Tag: relationships

Incredible, once you figure in the 100+ miles distance between our cities.

I was considering skipping Norwescon this year now that Myke and Beth have had to cancel, but after some deliberation I’ve decided to attend anyway in honor of one simple, sentimental fact: it was there that Tony and I silently came to the tacit understanding that we were both going to go home, clear out any distractions, and embark upon the complicated process of transforming into a couple.

I can’t pinpoint how we did it, exactly, given that we discussed nothing of the sort, but that we did so was undeniable. (In fact, nothing related was said until I got back to Canada, where the first thing he said to me over messenger was not “hello”, but “which bus are you taking down here?”, to which I already had a reply.) Two weeks later, I arrived on May 1st and so began our Month of Sundays, which has now stretched out almost to an entire, (and entirely), wonderful year, without even one weekend skipped.

Next year, excepting a social miracle, it is unlikely I will go, but this year I can’t help but see as a proto-anniversary, an excuse to celebrate what I am thankful for absolutely every day.

creeping up on a year together

spiffing

Let me fall out a window with you. Place your hand here, upon the jut of my hip, where it rests in your sleep, where you grip my body to yours from behind. Let me lean back, just a little off balance. Let me feel the center of my gravity shift and slide. Place your other hand like a cradle for my head, as it hangs backward, trying to get the perfect shot of something sixteen stories below. The shape of you, the perfect heft of you, let it join me as I slip. Let your eyes widen in surprise, then smile with me. Let your lips find mine as they do in the dark. The sound of our clothing against the sill, the relaxed, casual laughter that will explode from my chest, these sounds will protect us, keep us safe, as we listen, absently, for impact, the beginning of the end.

Before that, (our collision with the indifferent ground), let me float away with you, hands twisted in the cords of a enormous balloon, brightly coloured, impossibly huge. Place your trust in my wrists, where they strain at the ballast of our weight. Let me drift on the wind in your tightest embrace. Arms screaming, my fingers numb. Under our feet will be the sea, the turquoise horizon a feather shimmering gently away. Let us endure until land, our anatomy twisted into one tangled shape. Aceept that we are stranded. Let me make fire as you wave at ships, as you hold me close at the curve of your hip. The warmth of our totality, the sweet, delicious taste of our kiss, these things will protect us, keep us fed, as we signal, unwavering, for delivery, until the rescue ships.

another symptom

On the wall of the ladies room there is a picture, a long, soft-focus black and white photograph of a woman lying mostly naked on a bed in Seattle, only a few blocks away from where I live when I’m with you. I identify the city by inference, the lights of the tower, the three streaks of white light dotted in rows along the top of Queen Anne, washed out, pale, seen dimly through sheer curtains. There is no way to know when the picture was taken, what year, how recent, no clues, the bed is ordinary, the bedside lamp a timeless shape with a round bland shade, except that it was night. Instead it sits on the wall like a secret, knowledge of a moment, nudity, vulnerability, where I have never been, but have walked past, ignorant. Her face turned away, her luminous body partially draped with a thin white blanket, she could be anyone, somehow she could even be me. It seems for a moment like this recognition should feel like a message, that my bones should ring, that my blood should ache, and I should miss you, your city, your being, but instead I recall a memory, a terrible waking dream; how it would feel to walk by your apartment and no longer own a key, to arrive and understand that your home is my home no longer, a vibrant flash of possible self so hollow it shed time as irrelevant and moved backward, showing me a future I hoped I’ll never have to see.

I changed the word girl to boy (and there’s still more to come)

Tony's Valentine from the World's Smallest Postal Service

Valentine’s is creeping up, the candy coated holiday founded on Lupercalia, a Roman parade festival celebrating sex and werewolves. It basically involved sacrificing a goat, wrapping the wet and bloody skin around you, then energetically racing naked around the city and cackling madly while smacking women with whips for pregnancy luck.

Me, I just can’t be bothered to put that much effort in. Someone hands me a goat at the crack of dawn, there’s not going to be any leaping out of bed to kill it, no, nor running. At least, I wouldn’t be the one running. This is dawn we’re talking about. AKA bedtime. Also, seriously, what did that poor goat ever do?

So rather than running naked and bloody through the streets of Seattle, something I’m theoretically capable of if I weren’t so damned lazy, sure, I’ve decided to celebrate this Valentine’s by sending Tony treasures through the mail instead. How pale in comparison, I know, but wait! Don’t judge yet! These treasures might not involve flaying animals or whipping nubile young women, but they’re awesome.

The first present arrived last week, a new Crankbunny design made in collaboration with poster artist Brian Ewing called the Tell-Tale Heart Custom Valentine Card, a paper ribcage which opens up to reveal a personal secret message under a scarlet scratch away foil heart. My message read you have my heart. xox jh. It was a tricky choice, given that she has so many beautiful cards, but as I gave Secret Decoder and Dancing Robot cards last year, I wanted something new, something a little more to Tony’s specific tastes, so I decided the macabre ribcage would appeal more to his recovering goth-osity than anything else in her shop, especially as it comes in a smart black envelope. Ha.

The next present arrived just yesterday, a valentine by Lea Redmond from The World’s Smallest Postal Service! The letter is transcribed on a miniature desk in the tiniest of script, sealed with a miniscule wax seal with the sender’s intial pressed into it, packaged up with a magnifying glass in a glassine envelope, and finished off with a large wax seal. The finished letter is just about the size of an American quarter, almost a little bit smaller. Tony was absolutely delighted to open the regular sized envelope and discover such a strange tiny gift inside.

