WHODA THUNK IT?

I am signing in from an off-site location, namely the Goat's own sacrosanct and fiercely defended computer...

He is off fighting the good fight [being a "presence" in a dorm common room so the resident adults can get a night to themselves, and keeping the kids from thinking they can do drugs or have sex without anyone noticing... God, I 'm glad it's not me...].

I am here having an extra glass of wine and letting my nearly unbearable happiness at seeing him carry me through a dry two or three hours. I had actually let my longing for him blot out the fact that it makes me happy just to look at him. But it does. And I am so happy about the thought of moving closer, of being able to see him without driving two or three hours, of just being with him, that it doesn't really matter that I can't move in with him, or move more than a third to a half of my, um...
"shit" down with me.

And then there are sensations like having his body next to my body, flesh against flesh. It doesn't even matter that much which parts we are talking about. I am almost as happy resting my head on his chest and feeling his hands on my arms and shoulders as I am with some of the more athletic activity due this weekend. I just feel happy. Balls to bone.

It is almost incredible that I am able to say that. A year ago I was on fire to get into bed with him, but had no idea how he felt about me, and even after our first "encounter" I had no idea whether I was anything more than a charity case or a pleasant Piece on the Side. For better or worse, he seems to like me as much as I like him. Something I could really not have imagined, a year ago.

Today is my second son's birthday, he of the Greek restaurant job and the inability to spend time with me without bursting into tears at some point. I called him up and, since he wasn't home, sang "Happy Birthday" to his answering machine, which was probably a little infantile; however he feels about it, that's what I did. I've been singing that ghastly little song to people over the phone for years, and like all habits, it's a tough one to break.

More to the point, however, is the fact that tomorrow is the first anniversary of my divorce. I had never put the two things together last year, that the two dates are so... remarkably close. So I will get to spend another sad anniversary in bed with the Goat; he was there this summer to help me over the first anniversary of the day I left home. He is awfully understanding about how the anniversaries drag me down, and just lets me be [aside from turning me on, that is].

And Sunday is the first anniversary of the evening I drove here for dinner with him for the first time and wanted to jump his very hot bones. He has since assured me that a number of things I claimed never to have heard he had made a point of telling me that night. I guess I have to believe him, since all I know is that if instead of having dinner with me and then sitting down in an empty classroom to talk, he had actually touched me, I would have burst into flame. So my ears were probably deaf to everything but the drumming of my blood, which was in fact deafening that night.

What did he do instead of touching me? He send me off to the second local Leather Night with a dessert from the school dining hall for the group leader, who, I had since learned, was his lover: the famous RBF. At the time, it seemed unbearable. Now, it approaches funny. Retrospect is like that. It has been said that comedy is tragedy happening to other people; it is equally true that comedy is tragedy seen in retrospect...

But, being the Silver Fox, he then upped and returned to the openness of his relationship and various other little intimate details of how and when to "just do it," while holding me at arm's length at the same time. Almost physically. It took all my last remaining shreds of self-control and self-respect not to just stand up and shout, "If not you, who? if not NOW, when?" But instead I went along with his game and let him send me off to the gathering with a present for his partner, who was attending. His parting words were an invitation to come again and stay, pointedly adding that there was only one bed in the house, but that it was large.

Am I crazy to say that the signals I was getting were... mixed? I don't think so. Is this a mind game? I hope not. And then, once we were standing outside in public, freezing in what seemed a Siberian gale, he hugged me goodbye. I couldn't decide whether I should just hold on until he did something, or just say "goodbye," get in the car, and get warm on the way "home." Well, I had to read the tea leaves I had.

Bad Troll, NO DOUGHNUT! (sigh) If I hadn't still been willing to do just about anything to get him to make a move, I might have killed him right then and there. This is not progress.

I found myself unable to let go when hugged.

