his article collects several blogs, in which I discussed the most significant event of my adult life. My first visit with Malaya, how we spent our week together, and how we fell in love. It is far from all roses and happiness, just so you know in advance.

Read this in order, by scrolling down the page.

May 31, 2003

Background information, for those of you who don't read this every day, or may have forgotten.

I need that damn cast of characters page done so I can just link to it for this sort of thing.  Bah.

Anyway, Malaya is my love, a woman I met through this site when she mailed in to comment on one of my stories.  You can see her very first mail in the February Mailbag.  We traded a few emails, and then moved to ICQ, and then to phone talk, and after wanting to spend time together since at least early March, we finally got to meet just a couple of weeks ago.  I flew up to see her after having to back up the visit date twice, due to delays she suffered as she was trying to finish purchasing and moving into her new condo.  She was living at home with her parents after being overseas for her work for more than a year before that.

This is the very short version; I'm not going to recap the whole thing now.

Anyway, we were very eager to meet each other, both very horny but much more than that; hoping it would be the start of a really great long term relationship.  Comments like, "once we're in love" and "spend the rest of my life with you" were thrown about like dice at a craps table, pre-visit.  Neither of us had ever felt like that before beginning a relationship, neither of us had ever lived with anyone else, and neither of us had ever been in love, so it was very new to both participants.

So pre-trip we were very eager to see each other, and hoping everything would go very well.  We'd talked at great length about nearly everything, knew each other very well, had only a few deepest and darkest secrets left to share, etc.  What could go wrong?

Funny you should ask.

Almost nothing went wrong with her -- nearly everything went wrong with me.

Malaya was fine and comfortable with me the entire time I was there.  Unfortunately that was not the case for me, and I got a huge case of the nerves that lasted for about three days.

The visit began very auspiciously, with Malaya meeting me in the airport in a long black trench coat, which of course just made me wonder what she was hiding underneath it, since we'd talked at length about sexy clothing and what she was going to wear for me.  Which of course was her whole idea.

She also had on black high heels and black Matrix shades with dark purple lipstick (which I love) and she looked very cool and desirable.  She was very nervous though, pacing around, unable to hold still or hold my hand for long, having trouble breathing she was so nervous/thrilled/excited, etc. Conversely, I was quite calm and happy to be there, eager to see her and hold her hand, give her a hug and a peck on the cheek, etc.

Once my luggage came up we headed out of the terminal and waited by the passenger pick up area for a bit, making small talk, until a limo pulled up.  Yes a big stretch limo, blackened rear glass, the whole deal.  The chauffeur opens the rear door for us and takes care of the luggage as we slide into the cool, dim interior.  There was a back seat, a sideways seat along the length of the stretch, and then a front bench seat facing towards the trunk. Along the right wall was a long wooden bar with all sorts of champagne glasses, a mini-fridge, sparkly lights around it and the whole back of the ride, etc.  Really cool, and the first limo I'd been in for many years, so I was impressed.

I shall not share the details of the ride home, suffice to say that Malaya was completely in charge (as we had agreed pre-visit).  She spent 15 minutes slowly undressing me, mostly with her lips, while simultaneously teasing me by not letting me do much of anything to her, other than see that she was actually wearing a full on Catholic schoolgirl outfit, with the pleated skirt and starched white blouse, black nylons, the whole thing.  And she also proved that she was not at all shy, and that she really was as good with her technique as she'd promised me during various steamy phone chats.

Though I didn't really realize it at the time, it was during the 45 minute ride back to her condo that I started to realize how nervous I was.  I didn't feel really nervous, no shaking hands or anything, but I wasn't at ease.  Of course me being somewhat nervous was definitely the only reason I didn't have an orgasm during the limo ride, but not in a good, "hold off so it'll feel better later" sort of way. (She wanted me to come, and certainly provided sufficient stimulation, but my body wasn't responding as I expected it to.)

