how I really feel

I saw you as a smooth, creative person who needed very little.  A bikesexual filmmaker artist northwest cliche.  I thought you had a thousand friends.  They were all over the world, and you could stay with them, when you toured with your film festival.  

Were you having sex with all of them?  Not sure.  Who wouldn’t want to have sex with you.  I saw you take off your glasses one time, and had to repress a gasp.  How beautiful you looked to me, as if the glasses with their pink tint were the only thing keeping you separate.

porn star

I learned you were a sex worker, and I remember the first time you ever hugged me.  I thought it was strange you would want to, as if hugs were too preliminary.  I remember your caution and how your body felt in my arms.

You had your dick inside all sorts of people on an everyday basis.  Why would you want to hug me?  I thought you were beyond hugs.  You were a mythical advanced sexual being, in a way I could never understand.

The wordplay was delicious.  I noticed and adored your slight gay affect.  Your thinness, the tightness of your teeshirts, the shortness of your shorts.  Those beat up dress shoes you wear all the time.  The way you sit with your legs crossed, like the thin, queer marathon runners I’ve known.  

I noticed your nuanced intelligence.  I evaluated your wit.  I thought you must come from money.  I lamented that you were another entitled white guy with an anger problem.

me and my spouse

I fantasized that I would hire you to have sex with me and my spouse, when I barely knew you.  I would masturbate, imagining you and him fucking me.  I wished it was possible.  I wondered how much it would cost.

When you and your wife broke up, I was afraid you were under-supported.  Maybe you lost friends in the split.  You were giving away possessions, like that terrible hat, and I was afraid you’d kill yourself.  

I started checking in with you over txt–more for my spouse than for me.  He loved you much more than I did.  

That day he and I were at the taco restaurant, I saw you walk in the door and asked him, “Is that so-and-so?”  He turned around to look, and when he realized it was you, he almost sprinted to you.  I’d never seen him do that.

I liked when I saw him hold your hand.  When I walked into the room and he was on the phone, I could tell when it was you he was talking to.  He had a tenderness in his voice that was only for you.

At first maybe you didn’t appreciate my txted questions about your well-being.  You seemed guarded.  Then my mom died, and you started supporting me too.  I felt special.  

holding your hand

We met at that Ethiopian restaurant.  Your hand was cold, and I held it.  I was totally unprepared for the swell of love in my heart.  How long was I allowed to hold it?  Was the tenderness of that moment real?  Did I matter to you?  Were you pretending that?  You’re definitely an actor.

What does it mean, to hold hands with a brilliant, sexy divorcee at an Ethiopian restaurant as my spouse witnesses?  It felt way better than I believed holding hands ever should.  I started longing for you again, but this time not as a stranger.

I’m skipping years–when you visited me twice in the hospital, something like an argument, red lentils, my spouse’s birthday party where you hugged him for a long time and started to cry.  My spouse’s excitement as he told me afterward, that you seemed to care about him.  

cheesecake

The time we met for sushi, I asked if you wanted to try my delicious matcha cheesecake, then slipped a bite into your mouth, on my spoon.  I felt something like a shock of electricity, as the cheesecake morsel entered your mouth and your eyes closed.  

I thought it would be a meaningless act of dessert sharing, but it felt sensual, at the same time wholesome, too vivid, almost erotic.  Did I want more of that?  Yes, I did.

Afterward, saying goodbye on the sidewalk, I wanted your hug too badly.  We stood together, our bodies pressed close together.  You said something that implied the need for a response, but I wanted to concentrate on what we were doing.  I would breathe with you and relax a little deeper into the hug, trying to feel how long I was allowed to touch you.

north

You recently left most of your possessions in our shed and headed north.  You took your time, meandering, and I periodically asked where you were, over txt.  

I looked up town names on googlemaps to see how far you were.  Oh, only a few hours away.  

I wanted you to come back.  I longed for you–sexually, emotionally, to be vulnerable to you, to give you something of myself I’d never given to anyone.  Maybe some corner of my heart had never loved yet, had been waiting specifically for you.

I wanted to visit you as you stayed in our guestroom and learn how to love you the way you want to be loved.  I wanted your body.  I told myself lust was meaningless and I was wasting my time.  

lust as a sign

Then I considered–maybe lust is a sign.  Maybe your body had something to teach me–there was meaning in these feelings, and Mother God wanted me to share part of my life with you.

I almost asked you to come back.  I don’t think you would have.  I wished you needed to return to sign a form, as your house is being sold.

Tonight you’re arriving at your destination, to stay with the friends who asked you to come spend the pandemic quarantine with them.  You say you’re returning here in less than six months.  

I imagined you driving over the bridge, crossing the river.  I lay in bed, sobbing.  The pain of losing you activated the other pain.  I’m not into regret, but I wished I had asked you to live with us.  I’d thought it wasn’t fair to the people already here.  

I hope when you come back, I can tell you something important with my body, whatever my body has to say, and cherish your entire being. 

who you really are 

I wanted to be your client, then your friend.  For a while, I wanted nothing to do with you.  Then I wanted to be close to you again and feel the nourishment of your attention, come on you, and learn who you really are.

When you were getting ready to move and started visiting every day to deliver plants from your garden, boxes to put in our shed, and your slightly expensive bed, seeing you every day became part of my life.  I grew to need you.

I’d like new projects to share with you, as a way to learn, but also an excuse to remain connected to you.  How I really feel is–I wanted to be your girlfriend, then your lover.  

It’s not about your dick or the pornographic movie you starred in that I semi-accidentally saw a clip from.  It’s about tenderness and the gentle way you’ve looked at me from the beginning.