i’ll make this quick.

up until very recently, i wasn’t convinced that i would ever want, like, or be able to handle having things up my butt.

but somewhere close to two tabs of e later, it turns out that yes, yes, and yes, anal is pretty fucking cool.

that’s all i have to say about it for now.

other news:

dishboy is gone.  i have occasional pangs of missing him, but i’m mostly at peace with the beautiful memory of all the craziness we shared.

the husband and i are…  well, it feels like we’re on the way to things being better than they ever have been.  there’s a lot of talking and work to be done.  we might be going monogamous for a while to get our heads on straight and build a strong foundation.  i have come to the conclusion that i love him so much it’s a little intimidating.

loss.

i’m mourning for him.  in my head, he’s already gone and it’s cold here when i’m alone.

it makes seeing him bittersweet and vaguely desperate, like i’m simultaneously trying to build and drown the fire of this small strange love.

and what if one day he walks out of the woods and writes to me?  would it be better to let this die, and not remind ourselves of how it can’t be this way again?  nothing about anything will ever stay the same, and we are no exception.  i would much prefer these magic few weeks and a sad parting to the kind of lengthy falling out that a more solid relationship would inevitably become.

it’s hard to let go, though.  harder when part of me is trying before he’s even gone.

sex.

i had it.

hot, rough and breathless, high on the newness of it, only barely staying sane enough to not fuck everything up.  a string of bruised parentheses winds up my leg, my shoulders are draped in scratches now scabbing.

my husband flinches every time someone asks about the bruise and broken skin on my arm, or mentions golf.  on the plus side, we’ve been fucking again as well, and it has been hot.  our son is gone for almost three weeks, so we’re working on making it a good time.

dishboy leaves in less than a week.  i’m feeling peaceful about it, and i’m looking forward to getting not nearly enough sleep this week.  let’s go out with a bang.

things

1)  as odd as it may sound, i think the situation with dishboy is as close to “dating” as i’ve ever been.

2)  i think it will be impossible for me not to fall head over heels in love with him at some point.

after i left the restaurant yesterday, around when he was finishing his shift, he texted from a mutual friend’s phone:  “it’s [redacted], i want you.  see you monday.”

shocking, just how much that made my heart race.  so simple, but so…  well, honest.  how can i have missed out on straightforwardness before now?  maybe because i was less so than i’ve become in the past year or so.

i wonder what i’ll do with myself when he leaves…

updates

i made the pie, and it worked its magic. there’s something in the eyes and in the voice after that first bite that fills me with wonder. i’ve got something.

dishboy… well, things are interesting. this seems to be much more than a fling. we’re happy with even an hour or so together, talking and kissing and feeling comfortable and close. in a few weeks he’s going to walk off into the woods and resurface somewhere else, but i’m pretty certain that we’ll stay in touch.

he is a new type of person (relationship-wise) to me. to state it very simply, he likes me, and he’s okay with that. he shows it. i’ve been with jerks who only pay attention when they want something, and i’ve been with timid people who are too nervous to show how interested in me they really are. i like the feeling of being involved with someone who isn’t afraid or dismissive of me. part of me wishes i’d found this earlier, but i know in the back of my head that it would have ruined itself. i would have asked too much of it, and he’s not the kind of man that you can do that with. i would hate myself if i tied him down. i love his freedom, the wildness he has renewed in me.

i spent a long time on that last sentence because i am unsure about saying “love.” probably because i’m afraid that saying it to him would scare him off. i don’t feel that it needs to be said, although in some ways i can honestly say that i love him. i can be exactly my self around him and it feels good – what more does love really have to be?

——-

things with my husband are evening out slowly.  he seems to be slower to get over the shittiness than i am at the moment.  he’s staying home tonight, so i think we’ll do some talking.

myriad in-laws begin descending upon us tomorrow.  i need to ask him if he would prefer that we put our wedding bands back on and play like everything’s peachy, or if we should just answer any questions if they come up.  it’s his family, so i think it’s really up to him.

what to do?

i was looking forward to a nice leisurely bedtime, some touching, some love.  didn’t get it.

he says he needs to experience what it’s like being with someone else.  yes, okay, fine, we’ve been over this, that should happen if that’s what he wants and needs.  i have never had a problem with that, i’ve even tried to help him out with it once or twice.

but he gets in these moods where it’s like he hates himself for being so nice and so shy, and while i sympathize it just sort of makes me aggravated after a point.

