Fast Away

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve. I've always hated the holiday. Nothing like enforced merriment. But the week between Christmas and New Year's is a whole other thing. This year I was struggling with bad bronchitis, but usually the week bursts with erotic portent. The deliciously possible year end fling is ever elusive, but for that one week its promise dangles like ripened fruit pleading for plucking before it drops to the ground; bruised, bashed, and broken.

It was a year. Another year. For the first time since the recession began my work profits were respectable. I left life as a kinky single man about town and committed to care giving for my dying wife. While my personal life has become something of a shrunken and muted fugue, I find the experience of helping my wife to be sustaining and profound.

I asked her the other day why she thought I was so good at it and without missing a beat she said it was because I was "into S&M". She thought I was erotically driven to serve and help for her has tapped into that motivation. It is so ironic that what drove us to separate has provided the glue to our current relationship. It's so not sexy, but I get a deep satsfaction from my efforts.

So with my personal work star on the rise, her life is in a continuous downward spiral. Two opposite arcs with no chance of a future meeting. I sometimes have fleeting glimpses of future fantasy. But for now I look forward in a most bittersweet way to the coming of a new year and my continued life in the moment.