I had a summer.
The spring was spent adjusting to picking my head up when I walked, letting people make me laugh, remodeling my kitchen (which has never been and will never be mine so why I sank the amount of money I did into it I have no real reason and it was fun and I love my kitchen now), getting okay at woodworking, turning 30, admitting I was hooked on benzos and convincing myself that becoming a nun would likely be my best course of action. That I had gleaned whatever I was going to from this thing called sex, that I didn’t desire an intimate relationship and that all persons stuck in one were destined for a life of resentment, sex schedules and Ashley Madison furniture.
I would very soon after encounter a series of months (it’s called summer, Nat) that would radically shift this perspective, sustainably [start to] lift my shame complex, and invite new daily patterns into existence.
Let’s back up. It started in May. I was finally ready to try to be with someone again. I wanted it to be someone I knew, but not a friend. Someone I was attracted to and did not want a relationship with. I wanted to do the deed, clear the air and cleanse my pallet. I romanticized my previously overrated virginity, deeply aware of the fact that you cannot miss what you have never known. One day as I walk along the beach, you know the beach, an old acquaintance calls out my name, and I knew pretty quickly he fit the criteria.
Especially because he said, let’s hang out sometime.
Sometime came and we hung out. He showed up coked out and fucked up and my dog barked at him and my dog doesn’t bark and he did what he wanted and I didn’t want it and it happened and I wish I would’ve fought but I see now, I know now, why sometimes people don’t fight. And the thought, I did invite him over, so I guess I’m supposed to do this, scored the occasion and my tears kept me warm. This isn’t what this story is about. I am humbled, I am angry, I have forgiven him and I am okay.
Cut to!
I meet a tall dark stranger on the same beach, a month later, who will very soon redeem the beach, redeem Sometime, and renew my general perception. He is with a group of travelers, they are all travelers, none are meant to stay, they are passing through town and living out of a van. I can’t help it- it’s been a long-ass year of the same people, Covidity and isolation- you guys can shower and stay at my place as long as you need!
As long he needed turned out to be all summer.
It never ceases to surprise me how quickly life’s rhythms can change, alter, improve, redirect, on a dime. In a moment, in one interaction, with one exchange of phone numbers and then using that number to meet up at the park where you’ve spent the past 8 years, this stranger quickly morphing into lover, friend, roommate, dog trainer and family.
It’s true, I came third on his list. It was my dog, my brother, and then me. I always knew this; I was always okay with this.
His friends took turns sleeping on my couches and storing their shit on my porch and eventually it was just him left; overnight he became a staple in my life, in my bed and in my routine. Unfortunately he quickly became a saviour as well.
I was never shy or quiet about the pedestal I put him on. Just like he never refrained from reminding me where I ranked on his list (third. It was always third).
I wrote a break up song in the middle of our rendezvous (which should have been extremely telling) and I played it for him and I did a lot of ego inflating things like that for him. I did his laundry and sometimes he noticed and sometimes he didn’t. We ordered Chefs Plate. We cohabited pretty well I think. For being strangers. A month into his already extended visit he decided to move here; vacation being over, he got a job. He kept living here. He made attempts to move out (did he?) and he kept living here. I genuinely never minded. I quietly leaned all the way into this unexpected domestic situation. He got me on a water slide. We illegally climbed a mountain and moved the wind. He lost my dog, he found my dog, he trained my dog. We trauma bonded. We danced so much; we were constantly dancing and sweating and moving and laughing and interlocked. Together we survived two heat waves; it was so hot that I laid there and slowly moved my arm up and down and it actually felt like someone was burning my arm with a lighter. We made no efforts to not sweat even more. If you know what I mean. You know what I mean.
Stock photos coming thru.
Anywhere we could, really. Anywhere and everywhere and all day.
This is the most compatibility I’ve ever felt with someone , in this regard. Hands down . Ass up.
