Recently Draven and I had an amorous reunion following our, yes, week’s separation, the duration of which he spent at Veronica and Joe’s. This was our second period of no-contact since he migrated north for the summer, which he does out of physical necessity – he is heat-intolerant and lacks functional sweat glands – and not for any sort of irritation at the strictures of city living/our relationship. Draven is often incommunicado. This is owed to the fact that we interface largely through echolocation. Also his wireless provider is less a telecommunications company than an arcane magic headquartered in a Teuton cave system, so, understandably, service is spotty in Harlem, Park Slope, and much of lower Manhattan.
For the unacquainted, Draven is my long-term situationship who emerged one spring night from the ether of the router/house centipede corner of my studio apartment, and with whom I share an affinity for lengthy, pregnant silences and crudités. I can describe him best as a primordial spirit of the loam, a benevolent specter of death who, in heralding the end, also signals rebirth. I don’t know how old he is. He is for sure ancient or, rather, eternal, so we kind of defy typical age-gap relationship discourse. He rarely discusses his childhood, though it’s hard for me to imagine he ever was a child.
Initially our bond was purely physical. He possesses an animal quality informed by centuries prowling green-black forests, drunk with the still night air and rich Bavarian soil. Like lichen he’d creep along that heady floor, sampling the flora so partial to the riparian reaches of Baden-Württemberg. More shade than flesh he stalked those woods, flitting after various Rodentia for protein, his utterly profound trains of thought for diversion, and felled logs for sexual gratification (I don’t get it but whatever). Then suddenly, maybe because my spell of anxiously avoidant volcelibacy had reached a fever pitch, or maybe because he had fulfilled his tenure as reaper-steward of Northern Europe, he materialized in my bedroom-cum-foyer-cum-study-cum-kitchen-cum-living room-cum-home theater.
CONTINUED IN COMMENTS⬇️🔻👇
2 years agograce_leonhardt
Draven - so sorry to have left you asunder in the UES but there was a cat that needed your dark, warm presence 🤝
2 years agonosexwithoutlove2021
I think it’s healthy for us to have time apart. I’ve been so calm ever since I eliminated evil Gentile forces from my life (Draven is Jewish to me), and I worried our affair would wreak havoc on my hard-won happiness. This hasn’t been the case; in fact, I’ve never felt more secure. I realized the maturity I’d been failing to find in my geriatric millennial paramours is really there in my 700+ year old beloved. And despite the fact he has to travel for work – presaging quietus to the enfeebled of Greater Saxony – and is dismissive of my puny gallery drama, despite the fact he and I differ on our favorite late-career Scott Walker album, despite the fact he doesn’t have what we like to refer to as “a mouth” or “eyes” – his mouth and eyes are in his heart, and his heart, he says, belongs to me.
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