Thursday, 4 March 1999 (how the west was won and where it got us)
12:00pm
As I'd suspected, it was a long night. Not in an entirely bad way,
but in an emotionally draining way. Sometimes I'm amazed I have any
emotions left even to drain.
After one of the longer and more harrowing days at work in recent
memory (7am to 7pm, the kind where the absolute wisest thing to
do would be just going straight to bed afterwards), I went to
Bondage A-Go-Go with Tiff and Gahan. I got dressed and made up in
her bathroom in record time, looking a little trashy as a result,
but I didn't mind. Sometimes trashy is a good thing.
Since there really wasn't much else to do, we danced. After a while,
Tiff commented that I was getting braver.
I'm still not sure what she meant by that. Maybe it was the fact that
I was one of maybe three other people currently dancing, and this
requires a certain amount of bravery. Or since it was slightly more
clearly lit than Lilith's dance floor the true horror of my body's
convulsions are that much more noticeable, and you gotta be either
brave or insane to do it in public so she went with the less
disturbing option. But whatever she meant, it was wonderful to hear.
That I'm an ignorant chickenshit huckleberry at best is no mystery to her
by this point, if it ever was. Even if I hadn't blathered my recent life
story to her that night, she would have figured it out pretty damn quick.
I can only fake it so much.
I don't know any of the rules of dating or whatever it is we're doing.
I don't know what's allowed and what's going too far, and when these
standards change. I don't know a fucking thing, and it's wrong to expect
someone else to have to teach me.
So, as always, I make it up as I go along, usually not going far enough
because going too far seems like it would be so much worse. A side
effect of growing up with a very confused sense of identity in a body
way way way too big, perhaps. Sometimes I don't know my own strength,
or more importantly, my own bulk. I've broken chairs. I want to
pass unnoticed, and instead I'm the proverbial bull in the china shop.
But, goddamnit, no longer. No more fear. Something was developing
between Tiff and I, or at least something was on the verge of developing,
and I simply could not let whatever opportunities this evening and this
environment might present pass by. Not again. The majority of my
regrets in life come from succumbing to fear, and this is not going
to be lost opportunity. If I fail, it won't have been for lack of
trying.
And, for the record, I'm not talking about sex. When I was in the eigth
grade, I received was quite possibly the greatest compliment I'd ever
received or ever will: a fellow who was quite my opposite in this regard
said to me with a certain sense of amazement, "You're the only guy I know
who doesn't think with his dick." I've always taken that to mean I was
doing something right.
Do I want to have sex with Tiff? Am I even capable, all things considered?
Yes to both. If it happens, it will evolve out of our relationship. I'm
not at all sure if truly *casual* sex is something I could really do. Certainly
I've had my share of opportunities to find out—getting picked up at Trannyshack
is roughly as difficult as falling off a bike. But damned if it isn't always
guys hitting on me. If a woman showed the same kind of immediate interest,
well, that'd be different.
not unlike tiff or summer did at first?
Tiff is very...how to put it? Polymorphously perverse? Tactile? She's
into touching and being touched. Most everyone around her. It's the
way she is, and I wouldn't
ever try to change that, even if it is a somewhat new paradigm to me.
Which isn't to say The Ex hated being touched; quite the opposite, she loves it.
But she was very centered on me. She was for me and I was for her. I don't
know, if Tiff and I ever become official (or start dating or whatever the fuck
the terminology might be), maybe she'd become more focused on me. Or not.
But I'm not going to go into Rome and tell them to start doing as I do.
