Being Together
9 February

It's probably about time to say a little about my continuing relationship with Ross. The fact that we've spent a little while apart during the past month has given me plenty of time to mull things over in my usual fashion.

When Ross first moved in last July, it was very much on the basis of let's see what happens. Part of me would not have been surprised if he had stayed for a short while, entered College and then decided to move out and on. I'd have been upset, you understand, but would have realised what was going on. No-one is more gobsmacked than me that here we are over six months later and settled down like a long-standing couple with no discernible reason for splitting apart.

And yet, of course there are always areas of friction in any relationship. It's just part of being together. And that's sort of problematic when, like me, you are publishing a contemporaneous diary that is not only a way of unburdening yourself and making sense of life (like any diary) but is also on record and available for other people to read. Interestingly, another electronic diarist, Justin Clouse, has just run into similar problems.

Justin and Larry's homelife is the exact opposite of Ross's and mine. Justin is young and a student and Larry is older and with an established career. I found it interesting to read some of the issues that affect Ross and I from a different perspective.

But as he's found out the hard way, you have to be very careful about what you write about and, I have to confess, that part of the slowing down in the production of EJ postings has been to do with that.

So, maybe, it's about to time for me just to acknowledge some of the minor (and I do stress minor) irritations I sometimes (and I do stress sometimes) feel. OK, gloves off, where do we start.

• Well, sometimes, frankly, it's like he's off in a world of his own. Now, I guess that that's the penalty I pay for shacking up with an artist but he's so dizzy at times with no sense of practicality. This shows up mostly around the house, tidiness (you knew I was going to say that didn't you) and stuff. But I've got to be honest, he's a wow at doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen and cooking meals. So, maybe I should forgive the fact that I do all the laundry and ironing and he has to be pushed to use a vacuum cleaner and then not very well. Actually, I'm sure that all this fussiness round the house only comes after you've owned a place of your own and bought the contents. And it's going to be a long time before Ross has anything like a financial stake in our home.
• Which brings us to money, which both is and isn't an issue. I'm lucky enough to be comfortable so that having Ross around doesn't break the bank and OK there's his parental contribution which helps. I really don't mind paying for us to go out, have meals, go to the theatre. The alternative is that I go alone and I just don't want that. What really gets my goat is the odd time when we are out with people and Ross sits there all evening and has drinks bought for him without once offering even to share a round. I know he's not a gold-digger and doesn't want to be a kept boy but there are times like that when I'll swear he gives off all the signals that he is.
• I also get ratted off by the lack of communication at times. I know that Ross says that if he could use words to express himself he wouldn't have to sculpt but it would be useful at times to be given some verbal indication of his moods. I'm getting to be able to read him better but I am not a fucking mind reader. And, although I'm the older one and the mature one and all that, I also need my share of re-assurance. But, once again, to be honest, it's oft times that, just when I need it, Ross finds some way of letting me know just how much I mean to him. So, I guess, on this one I'm just too impatient for my own good.
• I could also do with a bit less of the shrugging of the shoulders and the "We can do whatever you want". This "can't make up my mind" syndrome feels almost pathological at times. I don't want the responsibility of organising us all the time. Mind you, when there is something that Ross wants or wants to do, he is quite implacable.
  
• Oh, and, when I raise any of the above points (and I'm not saying anything here that I haven't already said to Ross's face), I can hear, at times, my father's voice in my own and I really hate that. And, yes, I know that there is a whole father/son relationship thang between Ross and I and that Ross may be a substitute for my son, Robert, who I see less and less of as he spreads his wings. So, you can spare me the sub-Freudian analysis about the relationship being based on sublimated incest because, even if it is there, I'd rather just acknowledge it and get on with life rather than picking over the scabs of that one, thank you very much.

Phew!!

Actually, that feels much better for just having written it out of my system. It's like things that rankle also fester if they're not expressed.

Justin, in his diary, talks a lot about the age difference between him and Larry in terms of the money, the authority, the power. All those things are true of Ross and I. And, as Justin acknowledges, they are all surmountable. The one thing he doesn't mention (which as the younger partner is instructive in itself) is the difference in experience. And that's the one element which you can't ever bridge. I will always have twenty-odd years over Ross.

Take the tidiness round the house thang. I remember what it was like to be 20. I wasn't half as house-proud as Ross is now. I can empathise with his position. It'll be another 20 years before he can fully understand mine and, by that time, I'll be well ahead of his on other issues.

OK, enough said. Let's leave that and go on to the events of the week. Well, a couple of fun things have happened this week. Firstly you may remember that I mentioned about Ross dying his hair blond a few weeks back. Well, not surprisingly, it's beginning to grow out giving him jet black roots. Apparently this is completely fashionable at the moment as one of the fashion students at Ross's College asked him where he had had his roots done.

The second guffaw was also for Ross. He's been doing a project which involved him making casts of a well-endowed vibrator in my possession. Actually, it was a legacy present from Fred when he thought he was going back to Singapore last year. It's a long story OK. Anyway, Ross has been producing multi-coloured translucent resin willies from this cast. He was talking with one of his tutors and explaining that he's lots of problems making the cast. Suspiciously eyeing his crotch, she told him that she thoroughly understood and became very embarrassed when she was disabused of her mistake. I mean Ross is big but not, well, not that big, well not quite anyway.

Briefly, before moving on, I want to pay tribute to a new kind of hero. A big yea to Swampy. He's my kind of man. Four weeks down a hole in the ground delaying the building of an unnecessary road and he emerges ripped to the tits. Yo, Swampy.

Saturday night there was nothing on television so that meant just one thing ab fab sex.

Which meant that all we the energy for on the Sunday morning was a leisurely morning lying around on the bed. All we needed were the Sunday papers, a cafetiere of coffee and some hot croissants and we could have been something straight out an adman's dream - though not of course a straight adman. However, we had none of these and had to make do with.

Outside it was sun, sun and more sun. Everyone in Tesco's had gone mad. You know that sort of scene when the first warmish days arrive after the drudgery of winter. It was like Prozac Nation on the rampage.

Even the garden has gone berserk. The winter jasmine is just coming to and end and the dilly daffs are poking through. The front garden is ablaze with crocuses. Most of the stuff I planted last autumn has survived - the holly, the roses and, out in the back garden, even the new viburnum is flowering.

The one down side to all of this improvement in the weather is that the weeds are also coming on a treat.