But that is what makes the contrast to last year so mind-bending. Here I am, with the Goat, and as wildly, uncontrollably happy as I was wildly, uncontrollably unhappy one short year ago. And while my two red-neck brothers are apparently still wrestling with the revelation that one of their own has at last confessed to being the devil's spawn, I have basically met with nothing but affection and acceptance since coming out and leaving home. It didn't make much difference at the time, because the cost of what I had done was all I could see, and hope [that famously feathered thing] had departed, apparently for good.

So, let me paraphrase all 150 psalms by saying: if things are going great, be ready for a fall. If you are miserable, remember that good things will happen soon, and the balance will be struck again. I realize that the psalms express it a little more elegantly and profoundly than that, but that is the red thread that runs through. [Pick one and take a look...]

Here is what I wish. I wish everyone could remember, when they are in what my California friend called "a world of shit," that God or fate or random mutation will in fact bring them out of that world back into the light, and in many cases sooner than they thought even remotely possible. What is a year, after all, beyond the time it takes us to travel around the sun? The twinkling of an eye, a heartbeat, the minimum period for us crazy humans to take truth onboard. Did I mention that I was deliriously happy to be with the Goat, in spite of the fact that this was meant to be our weekend in my neck of the woods, and I am back in his?

Oh, I guess I should say something about that. My neck of the woods had yielded some time ago to a spot halfway in-between, hosted by a lovely older gay couple. Then I got a call at work. Many apologies, they knew they had accepted our reservation, would we consider changing for another weekend? I wanted to say "yes" -- one of them wanted to drive south to see his mother -- but I had just had the Goat read me the riot act over people who changed plans on him, and how impossible they were, apparently implying that I was one of the delinquents who had persecuted him this way, and I decided that I was not going to put myself on that list, however much he might consider me already on it. So I said "no." And felt terrible about it.

The next time I talked to him, when I was trying to take advantage of his not having to teach Saturday morning [a nearly mind-shattering exception to the rule] by driving down Friday night in spite of the fact that we were booked half-way for the following night, I happened to mention that they had been interested in offering us another weekend. He was suddenly all sweetness and light, and said that it made perfect sense, and why shouldn't we "meet them halfway" instead of meeting half-way ourselves? So I shamefacedly called the friends of my friends back, got their B&B answering machine, and said that if they could still make arrangements to drive south, that was fine with us, and we would be happy to move to another date. They didn't call back that night, and time was running out.

I was driving to work the next day, listening to whatever grim news NPR was dishing out that morning, when my cellphone rang [I could barely hear it, actually, as it was in an inside pocket of my down jacket]. I managed to get it out and answer it before the caller gave up in disgust, which is not always the case, and it was W, of the charming little B&B halfway in-between. They would be really grateful if we would bow out, and there followed a lot of bowing and scraping, in the course of which he began to sound as sorry for us as I had been for them when I hadn't dared to broach the topic of changing plans to the Goat. But everybody winds up happy, because it actually simplifies our lives considerably [in the interim, I was planning to be in the Big Woods for both Friday and Sunday nights, and the B&B experience half-way between the Big Woods and Nowheresville was beginning to look like the right idea at the wrong time -- or the other way around] and they were so grateful they offered us an extra night free when we did book...

The problem?

Apparently, there is no other week for the rest of the school-year, aside from spring vacation, which we are spending in warmer climes, that the Goat has two nights off in a row. What's wrong with this picture??? Well, maybe in June we can have a lovely weekend.

The hitch?

By then, I will probably have moved to the Big Woods, and driving up even halfway to Nowheresville will make no sense at all. Well, if we bend the map a bit, it's almost halfway to my mother's as well, so maybe we'll have her come down and meet us in Nowheresville for lunch or dinner while we roll in the lap of luxury in Interior Decorator Heaven.

Sometimes I think that things are working out this well because I was so miserable for so long last year, and "someone" is trying to make amends. And sometimes I worry that this is actually an advance on happiness, and I will be paying for it with years of misery in the future.

Well, who knows?

To all of you who are relieved at the [previous] absence of pictures:

[a] Screw you.

[b] Don't worry. They'll be back as soon as I get back to my own computer...

Hang in there, all.
C