dishboy fills a place in my life that the husband would not and could not.  i think he needs to figure out what it is that he needs that i don’t give him before he’ll be able to be bold.  he tried to turn this around on me, saying that i created the need for him to see other people when i realized that i did.  only he can create that need.  if it’s not there, it is neither my fault or my problem.

i definitely woke up in a sour mood today.  i like to think i’m normally a little nicer than this.

it’s time for time

this has been coming for a while. when you get right down to it, it’s been coming since the beginning, since i saw a plus sign on a pregnancy test, since i made every decision that has led me down this particular road. i will not deny that this new man has turned my whole world upside down. he most certainly has. i feel compelled to state, for the record, that all of this would have happened eventually. maybe without him, it would have happened too late for repairs.

i was 18 when my husband and i started seeing each other. he was 21. for as generally together as i’d like to think i was, i was still an 18-year-old girl. his talent intimidated me. i slowly shut down important parts of who i was. i stopped singing and writing, stopped wandering around alone on my bicycle at all hours of the night. it was never his fault that i cut off parts of myself, that was all me. it was stupid, but somehow i think i might have thought that relationships were supposed to be like that. handing over all your inferiorities to someone who could make better use of the time you’d been wasting on them. turning yourself into half of a couple, dumbing down the vibrant, wild, fiery, independent beast. it all happened slowly. pregnancy certainly shut down a lot of the more wild and frightening parts of who i was.

now i’m being thrown for a loop. i’m remembering that i’m just not the kind of person who has a kid or gets married. but… i have a kid, and i’m married. it’s been a difficult couple of weeks. mostly we’ve been taking a long hard look at our marriage. the rings are off for now. we need to take a big step back and remember how to enjoy each other, to have fun and be friends outside of our lives as parents and spouses. every day for a week i was having these extreme highs and lows, going from total optimism to utter despair within the space of an hour. yesterday was my first entirely optimistic day. we’re restructuring, and we’ll see how it works. in very different ways, we both missed out on a lot of growing up when we got pregnant. i think that we have done very well so far, and i hope that all of this hard work will reward us with something freeing and beautiful. it’s exciting and it feels like the right move, but it’s scary. it’s always scary when changes happen seemingly out of nowhere. we’re just not sure where anyone stands in relation to anything right now. we’ll get there, though.

big and overwhelming

wow.

there are bite marks (all the way back to the molars) on my arms and belly.

it’s so novel, being involved with someone as large and ferocious as i am.  larger, even.  he grabbed me around the ribs and flipped me over his head today, landing me just roughly enough on the grass.  i haven’t been small enough for anyone to do that for years and years.  i like it.

oh!  and i did handstands at the ocean yesterday!  an in-law was in town, renting a car, so we drove to the coast.  i’m amazed that my body let me do that.  it even felt like i was a little better at it than i used to be.  it’s probably the massive upper body strength i’ve been building up in the kitchen.  if i felt a little braver about my identity, i would post a photo here, but…  not yet, i don’t think.

another good thing recently:  i bought a beautiful journal, and i have actually written in it.  it’s still crisp and fresh, and i can’t wait until it starts smelling like grass and my hand sweat.

there is marital intensity going on right now, but i think it is good, and it’s all just sort of too huge and multi-faceted to write about coherently, so i won’t.

electricity

i work food service, back of house.  i like the people i meet in kitchens, the camaraderie, the honesty and the earthiness.  this new wild man i’ve acquired is a dishwasher, and we’d be boring idiots if we didn’t take advantage of all the beautiful hidden corners that a commercial kitchen has to offer.

i’m carrying about 75 pounds of food in ungainly plastic trays.  as i’m battling the metal door and plastic flaps that lead into the walk-in cooler he looks up from a cutting board.  “you need some help with that?”  yes.  yes i do.

i have enough time to set my trays down on a milk crate before he makes his way in.  the door closes, he looks around.  then there’s a lunge and he’s yanking my hair and pushing me up against a rack by my throat, biting my lips and tongue, sliding a hand up my shorts to grab my ass and all of a sudden there’s a huge flash of blue and everything goes black.

what?

we’re so hot we blew a lightbulb.

i may gloat over this for months.

i do think i’m awfully clever…

i had a stroke of genius yesterday, and i’m following up on it today.

i’m painting a scarlet letter to sew to the back of my hoodie.  oh, delight!

the husband is fine with it, although he doesn’t find it nearly as hilarious as i do.  whatever.  i know precisely how awesome it is.  and so do you.