perfection

His pillow, faintly permeated with the smell of his cologne. I pressed my nose to it, clinging to the last vestiges of the weekend we might have spent together, if his work hadn’t taken him away. A manly job, an earthy job, the wielding of knives. The faint salt sea clinging to him beneath the overwhelming aura of fish.

And I, curled up in this bed we shared, a bed that felt more his than mine, as our entire life did, wondered what would have been different. If I had loved someone else, someone more refined, less rugged. Someone whose drink of choice was the martini and not a beer.

But here, right here, in this nameless place, as I writhed with a hand between my legs, inhaling the scent of his cologne, I knew it couldn’t be traded.

age

I have a complicated relationship with aging. When I was a child, precocious and unreasonable, I was much older than the years biologically assigned to me. Given the vagaries of my troubled childhood, this comes as less than a surprise to most who meet me.

Now, in my “adulthood” I regularly find I’m the youngest person in a room. My best friend, the same age as I (or perhaps younger, I can never quite remember) is emotionally so much older than I that in some ways seeing her next to me is like picturing a 30 year old next to a teenager. (I envy that she has her shit that together…I certainly don’t.)

This meandering is a long way of getting to the fact that I’m celebrating my birthday today. (Hence the pot noodle ruminations of a day or two ago.) I’m conflcited as to whether or not I’m enjoying being older, but the birthday itself can’t be knocked.

longing

There’s a place in my soul I mostly try to ignore. It’s the place envy is born, the place where my reach will always exceed my grasp, because as soon as I’ve grasped whatever it is I have ceases to exist. I’m aware of this place, it’s a neurotic little center of me. A place I wish I could heal over, but never have.

It keeps chewing on my brain. This little part of me that keeps telling me I’m not good enough, that the ex is how it’s always going to be. That we’re going to stall out, the boat’s going to crash on the rocks. That someday he’s going to look up at me, and I’m going to think I’m going to the dance, and instead I’m going to be going to a football game.

It’s not that I want it all right now…I just want it all right now. I rationally get that now isn’t the time, or the place, and that grabbing greedily for it will just end in the same emotional turbulence I’m having about Mr. Wayne. I get it.

But it doesn’t stop me from being scared. From wanting. From trying to see there from here and being terrified the fog will never lift.

This little part of me is welcome to shut up, any time it wants.

objects

I’m carrying his lighter today. His first lighter. It’s brass plated, wearing away a little at the edges. It’s been loved. I wish I knew its stories, when he first got it, when he used it, whether he lit the cigarettes he smoked after breaking up with his ex with it.

It feels intimate, this object in my hand. It’s a piece of him, and if I had pockets, I’d nestle it in one. Next to my skin like a kiss or a bite, trace my fingers over it surreptitiously when no one was looking. It would be like having him here with me, the warm little play of breath on my skin as he leans in over my shoulder.

I hate this week. This week of girl-body, necessitating intellectual intimacy instead of physical intimacy. It seems that in this week I am most easily distracted by his lips against mine, by the feel of his thumb stroking circles on the small of my back, of the rise and fall of his chest as he sleeps next to me. I want to take him, in these moments, to crawl into his lap and push his pants aside, and have him within me.

Instead I’m carrying his lighter.

forever

It’s such a huge word, forever, that it scares me when they use it. And yet they do, and I’m drawn into it, picturing myself, happy. Settled. 2.5 kids. A pet. A house behind a fence, even if it’s not white picket.

Sometimes I wonder how the whole of me can fit into that box. How do you squish the kinky sex, the hyper-literate, the intelligent, the huge heart of me…into a woman with a house and kids? How will I reconcile two husbands with the life I live outside? How will I decide who goes to work things, how will I know how to label myself?

The world is not set up for people like me. People with a Cusak and a Wayne. People who know that they love bigger than the world is used to.

But as (t)he(y) is(are) fond of saying, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

morning

I wake to the sound of the rain on the roof, and the water falling in the shower. They mingle, subtly, in my brain, water everywhere. It’s hard, impossible almost, not to imagine him standing in it.

I wrap my arms around his pillow, clinging to that last fifteen minutes of sleep. Fifteen minutes which have already eluded me. Instead I inhale, wanting to wrap myself up in the faint scent still clinging to the cotton of the pillowcase and take it with me for the day.

We sit, downstairs, waiting to have to leave, stealing little looks at each other and banking them for the day ahead. He presses his lips to mine, warm and soft, and I close my eyes.

Every morning should be this beautiful.

list

He asks me what I love about him, and I catch my breath, trying to put it into words. His smile, his eyes, the way the sun slants across his skin. His freckles. The golden gleam to his look when he glances up to see me staring.

The way his voice rises and falls, lulling me into its somnolent ocean.

The smell of his skin, the taste of his breath, the fullness of his lips.

His anger, just under the surface like a Halloween bonfire. The protection he offers me, even from myself and the hateful things inside me. The comfort of his hand in the small of my back. The way he makes it safe to tell him anything.

The way he makes it safe to love.

How do I catch him in a word, in a list, in a note? How do I pin the soul of a man to a piece of paper, and make it sensible?

scattered

Sometimes I catch Cusak’s hand in mine, usually my left and his right. His fingertips brush against my skin and I’m reminded of the engagement ring. I look down at it. I’m aware of it, then, suddenly. As if I could ever be not-aware.

They know about each other, so it’s not a secret. I’m not hiding one from the other, or trying to live some secret double life. Maybe it would be easier if I were. Maybe I’d figure out that the secret is pretending to give your all to someone while holding something in reserve. But I can’t. I’m not that girl. They both know about how quickly and strongly I pitch myself forward into life. Into love.

**

This was supposed to be a sex blog, but it keeps becoming an emotion blog. A tiny bit of not entirely secret confession.

**

I’m watching Cusak play video games now, nattering with Bruce Wayne on GTalk. It’s a very modern relationship, I think. I tell myself anyway. I convince myself it’s all twenty-first century, and that the only reason anyone’s ever shocked is that they’re not used to it.

Still, I hesitate when trying to figure out how to tell Bruce Wayne’s mom that I’m kissing Cusak too on my wedding day.