I Know What I've Signed Up For
[Location: My bedroom, Hibiscus's house, Silverstag Eco Hamlet]
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"I need to remember to tell you about the berry-picking C.S.A.," Hibiscus said.
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"You already did. I looked into it. We're going to be getting two different fruit shares from other farms," I said.
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"Oh," Hibiscus said. "I did?"
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"Yes. It's the one over at the village in town," I said. Hibiscus nodded confirmation and I went on, "I can't remember exactly what it was that made me decide against it. I think I recall it being a high price per pound considering that you had to pick them too. There is this place an hour south of Snowland that Panda introduced me to where the berries are only $1.25 per pound and they don't care if you eat berries all day while you pick, and the place is huge, and they don't spray anything. They have honey there too, from their own land, so I would often get my year's supply of local honey when we went berry picking. It was also nice how all the varieties of blueberries were mixed together and occasionally you'd find a blackberry or raspberry bush too."
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Hibiscus's eyes were closed. He was laying flat on his back in my bed. I was sitting and turned so that I was facing him. "Are you tired?" I asked. "You look asleep."
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"No," he said, his voice sounding dismal.
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"What's wrong?" I asked. He didn't respond right away, so I asked, "Is it because I'm being dismissive of the place you mentioned to me?"
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"Part of me wants to say, yes, that's exactly it, and yet, that isn't all of it," he said, opening his eyes briefly and looking at me. I waited, anxious for him to elaborate. I felt happy to be in his company, happy to talk with him, and yet now he was distressed. Surely I could easily remedy that.
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"Bodicea and I went berry picking there each year. But it doesn't matter. No place I take you to is going to be as good as the place you were just raving about," Hibiscus said. I frowned. Oh, so this is about him feeling inadequate again, I thought, thinking about last night, where that had come up in a different context. "When you looked into C.S.A. options on your own," he continued, "You came up with better solutions than my suggestions. It is better that way."
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My frown deepened. I like when you introduce me to things from your life. I like seeing where you've been and who you've been. Suddenly it felt very important to me to convince him that I wanted to go berry picking with him specifically where he had gone berry picking before.
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"We can go to the places you've gone to before for berry picking," I said.
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"We could, but then you'd bitch about how it wasn't good enough."
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Suddenly I needed more air and began sucking in more of it with each breath. "I could skip the bitching," I said, smiling at him. Underneath, I felt resentment stir. I wasn't bitching. I won't bitch. How often do I really bitch about things? It's you who is bitching. And you're not even bitching about anything that is actually happening, or likely to happen, or has happened.
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"What would be the point? It would be an inferior experience," Hibiscus said.
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"I could go with you just to go," I said.
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"You could go with Paladin just to go with Paladin. Then the two of you can bitch together and agree about how the other places you've been were better."
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My heart sunk into my stomach. But I want to go with you! I thought in frustration. What is this really about? Why is he so dark all of the sudden? What did I do? I thought back through the exchanges of conversation we'd had. We had been talking happily right up until I was describing my experience with the berry picking place south of Snowland. And then he was suddenly quite disquieted. No, I thought, I will not let myself believe that raving happily about positive past experiences is a bad thing. I will not let myself be programmed to believe that. Gods, Hibiscus, please don't be such an ass.
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"I've got better things to do this summer," I said. "I've gone berry picking many, many summers out of my life. This year I'm interested in going kayaking with you, and extending our garden. We've got a greenhouse to build. And I might like to travel somewhere."
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"Exactly," Hibiscus said. "And I'm really not all that into berry picking. I won't miss it. It doesn't matter. There is no point in introducing you to things that I have some positive emotional association with. You won't enjoy them."
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My heart clenched. Part of me felt on the verge of tears, but that part of me stayed separate from my voice, my face, my tear ducts. Yet, my smile was gone. I felt heavier. More tired. I had to pee. I should go pee. I moved as if I would go to the bathroom. No, wait, I thought, he might want to have sex with me and a full bladder makes the sex feel much better. I should wait.
