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Love's Supreme Desire Tabloid, January 1999

Hey, by now all of you subscribers have gotten my little note explaining my absence for the past several months. I felt really bad just disappearing without a trace like that, but considering that I had to find a place to live, settle in, get a new doctor, buy a computer, get online; all of that took some time. I also needed some down time to process the whole breakup, which was a very distressing and tremendously difficult thing for me to go through. It's even hard for me now to write about it, knowing that some of you who receive the Tabloid are mutual friends with me and my ex. I have no desire to trash him or unnecessarily go into too many details about our relationship right now, it's all still too fresh and painful and I find that I can't even put much of it into words anyway. But what it really came down to was the undeniable realization on my part that after nearly five years, our relationship was not going to change in ways that I (and he) needed it to change so that we as individuals could be happy. We were too different, and we were both consciously and/or subconsciously desiring the other to change in ways that were highly unlikely, given our individual personalities. I feel that when you've given a relationship nearly five years, you more or less know whether it's getting better or getting worse, whether it is growing or stagnating, whether you are truly communicating or talking right past each other, simply put, whether it's time to finally relax and know that you're with the right person or whether it's time to hit the road.
 What precipitated the breakup is that I met someone who is more compatible, someone I felt strongly attracted to on many levels. Once you meet someone that moves you, you owe it to yourself to honor that, if at all possible. I had to decide whether to try and stay on with my ex or acknowledge the fact that (although I still love him on lots of levels, and deeply miss him as a friend and companion) I had fallen out of love somewhere along the line, and had some good reasons for having done so. I did lots of spiritual work leading up to this decision (believe me, I did not leave my ex lightly, it was devastating to realize that I had to do so). I wrote in my journal about how I wanted to meet my soul mate, or to realize and accept that I had already met my soul mate in my ex (and that it was time to stop looking). I was also prepared to accept that there may in fact be no such thing as a soul mate. I did my usual ritual, writing out all of my heart's desires for higher happiness and peace and love regarding the given situation, focusing love and light on the issue and surrendering it to the universe, burning the letter in the back yard under the stars. If you try this for yourself, be ready for big changes to come into your life. If I have learned anything throughout this whole episode, it is that ritual magick/spirituality DO work, and they work QUICKLY. Be careful what you ask for and be prepared to accept the consequences. The rituals I did during this period were followed immediately by manifestations of change, as you can clearly see. But all of this change certainly wasn't pretty, or easy, not by a long shot. I had to leap into the void once again, and this was the scariest and most painful leap I've ever taken.
    It would have been so much easier had my ex been an asshole, had he hit me or treated me bad, but I was forced to hurt someone who I basically liked a lot, someone who had given me lots of nice things and good experiences, had treated me kindly, been there through times both good and bad. We had had lots of great memories together, many good times with mutual friends, and I truly wanted it to work out for us forever. I never used him in any way, never looked on him as a sugar daddy (although he was a great deal more wealthy than I---another "difference" between us with which I was never very comfortable). I never wanted to hurt him. I guess that is one reason why I tried to make it work for so long when there were signs indicating to me as long as two years ago that we may not have been as compatible as I hoped we would be. He desired a strictly monogamous relationship, a romantic ideal which I can appreciate but have personally never been able to maintain, try as I might. We didn't communicate very well with each other, not on deep levels. I had to initiate discussion about our relationship through e-mail. I'm a fairly easy-going slob, he was very tidy and organized about most everything. We infrequently had sex (and I was nearly always the one who initiated it, which after a while makes one feel terribly undesirable and frustrated), which caused me to look outside the relationship even more than I would have (but then he would argue that we rarely had sex because it turned him off that I was fooling around on the side---we never did figure out the "chicken or the egg?" on that one). It wasn't even so much the sex but the affection and meaningful communication that were sorely lacking, and I am the type of person who must have such things if I am to be in a relationship with someone. We had been on a comfortable sort of auto-pilot for years, until I couldn't ignore my pain and unhappiness any longer. In short, it became clear to me that things were not going to improve between us if we stayed together as lovers (in fact they would get much worse), we should make a clean break of it and try to remain friends, if possible.
    Please don't get the feeling from all of this that I am trashing my ex, I'm not. Believe me, that is NOT my intention, I have too much respect for him to turn around and dis' him. As I said before, he was good and kind to me and we were generally quite functional together (which explains why almost all of our friends were blown away by the dissolution of our relationship). There are PLENTY of scathing things he could say about me, and it's his right to do so. But I am a writer, and I have to write about my life, and my lovers are part of my life, so I have to write about them (as objectively, as kindly, as generously, as possible while still explaining what happened).