The miniscule envelope, not having anything to do with actual mailing practices, can be marked as anything you like, so I wrote out the smoochiest addresses I could think of, mailing it from Jhayne Holmes, Lover’s Court, Inamorata, L0V34, Valentia, and to Tony Jackson, #1 Beloved Blvd, suite: 2 serenade, Inamorato, H34R7, Valentia, something Tony got to read out to Michelle and her friend Kevin, who were over as he unwrapped it.

Inside, it read;

Tony opens his valentine from the World's Smallest Postal Service

Now comes the long blue cold
by Mary Oliver, (with one word changed)

Now comes the long blue cold
and what shall I say but that some
bird in the tree of my heart
is singing.

That same heart that only yesterday
was a room shut tight, without dreams.

Isn’t it wonderful—the cold wind and
spring in the heart inexplicable.
Darling boy. Picklock.

-:-

Here’s to closing in one one year together, to holding hands even when we’re sleeping. Here’s to finding love together and trust, truth, and beauty bombs. Here’s to you, my exquisite love, my Tony, my only. Happy Valentine’s. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Jhayne

now to figure out how to permanently move to seattle

f4925624

september, seattle, fire spinning at gasworks park

One of the most amazing things about this trip, past the fact that it’s happening at all, is that Tony and I are going to get to spend an entire two weeks together, the longest period of time in each other’s company we’ll have had since we met in 2002. Once he gets off today’s bus, we’ll be inseperable until November 29th.

something caught in the throat, like a feather

I found out second hand, when you cheated on the girl you were fucking behind my back. She came to me, crying,
and asked what she had done wrong.
She didn’t know that we lived together, that you and I spelled a mutual m-i-n-e.
All she knew was that I was her friend.
I considered the satisfaction of throwing your things out the window then,
the meticulous movie moment of exploding chaos, socks spiraling to the street, books flapping their pages like miraculous paper birds attempting futile flight.
I had your childhood pictures and birthday cards from your sister.
Your special keepsakes in a box you had brought with you all the way from Australia, all the way from when you were born.
Perhaps it would be raining, when I did this Hollywood thing, this burst of scripted anger.
Even in August, it rains here a lot.
Your letters would get wet and the ink run in the gutters. Your jeans would soak through and become too heavy to carry.
Enough water and you would have nothing left with to remember your mother.
I thought about these things, and the mess, and the shouting, wondering if it would be satisfying, if I would feel absolved from your crime,
and I whispered a statement to the empty room, claiming it, before saying it to her,
and somehow, to you, rich with disappointment, I am sorry.

And now, once more, a drawer. What’s inside? This time I do not know. Clothes, a toothbrush perhaps. It is a mystery contained, hard-edged. A simple pull on the handle and the secret is out, but I do not want to look. The idea makes me flinch. It is terrible how small I am in your absence.

I do not wish to be reminded, nor read again the topography of your things.

Spaceship in Spanish is “nave espacial”

Contrast

When he lays down with me, it is as if my flesh lightens, I become milk spilled against the shaded tan of his nutshell skin, we are so distinct. I feel drawn to our differences, how his muscles are shaped dissimilar from mine. The softness of my body, the taut, fragile corners of his. Sometimes I will wake when he sleeps and simply admire him, this curious and perpetually buoyant creature with the temerity to fall in love.

We are so full of possibility, I can see it like maps on the inside of my eyes.

Disparity

He is slow to reply when we are sad, our bodies curled heavily together, depressed letters thrown to the bed in a mess. I do not react well to silence, not while asleep at night, not when we speak. His pause, the length of fifteen breaths, disrupts my communication, sends me casting nets, discarding what I started with, trawling the ocean of our alphabet for a topic, any topic, that will be worthy of response, anything to delay my please talk to me.

Somewhere in the gaps when he’s not speaking, there must be something to say.

give me a sentence fragment, and I’ll give you what I’m thinking

He dances for me as I leave, every time, out next to the bus as I sit inside, glued to the window, helpless but to smile. I breathe on the glass, trapped in my seat, and smear cartoon hearts in the resulting childish fog. I ADORE YOU, block letters, mirror formed, blowing kisses off my fingers, then holding my hands to my heart, messy with roughly mimed song lyrics. Bang, bang, my baby shot me dead. He runs alongside as the bus pulls out, skipping, swinging around if he can to stand on a street light like he’s singing in the rain, while I wave an invisible hanky, eyes locked on each other until we are defeated by the bus turning away.

We are reduced to texting then, once our line of sight is broken, my travel undeniable fact, snippets of poetry 160 characters long. I type awkwardly, all clumsy thumbs, until my cellular gives out by Bellingham, (Bellingham being north enough to be Canada according to the phone company). You are the answer to Samson’s riddle, I carefully type, arduously, letter by slow letter, the sweetness built inside my chest that coats my ribs in honey.

in an era obsessed with junk culture, I like to make things grow

We came home last night with bags full of treasure – groceries, favourite films, promising books, and a round black pot, some soil, and two miniature rose bushes tucked under my right arm, one red, one moonlight white, like the flowers assigned by Hans Anderson to Gerda and Kai. I planted the flowers before I even took off my boots, sitting at the kitchen table, fingers smeared with beautifully scented dirt, palms pricked scarlet from the thorns, smiling as if I was giving a home to a child. I potted them so close their roots will mingle as they grow, tying their lives into a thriving, inseparable mass, his and hers, with the simple breathing act of survival.