No coherency for tonight. I am sick again, I think a fibromyalgia flare up. I woke up at Maude\’s after ten or so hours of sleep (I really needed it) with sore glands in my neck. Getting out of bed two hours later I discovered my entire body was sore, achey. Stretched, took a hot shower, felt better, wrote it off. Two hours or so later at the lab where Maude works, I started sinking really fast. Home within a half an hour and all I could do was lie on his futon while he stroked me down, trying to relax the muscles. Stretching wasn\’t helping. Two Ultram eventually did, but he still had to follow me home in his car to make sure I got here okay. I was falling down again; had to pull off the road between Four Corners and White Oak to stretch out my legs and give them a rest.
Got home and he said \”I\’d come in, but I have a heavy schedule tomorrow and need to get home.\” Thank god, because he was not invited, and that saved me from awkwardness. I knew what would have happened. I walked up the little hill to my house and saw my mom standing there in the darkened kitchen, watching me. I don\’t think she realized I noticed her presence. Got in the darkened front door and her voice came in from the living room: \”Did someone follow you home?\” \”Yeah, \’Maude.\’ I\’ve had an FMS flare up and he made sure I got home okay.\” \”He could have come in,\” she said in a voice that implied she thought I was in the wrong for having been dating this guy for months and none of the family has met him, that voice that is the same one that she uses to make me feel bad about whatever she thinks I am not doing right — generally things that my therapist is adamant that I not do. \”…Why?\” I asked, hesitant and annoyed that she was attempting to push me back into the role of the twelve year old they still want me to be, because that is the year they lost me.
I do not remember how my mother replied (I wish I did), but it was something that reeked of \”You are keeping me out of your life and that is not allowed. I will hold this against you for days and if I bother to speak to you, it will be in a chilly, reserved voice. I will heap this on the pile of other things I hold against you and use it against you at some point. You are not living your life how I want you to live; you are keeping me out of it and therefore I cannot live vicariously through you. How can you leave me like this, alone? Why will you not cooperate? Why do you have to be independent? Why do you have to be an adult?\” I could have made excuses, explained to my mother that Maude had an early day and that it would be almost midnight by the time he got home. I restrained myself. She does not need an explanation. I do not have to justify this to her.
Come on, tell me, how normal and healthy is it to be in your twenties and introduce the person you have until recently been seeing only once a week to your parents? I think not very. In fact, I think that to be rather out there.
My parents, on the other hand, are up in arms because I have only introduced them to one person I have dated in the past nine months, and that was only because he was from out of town and staying the night here with me when we saw each other. They hate the fact that I have a series of friends that they have not met, who do not come to the house. When they query me as to where I am going and who am I going with, once I provide a name I am then pressured for more information. \”Who is that? Have I met this person? What do they do? Where and when did you meet them? Where do they live?\”
I want fucking out. It is going to happen soon. Soon. Really soon. This is getting worse.
This weekend was unbelieveably interesting. In short:
— Friday night, am awakened from my nap to a phone call from the good doctor who says there is an impromptu party at the man who really did dance twee\’s place in a little more than an hour. Said I\’d go. Girl Friday was also going on and I wanted to hit that but I figured I would go to the party, leave, go dance with the gals, then maybe go back to the party. Was pulling my shit together when Will called. \”What\’s the plan for tonight?\” We had plans? We had not made them, but we had passed an e-mail a few days earlier acknowledging the scheduled Girl Friday. We usually go to that together, but it\’s not a set in stone thing. We don\’t have anything like that. Well, suddenly we did and I was not aware. After blabbering at each other for forty minutes (we lose track of time easily when talking), we decide I will pick him up, we\’d go to Girl Friday, then to the man who really did dance twee\’s party. Seen.
— On my way to Maude\’s, I saw one of my recent ex-boyfriends crossing the street in Dupont Circle. I nearly shat myself, I was so surprised. We have no shared interests so our paths do not cross, and so I have not seen him in quite a while. I laughed for the next two blocks, wondering if it was going to be one of those kind of nights.
— Had a great time dancing, left around 1:30 for the man who really did dance twee\’s place. Hung with what Maude is now starting to refer to as my \”crew\” for a few hours, which was really nice and relaxed and comfortable. Left around four.
— Went home, basically immediately went to bed, fell asleep a little while later. Did not get out of bed until two-thirty the next day. I dragged Maude out to the Woodside Deli for breakfast/lunch, which was the first time I had brought him there. Usually I take people I like there early in the game. I have not beeing doing anything with Maude the way I us(ed?)ually do(id?) things, and I think that has made all the difference and been really good. Slow pace, better times. This past Wednesday night together changed our dynamic abuptly, however, and forced me to realize just how wonderful things have been and are. Maybe it only gets better, if I do not lose my head. My heart is already a lost cause. Gave Maude a tour of my haunts in downtown Silver Spring. Have never done that with anyone; I have always considered everything there minus the deli to be some of my hiding places. I do not, however, feel exposed. I just feel like I have no need for those sorts of secrets with him.
— Back at his place late in the day, we spent most of the rest of the afternoon in the shower. Hot fucking damn, that was good. Anyway. Took a step back from myself and realized just how oddly we had settled into each other even more so in just the past few days. One peeing at the toilet while the other brushes their teeth. Pointing at each other\’s face to draw attention to new blemishes. Applying my make up and doing maintenance on my brows while he flosses. Me sitting on the toilet changing my tampon while he stands there folding the towels. All the while, talking. Nonstop. It never stops. It just keeps flowing.
