Happy Fucking Thanksgiving. Yes the day we hack apart a carcass and serve it up to loved ones….yum. Having turned vegetarian my day consists of sides (ultimately better) and snacking although I have made a tofurky or some sort of other vegetarian roast to compete with the headless bird on the table.

Meat vs substitute. Was that what I was doing that year and half dating K? Just substituting a woman for a role I normally had with a man? Hard to say if I did, I had no idea on any conscious level but from an outsider yes it looks like a quick list of “you were never gay” you just played on our side of the playground awhile. With some lesbians this could get your ass kicked.  God forbid if you even think you might be bisexual then everyone thinks your greedy and just hogging up all the sides for youself cause you can’t decide if you want turkey or not.

I had an eye opening introduction to the gay community . I thought I was so down with it all, you know surrouding myself with lovely handsome, fun, caddy, well dressed gay men as friends. Lesbos are totally different, in fact I didn’t realize that often gay guys and hardcore non fem lezzies tend to not mix. Who knew. I had these discussions with a new friend Meg she lived most of her life as hetero thinking something was wrong with her, that she wasn’t a sexual person or might just go through life feeling “eh” about the current guy she was dating no matter how great they were. Then suddenly she started connecting the dots and found herself.  She is indeed a sexual being when touched by the right sex. GO MEG!  We had great discussions us both having lived a predomindately hetro life and now finding our gay (hers was a true discovery), we talked about how such a marginalized group then turns around and discriminates against their own kind, the labels, the catagories, the judgements.

I look back and no I don’t think I was ever really gay but people needed to catagorize me, they needed to be able to understand it in terms they were familiar with. I was less concerned of being identified as gay, I didn’t feel compelled to jump out of a closet of oppression, it just wasn’t my life, wasn’t my experience as a young adult. For this too I was judged-to really BE gay you must have had to go through that horrible torturous time of discovering your identity as an adolecent and I clearly did not. So yeah I went along with being called gay or a lesbian or whatever because I think it made other people feel comfortable including my partner. I just knew that I at that time in my life, I kissed a girl, and I liked it, simple as that I had no past to figure out, no “a ha” moment, no pain and identity issues from my childhood and no feeling of rejection because I prefered the same gender.  To real gays sometimes not having these experiences is not fair but everyone has their own path.

So fast forward to current time 11.24.11 I have been seeing/dating/fucking/whatevering a guy for the last month. He is funny, weird in a good way, unfiltered to say the least, and in some ways a beautiful mess himself. After our first date we decided to pretty much throw all our cards on the table. He is currently separated going through his second divorce fighting for custody of his two young daughters which they adopted. He has a son in his early twenties from his first marriage when he was very young. At times under the recommendation of his lawyer sleeps in his old house because it might force his ex to resolve matters more quickly if she has to deal with his presence in her space. He has an apartment down the street from his house where his ex lives and his kids go back and forth, he has a bedroom for his oldest son who stays there sometimes and then sometimes at his girlfriends. He’s a caretaker and a half, I like that, I admire that, I respect that.

So fine I think I’ll see your two exs, three kids, two divorces, and raise you with losing my dad, dog and brother all in the same year, putting my dog down because she badly bit the person I was dating resulting in hospitalization, and the person I was dating is the person I currently still live with….YES it’s true I live with my ex, oh and by the way SHE’S A GIRL. Let me know if you have any questions.

More or less that was the text I sent and then I waited holding my breath. The reaction was unexpected he was cool with it, asking great questions, trying to get a feel for what the full picture was.  Holy shit! I thought. After working through some of my details he followed up by telling me one more thing, one thing he says he doesn’t share until the 3rd date but what the hell we are pulling everything out of the closet so he figures let it rip. He tells me he suffers from full blown depression and gets treatment regularly and takes medication for it.

Damn he wins…..I snap back to reality and start firing questions. It is formally diagnosed? Do you ever go off your meds? What’s it like?

He answers everything I ask honestly and openly. I don’t know that this news scared me but I recall for a moment what it was like when K was going through her depression and it was hard, challenging and at times heartbreaking for me for many reasons but I don’t feel compelled to run away or jump ship or slowly stop texting away into obscurity until I officially delete his number.

From the get go I knew he was in therapy he talks about it openly and I thought well shit, good for you, everyone needs therapy been there done that several times it’s the fool who runs from his problems rather than tackles them head on (that was my ex) and not only do I think that’s great, well fuck, it turns me on.  Not the therapy part but the part that he is brave enough to do the work, do the digging and face the music so to speak.

Now what was the chance a person on his second divorce, fighting for custody, dealing with depression, in therapy, who sometimes lives back at his house to pressure his ex to negotiate would meet and ex lesbian still living with her ex (happily), after suffering from intense grief from losing her Dad and her brother and never dealt with it till a year later when she was dumped by her ex shortly after the anniversary of her brothers death and Xmas?

Come On!!! you can’t make this shit up. So I think we both figured fuck it let’s go with it and here I am negotiating my way back in the hetro world recalling why I struggled with dating in the first place. HA!

I over analyze, I over think and for as verbal and confrontational as I am there are just some feelings that you have to pry out of me, he sees this, he saw it almost instantly and told me I had trust issues. Yep he is right I certainly do, he linked them to my mom, yep they certainly are, he linked my strength, lack of need for approval and outspokeness to Dad, yep yep yep.

Whoa I thought it took K a year and a half to realize or see these things in me or herself and then the thought of actually talking about it out loud fucked her up royally.  I’m not trying to diminish her path, she has a quiet strength but dating a bull in a china shop like me pushed her over the edge.

So here I sit thinking what, why, how, when, where about this new guy. Will we be in each others lives long term, short term, as friends, lovers, in a relationship, semi relationship, weird undefined something. Ups and down, misunderstandings, miscommunication, stress from all the shit he is dealing with and going through will impact us and what we do or do not become.  I don’t think, no let me correct myself I’ve never sat in a position like this before with so much unknown before me and so much I cannot control.  THIS IS TOTALLY NOT ME! the only time I’ve experienced it was in travel when I was brave enough to throw all caution to the wind.

I would have never been in a situation like this 5 years ago everything that has happened in my life has brought me where I am at right now which is exactly where I need to be with the person I am supposed to be there with. Funny how life bring you that without fail-K came into my life when I needed someone most and much of what I learned in our failures prepares me for my next journey.

What do I want? sides? turkey? a substitute? a past, a present? a future? Guess time will tell but I’m enjoying him and the experiences we are having and to a small degree, a very small degree some of the uncertainty of it all.