💌 2020 Oct 11

Julia Bell (internet crush) texted me yesterday "so this is weird to say over text but all of our comms are textual so ... I'm into you :)" I saw it at Monica's while watching Kiki's Delivery Service, sheer moments after I'd gone on a monologue about the lesbian-coded painter who lives in the woods and gives Kiki permission to rest. I apparently responded noticeably and viscerally to this text, because Monica later asked me if something had happened (then scolded me for not divulging the happenings immediately). The message did shock me a bit, not necessarily that Julia's into me (she randomly DM'ed me about my are.na in April and we've been on & off messaging since then), but that she'd say anything about it (she lives in Philly, we've video chatted once). I almost felt like I manifested the exchange because truly days before I was drinking white claw and doing poppers with Hadley and Julia Gordon at the picnic tables by the 11th street park entrance and wound up trying to explain who this Julia was and how I knew her and how I had a pointless crush on this are.na stranger, and both JG and Hadley groaned like "OBVIOUSLY this is how you meet someone" ...so I told are.na Julia I'm into her but would have never said anything and she invited me to come to Philly sometime. I really want to do that but wonder if buying an Amtrak ticket to spend an afternoon with her is coming on too strong too soon (even though she literally invited me...?). She's just so funny and sharp I can hardly bear to text my own friends but texting her is just fun & effortless. Our tone has a lot of overlap. Fuck it honestly just go

💌 2020 Oct 25

Yesterday I took the train to Philly to hang out with Julia...part of me felt embarrassed by the extravagance of my own gesture but another part felt really cool and hot just going for it (there is nothing I'm less interested in at this point than downplaying interest).

She's super funny, cute in this lightly boyish way that I tend to eat up, and it was just nice to joke around with someone whose humor I've been feeling so aligned with and whose IRL materialization I never expected. But then she brought me back to her literal bedroom and for almost 2 hours we sat on the floor because there was nowhere else to sit but the BED...at one point she commented on my pants and reached out to touch them; I knew it was a temp check and I wanted to embrace it but my body shut it down, I could hardly make eye contact, I felt like such a fucking kid. Then Lex came to pick me up and I asked if Julia wanted to come out and say hi, but Lex had parked a few houses down and while trying to tell Julia she wasn't obligated to walk that far it sounded like I was rescinding the invite to meet my friend, and I clumsily tried to explain this...at one point I literally said "I'm sweating" but thankfully I managed to land on "This was really fun and I'd like to do it again." She said the same and I left. I knew I'd given off vibes I didn't want to give off so I texted her in the car to try to orchestrate my shot at redemption...no interest in downplaying interest...we'll see what happens

💌 2020 Nov 2

Julia posted this photo on Instagram yesterday that I literally couldn't stop looking at...just like boyish impish queer Draco Malfoy energy that I fell asleep and woke up thinking about

💌 2020 Nov 08 (JOE BIDEN FAMOUSLY WINS THE 2020 ELECTION)

Julia met me at the park at 7:00. I beat her there and waited by the entrance until I saw her approach with concerningly little sign of stopping (I was wearing all black on a shadowy bench like a freak). I enjoyed a second of seeing her without being seen...I feel like there's something sweet about catching that naturalness, right before someone starts moving and gesturing in relation to another person. I wasn't sure how to dress myself before leaving the house and I decided on utterly neutral for no reason other than a retroactive experiment in leading with my personality and not relying on being femme to feel attractive, I guess. But she looked so cute with a glow.

I stood up in time to stop her before she zoomed past and we laughed about it. We entered the park and found a hill in the dark while people set off fireworks next to subwoofers playing pop music and swung LED lights around like ribbons. I used my shoe as a wine holder.

We were flirty and increasingly touchy; I kept leaning back on the blanket as an active attempt at open body language and we would pause and look at each other in what felt like these loaded are-we-going-to-kiss pauses. At one point she asked me what my move was and I swallowed my dumb nerves and said "Honestly right now I want to kiss you but I feel a little shy." She looked at me cutely and said "well what if we just" – kissed me – it was so fucking fun. We made out in the park for a while. I can't explain how that day into that night felt...like I made the whole thing up.

We walked back to 475 and she kept reaching for my hand as we did. It was so sweet. Everything felt benevolently orchestrated by the universe. We got to my place and talked a bit more + lay on the bed facing one another until she said "can I kiss you?" Shirts came off, pants came off (...) After we hooked up she said a few times, "That was good, this is good." I agreed and meant it. At one point she looked at my bookshelf for a while and asked about Inferno and I offered to let her borrow it. She said, "I'm not a book thief, so if taking this means I get to see you again, I'll take it." I invited her to spend the night but she didn't, which I honestly didn't read into, if anything it felt like a good sign that she didn't feel pressured to stay

💌 2020 Nov 25

Spent the night with Julia for the first time this weekend and it was so sweet...especially Sunday morning, we stayed in bed until almost noon just talking and laughing and making out and I felt so so so relaxed and didn't want to leave ever, it's been so fucking long since I had a morning like that. Julia's just great. She's so quick and silly, very hot, has a great memory, great texter...I'm trying to enjoy what's happening without prescribing anything to it while also trying to set a precedent of communication + candidness. But I'm starting to like her a lot.

