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slipjig3This is a story in three parts.
Jenna
Jax
This post has been nearly impossible to start. I mean, how do you start with something this big? The beginning, yes, but what does that even mean for something like this?
So let me start with my right forearm.
Anyone who knows me knows how skittish I am about permanent physical changes. For ages I avoided the thought of tattoos altogether—"not for me," don'cha know. Then I started to consider the possibilities there, and consider them and consider them and not do much but consider them. Finally, I decided I wanted a rabbit tattoo for my 40th birthday, but dithered on the design and on the location and on the money I waffled about spending, until here it is a year and a half past my 40th birthday with still no ink anywhere on me.
Fast-forward to last week. Jax's visit to New Hampshire is in its waning weeks, and she, Jenna and I are discussing how best to honor this too-big-for-a-name Thing that has been growing between the three of us over the last year or two and gelled into something intense and utterly unignorable during her time here. A ceremony is certainly in order (more on that in a bit), but we want something tangible to keep with us. We start in with the rings discussion, but we run into the problem that each of us has our own separate predilections where jewelry is concerned, and consensus isn't happening.
I speak up. "How about tattoos?" All agree. I don't blink. Not even a little bit.
That's how big this is.
I haven't talked much about Jax here, which I regret. Partly that was to appease her husband, who preferred that we not speak publicly about what was going on. Partly it was because we had made mistakes early in our relationship—secrets kept, emerging truths ignored, things that I felt uncomfortable discussing even after we'd corrected and made amends for as many of those mistakes as we could. But the fact is that two years ago, Jax and I began chatting from opposite sides of the world, and those conversations, almost behind our backs, quickly grew into something more than just affection, until we found ourselves in a relationship, one where the only way we could set eyes on each other was through a pair of webcams between us.
And then Jenna and I fell in with each other, and a whole other set of challenges began: What is the place of each of these two amazing women in my life, both of whom I dearly love? How does it affect things when I can touch and hold one of them, while the other is limited to pixels on a screen? On the heels of these came Jax's husband, who was having a painful time absorbing and accepting all that was going on between her and me, and so Jenna, who had more experience with poly than her and me, stepped in to give advice on how to strengthen their marriage. And somewhere in there, the two women fell in love, too.
it's startling, really, how complicated a network of three can truly be. The three individual connections aren't at all static, as anyone in a relationship can tell you, but it's easy to forget how each side of the triangle affects the other two—shake one leg of the table, and the other two have to move to accommodate the shift. The ebb and flow of Us has taken us down some difficult paths over the past months. My depression has sometimes risen up and taken its toll on my relationships with each of them, leaving them hurt and confused and uncertain of where they stood with me. The nature of where they stood with each other has shifted over and over again, sometimes leaving them insecure and lost. Each of us has had doubts at some point or another, wondering where this all was going, or even if it was going anywhere at all. And yet we always came back to this same place of solidity, because in the middle of that graph of three lines is the spot where the three of us join into some undefinable whole that's greater than the sum of its parts.
We've known from the beginning that we needed to see each other, to be in the same place for just a little bit. It wasn't just longing, but the knowledge that we only had part of the picture. So Jax began saving money for the plane tickets that would take her and her son Christopher to America for a month-long visit. Even as we counted the days (hours, actually), we all kept in the back of our minds the knowledge that there would likely be an adjustment period for us to figure out how to talk with each other again. This wasn't Skype, after all, and being in real-space together was a whole new challenge all over again. So Jenna and I went to pick her up at Logan Airport armed with due caution—and discovered that we didn't need it, not a bit. Even the discussion (one we had a gazillion times) of who'd get to kiss her first was solved when we both embraced her together, and then Jenna's trickster streak got the better of her, leading her to kiss the girl on the moving sidewalk out of the terminal. I shouted, "Hey! I saw that!" but in truth I'd never seen anything so lovely, and it gave me the freedom to wind an arm around her waist and taste her for the first time as well, the corridor drifting slowly by.
I don't have words to describe this month. The silence in this journal has been deafening, I know, but life has been anything but silent. It has, however, been quiet, and I don't think I'm making too fine a distinction between the words. She and her son fell gently into our lives as if they'd always been here. Accepting long-term guests into one's home is usually a shock to the system no matter how positive and welcome, but the daily rhythm of sleeping and waking and eating and working and playing and existing coalesced around them like a feathered nest. We've cooked, talked, watched all the movies we've been wanting to show each other, talked some more, visited with friends, chsed and been chased by the boy, traveled some, touched, made love, slept in each other's arms in twos and threes. Forever and no time at all. There have been difficult times, too: Jax decided to end her marriage during the visit, a decision that was a long time coming and not really about jenna and me, but which brought with it conflict, stress and difficult decisions. There have been hard moments between us three as well: miscommunications, volatile emotions that come with living and loving this deeply, my usual f*cking demons that have kept me from investing as emotionally deeply as I would otherwise. And yet none of it, none of it, has stopped us from being an Us. There's something here, and it's too big even for me at my most obliviously emo to miss.
