Your Kids and My Ass
Wherein our narrator catches us up with what's
been going on.
So much, so very much transpired in the last
week. On Saturday I had my first party in Sydney, a lovely 2-stage affair:
after 4 PM for families with small children (Peter & Ann with Liam &
Raphie, Shilo and James with Connor), after 7 PM for everyone else. When I
threw Big & Viveka out at 3:15 AM, I pronounced the whole affair a complete
success - people came, had a very good time, drank a whole lot of wine (but true
to form, they left me with more alcohol than I started with, something that is a
bit of an Australian tradition).
(My
god. Mahler's 9th on the Train. It's like a
revelation.)
So the weekend was mch
consumed by preparing for and cleaning up after the party. But on Sunday brunch
- I should have been dreadfully hungover, but wasn't, thankfully - I joined
Rachel and Jeremy for lunch. If there is any person (besides Shilo) I have to
thank for being in Sydney, it'd be Rachel. She took care of me in 1997 when
Grant (a former boyfriend I was staying with) turned into a bitch-on-wheels when
his own boyfriend broke up with him (because Grant was pathetically unable to
keep it in his pants). Ah, she was so young then, single but shacked up with
Jeremy, and making her way in the world, a path that led to San Francisco, and
marriage, and their delightful year-old daughter, Claire Christmas, so named
because her birthdate is
25/12/2002.
And an interesting point:
this is the cross-over axis of two blogs - my own and Rachel's (www.yatima.org),
and I wonder how each of us will come across in the
other's.
But this is all so much
obfuscation. Burying the lead, as Tony would say. I've met a lovely man. And
this presents an enormous
annoyance.
First: he violates the rule:
never date someone with your own first name. So his name is Mark. He's tall
& thin and forty years old. (Which, right there, marks him as different,
because I do normally date much younger.) He's absolutely gorgeous, that is,
with the most amazing eyes, that I can't really stop looking into, except that I
really do stop looking into them pretty quickly because I feel myself falling,
falling, falling every time I do.
(Do I
sound like a goofy 16 yearl-old yet? I hope
so.)
But here's the pisser: he's a
resident of San Francisco, and although he's been in Australia very nearly the
same length of time I have, he returns to California on the 5th of April - we'll
actually cross paths in the airport in Auckland on that Monday afternoon. So
he's got nine-days-and-counting left on his clock, and here we are each of us
finding ourselves both irresistibly attracted to each other and really enjoying
each other's company.
What to do?
There are all sorts of issues to consider here. One of them is the three-date
rule, another is the long-distance rule, another is the
I-don't-want-it-to-get-weird rule. So many rules. But we talked about it,
somewhat elliptically, somewhat plainly, last night, after a lovely dinner on
Crown Street. We're both agreed that it's quite a shame that this is all coming
to an end, and neither of us particularly wants to ruin it (or rather, have it
get weird) by rushing the whole shagging thing. And as promiscuous as I may be
from time to time (something that's only alluded to in this blog, because
goodness knows who might be reading it) I don't like to handle my affairs of the
heart in the same way.
Third, he's a
Cancer. But I've decided not to hold that against
him.
So here the two of us are, ready
to throw ourselves at each other. But not doing it. Because we like each other
enough not to do it. This makes sense if in a very Jane Austen-y sort of way.
But when he goes home, he might never come back. We might never see each other
again. And while I'm not so deeply emotionally involved that it'll just break
my heart, it will hurt.
And then,
besides all this, there's one other thing: my ass has disappeared. Evidentially
the current phase of weight loss has been taking it most conspicuously off my
backside. I looked into the mirror last week and said, "Where's my ass gone?"
I now have a classic white-boy's ass, which is to say, it's hardly there at all
- just enough to sit on, and very little more. That's good, because it was just
all fat, but that's bad, too, because asses are sexy. I wonder if this is what
women with small breasts feel
like?
God, I'm being incredibly
shallow. Oh well. Sometimes shallow is good.
Posted: Thu - March 25, 2004 at 09:00 AM