Once home we retired pretty much directly to the bedroom, where it was more of the same: Malaya doing amazing things to me, me lying back and loving them, me simultaneously feeling nervous and unsettled, me failing to respond sexually as I wished to.

I'm skipping a lot of details since I do think *some* things should be kept private, but this went on for about the first three days.  We went through all of the motions, or at least tried to, but my body was not doing at all what my mind wanted it to be doing.  The net result was that I felt terrible and inadequate, and she felt like a failure and rejected, and it didn't help that much that I was constantly telling her how great it was and how much I liked her and how stunned I was at my body behaving so weirdly.

I suppose this is really opaque, so just to try and clarify; I was not impotent, but we were not able to properly complete our fooling around, and it left us both very restless and unsatisfied.

My uneasiness carried over to other things and I felt queasy, totally unable to consider eating without being sure I would puke it up immediately afterwards.  Malaya was depressed and sure I hated her and wasn't eating either, and tears were shed on both sides, mostly during long late night talks about what the hell was wrong and why this was such a nightmare when we both wanted it to be so different.

It was mostly Malaya who figured out what was freaking me out so badly, and I'm not going to go into the full details, but basically I was just out of my space.  I am not a full-on hermit, but I spend most of my time alone, other than when I'm at work, and I don't socialize much in real life.  I have lived alone for around 10 years, and never spent steady time with a girlfriend for more than a day or so (usually just dates now and then, never living together).  So I was just really dislocated while visiting Malaya.  New place, new things, new person, etc.  And no matter how much I wanted to feel comfortable, and how nicely she treated me, my subconscious was rebelling and I was freaking out.

Malaya had told me that she loved me the first day, that she'd been pretty sure she did for weeks previous, but wanted to wait and meet me in person.  And every time she told me that, mostly during the aforementioned late night pillow talk conversations, it felt like the words were ripping me open. I loved to hear it, but it hurt me to hear it at the same time.  I realize now this was strongly tied to my self-loathing, a personality trait that I have long made light of, but that I have to admit was very bad for me.  I joke about it, but it's not a joke; I really do (did) hate myself, at least in some ways, and with that inherent feeling of worthlessness and disgust at myself, I couldn't accept that a wonderful, beautiful, caring, intelligent woman I almost loved felt so strongly for me.  And when I tried to accept that she really did, I had to think that maybe I wasn't so worthless and miserable and awful after all, it felt like I was breaking inside.

I mean that literally, it was like a weight in my chest, or a coldness, and I would tell myself, usually with Malaya lying in my arms, "She really does love you, you fucking shithead." and I would just sob in happiness and grief and anguish and fear.

"How could someone I cared so much for love me when I was such a piece of shit?" was literally what I was thinking, if not entirely consciously, yet even as I thought that, I could feel the weight of it vanishing from my heart.

If you are reading this skeptically, as I would have three weeks ago, I can only say that this is what I felt, and alleged-writer or not, this is the best job I can do expressing it.  I would never have thought I'd feel that way, and would have found such a description utterly corny.  How could feeling happy or sad equate to an actual, physical sensation in my body?  That's not possible.

Well possible or not, I felt it, and it was overpowering.  I wouldn't say I had a breakdown, but I did lose all control of my emotions a couple of times, and I really have to thank God (or Dog or The Universe or whoever atheists thank) that Malaya didn't freak out or reject me then, or I have no idea what my current mental state would be.  Not good, I think it's safe to say. And while it hurt terribly, and day two wasn't really any better than day one, I felt like I was making some progress on getting over this huge block of pain in my chest.

As it went on I kept having the weirdest thoughts; almost hating Malaya even as I almost loved her, wanting to reject her, wanting her to reject me, etc.  Anything to get away from having to live through and deal with the mental pain, I think. And unfortunately the whole sexual dysfunction stuff was still going on as well, as was the "too nervous to eat without puking" thing. This is at the root of how I lost around 8 pounds in 7 days; I simply didn't eat anything but part of a Greek salad for about the first 60 hours.  I didn't even feel hungry; I was just too miserable and confused to notice my body's normal demands.