 Well, It all came down in the middle of the night of September 20-21. A few days prior to this, my ex and I were to go to a mutual friend's party but I was in such a state of turmoil that I stayed home crying instead. Keep in mind, this was very shortly after I did the ritual work regarding finding my soul mate or at least some peace of mind. On the night of our breakup, my ex propped up all of the love poems and such I had written him over the years in the bathroom where I found them after going to a drag performance with my current boyfriend. He wrote a letter accusing me of falling in love with someone else, of being insincere when I had professed my love to him (I wasn't), said I was being mercurial in throwing him aside after nearly five years and falling in love with someone else, that I was breaking my commitments to him. I read his letter with anguish and tried to go to sleep but couldn't, so I wrote him a four-page letter in response. I didn't exactly deny falling in love with someone else. I explained that this was a long time coming and that we needed to finally face facts about the ongoing, integral structural failures in our relationship which we had been glossing over because we were afraid of acknowledging the gravity of the situation. I said that I sincerely had hoped that our relationship would get better and grow and last for the rest of my life, and I was terribly saddened to find that instead, despite my best intentions, things had stagnated and were falling apart from lack of deep connection. I said that even if I wanted to totally commit to another, I could only truly commit to myself and my happiness and to following my heart wherever it lead me.
 I couldn't sleep all night and listened in the cold early morning light as he read the letter in the bathroom. It felt as if the world were falling apart around me; I had no idea what would happen, what I would do, where I would go, should we break up, but I knew that this is what had to happen so that both of us could be happy, whether or not my ex realized it. We talked about it some in the morning but found that there wasn't much to say. He had to go to work and it had all been decided already. I tried to hug him but he pulled away and said, "please don't." He asked me to leave as soon as possible because it would be much harder for him if I lingered around, so I cleared out that very day. I said goodbye to our cats, Davey and Lene, hugging them and crying, not knowing if I would ever see them again. Indeed I have only seen them twice since the breakup, and they were like children to me. My mom was planning to come visit us within weeks so I called her first and told her not to come, then called my friend Haia (or did I call him first?) and he offered to let me stay with him for a while, which I did that night. Maybe I'm naive about such things (or unusually European about them) but I imagined our breakup would be much more congenial, considering that we had been so pleasant and generally good with each other for most of our relationship (and I couldn't believe that my ex hadn't anticipated this long before, since I had initiated conversations about our problems on several occasions, followed by no significant change). Given our history together, I sincerely thought we would be friends again within a matter of weeks, but we're still icily incommunicado. It hurts, because my ex truly was an important part of my life and I miss him very much, but I guess that's the way it has to be for a while. I sincerely wish him well and hope that we can be friends again someday, but my ex has a history of completely (and a little coldly) cutting people out of his life when he feels that he needs to, and I fear that he feels the need to cut me out as well. I guess only time will tell.
    I stayed with Haia for a few days while freaking out about being as close to homeless as I have ever been. I had very little money in the bank and San Francisco is a terribly tight real estate market. I started looking at shitty fleabag hotels on Sixth Street south of Market. I called friends and several of them came through for me (thank you RW Hessler, Donna Rubin, and most especially Lynne Mostaghia and her roommates, with whom I stayed for a while). I lived with Rory near Hayes Valley until his roommate Todd came back from the hospital. Of course I was glad that he was back in the saddle after only one month but distressed to have to scramble and find another place so soon. I stayed with Lynne in the Mission for a week or two and then MIRACULOUSLY, I mean it truly feels that way, landed an apartment that we really like in the Tenderloin. Thank God for credit card cash advances, otherwise my ass would still be on the street. Now, the Tenderloin ain't your high class part of town, it's not the nice suburbs like where I lived with my ex, but then I never felt all that comfortable living in the suburbs anyway. We have a fabulous westward view of the city, kitty-corner from Glide Memorial Methodist Church, right in the heart of San Francisco. I love it because it reminds me of all the stuff I loved about living in New York back in the mid-eighties. Pigeons swoop down from the roof inches above our sixth floor apartment and fly dramatically around in circles above the parking lot across the street, they wake us up in the morning cooing on our window sill. The sun pours into our windows all afternoon until it sets in the evening. We live about eight blocks from where I work, and the YMCA where I go and swim is just a five minute walk. Chinatown, North Beach, the Embarcadero, Union Square and all the delights of downtown are just a short walk from us. Yeah, the Tenderloin is full of mucus-spewing drunks, smelly porno theaters and scabrous prostitutes but such things are the bread of life for a writer. What the Tenderloin lacks in order and safety, it makes up for in history, character, diversity  and vitality.
