Relationships

Property of Stormberry

First of all, Blessed Litha! Another Litha celebrated in the mids of the Pandemic, but we can still find reasons to celebrate, if we so wish. In spite of what goes on with the humans inhabiting Mother Earth, the planet turns and the celestial bodies sail on, go on retrograde and pulse on the deep skies, bringing the longest day of the year. Our work is both internal and external, we still work hard, even if we don't do it as before. Our activites have changed, but they demand the same effort from us, and this we can celebrate today.

Also, in the mids of this pandemic, I wonder if people are keeping their Quarantine Journals, and how those journals may look like. Have they kept them? Have those journals become just journals, inadvertently recording the process of human adaptation, from one world obssessed with traveling and out-of-home, social gatherings and picking locations of all types for the perfect Instagram/Tumblr/Pinterest pictures, to another masked up and full of new expectations and concerns?

My own journal had a page, an entry marking the beginig for me, of this new reality, but other that that, it's filled with the same sort of entries: thoughts, gossip, venting. My daily moves have changed, but the person I am have not.

Property of Stormberry

The seasons keep turning, we are adapating, we are getting he hang of this life with more cleanliness - which is always a good thing -, more physical distance and an ample range to discover new ways to show affection. This is becoming also a world and a time where physical intimacy holds a deeper meaning because of the risks associated and the care one must practice.

In my previous post I wrote about a date I had. My first date or "going out" with a friend I have had since the pandemic has began. This date of sorts have evolved, and we have been meeting for casual sex, though not as often or as regularly as the "have been meeting" might suggest. We have talked and decided we want to sleep together one day, and so we booked a room at a nice hotel, met there, had sex, spend the night and then each has gone on their merry way. And then again, last night, though this time my companion couldn't stay the night.

And so, when I was alone in the room, it felt like a stolen moment from the days before the pandemic, when I traveled and stayed in hotel rooms alone, and enjoyed that wonderful solitude and the limitless freedom it grants on you.

We talked before he had to go, and at one point he said he would not hide "what we have" if he was asked, and that got me thinking. What we have? And what do we have? I had not stopped to consider it. I had to ask him what he meant by that, "what we have". He said we were friends with benefits, and it stroke me that he might be right, but I never really stopped to think about that, and maybe realize that I am, inadvertently, entering a sort of relationship. Yes, I guess we are friends, and we have a lot of things in common, and sex is good, but just because we share sex together on a very random, casual manner, does that stamp a new name, a new label on our friendship?

I wish sex could be seen like sharing coffee with friends, or books, or music, and so friends who sleep together, because they enjoy it, could simply keep unlaterated the tag of friends without having to add words that let others know they also have sex.

There are things about this too. Now our friendship is part of his "love life", and I wasn't even considering him or our encounters as part of my love life. The first day he refered to us having sex as making love, and I also found that not only outdated (in my mind you don't "make love", love needs no making, but also, I don't like mixing sex and love, as love is an emotion that can permeat everything you do, and sex is an activity like eating, walking or spending time with someone), but also weird. Why "make love"? Now he simply says "fuck". I find it interesting that he doesn't say "have sex", which is more neutral, and yet chooses words or expressions that charge sex with a social or emotional connotation. He qualifies the sex between us, and with it, his mind expands and he qualifies the rapport between us, labels it, boxes it and so the thought in his mind arises about whether do admit or deny what happens between us, while in my head there is nothing to admit or deny, simply a connection that pertains only him and me, and nobody needs to know about it.

So I wonder if it could be the effect of the Pandemic, filling casual contact with more intimacy, deeper meaning than what it had previously, or whether we are still exactly the same, we still related to each other the same way, and only the logictics have varied.