Which brings me back to this weekend. After the long and fruitless jewelry discussion, I might have expected the tattoo subject to drag on indefinitely, but the decision to get ink done was made in all of five minutes, I think. From there, it was only another 15 or 20 to settle on a design: Jenna suggested an ampersand, based on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tacit's favored truism, "Embrace the power of and!" It's about numbers greater than two, and infinite possibilities, and not having to settle, and constantly growing: And now what? What's next? What can you add to your world? It's a symbol we three can each take with us and draw meaning from even if by some fate we end up no longer being an Us, and yet it's still absolutely about Us, and about this visit, and our future together. Perfect. (I think the hardest part of the decision-making process was choosing the damn font. We settled on Harrington, for those who feel such things important, and you know who you are.)
We knew we'd be in the Boston area for the Rebecca Loebe concert that i was opening for, so we decided to stay an extra day and head to Davis Square on Saturday morning. We got there just as the Boston Tattoo Company was opening, and I was volunteered to go first since I was the body mod virgin in the group (thanks, guys). Jenna came in to hold my hand as we were starting, while Jax took the stroller for a roll around the block to quell the whinging of the Cranky Young Christopher. As the needle approached, it occurred to me that I would be seeing this symbol on my right forearm until the day I die. Permanent change, my greatest bugaboo, the thing that sends me shrieking into the night.
"Cool," I thought. I didn't blink. Not even a little bit. In 15 minutes, I had my ampersand, and in less than an hour, so did they.
On Sunday, we gathered the tools we'd need for that evening. Before Jenna and I were married, we weathered a difficult period together that we felt called for a renewed commitment to each other, so he held a quiet handfasting in a secluded garden next to a pond on the Mount Holyoke campus, just the two of us. For the handfasting itself, we'd made a braid of two leather leather strips, brown for my Earth and blue for her Water; for the third strand, though, we used a silver thread to represent Jax, winding around the two of us and helping keep us whole. That braid has been on the headboard of our bed ever since. Sunday's project was an expansion of that: we rebound the original braid, then made two more, one for me and Jax, and one for the two of them. Mine and hers consisted of flexible metal bands (dark brown for me, copper for her), interwoven with pearl-like beads for my wife, while theirs was made from wide ribbons in fire colors and blues with an earth-tone shoelace-like cord with gold accents for me. Each pair braided our strands as a team of two, and then the three of us came together and somehow did the same with the three braids we'd just formed—a tangle of ribbon, leather, metal, beads, thread, and cord, ungainly, wild, and more beautiful than any of us could have predicted.
And then we celebrated with a true feast: pecorino fonduta by me, based on something we'd tasted at Craftbar on my birthday this year; an amazing New Zealand roast lamb with butternut squash and asparagus by Jax, representing her current residence; and from Jenna, our magical pastry chef psychologists, a trio of desserts, representing each of our favorites, chocolate mousse, tiramisu and creme brûlée, which she gleefully blow-torched herself. And then, bellies stuffed and Christopher finally asleep upstairs, our clothes fell away (as is their wont these days) and we tumbled together on the sofa until we could no longer move, and slept the sleep of the blessed.
This post is nearly impossible to end. I mean, how do you end with something this big? The ending, yes, but what does that even mean for something like this?
So let me end with right now: I'm sprawled on the couch, full of pasta and vegetables and bacon tossed together by Jax, who's on the floor nearby with Christopher, reading him one of his favorite books. Jenna has returned upstairs post-lunch to finish her post and possibly play some Sims. It's an amazing summer day, and we have nothing much planned aside from maybe buying some tonic water for G&Ts, or possibly finishing the screening of Vicky Christina Barcelona that we never finished yesterday. The visit will end soon, and that's weighing on all of us in the spaces between moments, but none of that matters right now. There's Us. And there's now. And there's tomorrow. And. And.
And.
Jenna
Jax
This post has been nearly impossible to start. I mean, how do you start with something this big? The beginning, yes, but what does that even mean for something like this?
So let me start with my right forearm.