I can see how people lose so much weight when they are depressed; I just had no desire or consideration of eating, and when I'd feel hungry I was too freaked out to eat anything. I have long given short shrift to people who have mental issues.  Karen Carpenter = have a fricking sandwich.  However having been there (sort of) I now have more understanding.  If you are mentally fucked up enough, for whatever reason, you can literally not eat.  You don't feel hungry, you know (for a fact) that you will puke up anything you do eat, so what's the point in trying?

This can apply to anything; you realize.  Your mind being out of whack can so totally overwhelm what you want to do or know you should be doing, and even as you tell yourself to stop what you are doing, and hate that you are doing it, you just can't help it.  I so desperately wanted to relax and feel at peace, I had every reason to do so, but I just could not, and it was driving me crazy inside.  And Malaya wasn't faring much better.  She so wanted things to be perfect, and wanted me to be happy, and was doing everything she possibly could to make it so, but it wasn't enough.  We know in retrospect that nothing would have been enough, and that it was all in my head, but at the time it was excruciating.

Fortunately, we remained committed to working through it, and communicated as much as we could during it. I felt horrible and nervous, and I also felt bad since I was making Malaya feel rejected and unloved. Plus she felt like she wasn't being understanding enough, and was beating herself up over that as well.  All in all, things weren't going real well.

I thought many times about giving up and going home early, and she volunteered to drive me to the airport several times, since she could see how miserable and freaked out I was, and as I said previously, her greatest concern was for me, and she hurt that I was feeling so bad, and she would gladly cause herself more pain to spare me some.

Despite my freaking and her offers, I never seriously considered leaving. I thought that if I did it would be the end of the potentially greatest relationship of my life, but more over I could feel that I was getting better, but also that I had to get through this. If I ran from it now I'd feel better in the short term, but it would all still be inside of me, waiting to jump out and ruin things with some future potential mate.  It sounds melodramatic, but I knew I had to stick it out and work through it, painful though it was, or I'd never get any better, and would hate myself for missing out on this opportunity. I don't know how close Malaya was to giving up and just kicking me out, but as hurt as she was feeling she had to have strongly considered it a few times.

Fortunately day three was less of a heartache, though things were still far from how we wanted them to be. I was able to eat somewhat normally, though we were still very uneasy about various things, and my queasiness came and went in waves.  So day three felt better, but the better-ness wasn't due to anything changing, other than me.  I kept telling Malaya that it wasn't her fault and it wasn't about her, it was all about me.  That she was being great and very understanding and all I could have hoped for; it was just me freaking out, and hating myself for doing it, and that if she could just have some patience and let me get over things.

Amazingly enough, the evening of day three we felt closer than we had thus far, and I started to get over most of my biggest worries and fears after a really great couple of hours in bed.  It still wasn't perfect or wonderful, but we were feeling more comfortable with each other, or at least I was with her, since I think she was pretty comfortable right from day one. And as she laid across my chest and looked into my eyes, resting and letting me rest after she'd spent well over an hour doing absolutely amazing things to me, I suddenly realized that I was in love with her.

I had never been in love before, and had even cast scorn on the very concept, thinking it largely a self-delusion.  I still think that, by the way, for most people.  Not for Malaya or I, of course, just *other* people.  We're special and smarter than everyone else, you see. *cough*

Anyway, I didn't know what love felt like, but for the first time since I'd been there I felt really at peace and comfortable, and thinking that she really did love me didn't hurt.  It was sort of scary, but in a good way, and as I thought more about it I asked her to tell me that she loved me again.  And she happily said that she did, and as she said it and I let it sink in, it felt like a damn broke inside of me.