I had this fantasy when I was like 12. My grandma would go to Florida every year to spend the winter in her trailer. That’s not the fantasy. I always wished I could go visit her on Christmas break and there I would meet an older, local boy who would show me the most thrilling, most PG time of my life complete with throwing rocks at my window and sneaking me out of the trailer and softly brushing the hair out of my face and I watched a lot of Mary Kate and Ashley movies and read a lot of Nancy Drew books and I would lay around for hours and think about this scenario and I never did go to Florida and I’ve still never been.
So he wasn’t American and he deeeeeeefinitely was not older. But in a way that I can’t really explain yet here I am trying, I feel like I lived out this seasonal, destined to end, trapped on a time line, too-hot-to-handle-until-I-kinda-became-his-mom kind of summer romance. I met him on the closest thing Canada has to offer to Florida, so.
I did things on his time, and I did my own things in between.
He took over my life.
I don’t know how he wouldn’t have.
He perpetually commented every time I showcased my independence, like making my own plans or getting out of town without him, how much he liked that. How he did not want to be a we. How doing your own thing was hot. I quickly developed a complex; I need to make my own plans or he will be un-attracted. And there is nothing worse in the world to me than being unattractive.
While I was not necessarily into an immediate ‘we’ either, I was entertaining the idea of seeing where we could go, I know now, more than he was. My life was no longer just about me- in a positive way. I was getting tired of only looking after myself. It’s why I got a dog. It’s why I invited a stranger into my bed with no boundaries. I want to share my life; I am ready for a we.
I heard it on a movie, a show, maybe a conversation on the bus, someone somewhere once said, you don’t stay with best-sex-of-your-life guy. That’s not your long term relationship. That’s the best sex of your life, and likely the reason that is, is because you didn’t get past the 3 month always-all-over-each-other phase. So the memory remains pure, because it never morphed into needing to share the less-than-sexy sides of life.
It’s not to say that long term relationships don’t experience good, better, and even the best sex. I can’t speak from experience because I apparently like to keep it short and sweet, but my chronically relationship’d friends have told me: it’s not that it gets worse, it’s just that it changes. It shifts, it grows, it evolves. As communication and intentional future planning and value lining start to grow and build, the can’t- keep-your-hands-off-each-other morphs into more connected, deeper intimacy, which inevitably will change your sex life. Not for the worse necessarily, but it will change it. Life is not always a vacation; it is not always summer.
As long as we refused to acknowledge what we were and what we were not doing- it couldn’t go unsaid forever.
All I’m saying you can’t fuck the stranger from the beach forever because he won’t stay a stranger forever and eventually it’s too cold for the beach and it won’t always feel like animal-level fucking because sometimes you’ll be tired or sick or hangry or out of town.
I’ve wandered off into unknown territory… Lust isn’t necessarily love... Good doesn’t need to last forever to be good.
Anyways…
We slowly and quietly started to exit this phase and things felt off. I was in deep denial, as I would soon soberly come to grips with, and he put off a conversation that in the end saved us both. We met in June. It was nearing the end of August. We never agreed to an exclusive relationship, quite the opposite- he told me he wanted to be free to do what he wanted should anything come up- and I said, yeah , okay, cool, but… you kinda sleep here every night…but okay, cool.
Something changed, as soon as he started working, as soon as the days were not entirely his to create and manipulate into whatever he wanted to do. As soon he was obligated by a schedule and a paycheck, something majorly shifted.
He lost his spark. Just like he lost my dog. But it took him a little longer to find it. He didn’t lose it right away and not all the way. And maybe this is normal. But it was starkly contrasted against the man I met- the free spirit, the unbound soul. I got sad watching him fall into a routine that lacked passion, I did not know what my role was supposed to be as he navigated his 23 year old existential dread. So I kept making food and doing laundry and trying to get out of town lest he get bored and making sure I was always smiling. I probably wasn’t always smiling.
