tuesday 29 augusteggnotes - may 2000
Amy moving out can't be easy. Both Howard and tonight Jonathan give me advice, remind me of the process and depth of expression required to communicate love. Somehow I guess I feel so comfortable with Amy that when I consider a split it seems to easy. Being together is easy, why would we stay apart long? It doesn't seem really possible.Last night we had a kind of a verbal knock-down drag out. At New Year's she made me a promise that she wouldn't smoke cigarettes for one year. I hate when she smokes, it covers up her natural funk which I love so well, and it leaves an acrid taste in her mouth, and in turn, in my mouth. So in exchange for a favour I did her, she promised no smoking for a year. I think she wanted to find a way to quit too.
Anyhow she very clearly and deeply smelled of smoke two nights ago. And she's been under a lot of stress trying move and everything. So I figured she'd been smoking. So I asked her, have you been smoking? And she said, no I was with Stephen, and he smokes in the apartment. So I took that for what it was.
Later on, finally she's climbing on top of me in a heated passion, after weeks of nothing but sleep and stress, we're about to get in on, and as she's huffing, she's exhaling clouds of stale tobacco. Yuk. In my face, in my bed, late and night, no escape. I go to lick her neck and I taste ashtray. I became increasingly angry and distracted from lovemaking. So I told her, I wanted her to clean up and brush her teeth because she had clearly been smoking and I couldn't get into the love without the taste and smell of my baby, or at best the taste of Tom's of Maine and Dr. Bronner's, rather than Joe Camel or what have you.
So the moment was passed and it was a little sad. Somehow in the middle of the night I grasped her breasts and manipulated them, as well as rubbing my hand between her warm sleeping thighs and we coaxed each other into some dreamy three AM sex that was just fantastic. So that was restorative.
So then the next day, home from work she is, and we sit down to talk and we kiss and she tastes of listerine and smells of smoke and I just get real amped up and pissed like yesterday you lied to my face saying you didn't smoke, and today you smoked and what the fuck happened to this promise? It's one thing to say, hey, Justin I'm having a hard time, or hey Justin I can't promise this to you, but it's another to lie in my face and tromp all over this promise you made me. And she sat there in mostly stunned silence, apparently not terribly sorry, because for her smoking is mostly a reality and it became clear between us that perhaps her promise was to make me happy but in fact she's her own woman with no intention of maintain a total withdrawl from cigarettes. And I continued getting wound up, not violent or agressive but just putting up walls in my head and running through my own maze - amy made me a promise, and i cared about that promise. now she breaks it and lies to my face. i can't trust amy. i love amy. how can i love someone i don't trust? i love their essential nature but i have to take into account their failings. but they're not failings, they're the difference between me, insistent on a historical word, and amy, insistent on her present day reality. so how can i ever expect to live with anyone if i demand that they conform to my conception of words and their importance? well let's think of another example where words and promises are important. marriage - why would amy care about any of the kinds of things that are promised in a marriage if the present situation didn't suit them or make it easy for her? why should I care? i never hung out with amy because i thought she would honour a traditional marriage, i hung out with her because she was honest and she created original solutions to unusual problems. so now she's not being honest, why? because she "was afraid of something like this happening" so she's afraid of my temper? so there's a problem of trust there between us.
amy interjected the word "codependent" into my mental maze-running and eventually it seemed entirely appropriate that she would move out and we would see what it means to date and love from some greater distance. so at once it was sad because it felt like we'd chopped off a limb, and on the other hand it was appallingly perfect timing. She moves out this saturday, and no matter what happens, we seem to be at a time in our life when we need to figure out that i get the silverware and she gets the couch. I love that girl, but I don't want to hang out at her place if Stephen can smoke indoors. And I don't want to neck with her if I'm going to be licking Winston. So do I demand to date a health freak or something? Amy expands my mind and loves me on a level commensurate with all that is silent, and I can't deny it. After all this shouting and pouting and staring off into our own demands, we hugged and teared a bit. There was a lapse into yelling again after that, and Amy was thinking it was better if she slept somewhere else but then her ride took too long to come home and Steve our houseguest got here and she told him we broke up as she sat in my lap and bitched bout everything. Incorrigable.
We watched half of "Don't Look Back" the documentary on Bob Dylan that Steve has and then we went to bed. I love that girl.
early august
i remember the first day we moved in, she tried nailing up this crazy art piece - a mound of wax paper with hair glued to it. and so she nailed this hairy wax paper to the walls and immediately it all fell down, it ripped the nails out, and then we had the large holes in the plaster. i wasn't totally psyched about that, and it was clear we weren't in a totally art-suited place.
[so then she secured a place to move.]