dancing trees, on-the-air epiphanies

So busy. So tired. So warm and wiggly. So miserable. So content. So odd, this period of my life.

LAST weekend, the 16^th, I took Friday off and Joe came up. It was an awesome time.  We had gone back and forth about what plans to make and what to cancel, trying to make sure we didn’t overbook and overwhelm ourselves.  It wound up being this perfectly balanced weekend… when I got back to work on Monday I was refreshed and relaxed and had gotten so much accomplished. How often does that happen?

Wednesday night I rearranged my living room to accommodate a performance set-up; my full sound system; microphone and mike stand, amp, speakers, guitar… all plugged in and ready for a show at any time. And I did a bunch of other cleaning all over. Now, I know it sounds like Well of course you’re cleaning; Joe’s coming, but trust me when I tell you that, sadly, there have been plenty of Joe visits where the mess stays as is. This was a great wave to catch. It is really nice to have a change. I’ve been in the apartment four years (!) and it feels great to have made a visible change.

The visit was all good times. I’d had a very compact hell-week at work, and was so ready for the weekend. (It is a huge and difficult decision for me to take a day off of this freelancing life I have.) Thursday night Joe arrived at my place about ten minutes before I got home from work. We headed for yummy dinner at Bogey’s, a local ordinary sports bar with way above ordinary food, and then to the Notch for some Charlie Jones blues and jazz.  Through the course of the night we hooked up with a few friends of mine he hadn’t met and I always love that. Joe is just so NOT what you’d expect no matter what you might try to expect.  Joe is a complete original, and I enjoy how he mingles with my peeps.

Friday morning I went to my chiropractor for a much needed adjustment (this was one of the other motivators about the day off)… Dr. Nadelberg has the worst hours ever–well, for me, not for him–and this is my only way to see him. I heart Dr. Nadelberg. After that it was back to the apartment, scoop up Joe and start an afternoon of errands.

Let me tell you now precisely what Joe did for me over those few days:

• He broke down my kitchen table, brought it to my mom’s, carried it (including the solid wood tabletop) up to my mother’s attic, brought the smaller table that was in my mother’s garage back to my place, put it together (even though we had the wrong screws and so then he had to improvise some… was it washers? so the screws wouldn’t wreck the table?) and put it into my kitchen.
• While at my mom’s he carried two air conditioners also up to the attic, at my stepfather’s behest.
• Hacksawed my knife block so that my knife set finally fits in the holes.
• Put the screen in the kitchen window that had been out for two years because it was so hard for me to take out I never even attempted putting it back.
• Snaked my tub. AGAIN.
• Plus just regular old ran errands with me.
• And maybe I’m forgetting something.

(Oh well, yeah, he also did lots and lots of healing work on my body… my ankle my back my shoulders my charley-horsing legs. But that falls under a different category.)

I can’t really rave enough about how wonderful it is to have someone do these things for me. It’s just hard living with these ongoing wants, with this perpetual inability to quite have it all work. And it’s been a process, how I relate to Joe about these things. I still resist some of it, not wanting him to feel like he’s coming up here to be my handyman, but I am comfortable enough now to ask for these things. And truly, Joe is that guy. He gets pleasure out of doing this stuff for folks; he is the guy that people call up to help them move or fix or help. And it is another kind of healing for me, to feel deserving of this from him.

One of the things I’ve been specifically enjoying about being with Joe lately is being inside this phase, that of comfort and knowledge and familiarity. There will always be mysteries; he’s a whole other human being and that is something that cannot simply be memorized, but I’ve really been grooving on what I can expect.

So all in all it was this terrific weekend… we went to Orien Rose’s birthday/costume party, and still managed to go out again Saturday night to hear another band; Sharp Edge (more friends of mine). And again, through all of it, lots of relaxing and lovemaking and just hanging around doing nearly nothing. Sunday morning, for the first time ever with Joe visiting, I got up early and went to a yoga class. I was all kinds of proud of myself and happy I went. He was supposed to leave early-ish Sunday but hung around ‘til around 9 Sunday night.

Now. What I am about to say here will sound implausible, I know. Check me on it, I suppose, in a few months.

I feel like I am less and less encumbered by this relationship.

I feel like what I have with Joe and what I want are moving closer towards being synced up.

I love him. No doubt. But I’m not feeling all in love with him. I’m not feeling daunted by unfulfilled desires. I’m not feeling loss.

Okay so it’s really easy to say that when I’ve just spent a great weekend with him. It’s easy to say it when so many of my desires are currently, in fact, fulfilled.

And uh… it’s especially easy to say because of part two. Which is, I went down to visit him this past weekend as well. Thursday was Thanksgiving at mom’s, Friday was Thanksgiving II at dad’s, Friday night I was at Joe’s by 8:30.  I joined his group for a full moon ritual (Saturday), I helped prepare the meal and the space, I made wonderful peace with an old friend, I hung out with his housemates, I had a great fucking time. I was in his bed for the first time in awhile, and for the first time in way longer than awhile, I didn’t get emotional. As in, no breakdown. No I wish it could be different. No I wish I didn’t have to wait so long to see you again. It just wasn’t going on. And his bed had honestly become this demon I had to face; it seemed this magical place that just sort of brought it out of me. Nope. Done. Grant you, I never have an easy time getting out of bed for the last time; I could stay in his arms forever. Good, strong, loving arms are like that. But it was one nice weekend with no drama and no crisis.

And the final fear being that I have this tendency to fall asleep on the ride home. Especially in traffic like there might be say, on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. But it was all okay. I left a little later than I’d meant to so only half my ride had daylight, but I saw the just rising moon, this massive orange blessing, and I tethered myself to it and as it rose, I came home.

(And went to sleep before 9!)