An Anniversary

I wasn't necessarily planning to write about this particular topic, but it's been on my mind all weekend. Better to get it out.

Saturday was the anniversary of the night I met Spencer, last year, in my old home state. We'd spoken online a couple of times before that and I'd kind of written him off as a flaky whore. I didn't mind the whore part. Flaky, however, I only like in pie crusts. But I was horny, and he was available, so I issued the invitation.

I was charmed off my feet by him, that Friday. When he came back the next night, I knew I wanted him in my life. Night after night he came back until our emotions were as inextricably intertwined as the impossible sexual poses in which he'd grip me with his strong dancer's legs. I loved him, and told him so. He loved me, and would whisper the words as we'd drift off to sleep together, curled beneath layers of flannel sheets and blankets and his impossible fortresses of extra pillows, while snow fell to blanket the frozen ground outside.

For months we made love and spent all our free time together. I'd like to romanticize the relationship further and say that it was simple and uncomplicated, but it wasn't—we both knew the time was coming when my house would eventually sell and that we'd part ways. That knowledge is what made the relationship difficult for us both. It made him occasionally snippy and prone to verbal digs, as he tried to separate himself from me before we were too rooted together. It made me morose and prone to guilt and doubt. I worried too much that I was doing the wrong thing by allowing him to love me so deeply.

Despite the complications, we ended the relationship on a loving high note. When my house sold after a year and I finally made plans to reunite with my family, already living on the East coast, I worried that he'd pick some kind of fight on the pretext of it being easier to part from me angry than sad. But no, he was sweet and loving and supportive until the very night before I threw my overnight bags and the cats in the car and left Michigan for good. At a going-away party given me by friends that night, he was there, sitting next to me the entire time. He'd been everything to me, that last year. I had the spouse on my right side and Spencer on the left, and it seemed right.

Sad, but right.

I'd thought this month about the anniversary a couple of times in an idle fashion—it occurred to me that it had been in November of 2010 that we'd met, and that I should check on the date at some point. I didn't do anything about it, though, until last week when Spencer messaged me. We met this month a year ago!he said.

I checked my journal on my computer. November 19th. The best day of 2010 I had, I wrote back.
Saturday he messaged me again. You're one of my favorite people. I still treasure the time we had together . . . especially those long snowed-in days. Then he closed with his love.

Well. I couldn't have asked for anything nicer.

I read it and burst into tears that I had to hide and muffle in the bathroom.

And now that I had to look at the message again to copy it, I'm crying again, though I'm having to pretend I'm not, even as fat tears scald my cheeks.

But you know what? That's okay. I said above that the relationship Spencer and I had wasn't pure and uncomplicated, but I was a damned liar. It really was. No matter what the gap in our ages, no matter that we separated, never mind the stupid arguments we sometimes had or the words we both feared to say out of fear of hurting the other—none of that mattered in the end. For a time, a blissful and wine-sweet time, we were two boys in love. We took delight in each other's bodies, in each other's whims and palates. We saw parting on the horizon from the moment we met, and yet we both threw ourselves into the deep with abandon.

There's not much purer or more uncomplicated than that.