<p>It is Pentecost Sunday. It’s a Solemnity, of course, but after Holy Week and Lent, it lacks anywhere near to the same level of impact, so although the mass differs from a mass during Ordinary Time, it lacks the social impact of the other holidays.</p>
<p>I always find myself using it as the marker of slipping back into Ordinary Time. It works well for me to treat it as a very deliberate marker. It is a relaxing of posture, perhaps. A time to switch from the tense contrition of lent and the jubilation of Eastertide into the, well, ordinary ritual and everyday faith.</p>
<p>Another interesting bit of news is that, as of last night, I appear to be taking the week after next off and heading up to Boise to visit Kay.</p>
<p>Like so much of late, the decision to do so seems to have sprung, fully formed, into my mind. Or perhaps our minds, as, when I mentioned the idea of coming up to visit, Kay responded readily and eagerly.<supid="fnref:response"><aclass="footnote-ref"href="#fn:response">1</a></sup> She mentioned that there is a percussion festival being held at UI that she would like to go to, and that she would welcome a concert buddy.</p>
<p>“Besides,” she said on PostFast. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen you.”</p>
<p>If I were in any other mindset, I think I would have taken this at face value, just as I’m sure I would have taken so many other things from our conversations over the last however long. Then again, if I were in any other mindset, I am not sure I would have suggested a visit.</p>
<p>I’m not, though, and I did, and now I am panicking on Pentecost. Was it some tongue of flame that descended upon me, caused those words to come tumbling out onto the screen, enter key hit far before I’d really allowed myself time to process the request? Was it some inspiration beyond myself, or something within myself? Perhaps my subconscious desires are acting out for me.</p>
<p>But now it’s set. I sent in a note to work and, assuming it is approved tomorrow morning, I will send out emails to my clients to inform them of my time away and my phone number to call in case of emergencies — and perhaps work can set up remote sessions if they would like — and then start considering what I will pack for a few days vacation.</p>
<p>I emailed Jeremy, and he replied quite quickly from, I assume, his phone:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Wow! Big step there. I was going to caution you about putting yourself in a situation where you would be pining away all the harder but a. You’re a big boy now and can certainly handle that, and b. It might actually do you good to be assertive about the things you want in life. Do you think you will talk to her about your feelings while out there?</p>
<p>J</p>
<p>This electronic mail message and all attachments may contain confidential information belonging to the sender or the intended recipient. This information is intended ONLY for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distributing (electronic or otherwise), forwarding or taking any action in reliance on the contents of the information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please immediately notify the sender by telephone, facsimile or email and delete the information from your computer.</p>
<p>I haven’t yet replied, as I am stuck on what to provide as an answer. The question itself made my stomach tie itself in knots. We, Kay and I, interact so smoothly over text that the thought of saying “Hey, I think I really like you” face to face makes my anxiety spike.</p>
<p>I mean, it also spikes when I think about telling her over PostFast, but certainly not as much.</p>
<p>So I guess I have yet to decide what to do about that, and instead of trying to figure that out right now (or all at once, as I keep telling myself), I’m focusing instead on what we’ll do. She says she’s found a few good inexpensive restaurants around the area, and, as I suspect that I am more comfortable financially than her, I will perhaps take her to a nicer one. She’s also promised to cook at least once and says that she’s not bad at it.</p>
<p>There’s also the percussion festival, which, on the surface sounds fun, if loud. I like drums well enough, though I imagine it won’t simply be drum sets on a stage. Maybe we can fit in a hike or something?</p>
<p>Weirdly, though, the thing that I’m most interested in out of all the ideas that have crossed my mind is just sitting in the same room with her. Even if we’re just reading or relaxing on our phones or, as always, showing each other videos that we enjoy.</p>
<p>Less than just doing <em>stuff</em> with her, I’m more excited about simply being around her and existing together. That feels like a friend thing to do.</p>
<p>It also feels like a couples thing to do, but on introspection, I feel like this particular desire may be more bound up in friendship than limerence. It has been a very long time since I have just hung out in person with someone whose company I enjoy.</p>
