Unless.

Two years ago today I was feeling…depressed. Laid low after a failed attempt at a book / teaching tour, I was doing that thing where you TAKE STOCK OF YOUR LIFE  and was not sanguine about current status reports.

Being back in NYC thanks to the courtesy of the generosity of The Evil Jewish Lesbian Landladies and my own madness was a gift​, yet I was dogged by the knowledge that this was not a permanent situation. I’d had several decent writing gigs that had all evaporated within the past year, and that made paying even my modest bills impossible. Furthermore, I was almost through the money I’d saved while working for FriendFinder Networks, and that weighed heavily on me as well. 

And I was lonely. Even finding play-dates was hard. I’d work up the nerve to ask someone to play, and almost inevitably there would be some reason it wouldn’t come to fruition. Or I’d finally have a long-awaited play-date, and the person involved would make it abundantly clear this was not going to lead to a longer-term or more sustained connection. I was sure there had to be something wrong with me, despite copious evidence to the contrary. I was still making what felt like an unbelievably futile effort to find a partner despite knowing deep down I never would.

In the shower, in the dark, (what, you don’t shower with the lights out? You really should try it. It is amazing) in the middle of the night, I had a long talk with my higher power. About fear, about disappointment. About the mad leap of faith I’d taken to move back home and try to live life as an educator under the banner of Alternative Sexuality.

I made an early New Year’s resolution that night, in the dark, in the shower, to suck it up, be a grown-up, give up this elusive and mad dream of being a full-time sex-educator, let go of the idea that I should fight to remain a part of a community that was so rampant and rife with deception, criminal behaviour masquerading as BDSM, where even friends turned their backs on me in the fight against bigotry in our communities…I didn’t feel I could make an impact and needed to stop doing for others and do for myself.

I decided I needed to Get A “Real Job™” and realize I was living in a fantasy world.  

Unless.

Unless, of course, my Sweet Lord would see fit to send me the perfect dominant. A monogamous person who would love me as I was, who would be able to offer me a place to serve and relieve a lifetime of financial anxiety. I had been polishing up and whittling down my relationship laundry list for years now, perfecting it, and as I thought about what I needed, wanted, desired in a relationship, I began to cry in the shower because I knew it was a fool’s dream.

I considered myself brave for being practical.

I considered myself reasonable for letting go of a  flighty unrealistic pipe-dream to which I’d clung,  hidden away, only to paw over alone in my heart when no one else was looking.

With a bittersweet crumble of memory, I pondered the smile I’d always had lingering on my lips when I met new people or hell, even walked down the street, eyes glancing for human to human knowing I might never know who the person could be to fulfill my outrageous hopes.

But that night, in the shower, in the dark, I closed my eyes and opened my heart and felt the edges of myself trembling as I said “Jai, Ganesha…You know what, Lord? I did everything. I left my job, an amazing place to live, friends I’ve known for a decade and a half…I put myself out there in ways that shake me to recall. And I am lonely. Lonely and so depressed and about to be dangerously broke again. SO, I’m done. I’ll let it go. January 1st will be the start of me rolling up the carpet on this overreaching dream. And I will get a job. A Good one. And I’ll work hard and excel, because that is what I do. Hell, maybe be management in a few years.

Unless.

Unless you bring me the perfect one and drop them in my lap because I barely even have the energy to answer another fucking message on another fucking dating site, to be honest. Let alone go out and meet them.  SO, go ‘haid, Ganapati. You have, like, twenty days to change my entire life and perception and renew my faith in this ridiculous and elaborate system of desire I’ve constructed over many, many years.

I dare you.”