And in turn, I lost something too. I lost my autonomy. My spiritual connections. To quote myself: yet again, I had let a man become god. It all became about him; he did not ask for this directly, I know he did not want it per say, yet somehow, both of our existences became about him.
And no one was really thinking about me.
I missed his spark, while denying missing my own, and I wanted to honor his journey and his humanity. Whatever he had introduced into my life felt like it was hiding again.
He was set to move out into his own place, keep working, keep coming over, I was looking forward to what our relationship (sorry for swearing) would look and feel like once we were not living together. This is some backwards shit.
The intimacy was in decline. The sex was quick and from behind. Little things I was trying not to pay attention to. I always knew he was selfish but he had become considerably more inconsiderate and I was resenting this mother role I had fallen into. I didn’t know then, I know now, I was suffocating and I was trapped.
You don’t stay with best-sex-of-your-life.
He came home one day and I was ripped and I was reading and I was happy because I had been home alone. He skips the formalities and says we need to talk. He explains he no longer wants a romantic relationship with me, he says he wants to be friends. He says its nothing specific and he repeats over and over that he hopes I don’t hate him.
I wasn’t tripping, this was really happening. I started to weep, as I do. I can’t stop crying, I am choking on rejection and where the fuck did this come from. Thru my gasps for air I protest that there is no being friends; we were never friends. I am frozen in time, I am haunted and sickened by the realization that he will never touch me again. I pathetically ask if there is someone else. I feel needy and desperate, I hate that I am crying, I hate that I care, I hate that he is not emoting. He has all the power and I am curled up like a child, begging for more explanation and convulsing with self pity.
I ask him to stay the night, that night, he says he will. Neither of us sleep. We try to be together but I can’t stop crying. He doesn’t actually want me; I am low I am ugly I am disgusting, unwanted, worthless, the shame is back in full force, I am sick.
I wake up still crying and he moves to the couch. He moves to the couch because he doesn’t know what to do with me and he’s tired. O you’re tired? Go fuck yourself, get off my couch.
And come back to to my bed.
This is obsession, this is stockholm, this has gone too far.
(You don’t try to stay with best-sex-of-your-life).
Over the next couple days he packs his shit, and as quickly as he came into my life, he is gone. I can’t look at my room, the screaming gaps in my closet, the smell of his hair on my pillows. He leaves a pizza box and other garbage on my table. Charming.
Over the next couple days I learn that he has quit his job, he is not moving into this new place, he is finally actually going home. Eastbound. He leaves in two weeks. This news brings me comfort; his determination to stay in my life as a friend was very confusing. He is a hot mess.
As fate would have it, after a week of missing work – I couldn’t turn it off, the grief was overwhelming, the where-did-my-summer go, the what-the-fuck-just-happened – my band was lined up to play at a festival that following weekend. I considered bailing. I considered against bailing.
I bought a wig. I played the gig. I did the drugs.
I opened my mind, got outside of myself, transcended my isolated island of existence, I had a conversation with the trees and my Self and we came through to the other side. The grief had to run its course, like antibiotics. And after that weekend, I was healed. I am healed.
I have never recovered from heartbreak so quickly and so absolutely.
I was so afraid it would be like last time; six months of deep depression and medication and laying on the bathroom floor.
Gosh darn it, maybe I’m growing.
I picked myself up. I turned my hair red. I spoke in a Russian accent. I sang my music to the rivers and mountains, I met new people, forged new connections, and I let myself see the whole thing as a beautiful, transformative season of intimacy, coming back to my body, allowing spontaneity and fun to shape the day. Redeeming Sometime, reminding me I like this and maybe I don’t want to be a nun. This boy taught me how to embrace life, to roll with it, to laugh with the wide eyed innocence of pure passion.
I felt beyond ready for my world to no longer revolve around him. It was liberation.