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"What is this really about?" I asked.
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Hibiscus took a deep breath. "I feel inadequate. I'm never going to be good enough for you."
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"Why do you feel that way? You were talking about this last night too," I said. It's because we're having a commitment ceremony this Sunday. You're having jitters about that. Ironic. You didn't have jitters when I asked for your promises in the shower. That had been in the middle November. I had asked for his promise to keep me, shelter me and feed me. He had promised to do so. It was then that I allow myself to think of him as my husband. I had asked what he wanted me to promise him. He told me he wanted me to promise not to give up on him. I had promised to do so. I'm not giving up now either, I thought.
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Hibiscus was quiet for a while. I look at his eyelids which hid his beautiful blue gems from my view. Eyes closed, face closed, he gave me nothing to read. It was fairly unusual, as he was often quite expressive. I began touching him, hoping he would have sex with me. I really had to pee.
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"Will you fuck me?" I asked sweetly.
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"Not right now," he said. "I'm not at all in the mood for it."
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I sighed. I made some guesses about the root of his distress. I said, "You've been pretty good about not giving me false expectations, you know. I know where you stand. You're not leaving Silverstag Eco Hamlet. You're not going to untangle your time, attachment or money from Silverstag. You're not giving up most of your books, and you're going to catalog them in a way that is incomprehensible to me." You're probably never going to like having a beard, but I hope you'll change your mind. "You're never going to be a committed raw foodist. Sure, you'll eat the things I make for you, but not to the exclusion of other things you like." But I hope you change your mind. I still hope. You may never choose to travel the world with me and start life again with me, but I hope you will. "You're not going to rearrange your house very much." But maybe we'll build one together at Silverstag. "You're going to become resentful of me over time no matter what I do." And there really is nothing I can do about that, I thought, my heart clutching. It's who you are. It's one of your deepest patterns. I hope you'll still fuck me when you hate me. "Sometimes you're going to be lost in such a fugue that you will be entirely unreachable and won't talk to me, or want to have sex with me."
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"Fugue," he said, pronouncing it differently than I had.
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"I've never heard it said aloud before," I said.
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He shrugged. "That was a much better way to get me to have sex with you."
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I smiled. "That made you feel better?"
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"Safer, but not better," he said. "Worse, actually."
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"But you have so many good parts," I said, trying to collect up in my mind all the things about him that made him worth it to me.
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He scoffed. "When I'm not busy being miserable."
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"It's addictive," I said.
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"I don't even know what I want. I've tried making lists, but I can never get it right. I just want to not be miserable," Hibiscus said.
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"At least you get to be right," I said.
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"Oh?" he asked.
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"You get to be right and superior and miserable," I clarified.
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"What do I get to be right and superior about?"
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"You get to be right and superior when you drive five miles per hour," I said. He snorted. I continued, "You get to be right when you put Silverstag Eco Hamlet projects before your own, and then work on your own projects even when you're exhausted. You get to be superior by not buying new clothes, and by not shopping much in general."
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Hibiscus nodded, "That's a big one."
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"And you get to be miserable," I said.
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His lips twitched, twisting a little at one side.
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I scoffed a little, thinking of myself. "That's what I've been doing this past year - past two years actually," I said. "I've stopped trying to be right and superior so much and started looking at being happy instead. The only problem is that trying to be happy has been identity-breaking for me." Or rather, some of my quest for happiness had been identity breaking, like learning to embrace cars, shopping, and the dominance of a corporate culture. But truly, wasn't I returning to myself more than I was breaking myself? Wasn't it the defensive facades I was breaking down more-so than my true self? I wasn't sure.
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"It feels to me like anything identity breaking automatically makes me feel unhappy," Hibiscus said.
