Google parses information about less-litigious sexuality-questionable celebrities, and makes an informed/educated/random guess. So it can ‘tell’ about NPH, but umm… he’s out, eh. Hugh Jackman? Wouldn’t we like to know?
And by “know” I mean “sleep with”.
Went to The Boys’ to work on The Brunette’s Halloween costume today. Texted ahead to make sure he was awake. No answer. Killed some time getting some thread to make the sewing go more sew-y. Still no answer. Fuck it, this is why I have a key. Texted again to warn that I was on my way, just in case he was home.
“I’m on my way. Putcher pants on.”
Arrive. No one answers the door. Quiet. Is he out? Nope. Asleep. Pantsless.
The Brunette is SO CUTE when he is sleepy. Usually I get to see it at bed-time, as I am on my way out the door. His brain goes into a semi-shutdown energy-conservation mode. He blinks a lot, speaks very little. Sometimes he gets silly, or affectionate, or both.
So there he is, all bundled up, blinking and befuddled. He’s looking at me like he can’t comprehend my existence - not just “Why are you in my bedroom?” or “Why are you in my house?” or “What time is it?” (1pm, btw!) but rather a sort of “That odd collection of shapes seems to be addressing me. I wonder what it wants.”
And being a good girl, I patted his head and told him to get dressed and closed his bedroom door and didn’t molest him even a tiny bit.
So I donated blood today. Hadta answer all the questions. Slipped in a few of my patented Sarcastic Qualifications (tm) like:
Q: Have you ever taken money for sex?
A: Well, I’ve been a student for three years, and my husband has been supporting me, and I sleep with him, but we don’t have a cash-on-the-bedside-table arrangement, so the HIV will know I’m a good girl and not infect me. That’s how it works, right?
…and…
Q: Have you had sex with a man who has had sex with a man?
A: Not that he’ll admit. And not for lack of trying. It’s a tough nut to crack. Give me time.
…but I still felt obligated to tell someone that I object to the policy of refusing donations from men who have had sex with men. I think it’s unnecessary since all the blood gets tested, and since donors are in demand - they are not in a position to turn anyone away unless there is a REASON.
But I also realize that the nurse plugging the core sampler into my arm is not in charge of policy. Still, she’s the highest ranking person in the room that I get contact with, so she gets to hear it.
So I tell her, gently, with specific deference to her non-policy-setting role, that this policy offends me.
And she responds with “No test is 100% accurate, and you have to think about where that blood is going - it might be going to an infant in the NICU, or to a two-year-old girl…”
“Un-huh…”
And that’s it. Just an appeal to emotion, and a weak one at that. Oh noes! Then the poor little baby girls will get the gay blood! Won’t somebody think of the childrens?!
I countered that I look good on paper: Two long-term monogamous heterosexual relationships covering 17 years. No drugs, very little alcohol, low risk for EVERYTHING. Seriously, I am the most boring person ever. But for both those relationships I have to admit that I can only 100% vouch for my own behaviour, and both guys had had exes who were promiscuous. Test me. For crying out loud, I could be lying. Test the blood before you give it to the poor little baby girls in the NICU! The test can’t be 100%, but it’s way more reliable than my say-so that I don’t think you should suspect me. Or my husband, or my ex, or either of their exes, ad nauseam…
Then during my favourite part (Cookies and juice!) a girl popped her rivet and sprayed blood everywhere. Gross! Almost enough to put me off my cookies and juice! *munch munch munch*
The Brunette left yesterday to visit his mom for four days. Short notice, if you don’t count the fact that he told me she had asked him to come out and visit when he told her he was taking some time off work.
And he needed that time off. He was starting to get that stabby look in his eye. Granted, he usually looks like he might be on the verge of going postal, but that sort of BS work stress is cumulative.
But he’s an important part of my not-crazy. And The Blonde’s. And now we are left to our own devices. I think The Carpenter has abdicated his role in my mental health maintenance. He’s been doing it for years, needed a break, cumulative, etc…
This is my new theory on relationships: Generally, there is one Crazy Bitch, and one Rock. The Crazy Bitch is responsible for the excitement/drama, the forward momentum, the thrill and the fun. The Rock is responsible for the stability, the inertia, responsible maintenancy stuff and whatever else they do. I dunno. I’m not a Rock. I’m a Crazy Bitch. :D
So I’m a kite without a tether now. Three more days. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. He had his vengeance for my going to see my mom without a proper farewell; I was supposed to go to their place after my class, but his ride showed up early. Adieu, mon beau!
Ah well. I still have my bites. The Brunette bites. Hard enough to bruise me, which in a strange way I find sort of comforting. When I am sitting in class feeling claustroagoraxenophobic (my particular brand of stressing out when in rooms full of people I am merely somewhat acquainted with, without any actual friends) I touch my arm or shoulder or wherever the best bruise is, and I don’t feel so all alone. I feel like I have a secret, that no one in this Douche Factory suspects.
Perverse, I know. But he will be back before these fade away. <3
Transcript of texts between myself and The Carpenter:
Carpenter: Coming soon
Me: Says you. [The Brunette] says ‘Thats what she said’. Like he would know. :P
Carpenter: Take away his gold star.
Me: Umm… Do you know what I have to do to get his gold star?!
Carpenter: If he made a girl come then he doesn’t get a gold star.