Yes, another corny metaphor, but I've found that they are really quite accurate in describing how I/we fell about each other, so we'll often talk and then say, "corn alert" before we drop some Hallmark'ish "You make me want to be a better person." type line in.  And it actually makes me angry that the best sayings we have in English for the deepest feelings of romantic love and respect and affection are all largely cheese-covered by being thrown casually around inside every sort of greeting card short of small note cards that come with Happy Secretary's Day bouquets.

As I looked up into her (corn alert) loving gaze, I found myself laughing wildly, while I wept uncontrollably.  But I was happy.  Unbelievably, overwhelmingly, heart-poundingly happy. I had never felt that way in my entire life, and it was astonishing.  I felt like I was having a heart attack or some sort of longer duration orgasm (though it was not sexual, I'm just comparing the intensity of emotion).  My brain was spinning, I couldn't stop laughing or crying, and all I could do was laugh and look at her and hug her and try to make her realize how happy I was, and that all of the misery and worry and doubt of the last three nightmarish days was over.

June 1, 2003

I was curious to see how yesterday's blog would be received, being as it's not the sort of thing I usually write.  I am, of course, referring to the lower portion of it, where I detailed the first three days of my recent Malaya visit.

It wasn't the snarky and cynical and humorous type of thing I usually (try) to write, but I wanted to give a detailed and honest run down of how I actually felt and what I actually did during my visit.  Well, not so much what I did, but I wanted to relate my mental state and emotional evolution over the 72 hours of difficulty.  I didn't especially enjoy writing it, and it's more than I'd like to reveal about my psyche, but (you may roll your eyes now) I thought it might be helpful to others.

I know that if I'd read it 4 or 6 months ago, or pretty much any time in the last several years, I would have done extensive eye-rolling, and it wouldn't have meant anything to me.  Some guy with a bunch of issues falling in love.  Great, wonderful, next.  I would have rejected it out of hand, since I didn't believe in love, and I certainly didn't think I'd ever be in it, and if I did it would be very easy to slip right into and I'd feel great all the time and so would the woman I loved.  Since love is all about happiness and better sex and all of that stuff, right?  Why would I feel broken to my rotten core to hear a woman tell me that she loved me?  Why would I find myself unable to stop crying and laughing when I realized that I loved her in return?

And so on.

I'm not saying that everyone is as fucked up as I am/was, but I certainly had no idea I was fucked up at all, much less as badly as I was, and the amount of baggage I had to shed before I could comfortably open my heart to another person was amazing to me.  Looking back now, I'm amazed I was able to do it in a single visit, much less just the first three days of the visit.  I certainly couldn't have done so if Malaya and I hadn't had such a close relationship from our extensive ICQ and email and phone chats.  We knew each other so well going in, had hardly any secrets left, and we are both very committed to open communication, and care about each other a great deal.  So we were able to move through my issues a lot faster than I think most couples would have been able to.  Certainly faster than we would have if we hadn't talked almost daily for a couple of months prior to the visit.

Anyway, I don't mean to go on and on about how special we are, since everyone thinks they are their sweetie are of course the most special and clever people on earth. And that's great.

It's just that all the rest of you are wrong.

Yesterday's telling of the first three days, three days largely filled with anguish and concern and upset, ended with Malaya and I lying in bed, and me laughing through my tears as my mind finally accepted that she really did love me, and for the first time considered that perhaps I felt the same way.  I had sort of come to terms with the idea that maybe I was loved, I mean I know my parents love me, and I know I love them, but that's not at all the same thing.  With relatives it's like, "Of course they love you." With a partner it's much more of an achievement and a compromise.

You live your live and at some point you meet another person who you really click with, and if all goes well you'll eventually find yourself alone with them, and if all goes extremely well you'll find yourself feeling more strongly for them than you've ever felt for anyone else in your life.  Do they feel the same way about you?  Do you want to be with them all the time? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with them?