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I looked at him sadly. I'm sorry dear, I thought. That's the part of you that is old. You're quite attached to who you've been, and it's stopping you from becoming who you want to be, from even seeing who you want to be clearly. It's stopping you from being happy. I'm sorry. I wish I could help, but I no longer hold illusions that I can. At the time, I wasn't thinking clearly about returning to even younger selves, returning to truer selves. I was preoccupied with my full bladder, my desire, my sadness, my desperation.
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I kissed him. He wasn't interested. If he was going to have sex with me, I'd missed the cue.
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Hibiscus reached for his reading glasses and picked up Jhereg.
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I frowned, feeling wasted.
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"You wanted to read, yes?"
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"I did, a long time ago," I said.
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"Well, let's read," he said.
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"But I want you to fuck me," I said.
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"I need some transition time. Let's read."
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I sighed. Okay, let's read. We'll see how long I can go with my bladder so full. I'm sure I'll forget about it while I'm reading.
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We read a chapter. We were very close to the end of the book and things were heating up. The end of the chapter was exciting, and clearly not a place that Hibiscus would want to stop. I started kissing his cheek and then his ear. He laughed as his eyes read the last words of the chapter. I had intentionally read it quickly so that I would finish before he did. He looked at me, shining his pools of beautiful cerulean at me.
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"Fuck me?" I pleaded.
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"Can I read while we fuck?" he asked.
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"Sure," I said.
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"Really?"
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"Yeah," I said.
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He grabbed a condom. I grabbed his cock. It was quite soft. I stroked him, and kissed him. He barely responded. I pushed down any thoughts of sadness that might want to creep into my thoughts. I will get what I want, I said to myself, focusing my consciousness entirely onto his level of arousal. I noticed each change in him. When he was finally hard, he said: "I think you have me where you want me."
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I smiled, and he added, "Structurally, that is. Not geographically."
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I laughed, my entire body shaking with the force of my surprised glee. I pulled out the condom, checked which way it unrolled, and put it on him, unrolling it down his shaft.
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He started to say something, but I ignored it and straddling him, sucking in the delicious feelings. Yes, this is totally worth the wait with a full bladder. Who knew my bladder would become such a good friend after all these years of animosity? I rode him harder. He picked up the book and began reading. He's reading a book while I ride him, I thought. Some part of me felt sadness again, but that part of me was very distant. Consciously, I felt the hinted degradation in that and it spurred me.
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I came while riding him, while he read. It was yet another first. Something memorable. Something different. We were good at that. When I got frustrated at not being able to make myself cum again I planted my body firmly against his and pulled, initiating a roll-over. He was smooth with it. We rolled without any awkward falling-out or having to reorganize ourselves or our surroundings. We fucked like the well-practiced duo that we were.
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I orgasmed five times overall. I was pleased. I went to the bathroom, squatted in the tub with the tub-water running and peed. I washed my crotch thoroughly with lavender-oil soap, rinsed, dried off and returned to the room. Hibiscus was reading again. I'll have to read at double-time to catch up, I thought. But Hibiscus resolved that by going downstairs to grab himself a kombucha or some other snack. I was so focused on the book that I didn't notice what he grabbed, although I did open the window to let the farts out.
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When he returned we finished the chapter together side-by-side. I suggested a change of position, and we curled up on pillows propped against the wall and read all the way to the end of the book. Satisfied, eyes burning, throat hurting, and extreme exhaustion settling in, I said sleepily, "I'm ready for bed."
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"Shall I stay the night?"
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I shook my head.
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"Shall I turn off this light?" he asked, gesturing to lamp near the foot of the bed.
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"Yes."
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"And you'll get the other?" he asked, indicating the lamp at the head of the bed.
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"Uh-huh," I said, wishing he would open the window again for me. I wanted it open through the night. He turned off the lamp. I struggled with the window. He closed the door to my room. I slumped to my bed and switched off the lamp, abstractly resentful that I had to arrange the covers. The moment I was still I fell asleep.