about to happen. (And one time I burst out laughing— sorry about that). And then I know this is something I really want and I can’t pretend it’s not.
But when you press me against my bedroom wall and kiss me, I forget pretty much everything— including this.
Mostly we’re both just quietly hopeful. We talk about you feeling closer than you’ve ever felt and the taste is bittersweet.
The reason I’m writing this now is to be a kind of love letter to the present. Because although things could change, I’m not treading water, waiting for them to. Because of that Andrea Gibson line: “I am going to be more difficult than anyone you have ever dated.” Because you once felt like that was you, and that this was a barrier to loving you.
I want to hold on to how fucking beautiful you look and how peaceful I feel when we’re in bed together right now at this moment – when there were imperfections in how we wanted things to be (because there always will be, in one shape or another).
And I want to hold on to something of this. This time in our lives. To being open-hearted little queers learning each others bodies. I don’t ever want to become complacent in our knowledge of each other – I want it to always feel like the first time we touched, like we’re still trying our very best. Still exploring every mole. That even when things are difficult, they can still be amazing and fulfilling. That I don’t always need to run from what is hard in life. That we can still tell each other what we want. And it never becomes about the finish line.
I still have those running shoes, in a box somewhere. I think that’s just the kind of person I am or need to convince myself that I am. That I could go. From anything or anyone. That everything ends, in the end. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop thinking like that.
You know I have a hard time believing in forever.
But right now, this is our love letter to each other. It might end up being two pages, it might become a whole novel. But my fingertips and my mouth are writing it on your paper-white skin, and you’re using my curls as bookmarks, my stretchmarks to underscore sentences and scribble in the margins. We crumple, we rip, and edit and rewrite. We fuck each other. We love each other, the best way we know how.
We just can’t put each other down. It’s keeping us up at night. We’re at the really good part of the story.
