2000-10-15 - 23:59:11

Life with Lilac (Lilac, part 2)

Lilac and I met in the last few days of October, 1983 and by the first of December, we were already living together. That's what you call your basic whirlwind romance.

It's curious that right now I find myself in a similar situation, having just moved in with a woman that I've known only a short while. And, I'm happy to say, that's where the similarities end. Life with Lily seems to be an endless honeymoon; we are getting along amazingly well.

Life with Lilac, on the other hand, was a bumpy ride. We had a lot of joy, a lot of love, but we had a lot of problems, too.

When I was first getting to know Lilac, I marveled at her strength. I admired the fact that she'd been through all the stuff she'd been through, and was still standing. What I didn't fully realize was that all of her tribulations had left their mark. It was only after she'd gone for good I realized that fear was her primary motivator. Fear of losing her eyesight, fear of her family, but most of all fear of me leaving. Ironically this fear helped to drive us apart.

And I had a fair number of issues myself. Even though she had broken up with me nearly two years before, I was still messed up over my college girlfriend, Anne, and I was still punishing myself for the mistakes that I had made with her.

Even though she had major jealousy issues, Lilac was a sympathetic listener - to a point. Finally there came the day when Lilac said "Enough! I don’t want to hear about Anne any more!"

Although by that time, I'd done a lot of healing and I was mostly over her. However, Lilac developed a major dislike of Anne, which lead to some awkward moments when Lilac finally met Anne some years later.

It's funny, during the years when I was alone, and missing Lilac terribly, I think I romanticized our time together. But now, looking back, a lot of the less-than-wonderful things are bobbing to the surface.

Before I moved in with Lilac, I had thought that PMS was something invented by the media. Nearly every month, like clockwork, three days before her period, Lilac would go temporarily insane. Every little thing would be cause for a fight. Lilac would be crying, screaming and throwing things at me, and I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong. One time I remember her accusing me of doing something and I was absolutely able to convince her I hadn't done it, she then accused me of the opposite crime!

It was then that I realized that Lilac was just having some uncontrollable fit of temper, and it really didn’t have anything to do with me at all. Once Lilac started taking birth control pills, these fits became a lot less frequent.

However this wasn't the only way that Lilac tested my patience. For example, only a few weeks after we moved in together she started getting these love poems from some guy in one of her classes at college. Needless to say, this annoyed me a bit. I asked Lilac to give this guy the brush-off, but she thought he was cute. Eventually he wandered off on his own, but unfortunately it was an indication of things to come.

I'm trying to think of a nice way to put it, but I can't. Lilac had a hard time saying "no" when someone else wanted to sleep with her.

The first time wasn't with another guy, it was with her "friend" Martha. Lilac had been visiting her, and got stranded overnight by a snowstorm. When she showed up the next day, she was acting all weird and tense. Plainly something was wrong, and I had to wheedle out of her what it was. She'd slept with Martha the night before and was all guilty about it. This was actually a pattern that was to repeat itself over and over again in our relationship. Lilac would do something that she knew I wouldn't like, then she'd act so guilty about it until even the most oblivious boyfriend in the world would know something was up.

When I met Lilac, she had a bunch of friends that she didn't like. What I meant by that is that she had a bunch of people that she would hang around with, and she barely tolerated any of them, but she continued to spend time with them because she felt she couldn't find anybody better. Say, someone who was helpful, smart, kind, non-abusive, etc.

I'd say that Martha was the worst of the lot. Vindictive, greedy and self-centered, Martha was a scheming bitch, but somehow so dreary and stupid that being around her was like a never-ending trip to the dentist. Her specialty seemed to be screwing up other people's relationships. She'd start by having threesomes with the couple and then sleeping with the guy and girl individually. She'd then poison them against each other, until the relationship broke up and then she'd move on to the next couple.

I remember one time, Lilac and I were meeting Martha in a mall with the idea of spending the afternoon wandering about, looking at the shops. Right after we met up with her she looked at us both and said: "What are you waiting for? Entertain me!"

