| now is | once was | came from | heard tell |

12:44 a.m. - 2005-01-12

New Kid In Town

In all of 2004, there were no new faces in my life. That little list that I keep (the one I don’t often admit to, that lists all the people I have slept with) grew by not a soul for the first time since I started having sex. Not that I was celibate, or with one partner all year- no, it was just the year of recycling. And in some ways that was a good thing. I got to know the revisited much better- I resolved things that would otherwise have gone unresolved, established things about myself I wouldn’t have realised otherwise.

I only mention this because I picked up on the weekend, and oh my goodness, I had forgotten how good it is. To have a new person, a new face, a new excitement, and actual sex. That someone is actually interested in. I don’t know anything about her, but we’ve spent three days together, and in a way I know her in detail. I know her manners, her gentle and thorough way of kissing me, her young butch pride. I know she is excited by me, and scared of me, and feels a little like I have hit her like a tornado. I know that when I leave she will lie awake at night thinking about me. She has told me none of these things.

I wonder if I am only doing this with her because I am leaving the country- if I feel free to throw myself wholeheartedly into topsy-turvy whirlwind romance, into dates and long nights and breakfast, movies and dinner out and drinks in nice bars. Because I will be leaving, and I do not have to think about such things as, ‘but how much do I really like her?’ and ‘to what degree am I prepared to deal with the consequences of such full-scale romance?’. I do not need to evaluate her in any way as a long-term option, because the possibility just isn’t there. And that leaves me free to just enjoy her. To just enjoy being treated like a princess, like a precious object, by such an earnest, gorgeous young thing. She is like my usual type but five years younger. I’m enjoying that as well.

Of course this sends the boy into fits of jealousy, and also total denial. He would never admit to caring enough to be bothered, but will merely sulk, growl at me when I call, punish me with coldness. Young butch had expressed some concern that ‘my partner’ might inflict damage on her as a result of our encounter. I do not have a partner, I told her. I have a friend, who is intense and passionate and possessive but does not behave in ways to justify this. Very occasionally, we have sex. More often he uses the possibility of sex to keep me in line. He is a sullen and charismatic butch dyke who will not punish her, will merely dismiss her, and punish me with a sulking tantrum. I love my boy, I really do, but I feel no guilt at all for treating myself to something else.

(before the young butch, the boy had been on the phone to me with such lines as, I would be committed to you if you weren’t leaving the country, and, when you come back we should… I would believe him, I would dearly love to believe him, but my experience suggests he is using this as a guarantee that I will come back to him. At which point things will resume exactly as they have left off. And I refuse to allow that to be my only option).

- |+

[Phone Home] - 2005-02-22

[She hurts, even from here, she hurts.] - 2005-02-11

[Two weeks and counting] - 2005-01-31

[Dirty] - 2005-01-20

[Here Now] - 2005-01-18