Being tender…relationship roles

 

Yesterday on our way back from the Dogwood festival at the park we ran into my doorman. He cannot be any less than seventy years old. I always looked at him like a cool old grandpa. He would always give me kisses or hugs upon my return or departure from home. Strange? Ok, maybe but it did not offend me. He has always complimented me politely. It was something like my grandpa would do. Anyway, since I’ve been living with my wife I have not been home in quite some time. So he was really happy to see me. I introduced him to her quickly understood why I flipped my life up. He has seen the girls come and go. We had a quiet understanding. He never asked about my sexuality and I never really shared. He knew and I knew he knew. That was all that was needed.

So yesterday he was clowning around with us and asked my wife if she was “being tender” to me. On the way out we realized that he was curious about our roles in the relationship. I guess every lesbian couple has to go through this on some level. You might even get a question like, “Who’s the boy?” or “Who’s the girl?” It is amusing that they feel we need roles.

It got me to thinking today about roles in relationships and how heterosexuals do not have to define. I’m not offended by this at all. I actually think that since my relationship is outside of the norm for most that it gives me an opportunity to define what works for me or better yet, for us. So is she tender with me? (That question makes me chuckle.) My wife is extremely feminine on the outside. She’s wears the bangles. She rocks the big curly haired fro. She pops on the stilettos. She makes the hardest wife beater look girly. Well, maybe its that’s body, lol. I have the short natural. I’m rocking the cons or flip flops (I hate shoes btw—another post). Loose fitting jeans and my favorite v-neck t-shirt. I’ll throw on a scarf or a hat and I’m good to go. We’re like gay flare punk rockstars in our heads. (Yes, we have our own show!) On the outside I guess our roles are more define by the way we dress. I dress more tomboyish so I guess one would assume I’m the boy. She dresses more femme so I guess one would assume she’s the girl. I guess I’m supposed to watch sports, drink beer and fix things. And I guess she would cook, clean and follow my lead. NEGATIVE! (lol)

In all seriousness I think our relationship is extremely balanced. Sexually we can both be tender with each other. Quiet as its kept we are both most often non-tender if you know what I mean. It is whatever the other person wants. No roles. We just go at it and complaints are none here!(smile) Outside of the bedroom we just follow each other. She lets me know where I need to be. I let her know where she needs to be. I cook and clean when she’s overwhelmed with her classes or just plain tired. She fixes me coffee in the morning when I’m busy on a conference call. She reviews my presentations and gives me her honest opinion and feedback. I look at her papers and do the same. She holds me when I’m sad. Actually she holds me every night so I can fall asleep. I cannot sleep without it. When she’s down I go buy her cupcakes from her favorite place and surprise her. She takes out the trash more than me. She knows more about cars than I do. I do kill the bugs though. When I get overly excited she just lets me go off and then lets me calm down. There is no boss. It is a true flow of give and take. It is full submission from us both. There is no real leader. We are partners. Isn’t that how relationships should be though? I would think so.

So is she tender to me, sir?

Why yes she is.

The best life

 

HGTV and me?

I blame HGTV. We find ourselves sitting in bed for hours watching show after show about renovations, swapping homes, buying homes and all that other jazz. We start comparing our own likes and dislikes finding out that we pretty much like and want the same things. NO SIDING! NO WHITE APPLIANCES! Next thing you know I want it. I want a “house house”. I have owned before and I was so happy to rid myself of that place so I could move to the next city. I own now but it was more of an investment purchase than a personal one. But now I want to settle into a place as a family. I want to find a place that we call our own. As I started to reconcile these desires with my past ones it got me thinking about how much I have changed. No, let’s say how much I have grown.

I vividly remember standing in my ex fiancé’s bathroom telling her that the life she wanted and the life I wanted were totally different. She wanted to get married, buy a house and have some kids. That plan sounded like the worse thing ever to me. I knew I was not ready to do any of those things with her or anybody else for that matter. I remember my parents telling me that once I fell in love that I would want all of those things too. Well, I waited and waited and that feeling never came with her so I moved on. Most of the women I dated wanted all those things too and it turned me off in the worse way. Yeah, I would stick around for a little bit, but I knew in the back of my head that it was not going to happen. I wanted to travel more and live fast. I remember after school all I wanted was to a certain car, a therapist and a personal assistant.  Never once did my plans include marriage and G-d forbid a kid. Yuck! I wanted to always be light on my feet and able to pick up and move at the drop of a dime. I craved and longed for that kind of life. Kids, mortgages and marriage just seemed like too much of a burden and too much of a load. I was settled in nothing but in the fact that I was not a settler. I was okay with that truth.

Being gay for Christmas?

So this Christmas and many others has been awkward due to one thing—I am gay.

Yes, my family knows but it has always been a military thing, don’t ask and don’t tell. Over the past couple of holidays the awkwardness has grown due to my intolerance of their passive acceptance.

