I know this is yet another hokey journal entry. Please bear with me. I'll get it all out one of these days and return to normal :)

Photo by Camilo, taken Dec 30, 2003

There will come a day when the sun doesn't shine for Ben and I. And there will undoubtedly come a time when we're not driven to spend hours of each day in each other's arms. But those days haven't arrived yet. Ben joined me for the weekend in New York, and it was another epic weekend in the three city Ben and Keith tour. The weather was gorgeous, especially for New York in July, we had lots of fun, met up with friends, went to a Broadway show, sunbathed, saw a wonderful movie, and had lots and lots of sex.

On Thursday night, I'd come back to the hotel to find somebody (guess who) had sent me a dozen red roses, for only the second time in my life. At that point, I just melted. So it felt like a long twenty four hours until Ben arrived on Friday early evening. Since he'd flown Jet Blue, an airline which doesn't believe in feeding its passengers, he was starving, so we went out for dinner. Where did we go? I'm drawing a complete blank on that one. But after our unforgettable meal, we walked over to the newly landscaped pier off Christopher Street in the Hudson River Park, and sat looking out into the river, shivering just a little in the unusually windy, cool evening.

I'm forever wishing I wasn't such a complicated, moody, introspective person. On Saturday morning, despite my happiness at being with Ben, a chance observation in the mirror (comparing myself unflatteringly to Ben) left me feeling suddenly awkward and unattractive. Ben showers me with compliments. I've no doubt at all of his utter physical attraction for me - not just because of what he says, but because of how he behaves. Yet despite all this, I guess it doesn't sink in to my heart, and I'm still vulnerable to flash-backs to an earlier, body-hating image of myself. So for much of the morning, as we worked out at the gym, then took the subway down to Chelsea to meet friends, I felt depressed. I completely hid this from Ben, of course.

Last time I'd been in New York, my friend Chris had been single. Now, out of the blue, he has a boyfriend too, so the four of us met up for brunch in the Meatpacking District. Chris' boyfriend turned out to be a strapping, thirty-eight year old former model from Los Angeles, with a strong personality and a wicked, rather jaded sense of humor - so different from Chris, who hides a passionate nature beneath a cool, hard-to-know surface. Chris was the first good friend of mine that Ben has met, so I hoped they'd like each other. But our boyfriends rather dominated the conversation, while Chris and I held back a little, withdrawing into our personal little worlds.

After brunch, my foul mood began to dissipate, for no reason whatsoever. We went clothes shopping for our cruise in August, and I found a beautiful, bold, flattering pair of board-shorts at Barneys Co-Op. It was a lovely, warm afternoon, so we decided to walk over to the Christopher Street pier again. In the daytime, it takes on a completely different complexion than it does at night; the gay men flock there, strip down to their tiny speedos, and alternate lying on the grass with their friends and sauntering along the board-walk to show off their bodies to the other men lying on the grass. Ben and I lay in the shade. It's a wonderful space, and it was sheer heaven to lie back, feeling the grass on my naked back, staring up at the sky, sensing with my entire body Ben's proximity.

Ben on the Christopher Street pier

After a shower and dinner at a sidewalk French restaurant on 7th Avenue, we went to the Winter Garden to see Mama Mia (Ben's treat). I've been wanting to see it forever, but had never been able to get a friend to go with me. Ben had seen it before - last Christmas in London, but it had been only a few weeks since he'd broken up with his lover of nine years, and the sad songs (e.g. "The Winner Takes It All") had just destroyed him. He'd spent almost the entire show bawling. This time we both shed a few tears but for happier reasons.

The finale of the show is designed to get the audience dancing in the aisles, and, well, it didn't quite suceed, but everybody was certainly on their feet. Ben and I danced though. They were playing my all time favorite Abba song, Dancing Queen. After the show we both felt the strong urge to go out dancing. We discussed it over drinks at the chic bar, Therapy, on 52nd Street.

Last time I was in New York, I'd been a little disappointed in myself - squandering yet another Sunday in New York due to a late Saturday night out at the Roxy. Sometimes I can be mind-bogglingly slow. I'd pompously berated myself for not going to museums on Sunday. How could I miss the obvious argument that I'm only young once. I have all the rest of my life to go to museums. But my time for enjoying clubbing is right now. And Ben and I love to go clubbing together. So clubbing we went. Unlike the previous two weekends, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, none of our friends were there, so we had ourselves to each other, and we spent most of the night dancing wrapped up in each other again, despite the presence of some of my tricks from my New York days last year. We left at the sensible time of three-thirty, and made it back to the hotel by four. And by dawn, ninety or so minutes later, we were finally asleep. A long, almost perfect day.

Sunday was, naturally, a slower day. We got up around ten, but didn't make it out the door until close to one, and headed back down to Chelsea for a sidewalk brunch at Viceroy. We'd arranged to meet my other New York friend, Phoenix, and we walked over together back to the Christopher Street pier for the third time this weekend, and lay out again on what was an even more beautiful day than Saturday had been. Phoenix is a lovely, sweet-natured guy and he and Ben really liked each other, which made me happy.

Like Ben, Phoenix can talk and talk, and by three-thirty or so, my late night was catching up with me, and my witty remarks were in increasingly short supply. So we walked Phoenix to the subway, and caught the five o'clock showing of "Before Sunset", a little Indie movie set in Paris. You'd think that given we were so tired, a ninety minute movie that takes place in real time and is one long conversation would guarantee falling asleep. But the movie was powerful, mesmerizing and moving, exploring love, longing and mistakes, as the two characters gradually let go their defences. Given where Ben and I are in our relationship, it affected us both a lot. I'd say it's easily the best movie I've seen all year.

We were spent when we came out, and emotional. As we stood on the subway platform waiting for the uptown E train, I was awash with longing to be alone with Ben. Yet when we got back to the hotel, and ordered room service, we didn't rush into each other's arms. It wasn't until after we'd stuffed ourselves that, strangely enough, we had our wildest, most passionate sex yet.

And then it was Monday morning. It was grey and overcast. Our weekend was over, and it was that sad time of departure. We woke up early enough to eat the only part of our dinner last night we hadn't already consumed - strawberry cheesecake, which felt like an indulgent treat for so early in the morning. We'd bought a length of simple calfsking the width of a shoelace, and (Ben's idea), we made a little bracelet out of it for each of us as a symbol of our relationship. We're never supposed to take it off. I can't believe we've reached this stage so quickly. All these years when I looked down on people who seemed to fall so quickly; yet look at me.

After Ben had gone, I lay around the room, staring into space. I should have been getting ready for work, yet I felt so sad. The ceremony of exchanging tokens of our relationship had so touched me, that my emotions were still close to the surface. I longed to cry, but couldn't. It was only later, at work, when I wrote Ben a poem - I just had to express how I felt - that the tears came. I hid myself in the corner of my cubicle and cried.