Likewise: I don't apologize

Love is:

coming home hungry to a plate prepared with tamales when previously
there
had been nothing to eat in the house. Thank you, WomiE.

Vinny came back from his glamorous two week vacation in Jersey—spending money he didn’t consider paying rent with and having the time of his life until he grew poor and had to return home. I clearly enable his foolishness. Vinny hitched a greyhound bus to commit scandal and wreckage to the east coast early one Monday morning with a backpack harboring my studio-sized headphones, which he stole from me, and didn’t return for two full weeks. Dare I say his absence was bliss. During which time the apartment got rearranged drastically—laundry got handled, dishes got washed, the sofa got moved, Jerome and I pushed around Vinny’s weight bench and there was a spirit…a quiet sort of gaiety in the unit that didn’t exist while Vinny was home and now that Vinny’s returned I think he recognizes it too. I digress.



It was brought to my attention that there will be people to hear the news of I and Jerome reuniting under the guide of Requited Love and applaud. Likewise, there will be a duck pond full of people who will hear of the news and either break glass or vomit. There were undoubtedly casualties in this reunion. I myself set fire to a number of bridges and everyday I find yet another to burn. Jerome and I have appreciated those who’ve been moved to applause but just out of the nature of it being a year-long separation, other relationships made, other relationships had—by no fault of our own or his own or my own—the thought of me will now leave several tongues purple and spoiled afternoons to someone “new” in WomiE’s life.

I will be the collateral damage in their sarcasm. They will, in passing, approach Jerome on the street or over other social networks and say things like, “so you left me for her”, and scowl leaving a plume of bitchassness in their exit-dust. This, of course, will be people who will only know of me through this reunion—recognizing me instantly in a crowd of people as the guy who stole from them their potential happy ending.

What I offer to the community of ducks in this pond who will take the news of WomiE and I poorly is that we’re making a home for ourselves everyday. Every morning I drive him into work and every evening he picks me up from work. Today we wore matching t-shirts and sometimes our underwears match. I don’t apologize for Jerome coming home. In fact, the only thing I’m sorry for is that he didn’t feel comfortable enough to come home sooner.

I woke up one morning and Jerome was already in the shower and the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes were his slippers…in our apartment. What brings me to pause sometimes is knowing that these early years of breaking up and getting back together but always remaining in love are the foundation for something magnificent in our future. I can feel it. I look at Jerome and see children being raised, apartments in skyscrapers, taxi’s and loveseats and portraits. We will be severely old and gray folding towels and matching socks together… and you know what?—its beautiful… and its natural… and I love it.

1. WomiE got tired of our junky room so he moved all the clothes off the floor and *viola* space!
2. Little girls love thier Uncle Ken. Karla proposed to me the other night. creepy but cute.
3. got in at 4am from work. makes for blogging hard. will try again tomorrow

How else could I tell it...???

1. Sweet Pea Rodney, my South Carolina buddy who I’ve loved for 6 years, graduated from Coker College yesterday with his Bachelors in Business Administration and Sociology. Congrats, Rodney, I’m SO proud of you!!! Next I want him to move out of South Carolina!
2. Went by the parents house yesterday and Mi Mi wasn’t there. The little critter has quite the social life. He was with his father at his father’s home. Everyone agrees Mi Mi looks like me and Karen says he loves tasting his fingers. Baby fingers are the bomb!
3. Its 9 o’clock in the PM and all I’ve eaten today is breakfast. I’ve got to do better with myself.
4. Tomorrow I begin the search for a new grad program. I’m nauseous of doing things that just don’t suit me.

Today Jerome, better known as WomiE, moved into my apartment in Pilsen. The idea is for us to stay here until we find a suitable enough place to house us or until we move from the city. I’ve given Vinny roughly until June first to find a place to bunk though I can see Vinny remaining for much longer than June. Jerome and Vinny seem to like each other. Remember Vinny is the straight roommate.

Anywho!—WomiE and I hitched up the truck and drove out to Riverdale, where he was staying with his best friend Joe and Joe's lover Breck, to collect some of his things. Joe owns a 3 bedroom house and dog in Riverdale. The house in wonderful but the dog is awesome.

Jerome and I have been seeing each other for the past month or so. I couldn’t tell you how it even happened. What I remember is that one day we were angry and the next we were at dinner. Jerome had text’d my phone about something so random, we weren’t even speaking at the time. I responded abruptly with a short message laden with attitude and he backed off. After I thought about it I followed that message up with an email apologizing for being so frank and he accepted. Somehow in the course of that conversation we talked ourselves into a night out.

I called off that Monday night from work and Jerome and I ate soul food in the hood and had cocktails in Boystown. He spent the night that evening and I won’t concern you with all the gory details of what it felt like touching a man whom I thought I’d never again touch in that manner…but what I will say is that it felt like home.