Next time I see her I want to make a conscious effort to be more physically open when we're not hooking up, to facilitate a general physical ease + invitation ...I'm truly so bad at that but think I can do it with her

💌 2021 Jan 03

Sometimes Julia's so funny in such an exact way that it gives me a visceral response. I get emotional about how hard she makes me laugh sometimes. Like she'll make a funny face in the right voice at the right time and jump on the bed and we'll roll around and I laugh so hard but I also want to burst into tears

💌 2021 Jan 18

Saw Sallie briefly then walked to Julia’s. It was the same lying-in-bed-until-we-have-to-eat-then-getting-back-in-bed vibe as it always is. We’ve been talking a lot about this shared fantasy of just being able to see each other in a crowded room, to see each other interact with other people from a distance, work a room. I think that element of people is so attractive and we talk about how strange and unnatural it is that the ability to see each other across a crowded room is just that - a fantasy. She asks me things like how I think we would have interacted if we’d met in college, says she wonders if I would’ve liked her. I like the feeling that she thinks about me that way, in this kind of speculative way. She told me the first time we ever video chatted she thought I was tall. She says I have a “tall voice.” That really charmed me.

We brushed our teeth together and she pulled me toward her in front of the mirror and said, “I’m just looking at us.”

💌 2021 Jan 25

Thinking about the time I picked Julia up wedding-style and spun her around when we were giggling about not being able to get her roommate’s cat out from under the bed…thinking about when she tipsy-facetimed me last week and the fact that she’d get the impulse to do so…thinking about her mouth open head back when I (...)…about when she kissed my forehead on the couch when we were both so nauseous…about when she says “hand please” just so she can hold it…

💌 2021 Feb 17

Moments from this weekend that I want to play on loop:

• Giving Julia a piggy back ride down the stairs
• Sharing a cigarette and sliding along the icy sidewalk
• Rubbing her stomach after she got “seasick” while we were hooking up LOL
• Leaning on her while watching the Britney documentary after we made ourselves a decadent snack platter
• realizing it was 10pm and we hadn’t made dinner yet
• Watching her prepare salmon while she kept walking around the island to kiss me / hold me / put her hands in my back pockets
• lip syncing city of blinding lights in her bed after going back and forth about indie movie songs
• swapping fireball cinnamon jawbreakers between our mouths
• holding her legs up like we’re ice skating
• running downstairs to get a knife for Palomas where she followed me and kissed me in the kitchen
• her making a heart with her hands while sitting on me in bed
• reading her copy of Detransition, Baby while she took a work call
• my mom calling me and asking, “do you still have a valentine?”

💌 2021 Feb 28

Surprise, surprise, here again with a Julia weekend recap (I went back to hers this weekend). We talked at length about this idea I’ve had that in order to effectively re-emerge socially, I have to occupy an alias that exists at a distance from myself – but rather than treating it like a personal reacclimation I want to treat it like a project, one that is imaginative but not disingenuous, is a performance that isn’t inauthentic but rather facilitates an entry into an unprecedented social culture without the immediate happenings being a reflection of myself, but as environmental stimuli to an avatar that temporarily takes my place. Julia and I sat across from each other at Bar Hygge drinking hot toddies yesterday afternoon and spent almost an hour going back and forth: “my alias makes hyper pop music,” I say, “my alias has never been described as a voracious reader” she says, “my alias has an herb garden,” I say, “my alias has never lived in Pennsylvania,” she says.

Highlights:

• I arrived, we immediately (...), then we went to bar hygge (the first of two times), got drinks and burgers, went home and (...), then ate Chinese food and chocolate cake with Andreas for his belated birthday
• Saturday we took showers, (...) for the first time, took a walk and got coffee, sat in the corinthian garden by the penitentiary where we first hung out and talked about grad school, “hangers” that we hang reality on, she talked about her fascination with Steve Jobs, Agnes Martin, Anne Carson, three people with clear and seamlessly integrated “hangers”, we split a cigarette. She was wearing the yellow t-shirt she wore the first time we ever hung out in October
• went back to bar hygge and alias conversation ensued
• we came home, she made rum and tonics by accident, we talked at length with Andreas, we went upstairs and (...) We watched icarly and went to bed early, I wept a little bit when a Cocteau twins song from the Harold Budd compilation came on - “Why do you love me?” – because I felt overwhelmed emotionally, with pleasure

💌 2021 Mar 17

Julia was here this weekend and it was perfect. Hadley was gone and we romped around the apartment. I always feel drawn to make Julia updates because they feel so precious, so cinematic, and I want them stamped on my brain. One night I held her for a long time, very relaxed, she had been anxious about a vaccine mix-up and I let her talk about it until she calmed down. At one point she joked about doing deep breaths; I asked if she wanted some alone time while I showered or something and she said no, it was calming to have me there, so I said I’ll do them with you and we breathed together.