    Why do I say that it seems miraculous that we found this place (which we call the House of Love)? Owen (my new boyfriend) and I did ritual work around finding an apartment. We surrendered it over to the universe and landed the apartment in record time. In fact it was only the second apartment we looked at. What kind of ritual/spiritual work did I do? I took acid one day when I was off from work and I wrote out all of my sadness and grief about my failed relationship with my ex, knowing that before I could move successfully into the future, I had to let go of the past. I sat at my laptop all day, tripping, weeping, writing out how sorry I was for hurting my ex, explaining to him and to myself why it was that I had to leave, trying to forgive myself. I never want to hurt anyone, and I had deeply hurt someone who was very important to me. I felt guilty and afraid and needed help working through these feelings. I needed spiritual help from an altered-state experience because I had become nearly paralyzed by fear of being homeless, by anguish over my failed relationship, by feelings of guilt over hurting my ex. I sat at the computer weeping and typing all day, then went out and walked around the city, feeling somehow born more completely into my new life. Shortly after this we got the apartment. I don't recommend taking drugs all the time, in fact I've even cut way back on how much pot I smoke. I rarely do psychedelics, and when I do them it is with a healthy respect and spiritual intent. Lots of cultures recognize the spiritual value of altered-state experiences, and have done so for centuries. Just because we live in a high-tech, tightly-controlled modern society does not change the fact that such psychedelic experiences continue to have immense spiritual value.
    What is so great about my new relationship that I had to break up my last one in order for it to manifest? First of all, we're equals. We're on the same starting line financially, working together to build our new life together. We’re in the same blue collar artfag socioeconomic class. We're much closer in age, which doesn't have to make a difference, but often does. We share spiritual beliefs, having met through the radical faerie Thursday night circle here in San Francisco back in June. We have similar sexual appetites and neither one of us is interested in a monogamous relationship. Not that we're necessarily out whoring all the time (somebody has to do the laundry), but it's nice being involved with someone who feels the same as I do regarding open relationships. At thirty-three years of age, if I know one thing about myself it's that I can't do monogamous relationships---when I try to, I just end up sneaking around and feeling bad and dirty and hurting (and resenting) the other person anyway. I just am not the monogamous type. Again, this is not to say others should be living as I do, I'm not into telling anyone how they should live their lives (and of course appreciate it when others return the favor). We feel like brothers, at least it feels that way to me, we’re really tight and we communicate easily, without undue effort. We hang out together, we walk around the city together, we both like to go to the beach. We have similar backgrounds regarding our family lives, in short we are just much more compatible on almost every level, and life feels a lot easier and more integrated now than it once did. It used to feel like I had two lives, the one I lived with my ex and the one I lived away from him, behind his back as it were. Now I just have one life, and it is more honest and more peaceful than my former splintered life. I feel like I have come home, and I have every reason to believe that Owen and I will be together for many, many happy years.
 Of course life is less predictable and materially comfortable than it was with my ex, I have to take much more responsibility because I’m no longer involved with someone who is making ten times more money than I am. This makes everything a little more scary and razor’s edge, but that’s what life is all about, and I’m happy and proud to be taking more responsibility for myself. I never wanted anyone to take care of me, and never used my ex in this way, although by default he ended up taking care of most things financial. Well, he could simply afford to do so. I lost my insurance and now go to a city clinic doctor, which is fine with me because I strongly believe in socialized medicine. Fortunately the cost of all of my HIV medications are covered by the government program called ADAP, and I get free groceries each week from Project Open Hand. But I have to worry now that if I get sick and miss lots of work, I may not be able to pay rent. As much as I love my job at General Bead, unless I get discovered by a Hollywood producer or a New York publishing house, I’m always going to be worrying about money, just scraping by hoping that my health holds out. I’m just now getting over a cold that lasted for several weeks and I was starting to freak out about being HIV+, running out of luck and running out of time. The upside of this is that I am much more inspired to make something of my life. I can’t just sit on my ass and benefit from the hard work of my boyfriend, I can’t just assume that my health is going to hold out forever. In fact right now my boyfriend is unemployed through no fault of his own and is looking for work. I’m happy that my cold is leaving because it makes me feel more strong and optimistic about the future. I’m working on a book, getting the Love’s Supreme Desire tabloid going again, and performing with a comedy trio. I have a job that I like and I’ll be getting raises there every six months. I have every reason to believe that Owen will get a job any day now. The insane, gut-wrenching turmoil of just a few months ago is settling nicely into a happy new life. Thank you for continuing to be interested in my misadventures, if you’re ever in San Francisco, you have a tiny place to crash. Peace, Blue