We’ve since spent this time informing all the middle-ground people we’ve involved ours with that he and I have been working things through and now today he moved in.

Not much of a story, I know, but how else could I tell it? I promise to keep you posted.

P.S. my instructor JUST called and admitted to making an oversight. I didn’t fail at all, rather I earned a B. I’m back in business!!!!

I am Pissed Heartbroken

So I failed my first class in grad school. I’m not going to let that stop me though. My instructor, on my final, left the comment “still too many questions left unanswered….contact Student Financial blah bla blah…I’m sorry”. I could vomit. I could tell you my issues with this online class but I’ll break it down like this: I answered every question on that raggedy ass exam except for one. Saved and submitted. To me, his comment meant that the system was still working improperly and because of it my grade suffered. I am pissed…which is code for I’m heartbroken. I sent my instructor an email.

Speaking of things that upset me Vinny is headed to New York this week to frolic with his NY city pals. He leaves tomorrow at 5 on the Greyhound trail to the east coast. I won’t mention he owes me two hundred dollars in rent and the first, when rent is due, was DAYS ago…nope I won’t waste my breath. What I will do is CLEAN HOUSE while he is gone and bask in it—get naked and wallow my long nudeself against everything with a surface. I will grocery shop and eat well and produced videos and journal write and sing loud and STAY UP LATE and turn off the heat and open up windows and frolic with MY Chicago pals in MY city!

I can’t believe I failed that class.

Pretty & Petite: Return of the Girl Noise

1. Torrence came over to work out with Vinny. They’ve begun a slight two day a week regimen. Today Torrence had trouble with pushups. He’ll only get stronger from here.
2. The volume at work was quite high this evening. Instead of a 53 hundred envelope count we had a total of 7000. The floor was down two people and I was required to go in the cashroom. Tonight was the first late night in a LOOONG time. Very uncomfortable.
3. Spent 20 minutes in the gym today. 10 of those minutes took place in the locker room dressing and undressing and 5 of the remaining minutes was spent walking up and down the stairs. What a wasted gym day.
4. Will check my final grade tomorrow.

Vinny has been entertaining this very pretty, very petite young lady for a cute little spell of time. She would come over, brings eats and they would watch movies on the sofa holding hands, snickering to themselves, snickering with each other. I was home the weekend before Christmas, I believe, when she dropped by and brought Vinny some spiced apples her father made and they sat on the couch hand in hand watching The Happening starring Mark Wahlberg. I was getting gussied up for a night on the town with my buddy Tannis when I had left the bathroom to discover that Roommate Vinny and Pretty & Petite had abandoned the sofa and relocated elsewhere. I’m unconcerned at first, they retreated to his room, WHATEVER, right!?!

I travel back and forth from my room to the bathroom, finalizing my look when all of a sudden I was brushing my hair in the bathroom mirror and through the vents, being that Vinny’s bedroom shares a wall with the bathroom, I heard a SMACK and a gasp. It was the Girl Noise. Roommate Vinny was in there manhandling Pretty & Petite’s vagina!

I have been fearful of what the girl noise might sound like since before Roommate Vinny moved in. It is the mark of harboring a sexually active heterosexual in your home—the girl noise. I had continued brushing my hair giving not a moment to what I heard until the sound persisted, getting aggressively louder. Pretty & Petite stood about 5’6, fair skinned, well-managed shoulder length hair, rosy face, almond colored eyes—the cutest thing Vinny has EVER brought home. She weighed no more that 110lbs, give or take 12, if that much. Vinny, the beast on the opposite side of the spectrum, is a muscle heavy 260lbs, 5’8/5’9, maybe, 38” waist, fat calves, big hands, mean face…a monster in comparison to Pretty & Petite. Slap! I heard another smack! I stopped brushing my hair. What he was doing to that little girl was very real. The sweet fawnlike creature I had familiarized myself with holding hands with my roommate on my sofa wouldn’t allow the Beast to ROT OUT her vagina knowing there’s an audience opposite the bedroom door . Whether she found it to be pleasing or appalling she made it her verbal effort to allow anyone in an earshot range know that something was being done to her pudenda…and that Vinny was the cause. I collected my things and threw on my coat and escaped as fast I could.

There had been a peak, a plateau and a pause in their relationship…due primarily to Vinny not wanting one with her. “She’s so needy,” he told me. “And her head is horrible.”

Their rendezvous became infrequent. I no longer had to dodge the smack & squeal of a woman who was clearly throwing her cat under the bus. What has your pussy DONE, Pretty&Petite, to deserve such a beating!?! The girl noise, in my mind had come to a end. I was glad until today, months later, she came back.