IGD Day 02: Your first love, in great detail

Depending on how you define things, this could be one of four people:

1) The first person I ever fell in love with, Alex Will, though Alex was his middle name; his first name was John. I was in the 4th grade or so; he was probably in the 8th. He's 4 years, 5 months, and 12 days older than I, and that makes him 48, which kind of blows my mind. Anyway, he was the piano teacher's son, and a trumpet player, and an actor, and popular. And he had gorgeous lips. Oh, yes, and he didn't have any idea I existed.

I used to write to my friend back in the States and tell her about him as though he were my boyfriend. My mom found one of those letters and humiliated me about it in front of her bridge friends. Still ouchy to think about that.

2) The first person I ever loved that I actually knew was also named John. He and I went to church together. He said he sought out my company at first because the second time we met, I remembered his name. He was a few years older than I. We were all but inseparable for two years, enough that if one of us showed up somewhere alone, we'd inevitably be asked where the other one was. We never held hands or kissed. He felt like a boyfriend to me, but I never knew if I felt like a girlfriend to him. I was genuinely happy to have what we had, and didn't feel any real need to make it be anything else. My first piece of creative writing was a prose poem about his lips that began, "I tried to concentrate on the meal..."

3) TOTGA is the first person I ever loved who loved me back. We had a stormy internet romance that was real but ultimately doomed. I still love him. We barely keep in touch in the 10 years since we broke up, but when we do, it's friendly, if a little guarded.

4) Cute-poet-chick was my first real, multifaceted, in-person, adult, live-in relationship. The first person I had loving sex with. The first person who ever asked me to move in; the first person I ever had a honeymoon with; the first person I ever wrote pair poems with; the first person who ever looked at my body with undisguised lust. The first person to put me on her health insurance. The first person to introduce me to her family. The first person from whom I ever ran home to mother.

IGD Day 03 – Your parents, in great detail

My mom is 4 years older than my dad. They met in a bar; he was in the Navy, and she had a toddler. Not at the bar or anything, but she had one. He married my mom and adopted my sister, and they never told any of us (my sister included) that she wasn't his, not until they were divorcing and my sister was 18.

Mom essentially raised us by herself, because my dad was out to sea most of the time. He was gone 9 months out of the first year they were together, and she had to schedule me to be induced in order for him to be around when I was born.

They were SO happy when I was born. My mother danced when she found out she was pregnant with me. And my parents adored me, even though my mom and I had a difficult relationship throughout my childhood. I was mostly a good kid, and they both seemed to like me.

My dad's a brilliant, sanguine, musical guy, and he's fun to be around, but difficult for me to engage with on any kind of deep level. He's VERY tall, and Cute-poet-chick used to call him His Gigantic Dadness.

He gets along much better with my brothers, and has a very close relationship with my baby brother, who has always tried hardest to keep ties with dad. We sometimes half-jokingly refer to the dad of our childhood as "Uncle Dad", because he would come home long enough to give us presents and play with us, then go out to sea again. For a year when I was 6 and 7, they were separated, but again, they didn't tell us that. We just moved in with my aunt, and they told us he was out to sea.


The was never a time in my childhood when dad didn't have a bunch of books on how to strike it rich -- in stocks, in commodities, in real estate. He also collected geeky things like princeps puzzles, books on cryptography, and all manner of games and wooden puzzles. It's disappointing to me that we no longer get together as a family to play board games. Those are some of the fun memories of my childhood.

He left my mother overnight when I was 13. One day, they were happy, then he went out of town for some medical help and met a nurse. He fell in love but didn't tell my mom that's what happened. He still has a story about how he left her because she wouldn't come out to Bethesda and work on their marriage. It's bullshit, but we all have our stories. My mother is not an easy person to live with, and he had been on shore duty for two years after being accustomed to lots of time away from her. The new woman probably looked easier to him. I don't blame him for going after his bliss, but he kind of was an asshole about it. I'm pretty much over it, but it devastated my mom.

My mom's a brilliant, hyperenergetic, hardworking, loving woman with a vengeful streak. You do NOT want to be on her bad side. She's also obsessed with thinness: I've never known her not to be on a diet, and I've always known she thought I would be better, more successful, and more loved if I were thin. I think it genuinely hurts her that I'm not. I was around 8 when she put me on my first diet, and I remember several attempts of hers to bribe me into losing weight, or to shame me into it.

But she loves me fiercely, takes care of me (both emotionally and financially), and genuinely likes and gets along well with my partners. She did not get along as well with either of my wives, and I'm not sure how much of that was personality stuff and how much is that they don't have penises.

I talk to my mother nearly every day, multiple times a day. We check in in the morning and before bed. I know what she had for dinner tonight and what she's planning on having tomorrow. I email her doctor for her when her shoulder is acting up, and I carry a debit card that draws money on her bank account for when I run out of grocery money.

I talk to my dad rarely, and because I'm uncomfortable on the phone with everyone except my mom and my partners, he thinks I dislike him, but I don't. When we get together, we usually watch TV together and talk about his job, which I think is cool: http://richardvannoy.info/

He's also still working on getting rich: http://www.southwestsolarsolutions.com/

My mother never remarried, though she lived with a couple of jerks along the way. She's seeing someone now. My dad married a wonderful woman (even my mom likes her) around 15 years ago, and they are good for each other. I call her the Non-Wicked Stepmother.

August 23, 2010

Me, to someotherguy, who took the photo: "My tits are in focus; my face, not so much."

Him: "That's okay; just tell them your boyfriend took it."