I want to tell y’all a story about supporting and loving your partner, starring my amazing wife.
I’ve mentioned before that I had an eating disorder for many years, and though I consider myself “recovered” there are aspects of my disorder that I still struggle with today — being quite a bit heavier than my wife is one of them.
When my wife and I moved in together back when we were still girlfriends, I was at my skinniest. She used to pick me up all the time and lift me off the ground, and I’d laugh and kick out my legs ‘cause I was just delighted to have her holding me.
But I started gaining weight as I went through recovery, and where once we were pretty close in size, I began to get bigger. And bigger. And bigger. And she remained her naturally petite self. I began to almost dread when she’d try to pick me up, sure that this time she wouldn’t be able to get me off the ground.
But every time, even if I protested, she’d lift me up and say something like: “See, you’re not so big that I can’t lift you!”
And one time I just blurted out: “But someday I’m going to be so fat you won’t be able to.”
She looked me dead in the eye and said: “No you won’t. Because if that ever happens, I’ll start working out.”
It was the best possible thing she could have said to me, because she wasn’t saying I wasn’t going to get fat
—
neither of us knew that for sure. She was just saying that I was never going to be “too fat” for her.
And every time I worry about getting bigger, I remember that I’ll never be so big that she can’t lift me, because baby knows how much I love being held, and she’ll change her own habits to ensure that I never feel “too big” or “too heavy” because in her eyes I’ll never be “too” anything.
Anyway, there’s a moral to this story: Find yourself a partner who will never consider you an excess. You should never be “too much” to someone who loves you — too big, too loud, too passionate, too awkward, whatever your “too” happens to be. And even as you change and grow (in my case, literally), the right person will be there through the changes, to tell you that you’re always just right for them.
My strongwoman, the wind beneath my wings, the arms under my ass. 😍😍 😍
I saw a sad facebook post from the gay bookstore back in Ann Arbor where I used to live about how they hadn’t sold any books that day so I went on their online store and bought a couple, and while you don’t get #deals like elsewhere online, I’d love it if y’all would consider buying your next gay book from them instead of like, Amazon.
Common Language is a great bookstore and while I’ve only been there once, I follow it on Instagram and really want to see it succeed!
Their most recent Facebook post (~9:30 PM, April 18):
A little update:
At last count we had 211 online orders over the last couple of days. We generally have a handful of online orders PER MONTH. And many days our in store sales are 3-5 books. In other words, this deluge is significantly more than we sell in a month. We are literally brought to tears by this outpouring.
About 80% of them have already been fulfilled and are on their way to you.
The other 20% require special attention (out of print book, book temporarily out of stock, etc.) or we need to pull together books from various sources. Some of you will be getting emails from me!
Our staff is three people and one dog. And while the dog is, perhaps, the world’s sweetest dog, he’s not much help in this task. The lack of opposable thumbs is a big hindrance to many bookstore tasks.
Mind you, we are not complaining. Having a surge which overwhelms our current resources is a great problem to have. Heartfelt thanks.
As I take a short break from fulfilling orders I wanted to share a few thoughts.
This is transformative.
We will be able to pay some bills which will steady the ship for a longer voyage. In our wildest dreams this surge would continue, we’d hire more people to handle the load, and the world would have a thriving honest-to-god queer bookstore.
But even if it doesn’t continue at this truly astonishing rate, having a regular flow on online orders would give the store a level of security we haven’t seen in a long time.
All of you did this. You made it happen. And you can be a part of making that dream come true. In fact, you can be the most important part of making that dream come true. You can be an ambassador.
It was, after all, an ambassador who made this happen.
When a friend talks about getting a book, steer them to us. Our mission is to create a safe space for LGBT people, a resource for a community, a place of equality for women, a place where black lives truly matter, a place where your gender is what you say it is, not what anyone else says it is.
True story – There are historical accounts (well, there’s at least one historical account) in which English people whine about how the Norse men bathe so often they’re able to seduce the local women away from their husbands.
^^^ Yep. Turns out the women were way more into the hot well groomed muscular dudes who liked to smell nice.
*Hot, well groomed men who liked to smell nice and knew their way around sharp objects.
“I just don’t know why you couldn’t marry a local boy sweetie.”
“What can I say dad, Hjalmar bathes regularly, smells nice, has shoulders, can wield a sword and can wield his sword ifyaknowwhatImean, and when he comes back from raids likes to shower me in rare gifts from overseas. Look at this necklace! The amber beads came from the lands of the Rus! Also, he’s teaching me how to shoot a bow and use a spear because he thinks it might be nice if I could go on raids too someday.”
I mean, frankly, if I wasn’t already married, I would marry Hjalmar, too.
so last night I was tabling with Nicole of #StillBisexual at a bi art event, which was in a performance space that hosts LGBTQ artists and their work.
Nicole and I are sitting at the table with all sorts of #StillBisexual swag when this guy walks up, looks at the table and says to us, “Yeah, I don’t know about those bisexual people, like, can you ever really trust them?”
…at a bi booth.
In an LGBTQ performance space.
Before a performance about bisexuality and stigma.
Nicole didn’t miss a beat and said, “Sounds like someone needs a brochure.” But the guy continued to tell me about how you can’t trust a bisexual to not cheat on you because they’ll always be craving “the other half.” I tried to stay polite while attempting to check him but the whole time in my head I was like ???!!!!??!!
Later in the night he interrogated a THIRD bi person about the same thing, (and mentioned how he wouldn’t date a bi man). Turns out this dude is the artistic director of the space.
This is what bi people mean when we say sometimes we don’t feel safe in LGBTQ spaces. The fact that people feel totally fine with voicing their prejudices about bi people – TO bi people – in spaces that are supposedly for us as well?
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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