Anyone who knows me knows how skittish I am about permanent physical changes. For ages I avoided the thought of tattoos altogether—"not for me," don'cha know. Then I started to consider the possibilities there, and consider them and consider them and not do much but consider them. Finally, I decided I wanted a rabbit tattoo for my 40th birthday, but dithered on the design and on the location and on the money I waffled about spending, until here it is a year and a half past my 40th birthday with still no ink anywhere on me.
Fast-forward to last week. Jax's visit to New Hampshire is in its waning weeks, and she, Jenna and I are discussing how best to honor this too-big-for-a-name Thing that has been growing between the three of us over the last year or two and gelled into something intense and utterly unignorable during her time here. A ceremony is certainly in order (more on that in a bit), but we want something tangible to keep with us. We start in with the rings discussion, but we run into the problem that each of us has our own separate predilections where jewelry is concerned, and consensus isn't happening.
I speak up. "How about tattoos?" All agree. I don't blink. Not even a little bit.
That's how big this is.
I haven't talked much about Jax here, which I regret. Partly that was to appease her husband, who preferred that we not speak publicly about what was going on. Partly it was because we had made mistakes early in our relationship—secrets kept, emerging truths ignored, things that I felt uncomfortable discussing even after we'd corrected and made amends for as many of those mistakes as we could. But the fact is that two years ago, Jax and I began chatting from opposite sides of the world, and those conversations, almost behind our backs, quickly grew into something more than just affection, until we found ourselves in a relationship, one where the only way we could set eyes on each other was through a pair of webcams between us.
And then Jenna and I fell in with each other, and a whole other set of challenges began: What is the place of each of these two amazing women in my life, both of whom I dearly love? How does it affect things when I can touch and hold one of them, while the other is limited to pixels on a screen? On the heels of these came Jax's husband, who was having a painful time absorbing and accepting all that was going on between her and me, and so Jenna, who had more experience with poly than her and me, stepped in to give advice on how to strengthen their marriage. And somewhere in there, the two women fell in love, too.
it's startling, really, how complicated a network of three can truly be. The three individual connections aren't at all static, as anyone in a relationship can tell you, but it's easy to forget how each side of the triangle affects the other two—shake one leg of the table, and the other two have to move to accommodate the shift. The ebb and flow of Us has taken us down some difficult paths over the past months. My depression has sometimes risen up and taken its toll on my relationships with each of them, leaving them hurt and confused and uncertain of where they stood with me. The nature of where they stood with each other has shifted over and over again, sometimes leaving them insecure and lost. Each of us has had doubts at some point or another, wondering where this all was going, or even if it was going anywhere at all. And yet we always came back to this same place of solidity, because in the middle of that graph of three lines is the spot where the three of us join into some undefinable whole that's greater than the sum of its parts.
We've known from the beginning that we needed to see each other, to be in the same place for just a little bit. It wasn't just longing, but the knowledge that we only had part of the picture. So Jax began saving money for the plane tickets that would take her and her son Christopher to America for a month-long visit. Even as we counted the days (hours, actually), we all kept in the back of our minds the knowledge that there would likely be an adjustment period for us to figure out how to talk with each other again. This wasn't Skype, after all, and being in real-space together was a whole new challenge all over again. So Jenna and I went to pick her up at Logan Airport armed with due caution—and discovered that we didn't need it, not a bit. Even the discussion (one we had a gazillion times) of who'd get to kiss her first was solved when we both embraced her together, and then Jenna's trickster streak got the better of her, leading her to kiss the girl on the moving sidewalk out of the terminal. I shouted, "Hey! I saw that!" but in truth I'd never seen anything so lovely, and it gave me the freedom to wind an arm around her waist and taste her for the first time as well, the corridor drifting slowly by.
I don't have words to describe this month. The silence in this journal has been deafening, I know, but life has been anything but silent. It has, however, been quiet, and I don't think I'm making too fine a distinction between the words. She and her son fell gently into our lives as if they'd always been here. Accepting long-term guests into one's home is usually a shock to the system no matter how positive and welcome, but the daily rhythm of sleeping and waking and eating and working and playing and existing coalesced around them like a feathered nest. We've cooked, talked, watched all the movies we've been wanting to show each other, talked some more, visited with friends, chsed and been chased by the boy, traveled some, touched, made love, slept in each other's arms in twos and threes. Forever and no time at all. There have been difficult times, too: Jax decided to end her marriage during the visit, a decision that was a long time coming and not really about jenna and me, but which brought with it conflict, stress and difficult decisions. There have been hard moments between us three as well: miscommunications, volatile emotions that come with living and loving this deeply, my usual f*cking demons that have kept me from investing as emotionally deeply as I would otherwise. And yet none of it, none of it, has stopped us from being an Us. There's something here, and it's too big even for me at my most obliviously emo to miss.