The point is, I tried to be closer to her in that regard, at least while we
weren't dancing (though we did get close at times while dancing and I tried
my best to follow her lead and naturally failed miserably). I cuddled up
against her, massaged her, tried somehow to bring our auras together, to simply
be close with her. In
one respect she didn't react negatively, which is to say she didn't immediately
move away or tell me to stop. But she did admit at one point, confirming a
look I could clearly see on her face, that
a look almost exactly like the one on summer's face, the original summer, all those years ago just before she rushed off and left you realizing in
some fashion that you'd completely fucked up for what was the first time and by
no means the last and that what the rest of the world takes for granted will always be a
great struggle for you, that the more you're interested in someone the more
likely you'll hurt or upset them in some way, because certain things are meant
for you and certain things aren't and that's your fate and you can't do a goddamn
thing about it remember that remember remember remember you promised me i'm dying
i'm dying please
she was feeling shy. I replied, jokingly of course, that being shy was
my job. She smiled and said we could take turns.
I fully expected that to be it for the evening. I'd pushed too hard and it
broke. Once again. Everything I touch, I destroy.
It wasn't over.
I believe on some level the further events of last night (for the record, no, we didn't) were like a gauge for Tiff, a means of
deciding whether she wanted to continue on with this big dumb tranny in pigtails and
too much eyeliner.
I think the answer is yes.
And after I got home...well, more on that later...
5:30pm
I got home at about 1am, and The Ex was still up, continuing her Buffy the Vampire Slayer
marathon. We talked about the club, which she'd been to for the first time herself a couple
weeks previous, and starting comparing notes, about BAGG and our club experiences in
general.
It was probably the first time we'd spoken openly to each other about these things,
and how even though it's all quite shallow the adulation and fawning we each receive will
almost certainly keep us coming back for more. Hearing her talk about being pawed by three
men at a time was far less distressing than I expected, and she didn't seem particularly
bothered by my story about the french guy who wouldn't take no for an answer from earlier
that same night. In that context was the only reference I made to Tiff, and she didn't
mention the guys she's gone out with at all.
I was okay at first when I got into bed. Between the low of work and the relative high
of becoming more intimate with Tiff, I was emotionally exhausted. But hanging on.
Then something strange happened: my right foot started to cramp. Hard. This wasn't the
first time, but definitely the worst. It was like the muscles in my foot had suddenly
decided to turn into a knot for no apparent reason (which, I suppose, is what a cramp
is). I tried to keep it to myself, to weather it, because usually these things go
away.
Not this time. The Ex became aware before long that I was in pain—I suppose the slight
but uncontrollable whimpering, and rather than being stoic, when she asked what was wrong,
I told her. She suggested I massage it, which I did. No luck. The agony continued, if
not actually getting worse.
She turned on the light so we could get a closer look; the tendons in my foot looked like
they wanted to leap right out my skin. At least there was some visible manifestation,
since there's little worse than being in intense pain and not having any physical evidence.
This is something that's plagued The Ex for years, since she has chronic headaches which
obviously nobody else can tell are happening.
The Ex instructed me to lie down and take deep breaths, and she'd massage my foot. I was certainly
in no mood to argue. Breathing deeply was a challenge, because I was starting to cry. This
was all too goddamned much. It wasn't even so much the pain (though, for the first time in more
years I can count, I was associating crying with physical pain) as it was the unfairness of the
situation and the fact that The Ex was coming to my aid. The only times I've cried recently have
been with her, like the night of my closure with Summer, or of course the morning we broke up.
For whatever reason, perhaps having to do with simply how close we've been over the last eight
and a half years, I can only cry around her.
The temptation lately to just say screw the rules (I broke up with her so I'm not allowed to
use in her physically or emotionally) and hold her and cry to purge my bad feelings has been
intense, but I've resisted. It's simply not the way things are. It would probably be more
acceptable for us to have sex than for us to hold each other. The whole level of intimacy
thing.
And now, here she was, massaging my ragingly painful foot (funny how foot massage keeps on
accompanying dark emotions), speaking softly about breathing and relaxing. It was just all
too much. And yet I never quite let the tears flow completely freely. I should have, but
I didn't, at least not until she left the room for a moment. Then they came out, if
briefly.
Eventually my foot decramped itself, and I went to sleep with a soaked pillow and a depleted
heart.
I'm doing a little better today, though.
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