Jock

Do you know how touching it is when you're dating someone, and they know you like to see them in a jockstrap, and so every time you hang out with them, they wear a jockstrap? Like, a different one each TIME, even. I get so touched when I think about how Elias looks out for me that a tear comes to my eye. Well, okay, maybe not my eye, and maybe not a tear, but you know what I'm saying.

Elias has been leaving things at my apartment for weeks now. Little gay periodicals, an unassuming little packet of cocaine (eww). I leave them in a pile in my kitchen, a little shrine to our burgeoning love. I know he is going to break my heart, and it is going to hurt, because he is so good-looking. And then he can collect his shrine. This is not him in the photo, by the way--he hates for me to photograph him, because I think he thinks I'm going to post the photos on some lurid German porn site, WHICH I WOULD NEVER DO.

Elias likes to fight his lovers, verbally. I have known him for nine years, and during that time, he had epic battles with two longterm boyfriends, he ran down endless alleys at night, screaming at his lovers in Portuguese. I would come pick him up to romp through a game of "Space Invaders" and listen to his tales of love woe. Should I see that as a red flag? That he cheated on his lovers to spend time with me? Spell that out for me: "r-e-d f-l-a-g." What do those words mean? They have no bearing on my life, begone with them. Now I sit in cafes with Elias and effortlessly parry his incessant attempts to bicker with me. And then we go home and he has, like, another fucking jockstrap on. I think he loves me.

I went with Kateri and Kayleigh this week to see the movie "Obvious Child." Go. I swear, you'll thank me later. I cried laughing, and the love interest was soooo SWEET. Like, he warmed Jenny Slate's butter before passing it to her. I immediately thought, "I want to be that sweet! I want to be that guy. I will warm someone's butter." And what perfect timing--I'm dating again. Now I get to warm the butter.

Elias is working tonight at Posh. We texted earlier and now I'm home cleaning my apartment (my cleaning lady is coming tomorrow, and I would be ashamed if she actually had to do any real cleaning, which tells you a lot about my complicated feelings about class and my being a slob). I move around my apartment for two hours, doing the next right thing, and things get better, gradually. I know this feeling I'm having, this feeling of not wanting to see someone less, and being comfortable with not seeing them more. Some people call it love.