Scintillectually Yours

My girlfriend (boifriend?), DPR, has a relatively new blog that I’ve promoted here several times already. Although I believe her to be a wonderful writer of erotica, she lovingly sends those pieces only to me and instead focuses her endless talent on issues that are more relevant to her daily life. If you read my work on a regular basis you know that I am very traditionally butch/femme. I joke that as the years have gone by my girlfriends have gotten so progressively butch that I wound up with a man (my ex is a female-to-male transsexual). It should come as no surprise then, that DPR is butch to the nth degree. While she has no plans to transition, in daily life she passes as a man far more than she passes as a woman. Hence, her desire to explore, through words, her daily “walk between worlds.”

On Fridays, however, she devotes her page to her true passion, her poetry. Today she posted, with my blessing, the first poem she ever wrote to me. It is called Something More Than Promise and it is heartbreakingly beautiful. I was moved to write about this because of the conversation that ensued after I read the introduction she wrote. Her Friday posts are called “The Mind of a Poet,” and she literally blew me away (as she often does) with her literary references and her sheer overwhelming intellect. I am always fascinated by anyone who writes good poetry (and I believe hers is far better than good; I believe it borders on genius but I leave it to you, dear reader, to check it out for yourself). I dabble with poetic format but would never, ever attempt actual poetry. This is where the difference in our styles lies. I am in awe of her academic prowess. I get wet just listening to her talk—she is this wellspring of obscure knowledge. Anything she has ever read, listened to, or studied…it’s there. I sometimes feel as though I sit at the feet of one of the greatest teachers and have nothing worthwhile to contribute because I am so overwhelmed by the force of her intelligence.

I may sound as though I’m not giving myself any credit and that is not the case. I write. I love to write. I think I’m a good writer. Someday I’d love to be published (and I don’t just write erotica…I maintain a couple of other websites and am working on a book of essays about single motherhood, this just happens to be one facet of my work). I believe I have raw talent and I’m not a stupid woman by any means. However, I also am very instinctive about my writing. I rarely put more than a single hour into any one piece that you read. I have gut, visceral reactions. My work is pure passion on paper. I often find myself flying out of bed at midnight to purge my cerebral overload; DPR, on the other hand, has one poem she’s been working on for 10 years. Yes, 10 years! That means she was giving birth to that baby on paper around the same time I was birthing my demon-spawn of a child!

I guess the point I’m trying to make  with all this verbal rambling and fumbling is that she is a true intellectual. Put her in a room full of academics and she can hold her own against the most pretentious of them (and she has not an ounce of pretense in her body, mind you). Put me in the same room and I’m off looking for the chips and dip and snooping in the medicine cabinet. I have said this before and I’ll say it a million times more, DPR first got me (oh, those many years ago) with her attitude, but she (when we reunited) seduced me with her intellect.

As an aside, and I hope she doesn’t mind that I’ve shared this, I want you to know a little something more about this particular poem and to fully understand the meaning of this you will have to read the poem itself. She wrote it in December, shortly after we decided to see what would come of reuniting after 26 years apart. Just after Christmas she came to visit. The night that her luggage finally arrived, having been sidetracked by USAir to who-knows-where, she pulled out her Christmas gift to me. It was a cairn. A beautiful glass jar with a cork in the top, filled painstakingly with native garnet, granite, and river rocks polished long for us. It was the most beautiful and romantic gift I have ever received. Now…don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like her?