jockey pouch full-rise briefs and grand marnier cake
Performer just dropped by to pick up a divine Grand Marnier cake he had brought to share last night and then left here. Yes, I live on yogurt, granola, spinach, et al., but I had to taste this cake, because its smell was overpowering and wonderful.
So he dropped by for half an hour (on my heaviest work night of the week) and had a cup of tea and a piece of his cake. It was such a pleasure seeing him on a work day; I could almost imagine what — dare I say it — living with him would be like, though that’s unlikely ever to happen because between us we have too much stuff ever to be able to afford the New York apartment that could contain it all.
That’s what happens when you’re 70 and 60, even when you downsize: you acquire and accumulate Stuff.
So we chatted, and I asked him a question I’d been thinking of before he arrived:
MIMI
When, on Saturday July 28, around 8:30 a.m., in the Trailways parking lot, you said ‘I love you’ to me for the first time, had you planned it? was it deliberate? did you know you were going to?
PERFORMER
No. Are things like that ever deliberate?
MIMI
For some people they are.
PERFORMER
Well, it wasn’t for me.
MIMI
So it was spontaneous? It just spilled out of you?
PERFORMER
Yes.
* * *
We also talked about our credit card bills. It’s funny, but though we’ve seen each other completely naked quite a bit now and have told one another many intimate things and touched one another almost everywhere (not, I think, on the gums or the heels or between the toes, for example), we know almost nothing about one another’s financial situations: I don’t know his salary and he doesn’t know mine; I don’t know what if any investments etc. he has, and vice versa. We talked about our taxes recently (we both had extensions and paid up October 15), but neither of us has any idea what the other one paid.
I don’t know whether there’s some kind of taboo about money, and each of us is allowing the other one privacy, or if we can infer the approximate income from the way of living, or if neither of cares all that much. Sooner or later we’ll probably know, but there’s no hurry.
* * *
Besides the cake, he had left a pair of jockey briefs, which I returned to him. They were on the floor near his side of the bed (the left side, remember?!). I’ve been combing the web to find precisely the right term for this garment: I believe it’s ‘jockey pouch full-rise briefs.’
* * *
Did I kiss the briefs?
No.
Did I nibble at the cake just the teeniest bit?
Not really; but there were a lot of large crumbs and broken-off pieces that made it look sort of messy, so I ate them just to give the cake a cleaner look.
* * *
Next time I see him it will be Halloween; he can kiss me in my pope costume.
* * *
UPDATE TUESDAY MORNING 30 OCTOBER
Performer emailed me to say he enjoyed our ‘brief visit.’
I wrote back that it was a ‘sweet brief visit.’
We geriatrics, wow; we’ll kill you with our wit.
October 30, 2007 at 2:20 am
Dear Mimi, I wonder how often you will be able to post anything under the category “cake and underwear”? It seems an awfully specialized category.
October 30, 2007 at 6:50 am
oh, you never know, i may host an orgy…
October 30, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Just a “brief” comment… Interesting how asking one’s salary is sometimes more personal than sex. Probably that’s because neither of you want money to play a part in your relationship. It may enhance your experience, but it’s not the reason you’re together. By NOT talking about it, you’re both stating it’s not that important (aside from any major debts and scandals, of course.) So I guess it’s not about the subject being too personal, it’s about it being irrelevant.
October 30, 2007 at 7:47 pm
ahh — a very Astute ‘brief’ comment. i think you’re entirely right in your analysis.
i had thought it was taboo, or kind of taboo, but your comments are right ‘on the money’ (ha ha).
November 1, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I don’t know — I think $ is the big taboo for almost everyone. I know very little about the money situations of my friends, or even my family.
$ may not matter very much to either of you, but I don’t think not discussing it is due only to that.
I actually would have been surprised if you HAD discussed $ this early in even a wonderful relationship like yours.
November 1, 2007 at 5:53 pm
The only way we’ve discussed it is this: P said he hoped we would _not_ be like his older brother & ‘wife’ [unwed but partners for 20+ years] who split absolutely every bill down the center to the penny. he said he hoped he could take me out to dinner sometimes and i him etc. i said yes in principle — and have let him take me out twice! but i eat almost nothing and have paid for other things, so it somehow balances.