<p>I have the bus ticket, I have a few room-rental options I am looking at (she made no mention of me staying with her, and even if I trusted myself to do so, she has shown me pictures of her place before, and a studio bedroom with a twin bed would be quite cramped).</p>
<p>I will not deny my excitement for this upcoming visit.</p>
<p>Neither, apparently, will my subconscious, for I have had not one but two dreams since our agreeing to visit, and given that it has only been three nights since then, this is rather a majority of my time spent thinking about her.</p>
<p>The first dream was much like the one I wrote about a few weeks back. I was at her senior recital, it was unspeakably beautiful, and then when I tried to help her up onto the stage, I was pushed away by the crowd, unable to call out to her.</p>
<p>In fact, it was so similar to the first dream that I nearly did not write about it here, but the very act of sitting down at the desk to write seems to have dredged up all of the subtle differences.</p>
<p>Yes, the music was breathtaking, but in an almost hypnotic way. The audience wasn’t simply listening to it, we were enchanted.</p>
<p>Yes, the applause was uproarious, but it was outsized, for though the audience was perhaps a few dozen people in that intimate auditorium, the sound of the applause was of hundreds, thousands of people.</p>
<p>And yes, the applause was well earned, but more than that, it sounded possessive, as though at the culmination of the concert, the audience wanted nothing more than to claim Kay for their own.</p>
<p>And finally, yes, I did move to help her up onto the stage, but the act was one of desperation, as though that was not simply to help her take a bow, but to rescue her from the grabbing hands that wished to take her.</p>
<p>I didn’t just fall away out of weakness, I was actively pushed away, I was an impediment on the audience’s way to claiming what was rightfully theirs.</p>
<p>As with any such dream, this all felt astoundingly normal. It was not a nightmare, at the time. It was just a dream in which all of those things — the enchanting music, the audience, the possessiveness — were simply an inherent part of the universe. They were a core truth. They couldn’t <em>not</em> have been present.</p>
<p>And yet, two days on, the anxiety of having Kay taken away from me (such as it were) clings to me like scent-block. I can feel it as an oily residue in my fur, between my pads.</p>
<p>The other dream is…I don’t know. I have only been up a few minutes, now, and I am still struggling to internalize it. The part of me that is able to interpret is not yet functioning, though I have my coffee already, but the part of me that desires interpretation has been online since I crawled out of bed. I do not know <em>what</em> the dream was, certainly not what it means, but I suppose the least I can do is write it down.</p>
<p>I dreamed that, during the visit, we were sitting down on a couch to watch a movie and that Kay surprised me with a kiss. The dream jumps from there to us in her bed, trying to…it is hazy. We were trying to make love, and it’s not that anything was wrong or necessarily preventing us, not in the dream’s universe, but my point of view kept rewinding back to the point where we had just lay down together. After a few of these “rewinds”, I found myself — not the me who was laying down, but the me who was dreaming, or perhaps observing the dream — getting frustrated with the repetition, and I started to change up my approach. What if I put my paw <em>there</em> this time, instead? What if I kissed first instead of touching? What if I lay on my back? What if I lay her on hers?</p>
<p>It was one of those fruitless dreams of struggling to find the <em>correct</em> way to engage with an idea. It was an erotic dream, but without the catharsis of orgasm (that was left to manual intervention after waking).</p>
<p>I don’t know. I am just as sure that my feelings for Kay go far, far beyond sex, as I am sure that I would not turn down sex, should the topic ever come up.</p>
<p>If I’m honest with myself, given my current struggles over even telling her that I have these feelings for her, I think the idea that I actively pursue sex at any point soon is outside the realm of possibility.</p>
<p>It’s been a few hours, and I have decided that that dream was simply the process of anxiety over the trip combined with a spike in libido. In the other, yes, I could see the layers of meaning going on there, with the ideas of possession and being shut out, but when it comes to what amounted to a sex dream with little in the way of plot or inherent meaning, I don’t think there’s much one can draw from it.</p>
<p>It all feels a little silly, being anxious and horny. I’m in my 30s, for goodness sake.</p>
<p>A fact which I am striving not to think of as a big deal. <aclass="footnote-backref"href="#fnref:response"title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
