mnemonic roses
I sometimes regret that I have not kept a more exhaustive record of the early years of my relationship.
When I lived in California, I had nothing better to do than keep a true diary, ending every evening with a droning self-indulgent recap of the day's lack of events and the sort of roiling emotional turmoil one expects from a closeted homosexual virgin in his late twenties. I chanced upon LiveJournal after moving back to Virginia and it immediately usurped my focus. My entries, while still intensely personal from time-to-time, became either writing exercises or more superficial, focused primarily on events rather than my reactions and feelings. Finally, D. came into my life and assumed the role of close confidant, the (willing?) recipient of quotidian phone rants and a lifetime's worth of neurotic self-analysis. Because of this (and a certain respect for his sense of modesty and/or privacy), I have skirted publicly airing the much of the minutiae of our journey together.
It was, however, simple laziness that prevented me from recording these details privately. There are a number of poorly named text files and incomplete private entries where I set about to describe a certain date or vacation together, but, because of the lack of outside pressure an audience provides, they ended up half-finished--whatever the digital equivalent is of moldering--in the fragmented corners of my hard drive's more remote sectors.
Still, I am glad for what I have - four years of vague implications and terse overview. I approach those old entries with the perspective of someone who suddenly experiences a moment of deja vu, awash in inexplicably forgotten details, reliving a vivid dream that somehow slipped my mind. I see past the surface text and remember calling his voice mail while hurtling onto a highway on-ramp following my break-up, the giddy exhilaration of our first face-to-face meeting, the first time he told me he loved me, our fumbling early attempts at sex, our first first trip to Vegas together and the moment we sexually clicked.
I read between these cryptic lines the seminal moments of what have been the happiest four years of my life.
And, post-by-post, I fall in love all over again.
When I lived in California, I had nothing better to do than keep a true diary, ending every evening with a droning self-indulgent recap of the day's lack of events and the sort of roiling emotional turmoil one expects from a closeted homosexual virgin in his late twenties. I chanced upon LiveJournal after moving back to Virginia and it immediately usurped my focus. My entries, while still intensely personal from time-to-time, became either writing exercises or more superficial, focused primarily on events rather than my reactions and feelings. Finally, D. came into my life and assumed the role of close confidant, the (willing?) recipient of quotidian phone rants and a lifetime's worth of neurotic self-analysis. Because of this (and a certain respect for his sense of modesty and/or privacy), I have skirted publicly airing the much of the minutiae of our journey together.
It was, however, simple laziness that prevented me from recording these details privately. There are a number of poorly named text files and incomplete private entries where I set about to describe a certain date or vacation together, but, because of the lack of outside pressure an audience provides, they ended up half-finished--whatever the digital equivalent is of moldering--in the fragmented corners of my hard drive's more remote sectors.
Still, I am glad for what I have - four years of vague implications and terse overview. I approach those old entries with the perspective of someone who suddenly experiences a moment of deja vu, awash in inexplicably forgotten details, reliving a vivid dream that somehow slipped my mind. I see past the surface text and remember calling his voice mail while hurtling onto a highway on-ramp following my break-up, the giddy exhilaration of our first face-to-face meeting, the first time he told me he loved me, our fumbling early attempts at sex, our first first trip to Vegas together and the moment we sexually clicked.
I read between these cryptic lines the seminal moments of what have been the happiest four years of my life.
And, post-by-post, I fall in love all over again.