SIMULTANEOUS COMBUSTION...

Every kiss, every hug
Seems to act just like a drug
You're getting to be a habit with me
Let me stay in your arms,
I'm addicted to your charms
You're getting to be a habit with me

I used to think your love
Was something that I
Could take or leave alone
But now I just can't do
Without my supply,
I need you for my own
[fat chance of THAT!]

No, I can't break away
I must have you every day
As regularly as coffee or tea
You've got me in your clutches
And I can't break free
You're getting to be a habit with me
You're getting to be a habit with me

Bigg checked in recently with concern about my -- how shall I term this? -- mental state; I was able to inform him that I was in fact doing OK. I mean, I haven't actually talked to the Silver Fox yet, and there's no knowing what his e-mail really means, but at least the weeks of silence are over. It might be as simple as the fact that, now he has finished cutting a swath through his vacation spot, he can turn his attentions to possible quickies on the home front. But it could mean more, and of course the Inner Girl has grasped that particular straw with iron determination...

I AM doing OK.
I'm not sane, by most measures, but I haven't been sane by most measures for quite a while.

I found myself skipping into the post office this morning. In spite of the fact that I had just wasted half an hour at the Weeds-and-Seeds Market trying to pick up a lost-and-found item; they had called to let me know it would be held at the desk, but when I got there, it was not to be found. Very nice guy, with one of those single braids you haven't seen since about 1976 (at least not unless you and your trust fund moved up to a farm in Vermont about then) went rooting through all the drawers, to no avail.

Sidebar:
One of my hockey players got a haircut, which is not a big deal in itself, except for the fact that it of course made looking at his ears absolutely unavoidable.
Frailty, thy name is Troll. As if I needed any extra input on that front...
I have found being confronted with the endless multiplicity of men I find attractive a little breath-taking. So it was kind of a relief to deal with this Braid Guy and realize there were indeed some men I was completely uninterested in.

So, I found myself skipping into the post office this morning. That is odd enough in and of itself, but I was singing "You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me" and I just had to dance along. Now, one can argue that it's a bit odd to claim that anyone you have spent all of about 22 hours with can be described as a habit, but if you've also been looking at his ugly mug every morning when you turn on the computer -- and yes, you guessed it, I installed the picture I extorted from him as my desktop wallpaper -- and you've gotten used to running the cursor over the contours of his face as if it were a hand... Well, you are not only hopelessly delivered up, hogtied, into the "clutches" the song talks about, but you do feel that someone has become a habit. Perhaps not a habit grounded in reality, but who needs that?

[ME, that's who, it's just that I'll take what I can get...]

Well, putting his picture on as my wallpaper was dumb, I know. Not as dumb as stroking his face with the cursor, maybe, but dumb. And I loaded a slideshow of beautiful young men as my screensaver -- not too dumb in and of itself, perhaps, though it takes me completely by surprise every time I enter my kitchen/studio, since I expect a starfield and get something considerably more compelling. It could certainly become dumb if I forget to change it back when I have children visiting. I think they are ready for many things, as time goes by, but no one wants to be confronted with the facts, let alone the details, of a parent's sexual responses, do they? I know I didn't.

So, I found myself skipping into the post office this morning. And it hit me that the roller-coaster image was in fact all wrong. It applies some times, but what's really mind-bending about my current "state" is that both high and low are running simultaneously: completely schizoid, I know, but I've been doing that for years.

Hope seems to be springing again, if not yet eternal, and though it's not fully fledged yet, God knows, at least it does have a feather or two to its name. I'm not necessarily ready for what any new encounter with the Object of My Current Affections might actually involve [I am after all the guy whose leather life has lived comfortably between his ears for decades, and whose nipples proved completely unable to withstand the first encounter...]. But I welcome the rising of my own phoenix hope from the ashes of the last few weeks, and I admire its scanty plumage enormously.

On the other hand, on the way back from the office to the parking lot, I found myself moaning out loud. Some of you with longer memories may remember me saying that I could feel the longing for a far-away someone for whom I had fallen hook, line, and sinker last year around this time.

[And I wonder whatever has become of him?]

I could feel it in my flesh, in a tight band around my chest, focused on the heart -- or was it the nipples? I'm not entirely sure I remember -- but this is very much the same. It's simply a physical feeling that accompanies an emotional overload, and the symptoms are an ache that lays me low: moaning in public is otherwise not something I do every day. It's just a little more than the little bit of sanity I have left can handle, some times. That's all.

So the next week or so could be.c.c.c. difficult. Oh, please God, not too much longer. I'm really ready for something nice to happen, myself. And no guarantees from any corner, so far...

It's something like "simultaneous combustion" -- the good feelings and the bad are in some sort of firing order, like pistons in an engine, though they're not exactly firing in sequence very well, or at least, not very reliably.

Bigg says he wishes he had a nickel for every time he wonders how things are going with me. [I know he reads this stuff, so what's he wondering about? And only a nickel? I thought I was the cheap one.] He often wonders what my life is like; the same and yet so different from his. [Yeah, the same, but minus David. GREAT. And I've already lost my house and hometown . . . On the other hand, I do get a lot more sleep than he does. There's something to be said for that...] More than anything but happiness, he wishes me peace of mind.

Your word in God's ear, mate.

Life goes on.
So do self-deception and baseless fantasy.
But life goes on.

Hang in there, all. There's not much else we can do.
.