These days I hesitate when somebody asks "how are you?" I know the answer clearly. The probem is that if I'm allowed to talk about it for long, I'll be a smugly pleased with myself as to be utterly insufferable.
Not to retell the whole story, I fell in with two wonderful women over the last year. The story of our meeting and getting together is longish and involved and fairly cute and at least for the moment I'm not telling it. Here's a quick impression of what life is like now, though.
We've lived since August in a fifth-floor walkup in Washington Heights, very close to the GW bridge. It's a three-bedroom, or has been for a while; one of the bedrooms, mine, was clearly intended as a common space when the place was built. It has huge french doors opening on the living/dining room, and the closets are later additions, wardrobes built into the corners. I got that room by dint of my willingness to have a semi-public room, through which Rebecca must pass to reach hers. And since mine is also the biggest, I get the big bed (formerly theirs). The room isn't that big, though, so to buy me room for a desk we (mostly Rebecca) built a queen-sized loft. In my little cave underneath are my desk and electric piano, but since the ceilings in the place are so high, there's plenty of room both above and below. (I had originally suggested that we build three lofts, but Miriam insisted that somewhere there must be a bed on the ground, so she'd be able to fall onto it with minimum fuss.)
We lucked out. The three of us have pretty thoroughly compatible ways (apart from eating habits, and frankly mine had to go anyway, so I'm working on that), comparable future plans, similar attitudes about most of the most important things. It's a good bet.
It's been funny to see how that has worked some awfully stereotypical changes on me. How many times have I rolled my eyes at the sudden scarcity of a male friend who got himself a girlfriend? While there are things out in the world I want to do--and I still do a fair bit--I'm finding myself more and more inclined to stay home on any given night, jealous of my unscheduled time. Understandable enough ("Dude," as my brother put it, "your house is full of chicks") but it's a little disappointingly traditional.
I also felt an effect for a while that I'd never really believed in before: I was virtually unable to feel an attraction to someone new for a while, after falling in with these two. That passed eventually, but I have new respect for such claims. And even now, less puzzlingly, I'm not wildly anxious to pursue any new involvements. We have no rules against them (if the girls were against outside involvements, I wouldn't be here), but I'm in no hurry. If anything I'm uncharacteristically content not to chase after anyone. I suppose to some extent I'm hoping one of the others will break that ground first. These days the thing I've got already is of critical importance, and I'm not going to trouble it lightly.
What else does a random websurfer want to know about the love life? I feel a little silly having spoken about it this much. Yes, we generally share one bed. We do figure to have kids, both women will be mothers to all the kids, and I don't imagine we plan to conceal the shape of the family from anyone. We have no ironclad rule against taking someone else into the core family, in theory, but we're agreed that it would have to feel as strongly right to all parties as this did, and--that's not impossible but I'm not expecting it. Nor do I feel a need for it. We are where we are. We make our lives with what we already have.
All that aside, here's the real bottom line: right now, if I lean far forward and look left, I can see Miriam's knees and bare feet and some outlying curls of her unruly hair, as she sits on the couch with her notebook, voluminously recording who knows what. In the kitchen I can hear Rebecca, just home from a random few hours of weekend overtime, foraging for leftovers--largely due to her efforts, we are almost always well-endowed with good leftovers--and still breathing a little hard from coming up five flights.
Last night Miriam and I spent the evening together while Rebecca was out, trying to remember or reconstruct the rules to Go; tonight Rebecca and I get some one-on-one time, which we will probably take out to a park or some such. (Just to round that out, their last date was Wednesday. We're not always so regular about time in twos, but it's nice when we can manage it.) Tomorrow is a designated lazy day. We will most likely have a chapter--we're going through Lord of the Rings out loud (an old practice of theirs which I'm finding remarkably useful in reading an old favorite book of mine)--and maybe a movie later, or a game, unless we just fall to talking. And at some point I do need to address the backlog of dishes.
Sorry, I guess that wasn't the bottom line. I'll try again: the bottom line is that I'm an inordinately lucky person and tremendously pleased about it all. More news as I get it.
Well, not exactly news, but here's the first known photo of all three of us online. Pity nobody's smiling; we all look intent on something offstage right. (We were at a seminar of sorts and had no idea we were being photographed.) In any event there it is.