If you answer "yes" to all of these questions, then maybe you are feeling something like love.  It's not "like" and it's not "lust".  It should incorporate both of those things, but feel so much stronger and more "right" than either of them do on their own.  I was not expecting to ever feel that way, but expecting or prepared or not, I felt it.

Anyway, of course you love your relatives.  But you love them almost as an obligation.  How many people do you know who really have nothing at all in common with their parents or children or siblings or grandparents, and who you know would not spend 10 seconds in each other's company if they weren't related and felt like they had to.  And who wouldn't even want to know each other.  Much less like each other.  Much less love each other.

I've long planned to blog (at some point) about the oddness of loving and tolerating your relatives. And how we just do, despite the fact that so often blood relations have absolutely nothing in common.  It seems like almost everyone thinks their mother was saintly and wonderful and sacrificed so much for them and was the best mom on earth.  And that sort of attitude is smiled upon.  But be a little bit objective.  Most likely your mom, no matter how much you love her, was not really that great a mother.  She was probably pretty average; not as supportive as she should have been sometimes, not as loving or forgiving as she should have been, too lenient, lazy, disinterested in your activities, eager for you to get off to school or a friend's house so she could do her own thing, etc.  And yes, this applies to my mom also.

I'm not saying anyone should stop loving their mother, but it's self-evident that every mother can't be the best.  The vast majority are just very average. Nothing special, nothing unique. 

My point here isn't to talk about moms, but about relatives in general.  Everyone (practically) loves their siblings and parents. Why? What makes them special, other than that you grew up with them around them and you've all seen each other in private, at your best and worst.  Sure they know you, but what makes them any more special or nice or compassionate or understanding than any random person you pass in the supermarket?  All of those people have sisters and brothers and mothers and children who they love and who love them, and to them, you are just some idiot in the supermarket.  No one special.

So why do we all think our relatives are special and why do we love them and put up with their shit?  Even semi-relatives like your drunk brother in law who sleeps on your couch and leaves back hair in your shower drain.  You can't stand him, your wife doesn't like him, and yet he gets treatment better than 99.9% of the people on earth, just because he's related to you, despite the fact that he's never done anything for you, and you have no expectation that he ever will. Why?  Why do humans give such higher priority to people just because we've known then longer, or came from the same sperm and egg?

I don't have an answer for this at this point, and this digression is running way long.  I'll pick up this topic in a blog some day, I suspect.

Picking up where I left off a few paragraphs ago; we feel like we love our relatives, but how do we go from not knowing to liking to loving a total stranger?  What about me is it that Malaya enjoys so much that she loves me, and thinks fondly about spending the rest of her life with me?  And what is is about her that makes me want to do the same?

Well actually I can sort of answer that last question, but since I'm asking it rhetorically, I shan't.  For now.

As I was saying, as I realized that Malaya loved me, and especially as I realized that I loved her, it was an amazing awakening/dawning. I'm not saying that scales fell from my eyes or that my heart swelled up, Grinch-like, to ten times its size. But I certainly felt like it was, and for quite some time, 45 or 60 minutes at least, I was unbelievably happy and content to hold her while I kept laughing and crying.  And we talked and I tried to explain to her how I was feeling (and didn't do a very good job of it, but she got the gist of things) and that everything was going to be better now.

At first she didn't believe me.  When I told her that I loved her.  She relaxed and felt very good that night, and I slept well, but the next day she was a bit wary, and gave me the opportunity to recant, or rethink, or backtrack.  Which was very nice of her, but totally unnecessary, since in the light of day I realized that everything I'd felt the night before was entirely true and accurate, and that I felt it all the more strongly for having slept and settled down a bit.

From that point on, all was bliss.  Or if not bliss, at least a lot happier than it had been.  We were content and enjoyed each other's company, we made love a lot and it was wonderful, we snuggled constantly and were disgustingly cutesy and happy around the house, we cooked together and washed dishes together and went shopping for two hours at Target for homewares stuff. We went on a picnic up in the windy hills and made out in the grass, we walked in the woods, we took two long baths together, we gave each other numerous massages, and we even regretted spending a whole day at Blizzard North playing v1.10, just because that was a day we could have been together, alone, doing together/alone things.

