One more Birthday :)
Hallo loves.
I know I keep announcing a project, but…merch and link delays. It’s coming. It’s kind of nice. I’ll just keep writing about fun things and things I love in the meantime 🙂
Yesterday was book birthday, today is boyfriend birthday.
I try not to go on and on about my current relationship, because, well, you know….but it’s his birthday today, and I want to sing his praises for a second.
I’ve been with fella this for a year and a half now, and every day of this relationship has been little miracle of re-understanding love.
I used to think relationships were just for me and the other person. What can you do for me? What can I do for you? What are we getting from each other? Like some kind of tallying video game.
This is different. Some of you know the history of our relationship (it’s wild, and beautiful, and in some versions of the story we get to say we have actually been together for 22 years, with a break in there somewhere).
This relationship has been less about what we can get from one another and more about how we revel in what we do for the ones we love. The friends, the community, our families, the biological and logical kids.
Our love takes flight in a kind of mutual passion for making a haven for whoever is around, and then falling into bed at the end of the night, exhausted and happy, entangled in a job well done. It’s a feeling I’ve always craved. It’s the feeling of deep care, of chosen family and hearth above work-work. We are happiest when we are cooking and kids are laughing in the kitchen, when we get to make out for a second in the dressing room when everyone has gotten what they need.
A lot of you patrons have met Brendon…at events, at patron gatherings, at your houses.
He loves and gets this community and he loves helping, and honestly, if he didn’t, it would be a dealbreaker. I am in a lifelong relationship with this community and my friends, family, and partner need to understand. At worst: they tolerate it. At best: they revel in it.
Brendon and I revel in what we can do to build magical moments and safe harbors for other people. It’s our life’s work, both of us. It’s what we do. I may be the front person, and he’s mostly a backline guy, but we believe deeply in the power of The Show as Church.
But also? We love just being basic bitches together.
We cannot stop being thrilled by the fact that we deeply, deeply enjoy going to Home Depot together. Or to the grocery store. Or the post office. Or anywhere, really. We bask in one another’s basic company, and I have learned that that is not something you can take for granted. We never stop cracking each other up. The puns are endless.
We were at a party the other night and Brendon was introduced as “my boyfriend” to a rich powerful tech guy, and the guy greeted him with “Congratulations”. Here is the irony: I am the luckier one. I FUCKING SCORED with this guy.
He’s also…a truly incredible poet. My love language is words, and this guy knows how to romantically string them together like no other.
Happy birthday, the lover.
You’re the bestest.♥️
Xa
Header photo: Darling Harbour in Sydney, Australia, Jan 2024
Here’s another sweet one of us in Australia with my Oz song and book writer friend Clare Bowditch, eating Ice Cream in Collingwood super late one night (photo by Clare).
