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.

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.

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.

Blocking your blessing?

I was in a dead-end-going-no-where-slow-relationship not too long ago. Nothing against baby girl but we did not share common goals or expectations for a relationship. Plus, I did feel that I was constantly being fed a bunch bullshit when it came to her life. Seriously. It was hard for me to really trust her because her life did not add up. From the day we met she had problems. It was problem after problem with her. She was victim of countless robberies, financial issues and just plain laziness. Hate to be harsh but damn it is what it is.

But I stayed just to prove I could stay.

Falling…on my head?

Random shit…Stream

Queer Adolesence, Part I

And here it is folks.

For those of you that have been privileged by the company of me in person, I know you have been waiting for a long time to read this post on QA, Queer Adolescence.

So for the past year I have tried to articulate the struggles of my queer peer group. Most of us are either identify as gay or lesbian and are in the age range of late twenties thru early to mid-thirties. We are viable, able bodied, intelligent and overall stable people who have managed to achieve success academically, professionally and socially. However, when it comes to intimate relationships we cannot seem to match or parallel that type of success. 

Dating is hard for everyone right? People get together and break up all the time, right? What is so different with us queers? Well, my theory is that queers go through an important transitional phase of growth later in life than their heterosexual peers. While our friends are off married with kids at 27, we are still dating and mating. We are still trying to figure out what works best for us. At this age many of us are still making sense of our sexuality and what that means for us as 50% contributor to a committed relationship. We date with the optimism, naivete and most importantly, the wrecklessness of a 14 year old boy or girl. We do this not because we lack common sense, however we do lack the time for full development into the people we should be due to our sexuality.

Memory Lane: The Older Woman (The Finale)

Catch up—> Part I, Part II, Part III

So I met a girl.

She was mad cool. We shared a lot of common interests. We instantly clicked. We both had girlfriends and they both were in different cities. Luckily for now, so were we. We talked on the phone for hours each day. We would email. You know the beginning goes. We never talked about an ‘us’ until one day she let on about her relationship not being as perfect as she had made it seem. So we had a night of confessions and things got deeper. I cannot remember if it was one night or a series of nights? All I know is that soon I was booking a ticket to Atlanta to hang out.