A Twenty-Second Wedding Anniversary

WARNING:  The links contained within this post will take you to sites with content for mature readers only.  However, this post is suitable for a PG audience. 

Andrew and John ~ March, 2014

Today as I feel the sweetness and growth of an almost twenty-three year love affair, I pause to reflect on our twenty-second wedding anniversary.  John and I have been committed since our first kiss on August 25, 1991, but didn’t formalize it as married partners until seven months later.  Each year we celebrate both dates, as reminders of the intense and passionate journey of two soul mates.  

On a late summer afternoon in 1991 I was a suicidal young transman whose life was changed forever.  The train wreck of my miserable existence, running towards a derailment, had slowly lost it’s chaotic speed. Baby Doll unexpectedly walked into my life. He saw my heart, held my secrets, and touched my soul.  John Jericho saved my life.  For that, I owe him mine.

I define myself in many ways: complex, intense, mysterious, passionate and tender. However, I also have the ability to be direct and straightforward. I’ve known since the age of five that I identified as a boy, at twelve I realized I liked boys romantically, and at seventeen I decided that I was a masculine gay transman.  When I learned the meaning of those terms,  it wasn’t long before I was falling in love with the type of gay male that I desired.  A romantic friendship turned into a commitment.  So when I asked John to marry me, he said, “yes,” changing my life once again.

Twenty-two years later nothing has changed.  John is still my beginning and my end. Our history as life partners includes two biological children, a pair of cats, a home, and family.  So much has changed in the last two decades, not only in the world around us, but in our own lives.  Together we have climbed many mountains, walked through countless fires, and have seen situations where mercy was only granted to us in the final hours of despair.  Above all we’ve tried to hold onto faith, hope, and love.  I can say without a doubt, that after all these years love remains.

While I have shared many whispered words of love with my partner, I always return to the same poem written by e. e. cummings.  Twice a year, in the moments before Baby Doll and I fall asleep in each other arms, I recite somewhere i have never travelled.  Cummings’ poem, which broke all grammatical rules, also breaks the mold on how love is to be perceived. Love is not meant to be analyzed, but felt.

****

somewhere i have never travelled by e. e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

****

“Happy Anniversary, Baby Doll!” ~ Andrew

To learn more about John and I visit: Life With Baby Doll.  Due to the increasing popularity of the Life With Baby Doll series, I have created the permanent tab on my Website that contains information concerning the intense and passionate love affair that I share with my partner, John Jericho.

I enjoy hearing from all of my readers, and look forward to your e-mails. Remember Love is Love…Period.

Andrew K Kinley  is a ManLove erotic romance author for Siren-BookStrand Publishing  and LGBTQ rights activist based in Hot Springs, AR.  All of his work can be found at:  A K Kinley. For questions or comments please e-mail him at authorakkinley@gmail.com.