Posts tagged with "romance"

Duets

One day I’d like to pick up an instru­ment with a big­ger range (than a ukulele1), and start writ­ing my own mate­r­i­al. It’d be even bet­ter if I could form a duo with a per­son I was roman­ti­cal­ly involved with, like The Dresden Dolls or Wild Strawberries2.

Sometimes The Dresden Dolls play extend­ed ver­sions of their songs at con­certs3. The way they inter­act reveals such inti­ma­cy. In each face, you can see how they’re com­plete­ly lost to the music in those moments of dis­so­nant bliss, but they’re lost togeth­er. From body lan­guage alone, they read each oth­er for tim­ing, vol­ume, and inten­si­ty, until they feel where the oth­er is going by instinct. That kind of chem­istry is rare, and it’d be amaz­ing to be able to share that with some­one.

  1. The high‑g reen­trant is what gives the ukulele it’s dis­tinct sound, but it feels so lim­it­ing some­times. [↩]
  2. Hellllllllllooooooooo Roberta Carter-Harrison cir­ca Quiver. [↩]
  3. Okay, admit­ted­ly, Amanda’s singing isn’t any­where as good in the video as on the stu­dio ver­sion, but the near­ly five-minute extend­ed intro with Brian’s bril­liant drum solo would be worth the price of admis­sion by itself. [↩]

The Regret Of A Night Lost

I should be hap­py. Or feel­ing bit­ter­sweet, at least. On the one hand, I’m thank­ful to have had the chance to share so many things with her:

  • lis­ten­ing to Bring Me The Disco King (Lohner Remix), as she sat curled in my lap in the dark­ness of my room
  • runs for bub­ble tea before set­tling in for the night with a movie or two
  • a road trip to Toronto, where I got to intro­duce her to my friends, Pacific Mall, and drag­on’s beard can­dy
  • par­ties at Pat and Jen’s, with board games, Rock Band, deli­cious food, amaz­ing peo­ple, and gen­er­al silli­ness
  • moments like this
  • look­ing into her eyes while our bod­ies were locked in blan­kets on the liv­ing room floor
  • read­ing my favourite parts of The Prophet to her
  • just the two of us going to dim sum on a beau­ti­ful Saturday morn­ing, and intro­duc­ing her to a med­ley of new dish­es

But there’s one thing I regret, and that’s not being able to spend the night with her, for she had nev­er slept over, you see. Sure, there were times when we stayed awake well past sun­rise, with only the touch of hand and flesh as silent dia­logue, my desire to pro­long the plea­sure dri­ving my will to stay awake to every moment pos­si­ble with her. Those are some of my favourite mem­o­ries. But the sleep that even­tu­al­ly took us was only our bod­ies pass­ing out briefly from exhaus­tion, and when we woke, she’d be gone soon after.

There are oth­er things I wish I had had the chance to do while it last­ed — shar­ing a relax­ing bath, pho­tog­ra­phy and video ideas, get­ting involved in a deep co-op game — but none of them were as impor­tant as a night spent sleep­ing togeth­er.

A long time ago, I wrote about how a girl­friend helped me fig­ure out the impor­tance of the night because of my ear­li­er romances, and the sit­u­a­tions that nev­er let me share some­thing as sim­ple as sleep, the most inti­mate of inti­mates.

In a rela­tion­ship, shar­ing the night is more impor­tant than shar­ing flu­ids. Falling asleep with some­one is an accep­tance of trust, a way of say­ing that we’re com­fort­able enough to drift into our sub­con­scious minds.

Perhaps it was my fault for keep­ing her awake. I won­der now, if on one night, I should have let myself sleep, instead of let­ting our pas­sion take us long into the next day.

The Kissing Map

There were patch­es of skin on her body that would build, and turn white, and flake.

She was always self-con­scious of those areas, to the point of tears, but I called them my kiss­ing map, as each patch would lead my lips to the next. In the dark, the spots revealed them­selves in their tex­ture, like del­i­cate wounds. How dif­fer­ent they tast­ed, how strange that skin felt against my own.

I would always kiss those spots, in hopes that my lips would con­vince her that she had noth­ing to be self-con­scious about around me. To ease, and share their bur­den.

To acknowl­edge that she was flawed, as we all are on earth, but I still loved and accept­ed her, despite it all.

Be Still, My Heart

Muse side face

In the dark, our bod­ies fit like puz­zle pieces — face in neck, crest in val­ley, curve in curve. I’m com­plete­ly vul­ner­a­ble when she lets me love her like this. She brings my guard down.

It’s the way she makes me hap­py with­out try­ing. The way I’m filled with ten­der­ness every time I feel the warmth of her skin against mine. The way her exis­tence gives me hope for the rest of the world.

If I chose to fall back on old habits and kept my dis­tance to pro­tect myself, I would­n’t know this inef­fa­ble feel­ing. I may get hurt, but it’s worth every moment I can be next to her.

Maybe she’s right, and I’ll feel dif­fer­ent­ly by the time it’s nec­es­sary. Until then, there’s no use in fight­ing it.

Not that I let myself fall for her.

My heart nev­er gave me a choice.