Relationship Acountrements

(in my mind, pronounced with a faux-French accent similar to ac-cu-tra-moan).

When I was a young boy, I thought in young boy ways. Now that I'm so much older. . . . I think in older man ways.

When I first started dating (remember, I was a late bloomber), I . . . . . . this blog was a lot easier to write in my head last night, sans a computer in my home, at bedtime, than it is to remember now. But I think the point is -

There was a man whom I dated, and I don't want to give him too much space. Today, with all respect to him, who he was is not important. But he lives, and for about four years, we fought the universe in futile attempts to date. Roughly four month cycles of dating and breaking up, that finally culminated in one horrible, loud, crying, begging, down-on-the-knees with snot-coming-out-of-the-nose break up. . . . . . and that was just me.

But early on in our relationship, I can remember many nights, or many mornings after the nights, when I would email or call G and other friends * and making sure to mention that either he is sleeping here tonight, or he did sleep there last night, or we took a nap until it was time for him to go to work on the night shift. Looking back, it seems that I looked at the accessories of a relationship as definers, as things that proved that he and I were dating, and that I was his boyfriend. ** I wanted us to go places together, to be seen together, and I wanted to be able to say that we had spent evenings sleeping next to each other. It seemed somehow . . . . . important, in a way that had to be noticed. Published. Public.

Time takes it's toll on a man, and thankfully so. At the age of 37, not 31, I'm a little more interested in who is sharing the bed with me, rather than telling everyone that he is sharing the bed with me. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy the middle of the night tangle of bed sheets and limbs, fighting for just the right pillow position. I like knowing that he's sleeping next to me, but I don't feel the need to tell it anymore. We lay down and have a sort of 15 minute tussle trying to figure out whose arm goes where, who spoons inside and out, and if the order of feet is mattress-mine-his or mattress-his-mine. We seem to cycle up on our rem patterns about the same, too, or perhaps we just both have to pee about four in the morning. And then we start the tussle all over, trying to find just the right spot for another 2 or 3 hours of sleep.

But for the first time in my life, for the first time and it took a very long time coming, who I'm sleeping next to, is just between him and me. I like that.


*Sissy & G sure took the bulk of some crazy things with my coming-to-terms with myself experiences
**Enough for a whole other blog, I think part of the problem, in a nutshell, was that he was 10 years younger than me, built like a brick house. I had some minor emotional issue with coveting him. lol.