She took a sick day and played hooky on Monday to stay an extra day and my god it was magic. We had s*x all morning and then went to Casa Azul on my corner in the afternoon under the heatlamps & sun. It was about 3pm so it wasn’t crowded and we could sit wherever we wanted; I had two palomas and she got two margaritas and we ate tacos and then were tipsy and buzzy and endorphin-filled, and we tried to smoke a cigarette but her lighter was out so we went back to my apartment to get one. As soon as we walked in the door we started making out, coats on, just like, so hot and intense and instant, we felt so high together and attracted to one another, it was so perfect I wanted to laugh. Then we split her last cig on the fire escape and just kind of blew smoke sensually/goofily into each other’s faces and I soaked it in. Then we went back inside and she pulled me into bed and asked, “Are you s*xed out?” And of course I said no, and her train was in an hour, and we stripped down and kissed smokily and (...); it was fucking euphoric and then she had to catch a train

💌 2021 Mar 23

Sunday night Julia and I FaceTimed for 4.5 hours and it went by in a second. We had a really beautiful conversation about our sexual dynamic that made me feel so close to her/so real and there with her. I also talked to her at length about Rory and she talked for a while about her mom. I told her how I feel like she’s the first sexual partner I’ve had where I feel like I’m able to tell the difference between what I’m into because I'm into it versus because the other person is into it...I was basically like, all my past sex has been so dissociative and with her its so much more present…we talk a lot in this shared/invented framework of having shame vs. being ashamed of the shame and in all past sex I’ve been ashamed of the shame, but with her its not that there’s an absence of shame, but I know that its presence isn’t being projected/interpreted by her, but that it’s coming from me, and it’s so much more compassionate. Julia described our sex as “revelatory” and it felt really really nice to know that the feeling is shared.

💌 2021 Apr 01

It’s Thursday, but I was in Philly with Julia over the weekend. Friday night she made a reservation at a fancy Italian restaurant. We walked to center city and it was sunny and springy and brisk, I was wearing a black button down and a high bun and black jeans and feeling hot, Julia was in a little skirt and her loafers, we got a margarita right before dinner that was STRONG and sat in the park for a little. She said she can’t imagine quarantine if we hadn’t met and that she’s grateful. I wanted to kiss her. Our dinner table was sequestered in the corner of the back patio of the restaurant under a wire staircase….we joked about being the token sapphics eating oysters in the corner and all the sullen, queer-coded waitresses in this otherwise straight-coded environment. Julia joked that she felt like a supporting character in each waitress’ story, which was apt. We shared a cig while waiting for a car and fell asleep almost immediately

💌 2021 May 10

Julia officially moved here on the 1st and having her here has been so wonderful. Yesterday I helped her find and carry a shelf from a Park Slope sidewalk to the Grand Army stop and at one point we paused to rest at a corner and had a long conversation over the shelf about her job, careers, life. Our relationship feels very fluid and organic in a way that doesn't quite fit into anything I've had before yet I feel really warm and secure and considered. It feels nonprescriptive and responsive.

Yesterday morning we had nice s*x and then watched top model on the floor while we ate breakfast sandwiches and she asked me to put my head in her lap and I did; we lay in the corner of my room in front of the window and she rubbed the sides of my face so sweetly and said “I’m making my hand into a jade roller” and I laughed and laughed

💌 2021 Jun 15

Yesterday I met Leila at Soft and we ate dinner in Cooper park while watching the skaters and Leila asked me about my relationship with Julia. And while talking about Julia I was honest about what is new to me and what scares me but also spoke assuredly about things that have felt so good with her and why I feel safe to explore these things with her and be honest with her. Leila said “That’s the first r*lationship I’ve ever heard a friend describe that I can actually picture myself in.”

💌 2021 Jul 03

For a long time I've thought about how I have a lot of close relationships, but very rarely feel seen or regarded with what I can best describe as specificity – like, people know what I do and what I like and that they like me around, but don't know what I want or need or why they do – so I've caught myself in relationships that feel like if I swapped myself out for someone similar, no one would be able to articulate what was different or missing. I think Julia sees and describes me specifically.

💌 2021 Jul 05

I was supposed to go to Julia's on Saturday but I was having bad PMS symptoms so she called me and offered to come over instead (after I cried on the phone lol). She treats me with such kindness and I feel able to accept it because I know how much I want to give the same to her. We had a loving and slow afternoon, got pasta dinner where we talked about Clyde, then came home and fell asleep like actual babies for three straight hours from 6-9. We woke up in darkness and she was supposed to meet Angela but she stayed; we just kept the lights off, listened to a New Yorker short story, and talked about how much we care about each other until we fell back asleep and somehow stayed asleep through the night