I was 47 when I recognised that I wasn’t exactly as straight
as I’d heretofore assumed. Now, I flatter myself that I’m about as liberal,
open-minded and sex-positive a human as you could hope to meet in normal life,
and given that I’ve been pretty open on the kink scene for about 4 years, my ‘normal’
casts a pretty wide net. But no, as far as I was concerned up to that point, I
was comfortable counting a pretty wide variety of LGBTQ+ people within my
friendship group, openly and on Facebook, but it really wasn’t my thing.
Except. Except … Except lots of things, as it turns out. My fiancée
Helena knew. She’d always kind of known, and there were lots of bits of our
play that had dropped some pretty broad hints. I was quite happy to slip into a
little pleated tartan skirt and take photos to send her, entirely because she ‘needed
a laugh and a bit of cheering up’; when I was in San Francisco, I went
underwear shopping in the Castro and browsed Grindr (strictly for research); I
thoroughly enjoyed anal play (although I found it a difficult thing to ask
for). I still deny that my willingness and ability to run up a set of curtains for
me and lacy underwear for her on her sewing machine is an indicator.
This week’s Wicked Wednesday submission is something that my wonderful @NotMuchOfAMuse sent me from work as she was getting into the Christmas Spirit in an office full of Bah Humbug …
I’m in a significant hurry for her to get home this evening!
Helena and I were 41 and 43 in 2014 when we met and, when we
met, I honestly think we were a bit in love before we made eye contact. She’d
seen something I’d written on Fetlife about Strong and Difficult Women that was
inspired by a Royal Shakespeare Company mug I have, connecting Cleopatra,
Desdemona, Kate, Lady Macbeth and Rosalind. She immediately pulled me up about
the ‘difficult’ bit, and after much back-and-forth, with digressions on why
Irish authors write better female characters, I changed it to ‘Strong and
Challenging’, which sat much better with both of us.
Strong, Challenging Women, please joun the turquiose line.
We met at a munch a couple of weeks later, and I went to a
(ostensibly vanilla) party at hers just after that, where things got excitable
(involving fire poi, amongst other distractions), and then a couple of days
later, we had our first night together in a hotel. She tries to deny how
quickly I fell in love with her, but I can give you the gist of our Fetlife
chat without ever having read it again. I can describe pretty much exactly what
she wore when we met, how her hair looked, what we talked about, and how I (robust,
confident, gregarious) could barely bring myself to look at her when we first
met because she was so fucking …much.
So beautiful and clever and funny.
We’ve been through so fucking much since then, blending
families and tying together our lives, exploring and discovering things about
ourselves and each other. I can honestly say I’m more in love with her today
than I was yesterday, or any day before that. We know each other; we’re both
ridiculously empathic, and that feeds the core of our relationship.
We’ve got a lot that we’ve brought into this relationship,
including a not-insubstantial number of children, and we occasionally chat
about opportunities missed. How it would have been to have our own, together.
How we would have loved discovering ourselves together in our 20s. How it could
have been if we’d been there to support, encourage, conspire and generally be a
bad influence on each other. And we both miss those missed opportunities.
Except …
Except those missed opportunities weren’t really missed.
We were raised hundreds of miles and a sea apart. The
closest we ever came to each other was about 50 miles when we were both doing
our respective training. If we hadn’t travelled these separate paths; if we
hadn’t had the respective spouses we had; if our previous relationships hadn’t
failed when and how they did; if, if, if …
If we change one thing in our past, the whole bifurcating, Sliding
Doors, Star Trek reboot, path not taken, chain of events that brought us together
collapses, and we never meet. And although I’d have no way to know it, my life
would have been immeasurably poorer for not having met her. The world would
have had one fewer shining examples of ‘nauseatingly in love’. You know those
doddery old couples you see in their 70s who are as clearly at least as in love
as they were way back when? That’s our realistic and easily achievable
relationship goal.
So. Do we wish we’d met 20 years earlier? Fuck yes. Do we begrudge it? Fuck yes. Would we change a single thought, deed, or decision that brought us to where we are now? No. Not a single fucking thing. I wish that we could have had another two decades of being in love, but we’re not concentrating on that. We’ve got today, and tomorrow and everything else, and we’re looking forward to being together in a nursing home, scandalising the staff by both of us flirting with the same cute ones, demanding Viagra, and Helena asking for assistance with her strap on cock.
This is from a series of photos I did with @NotMuchOfaMuse with Chinese paint brushes and ink. Half the fun was the clean-up. Maybe a quarter. At least 5%.
John Milton was a seriously repressed motherfucker…
