Significations

Thursday, Sept. 26, 2002 -
Ap�sl�min ida corbalanyrtne 'ls�o rohl'daathi�m v� nen�a iroyss�rd.

Tristine Rainer sez: "In describing my experience I am recording not what happened or what exists, but how I perceive it. In doing so I define myself. As I create my diary, I create myself."

Damn, that's a scary thought.

~

Stymied.

That's a good word. I know I had told you that before, but since I am, I thought it would be appropriate to mention it again.

Actually, I'm not totally stymied, because this is my effort to work my way out of this little impasse in the writing of this diary. And I suppose the fact that I am here, and writing, demonstrates that this impasse is actually not impassable. That makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

I know what I want to write about: my relationship with Erik (the Fiend), which has grown deeper over the summer, and which deepened further, suddenly, over a crisis, last week. But I can't figure out exactly where to begin. And reading Eluard (in my last entry: "The language of my love does not belong to human language...") and Elaine (via Meena aka allumeuse: "Never speak about what you love, be selfish with it. It'll remain special longer.") has not helped. And I know this, from haikuboy, is somehow apropos: "There is more significance in the trivial than in the greatest of events." Thanks, Chad.

But none of this helps me find a beginning, except that this is a beginning, isn't it? Inasmuch as it is at the top of this entry. But it's going nowhere. And it's getting there pretty darn fast.

Urgh.

So.

What?

Okay.

Let's eschew the beginning, shall we? We don't need no stinkin' beginnings. What follows here, and in future entries, will no doubt be incomplete and random, but in the end (if there is an end--hell, there wasn't a beginning, so why should there be an end?) it will make sense as a whole, in a fragmentary sort of way.

Yeah. Right. Um. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

~

The Fiend's birthday is, or was, July 4th, which makes him a Cancer to my Capricorn, a Crab to my Goat. If that's significant, I don't care. The zoology of the Zodiac is just a quaint antique bestiary to me. Did you know that the Fiend turned his twenty-ninth year this past July? Of course you didn't know. Heck, even I didn't know. I thought he was becoming thirty-two (and a very becoming thirty-two he will be, when he becomes thirty-two). I had to find out from his mother that I am in love with a younger man. (Uh, not younger than me--I'll be twenty-eight come Christmas--but younger than my perception of him). I felt rather foolish that I didn't know the age of my own boyfriend, but my excuse was good: the Fiend had deceived me. Well, he didn't deceive me, not specifically... I mean, I had never asked him his age. But I had read his clippings, and I am re-writing his promotional copy (you know: his biography, his list of achievements, milestones, shows, important collectors, etc., plus the requisite high-falutin' statement of artsy-fartsy bullshit) and in those paragraphs the Fiend was born in 1970. I confronted the Fiend with this fact, and he confessed to the lie. But it wasn't really his lie, or I should say, it wasn't really his idea. Apparently, his first spin-doctor, encountered at a seminar, recommended that the Fiend add a few years to his life. He convinced the Fiend that if he beefed up the paltry number of his age (the Fiend's first successes came early) his art would gain a lucrative quantity of gravitas in the eyes of the beholders. The Fiend took this advice to heart (after all, he hadn't shelled out 450 bucks for the seminar just for the opportunity to scorn all that he was told) and subsequently lived three years of his life in a moment.

And the spin-doc? The Fiend never saw him again. He can't even remember his name; he lives as "Wayne Pen-something" in the Fiend's memory. (Pendleton? Pennington? Pennywell? Pentecost? Pendragon?... Wayne, darlin', if you recognize yourself, drop us a line.)

I'm trying to figure out if it's significant that the Fiend is not the age I thought he was. I was a bit proud of myself for shacking up with an older man, defying the common perception* of gay men as youth-obsessed sex-machines. Although, even when he was thirty-two in my mind and in my heart, the Fiend was only four years older than me, hardly an elder statesman. However, if we were in high school, I would be the lowly freshman and the Fiend would be... well, he'd be a lowly freshman too, but he'd be in college. Of course, at twenty-nine, he's still the older man in our relationship, by more than a year... oh, this is too stupid! It means nothing, doesn't it?

Especially since I wasn't defying the sex-machine part of the common perception.

(Oh, gawd, this is an auspicious beginning, isn't it?)

(Oh, right. It's not a beginning.)

~

*An uncommon perception.

<~>
Ap�sl�min ida corbalan� 'lse nesgla ugar�-cham sa cru ogrulho bat�oltha al�mv�sde.

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