— Finished getting dressed for the day around six or so, and it hits me that we have plans for that night, too. Two nights in a row together. This is bigger territory. Could be dangerous. I debate leaving and hanging out on my own for a few hours. Does not feel dangerous. I stay.
— Sat on the terrace with some Brie and crackers, watching the Dupont Circle parade below and talking each other\’s ears off, as usual. Watched the thunderstorm and revelled in the evening. Talked about my increased questioning of my gender, my continuing comfort of my sexuality, and my current somewhat efforted search for a girl to have relations with. He sat and listened and had little comment, with absolutely no expression on his face other than the occasional smile.
— Talked about this and that and I discovered (not unpleasantly) that back in the early autumn Maude had met a woman who sounded incredibly familiar. He did not like her much and they had no interactions beyond meeting up for a few drinks one night. He told me about some of her various characteristics (we were discussing dating women who had a bit of a mental screw loose) and I came to realize that this woman is almost definitely a chick that some of us refer to as Samertime. \”A\” dated her while he was dating me, and she became the butt of a series of jokes amongst some of the people \”A\” knows. (Yeah, I agree, he is a creep.) Samertime\’s existence continues to provide us with much amusement, as we occasionally just look at \”A\” and say her nickname, which causes him to shudder while laughing. The idea that Maude had gone on a date with this woman amused me to no end, and I spent the next five or so minutes laughing at him and chanting \”You dated Samertime! You dated Samertime!\” like an obnoxious preteen taunting the kid they have a crush on. This became a running joke during the lighthearted bits of the rest of the weekend. Tomorrow I am going to query \”A\” on more specifics to make sure it is her. If it is I will have a source of amusement for the next several weeks until the novelty wears off. This city is so damn incestuous; lines of association run everywhere and are seemingly impossible to avoid.
— Diddled on the computer for a while, showing each other various things. We giggled over the e-flyer for our friend\’s dj night that evening, then were appalled when we realized it had started at eight, was ending at eleven, and it was already nine forty-five. So much for dinner, which we had just started making. Took off for a cab. Now the night starts getting fucked up. In short:
— The cabbie did not have change for a twenty. Fifteen minutes were spent along the U corridor trying to get change. Nada. Maude lost his cool before the cabbie finally had to change Maude\’s bill with a fellow cab driver. Issue settled, we get into Saint Ex and it hits me that the place is essentially a constant happy hour for singles who are not quite trendy enough for the Red Room, but consider themselves to be rather unmainstream. The place is just… bad. Icky. I thought this before the rest of the night took off.
— We got in there at 10:20. Our friend\’s set was done. He had been cut short because the next dj had showed up early.
— The woman I thought Maude was still seeing but apparently has not seen in almost a month (and it turns out he has only been seeing me for that long) showed up, walked up to us, and acted like a raging, jealous psychopath.
— A friend of Maude\’s that he had been on a few dates with a year and a half ago walked up to us, introduced herself to me, then abruptly walked away.
— The dj was playing horrendous attempts at funk, and we decided we had had enough drama and left to find dinner. Walked in the front door of the Black Cat and there was the friend of Maude\’s that he had been on a few dates with. We said hello again and she stood there rocking back and forth, acting incredibly nervous. (I have hung out with Maude\’s friends a few times before and have never encountered any of this at any other time before.) We excused ourselves and went in to get food.
— Inside was one of my nemesises, and she spent the entire time giving me the evil eye.
— It took thirty minutes to get our food, and everyone who had been there when we got there, including the people behind us in line, had already finished. The place was almost empty. Maude half-jokingly theorized that my nemesis had pulled some strings in the kitchen.
— I remembered too late that I was missing another friend\’s dj night, and was unable to make it after promising my attendence.
— I accidentally got hit in the eye.
— We ran into BOTH of the women Maude had dated in the Red Room on the way out of the Black Cat, literally with four people separating them. The confrontational woman glared at us further and tried to physically grab Maude as we walked out.
— We stopped at the CVS in Dupont Circle for a few things, and the guy in the front of the line was arguing with three employees, yelling.
— We went to bed and Maude had a nightmare so bad that he was soaked in sweat and was shaking.
— After a month of being able to pee in his apartment without a problem, Saturday night I was so upset it took me a little over five minutes just to be able to relax enough to squirt.
— For the first time, I started experiencing jealousy in regards to Maude and considered walking out and never seeing him again so that I would not have to deal with my feelings. I decided against this, obviously.
— My period started again after two weeks, even though I have been taking birth control pills every day at the same time of day for the past two weeks.
— I felt the need to tell Maude about what happened last Friday because a mutual friend of ours was there then and that friend spent our time together on Saturday night giving me dirty looks. They made plans to get together, and I would rather Maude hear it from my mouth than the friend even though I was not in the wrong. Maude actually said he was glad I had told him because he would rather hear it from me than second hand. He also said \”you do what you feel like you need to do, though I don\’t know why you feel like you need to do it\” which made me feel kind of dirty.
— We both had bad headaches off and on Saturday and this morning, then I got really fucking sick this afternoon. He took care of me, which was good, accompanied me home, then the shit with my mother.
— One of my best friends is mad at me, and it is basically my fault. I am really upset about this and have been trying to come up with ways to fix everything, not just short term but long run. You know who you are — you didn\’t call me back. I won\’t be at home until seven or so tomorrow, and will call you then. Please answer this time when you see my number.
