8 years together

8 years together, today.

February 11 is our official anniversary. K and I met 8 ½ years ago in a Women and Film class at Eastern Michigan University. We did not really talk all too much during that Fall semester. I was dealing with my own turmoil about my personal gender stuff and sexual identity, and it kept me pretty much to myself.

In Winter semester 2000 we had another class together, finally, K asked me to go out for a cocktail after class with a group of women. I declined. Then she asked again, and I said yes—she says she had to ask a few more times before I said yes…

After a not very tasty beer and some interesting conversation about social justice, etc, k asked me to go see boys don’t cry with her the following week. I said yes and my heart lodged itself in my throat for the first time in my life.

But that movie date does not mark the anniversary. We had a good time together; I wept through the whole movie and blew my nose and wept some more in front of this woman who I thought amazing and gorgeous and pretty much untouchable.

After the movie we drank tea, talked, and parted ways. In the following days, we made an elaborate plan to go hear Angela Davis speak. I would drive some of her friends and one of my friends, cause I had an old Honda Accord and K had no vehicle, to Wayne State University in Detroit. This driving meant planning pick up points and drop off times and all that good stuff. It was my first real experience of the kk I know so well today—the organizing magician who can pull people from many different places and backgrounds together to get something accomplished.

We made it downtown and got our seats and waited for this woman we looked up to as activist, heroine, fighter for the greatest good to speak. But, the auditorium was packed out and the overflow rooms were packed out and the organizers of the event locked the doors and the people who were outside beat on the doors and beat on the doors. It was crazy strange. Then Angela Davis spoke and my heart got all fiery and furious and achy-like because of the systems in place in this country that perpetually keep people (certain groups of people—people of color, poor people, queer people, and the list goes on…) down and marginalized and oppressed and out. I was not a prisoner rights activist, yet, but this was just one of many moments in my life that helped to lead me towards the work I have become passionate about.

How fitting and right that this speech would also mark the beginning of the unification of kk and me. After listening to a detailed and astute critique of the prison industrial complex, we headed out to eat with our carload of people and various friends we had bumped into at the talk. [the next time Angela Davis was in MI giving a talk, I was in a women’s prison co-teaching a personal narrative class and we told the women inside that she was nearby speaking about tearing down the system that held them captive]

Then I drove my carload of folks from kk’s world and my world back to their respective cars/houses, and I ended up asking k if I could use her bathroom before heading back to my apartment. I went upstairs to her place and did not leave until Monday evening (it was a Friday night). We talked and talked and made love and talked and talked and made more love and talked and talked. And i did not sleep much. I stared at kk as she slept and my heart got tangled up.

That was the beginning of this 8-year journey. This journey full up of love, adventures, complications, obstacles (year 6 of our relationship was fucking rough), good food, good friends, good community, good work.

A fortifying factor in our relationship was this decision to try to bring a child (or maybe two) into this world.

Today, on this day that marks our first coming together in both passion and the pursuit of justice, kk started her period yet again.

No sperm stickage to egg this time around. I am sad, but I know we are solid together and that things will be okay. We will keep trying. I will keep hoping and then keep slapping myself for getting my hopes up, and maybe someday kk will miss her period and we will be in for a new ride.

Until the time comes when we are on the new roller coaster, I will settle back into this life that I am blessed to be living and keep striving for the greatest good for all beings and the rocks and soil and worms and fungi and trees and bodies of water that make up this ball we are spinning on.