Perfectly Flawed

my oldest and dearest friend. he knows all of my secrets. he even knows about the mia. i am more ashamed of mia than i am of my anxiety and depression. i don’t talk about it much here. i choose to believe it is in my past although it still haunts me on occasion. maybe someday i’ll post an essay i wrote about it.

what a serious start to this post! it was meant to be a pleasant one.

there are very exciting things i wanted to write about instead. for instance the beautiful new silver, black, and blue running shoes i bought today. there is also the new bike i’m planning on buying sometime very soon. i want to mention the joy that cycling brings me and my desire to run to get back to feeling perfectly healthy and comfortable. also there is my genuine excitement for starting a pottery class this week. i’m pleased to report i’ve been reading more books this summer.

i am hosting a dinner party on friday and i’m very excited. this is relatively small i’ve only invited a dozen of my closest friends. i’m sure i’ll gush about it if it’s a success and moan if something goes wrong. i adore being a hostess.

tonight i confessed to my nearest and dearest friend yukon that i wrote an anonymous blog. i didn’t tell him what it was called or give him any information. he started to ask if he could read it but instead told me he didn’t want to read it. not yet.

you see i was telling him about b. i have to say one thing i strongly identify with is my animated storytelling and expressive face. i love making my friends laugh. i’m very open and casual with my emotions although i chose to believe i can hide them when i channel my inner actress.

most of the things i told him i’ve already written about here. i also told him about the very busy weekend i had. i recorded recent events in a message to wren. specifically in a four page message to wren. i know because i put it into a word document just to see. it detailed more of b’s antics and some thoughts about aiden. i might convert it to a post but for the most part i think i’m going to avoid regurgitating it here.

i told yukon about how when b brought up her past of underage drinking as dinner conversation with my father i stood up from the table and patted my father on the shoulder while smiling sweetly and saying “daddy, aren’t you glad i never got a fake id?”

i explained that my first tactic to avoid conversations about sex and men was to change the conversation. my second tactic has been to leave the conversation. b has picked up on my boredom and disinterest in the topic and doesn’t bring it up for conversation much anymore. but she has resorted to structuring sentences with an unspoken sexual content and then using intentional pauses or ums and ahs as an alternative to actually using the words that tend to trigger my tactics. i’m not sure that is an adequate description. i’ll be sure and try to remember the next example. so in practice it comes across as a sentence with a subtle sexual context which is then interrupted by her disfluency as an alternative to using an explicitly sexual word.

i confided in yukon that if this continues or gets worse i am going to ask b with concern if she’s always stumbled through her sentences and had word finding problems. in case you hadn’t figured out fluency is part of my grad school curriculum.

yukon covered his mouth and started laughing his eyes crinkling in a way i love. “so first you change the subject, then you leave the room, now you’re going to make her feel stupid?” written out it may almost sound cruel and in a way i suppose it is me being manipulative. yet i feel that it’s much easier to do a bit of social conditioning instead of an actual confrontation about her lifestyle and how it affects me.

the example i gave yukon about this strategy was from sunday morning.

i was in the kitchen getting a glass of orange juice when b came in with a hand on her back. she grimaced and complained about her back hurting. i had already pieced together that she had gone to see pt guy saturday night. i’m not sure if she really seriously expects me to inquire further whenever she sets up an opportunity to talk about sex. i mean seriously my lack of interest has been quite clear so maybe she thinks she can force me to stumble into the conversation by accident. so as she starts to talk about her back injury i ask if she’s taken pain killers. she says no so i “tsk” and hand her two ibuprofen from the cupboard then suggest maybe she can stretch it out. i then left the kitchen with my orange juice.

yukon laughed and laughed and laughed that instead of asking “golly b, what were you doing that hurt your back?” i instead simply state “maybe you can stretch it out.”

apparently b just couldn’t resist telling me however because a few minutes later she came into the living room and visibly winced after sitting down on the couch. i knew what was coming so i began to unfold my legs and sit up to leave the room. as i stood to escape she said “i’m just going to put it out there – having sex on the hood of a car is a bad idea.” i looked at her with complete indifference and a touch of boredom and said “um yeah typically that’s not a good idea.” i then walked away to the basement stairs and closed the door firmly behind me.

together yukon and i had a great evening. during dinner i told him about having sex with aiden the other weekend. he asked how that happened and i began “well my allergies …” and he died laughing. he begged “please continue tell me exactly how your allergies caused you to have sex with aiden. i’m dying to know what you’re going to say to explain this one.”

yukon asked if the dinner with aiden had been relaxed and as friends instead of as a couple and i said, “actually yes, which might be surprising considering he’d just come in me.”

during our conversation he told me that i was responsible for bringing him to the world of wine lists and fine dining. i didn’t believe him but he told me that i was one of the first people who introduced these things to him. he said i was instrumental in helping him live a more cultured existence. i’m not sure how much i believe that considering the man naturally loves shakespeare and being homo and all i’m pretty sure he’s been with some pretty sophisticated gays.

so to pull it all together it was after dinner at the coffee shop that i was animatedly reenacting various situations involving b that he said this needed to be recorded. he said i needed to write in a blog, or keep a diary, or write a play because this was very entertaining material. i suppose sometimes it is the mean cruel conflicts that are the most entertaining. nevermind that, i’ll save the passive aggressive contemplation for another time. as we continued our conversation he said it again that this needed to be written down so we would remember it. it was after the third time he mentioned writing a book about my experiences that i confessed and told him that after shutting down my other blog i started a new one anonymously.

it’s yukon. he knows me well so i can’t say he was surprised but instead very interested. he said he didn’t want to read them yet. in response to his suggestion of writing a book or publishing my journals i laughed and said i didn’t have nearly enough talent to do so. although i did tell him that a goal of mine is to eventually have all of my writings bound in a book. you know publishing houses do that. they can specially print a small number of books for people who just want to have them. i think i’d like them to include my handwritten letters too.

so i told yukon that he could read them all eventually and that the only reason i was certain i didn’t want him to read it now was only because of his connection to aiden and b. i am sincere when i say i haven’t written anything on this blog that i wouldn’t mind him reading. we are intellectual lovers with the distance that ensures we never bicker and we never fight. instead we write each other letters in flowing cursive.

he replied that he would read them all eventually. he said he wanted a copy of everything i’d ever written as a wedding present. after a moments thought he added the he also wanted a dvd copy of a specific home movie. i told him i’d cut out the scene that was a close up of my face. the rest of the video isn’t exceptionally revealing although it’s obvious what we’re doing. of course i’m never making copies of that video. yukon said he only needed 30 seconds of full frontal to keep his occasional straight aiden turned gay fantasy alive.

all of this nonsense as a wedding present? quite silly and NOT very practical if you ask me.