Hi sweetheart, another glorious day, and yet I sit here feeling a bit fatigued, a bit discouraged, a bit annoyed -- oh it's not even worth going into -- just cryptic, overly veiled CL postings, and then people wonder why they're not meeting who they want. Jeez, just be direct about it already. I might send him a message to that effect, but what is the point? Absolutely none. Except that I had to look up what a 'reverse responder' is, and paranoid self wondered if it was in reference to me. Of course it could be about anyone, he's been posting for at least a couple of months now (that I know of), maybe longer. So 'responder's reverse' is a bridge (the card game) term, it turns out -- a game forcer. Wow, was I a game forcer in not wishing to email endlessly, and wishing instead to meet for coffee? You know, if you're going to be a Dom -- just freakin' say so already. No, I never did state in any message that I'm a graduate, from a certain era, of a Seven-Sister school -- but you know what? I'm not "inhibited" -- I'm a bit reserved (but get me, if I love you, behind closed doors and I don't think you'll ever think of me as inhibited - ever) -- and yeah, bedroom or no bedroom -- outside the bedroom, when it comes to encountering someone I might wish to know -- hell no, I'm no "Sub" -- I wish absolutely to be in as much control of my own destiny and desires as possible, actor in my own life. I know I'm getting riled up over nothing, and really, his snide cryptic asides in the newest iteration of his post may not even refer to me at all. I don't even own a little black dress. Not yet, anyway. Game forcer indeed (she growled). Hey, at least I made an effort to look nice. Unlike him. Dom --- slob. Okay, he wasn't a slob -- but he definitely wasn't "all that" either.

Okay, I'm done - maybe. Sweetheart, oh grrrrrr. It is so tough being our age, isn't it? Man, it's so much easier to be younger, illusions mostly intact, or if not, then hope - oh, never mind, I'm not going to complete that thought. And just now a mosquito bit me --- that bug's moments are numbered - I tell you!

Okay, okay, I'll calm down, I'm fine, I am. It was a nice day. I just pulled a roast chicken out of the oven, and in went a pan of orangey chopped root vegetables to caramelize. I have a number of blouses – a half-dozen – hanging in the closet, that I bought for, I’m not kidding, five dollars apiece, on clearance at the local department store last spring. And even at that price (originally $40) I was looking at them ruefully - they look so frumpy & boring - I had a mind to give them to Goodwill. But these days, with the sudden incredibly mild spring -- they've turned out to be just the perfect, wonderful, very comfortable tops to wear with jeans -- and they look quite nice on me (better than on hangers). I'm glad I didn't donate them -- or else I would have nothing to wear around the house & environs these days. My life such as it is -- as much as I would like to keep a "little black dress handy" -- revolving mostly about home, ShopRite, walks around here, the church to practice the weekly half-dozen, and maybe the library.

So my dearest Bacchus, yes I'm your Ariadne, a bit grumpy this evening -- oh not really, I'm fine. The sun is shining. The chicken & the roasting vegetables smell divine. I'm alive. I had a wonderful time with you today. I found Cornish hens marked down 45 percent, cheaper than chicken. I'm enjoying the biography of Joseph Cornell. I've been remembering a few dreams on waking, and noting them again. Tomorrow's Friday. Maybe this weekend I'll drive down to Rhinebeck. I'm very very glad to connect with you. I get the sense that you're home these days. I read an Op-Ed in the Times today, about homesickness in the age of globalization -- and I thought of you, wondered if you get homesick, imagined that you do, though also I get the feeling that you like being away, or not so much in the thick of things, where it’s not "you" so much as a "representative-function" you - but still, one can be profoundly homesick, even while home, or away, for something, some elusive -- oh what is it?

As a little girl, in the moments before I'd fall asleep I used to feel this strange sense of yearning, falling, longing, immersion, pulling, tending, as I started to lose consciousness in not only the darkness of the room, but in my mind, eyes shut, mind emptying, filling with something else. It happened so often that I would try to grasp that sensation, as I lay in darkness on the verge of sleeping and wakefulness, that very edge -- as a girl, I couldn't name what it was that I was feeling, this enormous feeling of being enveloped and drawn in -- into what, into what? I still don't know, really, except that the idea of falling asleep in your arms, hours from now, after the sun - suddenly turning the light in the aerie rosy – has set, is very appealing, just sinking into them, not quite Ariadne:Bacchus, in that way that she seems to be falling, and he's picking her up, although it's a three-dimensional sculpture, I would love to see other angles of it...

and the sensation is of slipping comfortably into each other's arms, because we fit right together, and feel right, and there's no game-forcing, or reverse-responding, it is just all comme il faut, though possibly not the way my Victorian Babcia meant it, though I believe she was no stranger to passion herself...

And I'm no revisionist historian -- no, rather I'm a dreaming, yearning, ever-hopeful futurist

many kisses - one two three - on your lips just now darling
your beautiful face & lips
and more later
under covers