An Oceanic Love Story
RIDING THE WAVES // DYNAMISM
The sea was the backdrop of our romance.
Eureka, Fort Bragg, Point Pinole, Half Moon Bay, Pacifica. Driving up and down the coast on Highway One for recreation. Staying in chemical cleaner-filled hotel rooms (I put up with them for him—for love) near the water. A couple blocks away, maybe.
He told me that he isn’t very romantic. Yet here we were, in Fort Bragg in a hotel he paid for, waking up early making bad coffee from those little pods and cuddling, softly bantering and planning our day. Here we were walking along the misty bridge to get to a cafeteria-style breakfast place that reminded me of the “Snow Trips” I took with my high school class. Here we were picking up some fancy ciders from the liquor store and walking down to the beach to drink them, in privacy while out in the open.
We were always in our own little bubble, shielded from the outside world, when we were together. I felt so much more safe than when separate.
It was all so romantic.
Yet he insisted he was “probably aromantic,” “probably asexual.” We made love tenderly, in hotel rooms all over Northern California. He lovingly, gently yet firmly held his hands around my throat, lightly choking me, while fucking me. He did this because he knew I liked it, knew it brought me ecstatic pleasure.
I couldn’t set foot in his apartment because of my chemical and mold sensitivities—my breathing would become labored, and I would panic about swift Death by asphyxiation. He couldn’t stay long in my house because I lived with my parents and it was awkward and uncomfortable for him. The few times he spent the night in my bed, he slept badly—tossing and turning all night. In fact, he often slept badly with me, because I snored loudly, apparently. No one else had ever complained about it, yet it was his excuse for canceling plans with me, leaving early. He had to be prepared for an all-nighter. He made a big sacrifice to sleep with me, and it impacted his psyche and soma over time.
In some ways he was so masculine. He wanted to be in control. He refused to use the GPS when driving us around California, refused to ask for help when entering Home Depot. He worked as a plumber when I first met him. Being handy was an fundamental part of his identity. He had small but strong arms, and rough yet receptive hands. He vowed to protect me, as if I was a vulnerable child. When we crossed the street, he moved to the side of me that was exposed to oncoming traffic, steadfastly holding my hand.
In the privacy of the bedroom, he experimented with becoming a different person. She had a common yet refined name. She was sometimes a young adult, sometimes a teenage girl. She was soft and delicate. Easily harmed, easily broken. She felt able to emerge when her body was in my arms, my cradling her shoulders and head. Safe. Quiet. Secret. I alone held this piece of who she was, who she could be sometimes.
When he then got dressed in his heavy Carhartt pants and one of his (only five) holey band t-shirts, and his voice deepened again. He entered out into the world with a gruffness, a solemn virility. This softened over time, over months and years of me holding the girl he could be in my arms, communicating safety and coaxing out feminine desire from her soma.
I remember the first day he wore long sheer polka-dot fringey-femme socks out to meet me at the botanical gardens by the lake. His legs, which he had shaved, were crossed. The rest of him was the same as usual. When I celebrated him for his femme statement piece, got excited, told him how pretty he looked, he said that he did it for me. He performed femininity for me. This was a revelation. I knew, then, that this was true love. This was a truth that we shared, alone, together.
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THE STORM // CAPSIZING
Soon after I moved into his apartment, in late 2020, I went off my psychiatric meds—and that is when my chronic allergic syndrome emerged. I came to the conclusion that there was something in his apartment that was toxic to me. I rushed myself to the hospital one night after panicking in front of him that my airways were closing down and I shortly would be unable to breathe. He tried his best to support me as I dealt with these new symptoms, which probably had some psychosomatic influence, yet were also very real. I became so obsessed with my illness and so afraid, that I had to move out within a month, going back into my parents’ home. I felt like a failure. He communicated to me that “we tried, it didn’t work out” to live together. I wanted to try again, in a new, less toxic home, but he wavered during those conversations, not wishing to pursue any new living situation with me. This reinforced my feeling of deep failure, that my illness was like a demon that had possessed me and was destroying my life. He did not reassure me that this was false.