Which brings me back to this weekend. After the long and fruitless jewelry discussion, I might have expected the tattoo subject to drag on indefinitely, but the decision to get ink done was made in all of five minutes, I think. From there, it was only another 15 or 20 to settle on a design: Jenna suggested an ampersand, based on
tacit's favored truism, "Embrace the power of and!" It's about numbers greater than two, and infinite possibilities, and not having to settle, and constantly growing: And now what? What's next? What can you add to your world? It's a symbol we three can each take with us and draw meaning from even if by some fate we end up no longer being an Us, and yet it's still absolutely about Us, and about this visit, and our future together. Perfect. (I think the hardest part of the decision-making process was choosing the damn font. We settled on Harrington, for those who feel such things important, and you know who you are.)We knew we'd be in the Boston area for the Rebecca Loebe concert that i was opening for, so we decided to stay an extra day and head to Davis Square on Saturday morning. We got there just as the Boston Tattoo Company was opening, and I was volunteered to go first since I was the body mod virgin in the group (thanks, guys). Jenna came in to hold my hand as we were starting, while Jax took the stroller for a roll around the block to quell the whinging of the Cranky Young Christopher. As the needle approached, it occurred to me that I would be seeing this symbol on my right forearm until the day I die. Permanent change, my greatest bugaboo, the thing that sends me shrieking into the night.
"Cool," I thought. I didn't blink. Not even a little bit. In 15 minutes, I had my ampersand, and in less than an hour, so did they.
On Sunday, we gathered the tools we'd need for that evening. Before Jenna and I were married, we weathered a difficult period together that we felt called for a renewed commitment to each other, so he held a quiet handfasting in a secluded garden next to a pond on the Mount Holyoke campus, just the two of us. For the handfasting itself, we'd made a braid of two leather leather strips, brown for my Earth and blue for her Water; for the third strand, though, we used a silver thread to represent Jax, winding around the two of us and helping keep us whole. That braid has been on the headboard of our bed ever since. Sunday's project was an expansion of that: we rebound the original braid, then made two more, one for me and Jax, and one for the two of them. Mine and hers consisted of flexible metal bands (dark brown for me, copper for her), interwoven with pearl-like beads for my wife, while theirs was made from wide ribbons in fire colors and blues with an earth-tone shoelace-like cord with gold accents for me. Each pair braided our strands as a team of two, and then the three of us came together and somehow did the same with the three braids we'd just formed—a tangle of ribbon, leather, metal, beads, thread, and cord, ungainly, wild, and more beautiful than any of us could have predicted.
And then we celebrated with a true feast: pecorino fonduta by me, based on something we'd tasted at Craftbar on my birthday this year; an amazing New Zealand roast lamb with butternut squash and asparagus by Jax, representing her current residence; and from Jenna, our magical pastry chef psychologists, a trio of desserts, representing each of our favorites, chocolate mousse, tiramisu and creme brûlée, which she gleefully blow-torched herself. And then, bellies stuffed and Christopher finally asleep upstairs, our clothes fell away (as is their wont these days) and we tumbled together on the sofa until we could no longer move, and slept the sleep of the blessed.
This post is nearly impossible to end. I mean, how do you end with something this big? The ending, yes, but what does that even mean for something like this?
So let me end with right now: I'm sprawled on the couch, full of pasta and vegetables and bacon tossed together by Jax, who's on the floor nearby with Christopher, reading him one of his favorite books. Jenna has returned upstairs post-lunch to finish her post and possibly play some Sims. It's an amazing summer day, and we have nothing much planned aside from maybe buying some tonic water for G&Ts, or possibly finishing the screening of Vicky Christina Barcelona that we never finished yesterday. The visit will end soon, and that's weighing on all of us in the spaces between moments, but none of that matters right now. There's Us. And there's now. And there's tomorrow. And. And.
And.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-31 06:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-31 07:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-31 11:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-01 12:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-01 12:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-01 01:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-01 03:40 am (UTC)And thanks for friending me back!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-01 04:11 am (UTC)So happy for all of you!!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-01 04:42 am (UTC)This post is nearly impossible to end. I mean, how do you end with something this big? The ending, yes, but what does that even mean for something like this?
The post doesn't have to end. It can "more later".
(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-01 05:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-01 01:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-03 05:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-05 09:54 pm (UTC)