A Well-Dressed Accordion

5/8/2012

I'm sitting in another man's bed as I write this. Not in any kind of erotic, post-carnal memoir sort of way (what do you take this for, a sex blog?), but a comfortable, hanging out kind of way, with his roommate procrastinating her homework by browsing tumblr on the other side of the room.

With everyone else I've been interested or involved with, there's been something defining that drew me to them, enough that I've been able to label them with some obscure but fitting nickname for anonymity's sake, because while this blog is personal to me, I also very much want to respect the privacy of the people I'm writing about. No matter how hard I try though, I can't come up with any kind of silly pseudonym for Ethan.

I find though that I like that.

We've been seeing each other for, gosh, a little over three weeks now, though it feels like so much longer. Buddha's shining belly, has it really been less than a month since we were first introduced?! On some level, I feel like I've known Ethan for a lot longer because I've known of him for over a year now. We have enough friends in common that Facebook, in all its nosy social media interfacing, has been suggesting him as someone I might know for months. Now that we've actually met, I'm kicking myself for not listening to it sooner.

I suppose it doesn't help that upon hearing that he and I are involved, the majority of mutual friends we have (and apparently there are quite a few of them) seem to react somewhere in a range between inarticulate excited noises that can only be described as fangirl-like squees to “Ohmygodyou'resocute!.” He and I have reached an unspoken agreement that the appropriate reaction to this phenomenon is death glares with the occasional “Shut the FUCK up” depending on who's saying it. Feeling like the center of the who's dating who rumor mill in a campus community can be exhausting, and for us at least unifying.

We met at a party the weekend after Easter that I almost didn't go to. He'd gone because of his roommate and I'd ended up going because I had made a commitment to our hostess at the Birdhouse promising her I would show up to the party.

Unsurprisingly, we were introduced in the kitchen, not because that's where the booze tends to congregate, but because at parties like this one it's the place you're most likely to be able to hold a conversation and be heard over the music/drunk people. That and I'm always drawn to kitchens,  bookshelves, or the dance floor. So when he showed up in the kitchen, I was there.

I think anyone who knew either of us at the party could see that there was something going on. Once we were introduced, I don't think we were separated once the entire night until he reluctantly left my side around two in the morning, sending me his number via his roommate. We even left the kitchen together a little later in the party, only to end up sharing a chair in the living room, casting sidelong glances at each other through our conversations with everyone around us.

I wouldn't exactly say that sparks flew when we met,  we are in Bellingham after all: the City of Subdued Excitement, but I would say that there is definitely chemistry between us, the kind of magnetic attraction you don't even notice until it's gone and all you can feel is the lingering pull.

My work in the Sexual Awareness Center has really opened me up to being very direct when approaching people I'm interested in, because I'm not sure if it was even a full twenty-four hours before I asked Ethan out on our first date. We were both busy, but agreed to coffee or ice cream the following Saturday.

We continued talking throughout the week and somehow “coffee or ice cream” turned into dinner followed by ice cream. I'd been hinting at that possibility most of the week and resigned myself to just a simple coffee date up to the point where he texted me while I was at the grocery store purchasing ingredients for dinner. Needless to say, I saved those ingredients until the next day.

I surprised him with a flower (long stem, red gerber daisy if you must know) when I met him at the Copper Hog. Though he didn't turn red exactly, Ethan blushed and looked down at the table for at least half a minute before meeting my eyes. I wanted to kiss him.

After dinner we walked downtown and I treated us to Mallards Ice Cream since I had cash and it would conveniently fill my stamp card so that the next time I came in I would get a free scoop. I invited him to my friend's Big Lebowski movie night. He told me that it was one of his favorite movies. I felt like this was a sign the universe was telling me it wanted this to happen.

At the movie night, we were relegated to sharing a beanbag chair since all other seating had been claimed. I don't think we would have complained even if we'd told we would have to sit on the floor. I felt comfortable enough in his presence that it wouldn't have mattered. I laughed quietly to myself as he quoted more than half the film. After the movie, we sat in the dark on our beanbag chair, an island of sobriety surrounded by a sea of drunk on white russians, holding hands while a Creedance Clearwater Revival playlist played in the background

Then he kissed me.

For a chaste, closed-mouth kiss that lasted less than ten seconds, damn was I seeing stars. When I walked him home an hour or so later, I couldn't help myself, I grabbed him by the tie and pulled him into another kiss.

Some time after our first date, Ethan talked with our friend Jesamie, and as she relayed the conversation to me, she'd asked what he liked about me and he'd answered that I'm the kind of guy who would bring a red rose to a first date (I would have, too, had I not been concerned about the historic and literary connotations associated with red roses). As Jesamie put it, “In other words, his Danny-ness.”