After this experience (which was traumatic for both of us), when we were together, it was evident that something between us had shifted. I felt him pulling away, felt him questioning his commitment to us. As he pulled away, my mania re-emerged after lying dormant as I struggled to manage my allergies. I began to anxiously pull him back towards me, through any channels available to me. I became dysregulated, passionate, manipulative. I asked him to marry me, several times in one month, even though, from the beginning, he said no, or rather “not at this time.” I cried, I sobbed, I told him I wanted to die…and implied that living with him would solve that. He was alarmed by this manipulation, which came from an honest (yet delusional) place, and was decidedly ethically wrong. He told me this, and I knew this—yet in the moment I couldn’t help myself. I was manic, suicidal, impulsive. He then pulled further away and our connection experienced its first big rift.
After taking some space, I apologized, begged him to try again with me, that I would be normal, that I would be easy. I could be casual if that’s what he wanted. I just wanted to see him. So he gave me another chance—invited me to spend time with him in a hotel in Mill Valley. I did, and we were able to reconnect. I soon learned that for him, though, things could never go back to how they were, he was no longer committed to fulfilling my (many) desires as a partner. Now, he shielded his vulnerability from me, distrusting that I would respond to it responsibly.
We had an on-and-off romance after that, for eight more months. We both engaged in harmful behavior towards each other, which I know came from a desperation in us. Yelling, crying, breaking each other down. Almost two years in, our romance was just too much weight for us to carry. I had invested too much; I had too many binding—for him, suffocating—expectations. He moved out of town. Our romance, thus, was fated to end eventually. I was the one to first voice that this wasn’t working, but breaking up was a mutual decision. Our romance was unsustainable—heavy with baggage—and had to be released.
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THE AFTERMATH // THE ELLIPSIS
This end turned out to be more like… an ellipsis. We took some time apart, not seeing each other for months. I reached out, finally, and we reconnected, meeting up at a pub. We began to explore what “friendship” could look like between us. I visited him a few times a month. We began holding hands again.
Now, when I visit him in his new home, we’re incredibly affectionate. No surprise, it is on the ocean—it is where he grew up, where he once again lives with his mom in his childhood home.
We hold hands and walk in parks, on trails, breathing in the gentle musk of the redwood and eucalyptus trees. We walk along the boardwalk, the invigorating ocean air wafting into our welcoming nostrils.
We walk along the cliffs, winding within the residential streets, visiting animals that we know in the area who we have named. Softcat. Creamsicle Cat. The Tortoise. We ponder the birds, making up stories about their doings, their comings and goings.
He has a sweet, strange fantasy that one day he will feed a pelican a fish, and then he will be able to pet it. He repeats this any time he sees one. He has done this since we first got together, whenever we went to Berkeley Marina, Lake Merritt, or the North Bay ocean. It is unclear to me whether this is playful autistic perseveration, or a true bucketlist item of action—and he does not reveal his intent one way or another. (Mystery is an art of his). Regardless, we talk about it whenever a pelican is near.
We visit the “Big Squishies,” as he calls the sea lions. Much of our interpolation is silly and childlike. Our whimsy has been something we’ve continued to build over the course of our seasons together.
When I’m there with him, it feels like all time stops. We are just a pair of companions, age unknown—unknowable—in a seaside town. I do not feel desire, usually. I try not to, at least. I try not to wish too hard that we be anything more than what we are in the moment.
The sea has always been the backdrop of our relationships—first romance, then...whatever this is now. The tenderness I feel for him didn’t leave along with the word “partner” or “boyfriend.” In fact, it grew. Softness has re-entered our connection, and softness reveals itself out of the open, along these paths that we walk together. The sea remains, and so do we, sometimes apart, sometimes intertwined. And I don’t witness an end in sight.