Men have covered themselves with adornments for centuries. Trends come and go: Fur pelts, body paint, piercings, tattoos, loin cloths, uniforms, denim, gabardine, super 180’s, sea island cotton, face powder, handcuffs, perfume, cologne, and the list goes on and on. In many respects, we men have adorned ourselves much like our fairer sex counterparts have adorned themselves, and probably, to a greater degree, even more.

I’ve learned over the course of my lifetime that when I gave the gift of adornments to a lover, I’m giving a bauble that I think they would look hot wearing. It doesn’t matter what they like, I think that they’ll like what I placed before them. Almost as though I was making an offering to an idol.

And our lovers are our idols, aren’t they? Don’t we prostrate ourselves at their feet? Don’t we pray to them? Don’t we look into their eyes and see the Divine? Don’t we think that their body is the only thing that even begins to come close to paradise in this whole lousy world? And don’t we love them sooooo much that the experience borders on cultism?

I love my beautiful Abram with my entire heart and soul. I love him so much that I can’t imagine my life without his life. Abram and I are a letter and an envelope. We’re like a catchers mitt and a baseball. We’re just like cookies in a cookie jar.

And when I prostrate myself at his feet and raise adornments above my head I know that he will take them without pause and place them on his body. Then with his delicate fingers, he will lift my head to meet his gaze and place an impassioned kiss on my lips, thanking me for the adornment. (And he will look so hot in it)!

This morning I became an ass. Not to be confused with the ogre’s now infamous sidekick, but an actual ass. As in asshole. I did something that I now regret with the whole of my heart. This morning I made my beloved Artem cry. I made him cry because my insecurity caused a quarrel. It caused a man-fight.

A man-fight is an argument between two men that never stoops to the physical destruction of another. Our man-fights never cause any physical bruising or broken bones. They do cause a tremendous degree of collateral damage. They place a tremendous degree of angst on broken hearts and push the whole of sidelined poker chips with an “all-in” call. “Show ’em,” we’re saying, “I think you’re bluffing.”

But neither one of us is bluffing. And neither one of us is holding cards up a sleeve. Man-fights are raw, unadulterated, impassioned battles. They’re emotional powder kegs blatantly placed beneath a munition depot. They’re horrendous volleys of scarring cannonballs across the bows of our emotional ships.

And yet they never stoop to any physical harm. You see, when we have man-fights we fight because we’re in love. We’re fighting for love; on behalf of love; in honor of love.

Aren’t we, Artem.

My former partner and I stopped sleeping in the same bed decades ago and eventually the same room, and finally to floors below each other. Just what turned me out like a pandering witch from the master bedroom is uncertain. As I recall, it was due to the fact that I was heavier and his night time ritual felt like those hapless supernumeraries holding on to any edge on the Titanic as the transatlantic behemoth lifted out of the water after it broke in half and plunged headlong into the icy depths.

Further, he added, that he often felt that as though he kept log rolling throughout the night and onto my Shrek-like form. When you think about it, there are worse things than falling into the doughy, green puffs of an ogre! Another reason was our sleep schedules: I went to sleep earlier and rose earlier; he went to bed later and rose later. And finally, it was simply because we kept each other awake whether it snoring, tossing or turning.

But what was it really? Was it really a distress signal like that telegraph on the bridge of the Titanic? Or did we find that the bedroom was not a place where we were compatible? Whatever the reason I’m sure it shook the foundation of our already quaking relationship.

According to the September 2017 issue of GQ Magazine, Jeff Vrabel writes, “In fact, one study says that 40 percent of adult couples have already sleep-divorced.”

Gee Jeff, which study is that? Obviously, it’s a study that panders to a particular population that is sleep-divorced. Oh, and just because 40 percent is, it also means that 60 percent isn’t!

Well, Abram and I aren’t. We drift slowly and quietly asleep like the snow that swirls around pines in the vast wilderness of British Columbia. When we toss and turn we’re like boats moored to docks. And when we snore we’re like two men that love loving the other.

I’m wholly disinterested in disengaging myself from Abram’s arms for any reason. And especially when night bathes our eyes in the twilight.

I was talking to Artem this afternoon between kisses and asked him, “when do you think we’ll understand the typography of each others’ body?”

He replied, “why, is that when you’ll tire of me?”

“Tire of you,” I asked, “tire of you?”

Why does familiarity breed contempt? Why should my feeling comfortable with touching Artem’s torso, his shoulders, his hips, or buttocks sans the need to rip open all his clothes, mark the end of one phase and the beginning of another? Of course we’re still steering our respective galleons toward physical exploration and the discovery of rapture. But anchoring off the coast of each other doesn’t mean we’re like hurricanes which lose their fury once making landfall.

What Artem hadn’t realised was that he wasn’t part of a group photograph. No, Artem was a candid, caught in my lens without knowledge; a selfless selfie; his image kidnapped and placed between four black corners on an even blacker piece of construction paper.

Artem is not and will not be in the background.

Artem will always be in my foreground.

How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? What are the signs that we’ve abandoned ourselves to a greater cause? Is it a yearning or a hunger or a thirst? Is it applied like decoupage, or is it organic, building from within like Old Faithful, then erupting sending steam and the fragments of our carefully constructed lives upward and into the stratosphere. Just when do we listen to our corner man and decide to turn ourselves over to their instruction rather than muddle through another round of rockem’ sockem’ punches?

It’s been a very long time since I’ve been in love. Some say that the “in” of in love slowly cools like lava that rolls relentlessly forward to the edge of the sea and drops into the water turning to a black crystalline rock.

“What,” I asked, “do you mean? Do you mean that we lose the music of love and replace it by a nervous tap tap tap of bored fingers on a tabletop?” And what an annihilistic attitude to adopt! No wonder there’s always the ball and chain joke, but the groom to whom the joke is lobbed rarely laughs. Why on earth does falling in love have to become pedantic?

When I fall in love next I want it to be a cashmere blanket that someone tosses over my napping form; I want a thousand kisses as though I’d just walked into a butterfly exhibit; I want the clutching hands, the wandering tongues, and the hungry mouths of craving. I want strong hands to hold my strong hands. I want broad shoulders which will become my pillows. I look forward to clutching fabric while I cry.

And while I welcome the seasons of life to change, I refuse to accept that my lovers will become pedestrian. I’ve never been one to walk into love. Instead, I run in as though I were charging the waves on an ocean.