I think that's what I like most about Ethan as well. I could talk about how I think he's adorable and nerdy, or that I'm constantly amazed by his intellect and skills as a writer, or his great taste in movies (and uncanny ability to actually get me watching them) but there's something more innate than that to which I feel I'm attracted.

We haven't had any kind of formal a relationship discussion yet, on Friday so I don't now feel comfortable referring to him as my boyfriend, though given the way we interact with each other, I suppose he'd let me get away with it. For now, I'm just happy to have someone who wants to hold my hand, who randomly texts me “:]” on a Saturday afternoon when we have plans for the evening, who asks me what kind of wine I like before we meet so I can make dinner (and picks a damn good one, too), regardless of what labels we use to refer to each other.

As I sit here in his bed, a pink stuffed bunny at my side, he's sitting in the other room on his computer, working on something for one of his creative writing classes, muttering almost incoherently to himself  about the idiocy of some of his classmates. It's kind of endearing, though that may be the sleep deprivation talking.

For now, I guess I just want to say I'm content.

UV Rays in the Wintertime

I used a tanning bed for the first time the other day. It's not something I foresee myself doing often, but given I paid $40 on a package deal so I could use a coupon and get two free sessions, I'll at least go seven times.

The experience made me realize among other things that tanning by and large is a white-people problem, or more precisely a problem for people with a range of skin tones between brown and translucent. As the safety disclosure agreement I signed before I was allowed in read somewhere in the fine print, “if you don't tan in the sun, you won't tan in a tanning bed.”

If I were trying to get a tan, I have the perfect skin tone for it. I'm not so pigmentally-challenged that I burn easily and I'm not so dark that a tan would go unnoticed.

Given that it's December, I'm in my light time of the year.

The machines are hardwired not to run for more than 20 minutes, as a safety precaution to protect stupid people from baking themselves alive. As I was checking in, the receptionist said I could probably go in for 14 minutes since this was my first session.

The friend who'd convinced me to go had gone in for 14 minutes a few days before and come out just barely reddening. I think I could have gotten away with 16 minutes before I would have needed to worry about that, but with all the worry bandied about around skin cancer and UV radiation, it's probably for the best that I didn't.

Each tanning bed had it's own room. Throw in an intercom system, a few crying children and a six item limit, and we might as well have been in the dressing room of some department store.

The whole process was a little sterile. Metaphorically and literally, there was a little tri-fold placard sitting on the towel next to my tanning goggles that told me the tanning bed was sterilized. While business is light this time of year, I couldn't help but imagine the kind of horrors the smiling receptionists have had to clean up after in these tanning beds. Realistically, probably very little since there's a bathroom for your convenience and I imagine the kind of clientele that a tanning salon attracts would shower fairly regularly before considering climbing into one of these glass coffins.

I stripped down to my underwear before shutting myself into a glowing doom. I would say I was too shy to go naked, but here underwear means fashion jock so I might as well have been naked.

Hitting the blue button on the wall turned on the body-length tubes that buzzed faintly with the energy flowing through them. A fan at the foot of the bed whirred ominously the entire time. It made me feel like I was lying down in the eye of a small, strangely horizontal hurricane of light.

At first I was worried that I would get bored. I'd forgotten my mp3 player in my rush out the door and even had I brought it, I'm not sure I was ready to figure out the plug and play system somewhere in the vicinity above my head. But soon enough I let myself relax and fell into some of the deep breathing techniques I use during meditation.

After the first few minutes in this painfully bright, bluish light I started to feel a slight warmth on my skin. Once I relaxed I might as well have been laying on a beach. A beach where the light comes from beneath you as well as the sky, but sunny and warm and kind of pleasant to lay on if you don't plan on being there super long.

Fourteen minutes later everything shut off with a start. My session had come to an end. I climbed out of the machine and dressed, meeting my friends out in the lobby. As we walked away, I felt a smile inextricably pulling at the corner of my lips. This was an endorphin high of a different kind than you get from exercise or sex, it was more like a tall cup of yerbe mate on an empty stomach. For that first hour or two afterward life felt exceedingly good. 

Musings on Love

There was much waffling over whether or not I would post this. I had to rewrite it like three times before I was satisfied enough with it that I didn't just delete the whole thing. If you can't tell, I've kind of started myself on a spiritual journey this summer, doing a lot of introspection and soul searching. It's also made me feel very creative so if nothing else I'll get all sorts of cool art out of this.

"I love you."