I continue to slowly redeem the trauma brought on by the religious cult I was raised in, by learning to enjoy pleasure for the sake of pleasure, learning what I like and how I like it, he reminded me over and over again that I am allowed to feel good. It’s allowed to be okay.
I held no more resentment; I saw him for who he actually is. A human, a lost boy, a Peter Pan. He was down on my level, I wasn’t looking up anymore. I saw the flaws and I didn’t judge them; I saw the wonder and didn’t worship it.
I didn’t know if I would want to see him again before he left. Yet, he showed up, to my house, during a party I did not invite him to. He was drenched, it could’ve been the rain, maybe the molly. I looked good, I was dressed up for this party that I did not invite him to. I saw him and felt nothing; in the most freeing way, I thought, that’s a human. He kissed me on the cheek and told me I looked amazing and I said okay. I liked this tension, this will-they, won’t-they. Of course I like this, if you know me, you already know this. And if you don’t know me, how did you find this blog?
Muscles hold memory and the night overcame us; we ended up back in that bed, back to the thing that we did best.
But not before I drunkenly pushed him off of me to tell him that I wasn’t under his spell anymore.
He said — good.
It was not a mistake, it was not alcohol induced, it was purposeful. It was a energetic and conscious decision; the last couple months I had turned myself into who I thought he wanted me to be. Anticipating his needs, following his agenda and talking about his dreams. Now I could honestly give a fuck about those things. Maybe I was still angry. (I was still angry). I did not need him to touch me, which is why when he touched me , the electricity was back.
It was redemptive. It was transcendent. It was what I wanted, not needed, how I wanted it, and I think I can speak for him as well.
In between expressing how I felt with my body , I told him how I felt with my words. Zero holding back. Full volume.
You are one of the most selfish people I’ve ever met. You made the break-up all about you by begging me not to hate you. Maybe don’t bounce to the couch when she’s crying next time. You want to have your goddamn cake and eat it too. Stop smiling.
No apology, no unnecessary care-taking.
He was into it. He was very, very into it. I continued this rhetoric of pent up honesty for his remaining days.
That night, after the violence and venom, we fell asleep in each other’s arms after saying I love you. I said it first and I didn’t care if he said it back, I meant it in that moment.
He said it back.
Because it was true, it was real, it was free. It had no further implications beyond that moment of truth.
Playing house with no conversation had trapped us both; we were finally free to enjoy each other again.
We did indeed spend his last West Coast days together, with boundaries, without implied sleepovers.
Okaywehadsleepovers.
It felt like a redo. His first exodus was tragic, it was one-sidedly sad and desperate. It was both of us realizing we had fallen into patterns neither of us asked for or wanted, relationships don’t happen on accident past a certain point. Sans intentional conversation, it’s gonna get a little weird when you move in with a stranger.
This second try at a goodbye; it felt right, true and honest to our initial dynamic. Fun, free and good.
I know I wasn’t the only person he played house with on his adventures. I know I was a convenience, I was not special, I was a place to sleep and a body to be with while it suited him. I also know he really liked me and I really liked him and a lot of it was authentic. I count it all as true , all as good, and I likely have dwelled on “us” more than he has.
It’s all good. I would do it all again. And I probably will!
I’m sorry I put you on a pedestal. I didn’t mean to and it’s not my fault.
I’m sorry I never properly sugar mama’d you. I don’t think you actually wanted me to.
He brought some deep, dangerous and next-level magic into my life and he’s gone and I’ve still got the magic.
Because I’ve always had the magic.
Everything I loved about him, everything I was attracted to, all the things that I thought made him stand out, made him special and unique, so energizing- I am all of these things. We are all everything we see in each other, good and bad. Separation is the illusion. We manifest some qualities more naturally than others but we are all everything.
We don’t need to make each other special to appreciate each other. We can smile and say yes thank you, me too. Yes thank you, this too. Yes, thank you.
Yes, thank you for everything; I’m not afraid to say I love you in my way.