With almost anyone else I would have thought they were kidding, but Martha actually thought it was our job to amuse her for the afternoon.

Martha was primarily responsible for one particularly memorable incident.

I need to preface this story with an admission, though. Group sex, or rather the idea of it, is a big turn-on for me. I'm something of a voyeur, and the idea of watching sex while having sex really gets me boiling, or rather it used to. Now I'm of the opinion that it's just too potentially destructive. Anyway, Lilac knew about this, which explains the following incident.

It was fairly late in the evening, and I was coming home from a comic convention. When I keyed in to the apartment, everything was dark. I figured Lilac must have gone to bed early. I crept into the bedroom quietly and started to undress, so as not to wake her. Suddenly, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Something was not right, I could feel it.

I called out: "Lilac? Honey, are you awake?"

This was greeted with a chorus of giggles from the bed.

Lilac was hanging out with Martha, and their friends Shawne and Lennard and they decided to play a little practical joke on me by all climbing into bed, fully clothed, and turning off the lights. Har de har. Good thing I hadn't undressed all the way.

I was not pleased by this. I'd had a long day, and was really not up to entertaining visitors, especially ones I didn’t like.

Shawne and Lennard were married friends of Lilac. I didn't have any problems with Shawne, who was kind of quiet and mousy, but Lennard was an obnoxious, disgusting jerk. By the way, I'm not misspelling Lennard's name: his folks were so dumb they didn’t know how to spell "Leonard."

Anyway, Shawne and Lennard had come within inches of divorce, thanks to Martha and her head games. Why they continued to spend time with Martha was a mystery to me.

So I was tired, and all these people were occupying my bed. Great.

Lilac beckoned me over and I lay down next to her.

I'm not quite sure how it all began, but practically without any warning, Lilac started kissing me very passionately. Then she stopped, and started kissing Martha in the same way. Martha's hand stole up Lilac's shirt while Lilac's hands were busy under Martha's sweater.

Meanwhile, Shawne and Lennard had sensed the direction things were going and started getting affectionate as well. The only problem with this was that as they got turned on, they began to make noises. Shawne started making noises that sounded like a cross between a hyena and a guinea pig, a sort of giggling squeal. To make matters worse, Lennard then began grunting like a pig.

So here, I was, supposedly experiencing my ultimate turn-on and yet all I saw was my girlfriend kissing someone I absolutely detested, and all I heard was: SNORTSNORTSNORT! Squeeeeaaal! SNORTSNORTSNORT! Squeeeeaaal!

It's not fair, I tell you!

Obviously I didn’t feel aroused at all. I felt like jumping up and running away.

Lilac stopped what she was doing, and whispered in my ear: "This is what you want, isn't it, baby? Tell me what you want. C'mon, baby, tell me."

Then I understood what was going on. I was being given a test.

I whispered back to her: "Lilac, all I want is you, just you."

Bing! Correct answer! Give the Uberhamster an A+!

Suddenly Lilac sat up in bed and turned the light on. She stretched extravagantly and yawned. She then said that she was very tired and needed to go to sleep and it was time for everyone else to go home.

Martha, Shawne and Lennard looked at her in disbelief. Nevertheless she made them put their shoes on and hurried them out the door.

Well, living with Lilac certainly wasn't boring, I'll give you that.

I have taken rather longer than I would like just writing this, so I'll stop here. Obviously I have more to tell, but that is a story for later.

However, in the last few hours, I've gotten an amazing bit of news. Lilac and her Australian husband are going to be visiting the United States in just a couple of weeks! Moreover, the two of them may be staying right here in the Hamster Palace for a couple of days. I haven’t seen Lilac in ten years, and the fact that she should pick now, while I am finally writing about all this, to make her appearance is a very disturbing bit of synchronicity. It's gonna be weird, folks.

Lily is being a good sport about all this and is a little curious about Lilac, but she doesn't trust her as far as she can throw her, in spite of the fact that Lilac is a married woman.

Ah, the joys of living in interesting times...

Continued