What meaning do these words have anymore? We repeat them a thousand times a day, often without any thought. I love you means goodbye. I love you means can I kiss you. I love you means I'm glad you're here.

But when I think about those moments of pure love where I look at someone and all thought leaves my mind, all the voices in my head shut up for the power of what I'm experiencing, in these tiny moments words fail me. They're moments full of innocence and an intensity that pull you direct to the bone.

In these moments, my instinct is not to say some stammered "I love you," but to act. I want to reach out, to caress away a tear or kiss surprised lips. To laugh with pure, unfiltered joy and spin in circles until I fall down crying because I'm smiling so hard.

Unconditional

I've said this in previous posts, but love is unconditional. Love encompasses and rises above whatever else we may be feeling. If it doesn't, we should question whether or not it's actually love or if it is love, then what other emotions and influences are at work.

It's possible to love someone you hate and hate someone you love. If you don't believe that, just look at your parents. The hate may or may not come and go, but the love endures. Or for another example, look at a small child. Hurt them and they will react in rage and sadness, but as soon as that passes it's like nothing ever happened.

Have the heart of a child tempered with the control of experience. It's a scary thing to do because from experience we learn to harden ourselves, to protect and shield ourselves from all the pain and misery the world throws at us, or in some cases that we throw at ourselves. We're afraid to let go of those protections, to make ourselves vulnerable and open and let our love express itself.

It takes work to break habits we've been in the process of establishing since early childhood, but as the tired adage goes, practice makes perfect.

More often than I like to admit, I've let fear hold me back; fear that my expression of love is somehow inappropriate for the moment or for the person I would be showing it to. But there have been a few times where I've pushed past that and bridged that gap and let my love manifest itself.

The first time this happened in recent memory, was my first kiss. Which I feel understandably uncomfortable writing about that here, but discomfort is just fear of judgment, and if you come from a strong place within yourself no matter what anyone else says their judgments cannot hurt you.

First Kiss:

We'd been talking online for what felt like months, though in reality it had only been a few weeks. There was an excitement and reciprocation of interest I'd never experienced before. We discovered each other through some mutual friends and started talking out of my lack of inhibition when it comes to talking to friendly strangers, or in this case, not so strange people I don't know.

One of our mutual friends was putting on a poetry reading in my area and being that we're both poets of a sort it seemed like the perfect opportunity and motive to get together in person. The only thing was that he would be coming from out of town. Not really thinking of any deeper implications, I offered my dorm room, opening my door and my bed. After all, what is mine is my friend's (except for my toothbrush, but that's kind of a different circumstance).

He caught a bus, or rather several different buses, on a Friday afternoon and was to meet me after my classes ended for the day. Sure enough, I wasn't out of my last class for a full 10 minutes when I got a voicemail from an unrecognized number.

"Hey Danny, it's me on somebody else's phone, just letting you know I might be a little later than expected since I have to transfer buses downtown before I make it to campus."

I waited with my friend, Dani taking silly pictures on one of the nearby sculptures. I saw him before he saw me and almost instantly had this huge, silly grin plastered on my face.

We spent several hours together before the Salt Lines performance talking and hanging out, basically getting to know each other better. Laying with my head in his lap, I noticed he had strong hands. I got to hold those hands later at the performance and again when we reconnected with some friends. I felt safe in them.

Back in my room after all of this as we lay in my bed, he felt warm sharing that space with me, his arms wrapped around me. I think we were both drifting off when I rolled over. I wanted to look in the face this wonderful person beside me. I think I held my breath for a moment before I leaned in and kissed him on the lips. On and off throughout the day I'd felt called to do that, but this was the first time I stopped my fear from holding me back.

It tickled sweetly and it was an unfamiliar pressure on my lips. It didn't go much farther beyond that, it'd been a long day for both of us, but I think that was as far as I was ready for at that point.

My point

Looking back, I'm tempted to call that a beautiful moment in my life, but realistically, all firsts are beautiful in their own way. It means a lot to me though that I've been able to find the peace within myself to think of this moment without any bitterness. So often we let the end of a relationship ruin any happy memories from that relationship or worse, get so caught up in missing those happy memories that we don't let go of the relationship and it hurts us.

But by sharing the experience of my first kiss here on my blog, I'm trying to show how it happened in a moment of love when I let my guard down and just let it happen. I didn't need words to say everything I expressed with a kiss. Of course it doesn't always have to be a kiss, depending on your relationship with the other person and the situation at hand, love could express itself as a hug or a smile or even something as simple as eye contact.

Love is a gift like the air we breathe. We all have it and we can give it freely to anyone. You cannot contain it and you cannot see it, but you feel it when it's missing and you feel it when it's there.