I'm skimming over this since it's between Malaya and I, and you can go watch any cheesy Hollywood love story movie, and just focus on the requisite "happy new lovers" collage where they do all that happy new lover stuff and it's all cutesy for about 10 minutes as they dab whipped cream on each other's noses and giggle a lot and fall over while walking a dog in a park and trade meaningful looks across a crowded room.

We didn't do any of those specific things, but whatever, you can envision us doing them.  Except for the fact that you have no idea what she looks like, that is.

I'll talk more about things we did in future blogs, and we'll be doing more things together in the future, but I suppose that variety in blogging is essential to keep the readers happy.  So I'll probably do my Matrix 2 plot discussion tomorrow, rather than another long Malaya essay.  Though I'd be quite happy to just talk about her/us every day.

In closing, here's the best picture I took of the two of us.  I was holding the camera up in one hand, and this is the second of two shots.  The first has us looking at the camera, and it's not that good a shot.  As she was looking at the lens, and I was looking at her, I couldn't resist a kiss.  And while starting with a peck it soon became much more, as most of our kisses do, and we were quite lost in each other for about 30 seconds here, standing on this dirt path in the woods, with the warm spring sunshine bathing us.

The left side isn't cropped at all, but you'll forgive my poor aim considering the circumstances. I wasn't exactly devoting 100% of my attention to where the camera was pointing.

I like this picture a lot.  More every time I look at it.

Afterward

I started to mention the reader reaction to yesterday's blog, and it was pretty heartfelt and supportive.  There was one weird, long, rambling, semi-coherent mail from a guy who apparently wrote one of the Guest Articles on the D2 site months ago, and thinks that I remember it/him at this point, despite the fact that I post 3 or 4 a week and read about 20 to select the 3 or 4 that I do post.  Anyway, he was vaguely-insulting (as I said, it was not a real coherent email) and appeared to be complaining about me posting too much personal information on my personal website, while also saying that he never read my personal website, since there was too much personal information on it.

Take a wild guess how much time I spent giving that argument any consideration?

More useful mails from several regular readers were very supportive and sympathetic and even congratulatory.  One reader sent me his personal story, one that had a lot of parallels to my own.  He had personal issues, an inability to accept love, and one thing I hope my own life/story will have; a happy ending.  Since he did get over his issues, and did accept the love of the woman, and grew to be able to return it, and they've been married for two years now.

You may join me in an "Awwwwwwww" of sympathetic admiration.

I think I'm over, or almost completely over, my issues in loving/being loved by Malaya, and she and I are very much looking forward to the next visit, which begins June 10th.

I'll have my spare computer hooked up there and be writing every day, though I don't know how much of that writing will be in blog form.  I'm really wanting to get going on the fiction to a much greater extent, and I think I'll be able to do that very well at Malaya's place, since there won't be the cable modem distractions, and I'll have her to motivate me.  She's wanting to get going on her thesis and other professional work as well, and we think we'll be great at motivating each other. Her condo is cozy, we'll have our desks basically side by side in the living room, and since we're doing things together 99% of the time when I'm there, if one of us is writing, the other will almost be obligated to do the same.

I don't know how it is for her and writing, but I do know that for me and fiction, it's all about finding the motivation and time and space, but mostly about getting started.  I often feel like I don't have it in me today, and I'm not in the mood, and then if I sit down and actually force myself to type, I'll look up 2 hours later and wonder what happened and where all of the stuff I just wrote came from.  In other words, if I can just get myself to start on it, I usually go pretty well.

Here I'll sit down to write fiction and think I'll just surf for a minute, or blog for a minute, and then three hours later it's time for bed and I'm wondering what happened. Similar time warping phenomena, but one that's much less what I want to be doing long term.

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