Yesterday I found myself surrounded by my aunts and my mom’s friends conducting a Q&A on what, why and how I am gay. One aunt had tears in her eyes. The other aunt was stuck on the bible and compared my situation to any other sin, which makes me not a lost cause. Thanks! One of my mom’s friends was strangely intrigued by it all as she kept asking the most intimate questions about me and my wife. I was asked questions like: Are you the man and she’s the woman? Don’t you want kids one day? How do you know it’s not a phase? How do you guys do the do? How did you meet her? Were all the womyn in your life gay too? Who turned you out to this mess? Why do you want to break your momma’s heart?

It saddens me that I cannot be myself without this kind of reaction, but I have to remind myself that I have been given the privilege of being the LIGHT. So I answered ALL questions. Yes, even the intimate ones. Why? Well, in order to ask for change, you have to be the change. I have to stand in their face and show them what a gay person looks like. Most importantly, I have to show them what a gay person that they loved and watched grow up looks like. Regardless of who I am with or not with, I am gay. Period the end. They cannot pray it away. They cannot hate it away. They cannot force me into a place where I am quiet about who I am.

At the end of the day I was exhausted but more empowered by it all. I’m sure there will be a round 2 today with my other family members so I need to get ready.

Creating traditions…

A week from tomorrow we will be loading up my car and heading west to visit our families for the holidays. Tonight we stepped out for a quick pizza run and both admitted again that we are dreading the holidays a bit. We love our families but we really wish we could stay in Atlanta and just do us for Christmas. Instead I will be in Dallas and she’ll be in Little Rock. Being that this is our first holiday together we are going to honor our commitments made prior to us, but damn it is not what we want to do.

I think if we were hetero our parents and families would understand why we would choose to be together in Atlanta for the holidays.  Also, the fact that we sprung our marriage on them out of the blue would not make matters better to bail. So we’re giving the families this last Christmas before we start to create our own holiday traditions…

Cigarettes and coffee

Last Friday night we found ourselves in a dark little coffee bar/restaurant smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. We had dinner earlier that evening with another couple and we just wanted a quick nightcap before closing out the night.

 

The thing I love about being married is that I have a built in friend. Listen, I do not think you should do marriage any other way really. I repeat: You have to marry your friend. I heard that said many many times before but I have never really understood that until now. Yes, my life is different than it was, but in such a beautiful way and that is because I married my friend. I married someone that gives me that perfect balance for me. I can be my whole self and not pieces. You know how you are with someone but you hide parts or habits from that someone because they may judge you or not like it? There is nothing I cannot do with her. I find that the old things I used to do for “fun” interest me even less than they did before. My fun now is doing anything and everything with my most favorite person, my wife.

The Evolution: Part I

Growing up I was a tomboy. I hated dresses and if I had to wear them I would force my mom to let me wear my cowboy boots. I preferred He-Man over Barbie. Transformers over dolls. Mud pies in the backyard over the easy oven cake crap any day! All of my cousins were boys and I was right there along with them. I would run the streets with them on the weekends. I had the flyest bike and could pop wheelies better than most of them. I played dodge ball and took my hits like a big girl. I had the flyest kicks at the time. I had all the video games and yes I was a junkie. I also played basketball better than any other chick on the block. Proven by the fact that I was never picked last EVER when we split up in teams. I was like the secret weapon because the other neighborhood boys saw having a girl on the team as a weakness. Little did they know that my pops showed me a few tricks from his college days.

Lovers and friends?

The tricky thing about being a womyn dating a womyn is that you have to find a place for your S.O. in your circle of friends. Womyn bond differently than men. We spend time together. We talk. We share. We lay up. You know the drill. The U-haul is no joke.

But is this womyn your friend? Or is she your lover? Or both? And should she be?

I have always separated my life with friends from my life with lovers. It has been a reoccurring issue in all of my romantic relationships. My girlfriends were always left wondering where they would fit in my life. My friendships mean the world to me. I grew up as an only child so my friendships are like my surrogate siblings. Also, I think there is something so beautiful about friendship. It’s the most unselfish relationship because your friends are really just your friends JUST because. Well, that’s if you have good ones like I do. My friends accept me and my craziness. I can be a complete dork with them and they are cool with it. They look out for me and tell me the truth. They build me up and affirm me and who I am when I get a little lost. So I need them like cooked food, ya dig?

A morning bumper sticker

This morning I saw this:

CWBS: Angelica

For clarification: Crazy Woman Behavior Syndrome

She was a pretty little thing and she had about ten years on me. We met while I was sitting in thelobby right outside of my Econ class. I remember seeing her legs first because I was in the lounge chair. My eyes quickly made it up to her face. I smiled and she smiled back. She gave me the 3-second gay glare. Straight women usually look at a woman with short repeated glances. They check out the hair. The face. The clothes. The shoes. Non-straight womyn check all that out before you notice and then they stare right into your eyes for at least 3 seconds. Three seconds is a long time people. So when it happens you notice.

She gave me the 3 second and I gave it back. Then she asked me about my bag. That was the topic of our first conversation. I was watching her lips move. I have a thing for lips okay. Lips and hips. I’m thinking wow ok. So I said, listen come hang out with me after I get out of class. I told her that I did not have anything to do for the rest of day and was thinking about blowing off studying. She quickly said yes. Greenlight.