Now, barring my policy on always rewarding an assist on a female orgasm, how easy is it for a gay man to lose his gold star? The debate reminds me of nothing so much as the strange logical contortions I saw in my peers when I was a teenaged girl. There were girls who thought they weren’t virgins anymore because they used tampons. There were girls who did everything except vaginal penetration in order to ‘preserve their virginity’. There were girls whose first sexual experience was non-consensual who felt (rightly, IMHO) that that particular experience shouldn’t ‘count’.
And let’s not get too distracted by the definitions of sex that people use to fudge their numbers. How many people have you slept with? Three. Including blowjobs? Umm… no… Handjobs? Yikes!
Fidelity is the same way. I worry about emotional infidelity these days; what they used to call alienation of affection. Not me. The Carpenter and Pilot Girl. There is a slippery slope from loving someone to being in love with them, and I worry that The Carpenter doesn’t realize how banana-peel-ridden his footing is. He knows she needs to hear how special and valuable she is right now; so he tells her. Somewhere along the line I got marked off as ‘already knows her value and specialness’. Ugh.
There oughtta be a governing body or something, eh. Like a registry. Then there could be an appeals court. If I gotta be a lawyer, then I should get to be a judge or lawyer in the court that adjucates relationship definitions and sexual checklists/qualifications.
P.S. The Brunette is sad because I said I loved The Blonde explicitly. I love you too, Brunette. [Love for Carpenter omitted because he doesn’t read this and he ALREADY KNOWS Mwaahahahaha!!]
Yesterday The Blonde sang. Everyone has been feeling blue, stressed out and anxious. A lot of shit is piling up. I was in Starbucks with The Brunette, waiting for The Blonde to be off work, when I found a CD of Muppet song covers.
The Brunette sarcastically tried to mash the CD into his iPhone. “It’s broken!” He complained as an (other) older woman giggled at his antics and my repeated happy dance. I love Muppets!
Finally got to listen to it in the car. Normally, The Blonde is the car DJ, and he has this thing where he almost never lets you hear the end of a song. Easily distracted. But the second song was Rainbow Connection.
And he sang along. Doesn’t sound like much, eh? But he has a beautiful singing voice, beautiful enough to get him into the Music program at our University, and he had auditioned for his spot in Ensemble… Tenor 1? I don’t know what most of this means, except that it’s pretty and I can’t do it so it sort of is like a super-power to me.
And he sings all the time, like how most people would sing along with their favourite songs, idly, remarkable only because he hits the right notes and tends to know the lyrics and it isn’t unpleasant. But yesterday he Sang. Like how a Bene Gesserit would use Voice. He sang Rainbow Connection.
I love him.
The Firstborn has gone home. I am bereft. But he left behind a few choice items to remember him by. The only thing he left behind deliberately was the white linen pants we got for him to wear to his aunt’s wedding. Too fancy for general day-to-day wear. Maybe also too gay. Kissing a boy in grade nine had some serious repercussions. Part of why he chose to leave was to start fresh.
So I am left with these white linen pants. The Blonde is too big for them, but The Brunette isn’t.
“Hey Brunette, you know how you said you wanted to get into Firstborn’s pants?”
P.S. I found the reference - Section 159 of the Criminal Code of Canada has been declared by the Supreme Court of Canada to be of no force or effect. So the age of consent for anal is 16, like for every other act. YAY!
The Blonde has feelings. The Brunette has moods. What’s the difference?Generally, moods are internal, feelings are reactionary. Not always, of course.
But generally, yeah. And generally, The Brunette tends to idle at ‘irritable’. It means that if he has a shitty day at work, he doesn’t get better as soon as he leaves. It can take hours. Hours of glowering seething video gaming before he is fit for public consumption, or even the company of close friends. And you better hope he does well in his game ;)
And generally, yeah. The Blonde is reactionary. Things happen, his feelings get hurt. Apologies, diversions, conciliations… anything can work to make his feelings better, and then he is just… cured. Until the next time.
As you might imagine this makes them alternately excruciatingly frustrating and adorably comic to observe whenever one or both of them is having a feeling or a mood. The Blonde will pester The Brunette mercilessly, begging to be told what he can do to help. The Brunette will demand to be left alone.
They are both working long hours right now, hoping The Blonde can return to school next week. It’s not certain. There’s a lot of stress and very little time. Specifically, they aren’t getting a lot of time together. The Blonde doesn’t want to waste any of it sitting under The Brunette’s little rain cloud.
But the little rain cloud is part of who he is. Like The Blonde’s ‘sensitivity’ (FUCK I HATE that word) it is not to be cured or fixed.
It makes me think of those little places in every relationship where there is a nearly inconsequential incompatibility. Like, I had to define a semantic difference to qualify that I was not describing a way in which they are similar. It’s not a deal-breaker. Not even close. But it causes a constant minor irritation.
The Carpenter and I are not super-compatible right now. I’m afraid. I suspect his heart is elsewhere, but I can’t really ask, because we are talking about a person who will not admit that his circulatory system operates that way. Derby Girl talked to me about it last night, for the first time since the restaurant incident. She did a spot-on impression of him abruptly apologizing for having interrupted the dinner by insulting me.
Derby Girl [Carpenter voice]: “I said the wrong thing. Sorry.”
Me: “Sometimes his human impression just fails.”
I guess I’m rambling. The thing is, the restaurant thing is not the irritation. Whatever caused him to say shit to me is the problem. And if I’m stuck begging him for direction, I know how much good that’s going to do me.
