Housewife fantasies and domestic dirtiness

Astute observers have already noted that I changed my Facebook and MySpace profiles to say “in a relationship,” which prompted emails saying things like, “Really? With who?” “This guy in San Francisco,” I tell them. It’s a long story, so I’ll try to keep it brief cause I’ve got a plane to catch in…11 hours or so, not to mention writing and packing. We met six years ago, back in 2001, when I thought I was going to move to San Francisco. I was so enthralled with city everyone seemed to be this successful writer and be part of this happy community and it felt just right to be there. But then I’d realize how small it is, how rumors spread like wildfire, how claustrophobic I might feel and after three trips and one tear-filled long distance relationship, I decided New York is my home.

Anyway, we got back in touch this year and somehow went from joking about making a baby together (he offered to fill my turkey baster) and trying to catch up to just bantering in the same way we did way back then. We weren’t flirting at the beginning (well, I wasn’t flirting), but getting to know each other all over again. I’ll be honest and say I’d thought about him in the intervening years, but mostly thought about how kinda crappy I treated him during our brief fling and I always felt kindof badly about that. Apparently, he had somewhat of a crush on me all this time, and the first time I heard that I just thought, “That can’t be true.” It unnerved me a bit because I couldn’t say the reverse had happened and even moreso, I couldn’t understand why. I’m not saying I don’t understand why someone would want to date me, although I must say in the last year of pretty much nonstop rejection, I have once again settled into happily single mode. But I’m finding that with him probably more so than with anyone else I’ve dated, or certainly anyone I’ve dated in recent history, I don’t have to censor what I’m saying in any way. I don’t have to act or pretend to be anything but myself and I certainly don’t have to worry about being “too slutty,” or too anything really.

And I’ll be able to expound upon this more after this weekend, but it’s funny because in a city that is just full of the kinkiest people around, we’re perverted in a really twisted, retro way. Like I told Violet that I probably wouldn’t be going to the Good Vibes Erotic Film Festival because we’re gonna “lay low and be domesticated” and I think she thought I meant fuck like bunnies, which we totally are, but what I actually meant when I wrote it is that he’s ordered stuff I wanted to watch on Netflix and I have to cook something for a magazine piece and he wants to make meatball cupcakes. He’s brought out this total homemaker fantasy I have, which is somewhat tied to my dishwashing fetish, and is ironic because my own home is a total pigsty (and has truly once been described as looking like a “crack den,” from someone who would actually know, and now it’s even worse). But that’s the thing⎯I don’t like cleaning my own apartment, I like cleaning other people’s. I also love painting houses (interiors). The thing is I would never in a million years want to be with someone who expected me to wait on them hand and foot just cause I’m a girl, but when it’s voluntary, when it’s fun, when it’s me choosing to do it, I’m all, “When can we get to the barefoot and pregnant stage?” The answer is probably pretty damn soon, if things go well. I tried to ease my mom into it by saying “within the next five years,” and he gently reminded me that five years is a long time. That was a long outside estimate; I might be having #3 by then. I’m not in some huge hurry, but with him, with things just fitting together as they seem to be, I would not be averse to that.

I looked up housewife at dictionary.com and got;

a married woman who manages her own household, esp. as her principal occupation.

Part of me kindof can’t explain it, and I was hesitant to even write about things with him but they’ve taken a turn from something much more lighthearted (like, vacation sex) and become more serious but not in a “serious” way, just in a “we really like each other and our interests mesh in a big way.” Both the little things and the bigger things. I think part of me always expects things in my life to kindof collapse and go awry, and I’m comfortable, or at least used to, doing triage. It’s not that I’m all doom and gloom but when things are all good, I really don’t always know what to make of it. So for now I’ll just say that I’m very much looking forward to the next six days. The sex, certainly, but also the really dorky stuff, which includes making myself totally at home in his apartment. I plan to mess it up and then clean it up when I’m not being attacked tied up and molested.