Love is the Digestive Cacophony of Eating a Large Mexican Meal

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a note for my sweetheart- throw up all you’d like

I don’t write about my boyfriend much anymore because it grosses some folks out. Understandably so- I don’t like reading sappy shit either.

Because of this, some dude I know named “Geoff” only comes up occasionally in my blog posts.

But it’s Valentine’s Day, dammit, and I’m going to talk about my lover.

Did the word “lover” just get under your skin there?

Because it most certainly got under mine and I wrote it. Yuk.

Geoff and I will not celebrate Valentine’s Day in any special way today. We will probably go out to eat later tonight which is something we do every night because he has an aversion to eating at home. We might take advantage of Gourmand’s $20 two sandwiches and a bottle of Boone’s Farm deal due to the delightful irony of it. And because we’re small town folk at heart.

We may do something special four days later since that day will be our anniversary. A trip to Enchanted Rock has been in the talks.

February 18th will be the second yearly observance of when we first met.

Yes, we consider our anniversary the day we first met.

Call it gross, but we both realized that first night that we needed to know one another.

We talked for hours about our similar interests,  gushing on about our mutual love for David Byrne (True Stories is Geoff’s favorite movie). I left him at some point in the conversation in order to not look like I was trying too hard and he was forced to talk to an Austin Beard Club-attending Santa Claus-looking man. Which is something Geoff likes to remind me often, “Remember when we first met and you left me and forced me to talk to that Santa Claus-looking dude?”

This behavior of mine was similar to what happened on our third date when he brought me to see a screening of his first film at the Alamo Drafthouse and I promptly left at the end so I wouldn’t look like I was waiting around for him. I hung out on front pretending to talk to my mother on the phone and he told me later that he thought I hated his movie and left.

But I got over trying to seem cool as a cucumber early on because he proved to me that he was not only interested, but that he was as head over heels in love with me as I was with him.

Like every relationship, we’ve had our ups and downs. We managed to write and produce a film together with very few bumps in the road. Both being career-driven in artistic pursuits, I’ve never made him feel guilty about his all-nighters editing film- though the maternal side of me will reprimand him for not taking care of his health.

We’ve spent every single day together except for when he or I are traveling- and we’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

We trudged through three months apart while he was teaching in Portugal. That might have been one of the largest challenges our relationship has faced. Being an ocean-apart from your partner can be very frustrating, though productive at times. Due to the time difference and shoddiness of Skype, we weren’t able to have worthwhile conversations for a large chunk of those three months.

And it hasn’t always been glamorous: I’ve had to spoon-feed him Pedialyte while he laid on the floor weak from food poisoning and he’s had to hold me during any number of my nonsensical panic attacks. Sometimes we’re in cranky moods and snip at one another or retreat to our own little worlds. Sometimes I zone out when he goes on long political tirades and sometimes he tells me that Hall & Oates’ music is shit just to get my goat.

And we don’t always feel sexy, especially after a large Mexican meal that brings both digestive cacophony and sleep.

Speaking of sleep, I’ve had a habit of crashing on the couch lately with him unable to stir or lift me. Initially he used to lay down on the floor next to me so I wouldn’t wake up panicking, but now he’s gotten to the point where he leaves the lights on upstairs so I can eventually find my way to the bedroom. At some point around 3 or 4AM I will wake up with a start, call out his name, he’ll respond and I’ll find my way to the spot I look most forwarded to being every single night.

We hold each other’s hands while we sleep. Even after two years, we wake up smiling at one another.

We’ve never stopped calling each other “babe”- just like his grandparents who have been married for 65 years do.

Sometimes I wonder what the hell I did to walk into this life.

I’m gagging as I read this, too.