Dear Liam in Musings

Dear Liam,

You’re annoying. You leave your beard stubble in my sink. When you brush your teeth, you leave specks of toothpaste and spit all over the mirror. You don’t take your shoes off in the house and trudge dirt into our home, leaving you shoe marks all over our wooden floors. You give me noogies and play on my gullibility, where you tell me to close my eyes, give me a wet Willy and also put your salty finger from digging in your nose in my mouth and I really can’t stand you. You annoy me to all hell. You push your boundaries with me. I HATE YOU.

But then there are times when you come home exhausted and I’m already asleep, or pretend to be asleep, because I’ve been waiting for you and even though I know you’re a big dude, I don’t know what the world holds for us; you just stumble into our room, rip your clothing off and talk stupid nonsense—-and 2 nights ago, you just cuddled behind me, pushing up against my back with your bare chest and you said “I know I’m under your level, but I hope you know I’m trying Andy, I love you so much.. I hope that transcends into your sleep” and you thought I was asleep.
Liam I want you to know that you are doing more than enough. I want you to understand that I don’t care about money or whatever inadequacy you feel surrounding it, because you feel you need to live up to my expectations or whatever you think I am expecting from you.
I don’t know how to put it in words, how I feel about you, how I appreciate you, how if for some freak accident of life, you become absolutely dependent on me… you’re my bestest friend… when I’m going through some weird life cycle, you know the triggers, you know the nuances, and you know how I think… and you do all the right things, say the correct things to settle me down.

I love that I tell you how much I HATE feeling protected by you because it’s emasculating. How much I dislike you always being on my back and 9 times out of 10 you kick someone’s ass, or tell them to not speak to me that way in your presence and then you tell me “I don’t want to emasculate you, you, but if you’re not going to defend yourself, then I have to do it” and I know I get so irritated at you and lash out and I love that you not only hear me, you listen to me and I start feeling stupid for understanding your logic and you told me “I’m not trying to make you feel like less of a man, I love that you’re a man—-I also know that you’re a very generous man, you like to please everyone and you swipe your card or you pay for someone’s drink, and I love that about you Andy, I love that you’re such a kind guy… but I also want you to know and understand that you’re so beautiful, not only are you hot, well dressed, well-spoken, and smart; I know that you love to be liked, you love to be the center of attention and you’re a sour patch kid, sour on the outside , sweet on the inside and you’ve always told me that you are like black licorice. Either you love black licorice or you absolutely hate it. You’re beautiful, you’re special and you’re mine and I love black licorice”

Thank you for seeing Me as special. Thank you for defending me, protecting me, knowing that I’m superficially strong, but internally fragile. I just want to be loved and liked and if you’re there, I know that you’re my body guard, my best friend, my confidant, my magician.

I hate covid… I hate that you bust your ass and you work as if you weren’t talented, as if you just started tattooing, as if you weren’t making money… but I also love that you do bust your ass and you’re not too arrogant or proud to begin from the bottom up again…and you never complain, or make it about me and you juggle a difficult business and a difficult partner like it’s a piece of cake.
I hate that I stay up waiting for you in our apartment, with our two dogs and it hits midnight and you’re just sending me pictures of whatever tattoo project your doing… I crate our dogs and curl up in OUR bed and even though my eyes are shut, I see you, hear you, smell you because my eyes might’ve been shut, but I wasn’t asleep, I’ve been waiting for you.
Sometimes, I feel like you are lonely because I don’t express myself like you do… and I hear you in the dark of our room, talking to me because you think I’m asleep, and babe—if you’re not happy, please don’t worry about keeping up with me financially… I’m more than happy to help you, we can hire a financial planner, I have a full mother of pearl chest filled with jewelry that I can sell or pawn that I’ve been keeping as my backup plan to never suffer.

I can never tell you that. I know that you’r never accept the money, because you’re a typical Puerto Rican man, who’s too proud to ask for help.

I am usually not the sappy one or the one that feels the way that I feel now…

You came in at 2 AM, when it was suppose to be Valentine’s Day… I don’t care about Valentine’s… but I care that you had a good and productive day. Thank you for the infinity roses, which I know were stupidly expensive, thank you for the box of Candy, because you know I don’t like chocolate…

Honestly… I’ve never wanted to celebrate Valentine’s Day and you’ve always been the one to tell me “babe, get your ass ready, we are going to have dinner, we are going to drink 3 bottles of champagne, and we are going to go home, and I’m fucking your brains out, until we see sunrise”

Dear Liam… you are my fiancé, husband, life partner… you know that I don’t need overtly financial expressions of your love… but i know that’s the way you are.

You came into our bedroom and your energy felt defeated and that’s not the man that I fell in stupid love with… I mean LIAM look at you!! You’re a gigantic man covered in tattoos, and I’m an average, skinny twink with 2 small badly done tattoos…when people see us together, they think “what’s Andy doing with that guy who looks like a convict?” Or “Why is Liam, a super alternative guy, dating Andy, a little prissy bitch?” And then when they see our dynamic and realize that at the core of us, we are the same type of super silly, super match made in heaven, like why did you sound defeated as I pretended to be asleep?

I heard your rings hit the glass bowl you keep them in, I heard your belt hit the ground. I kept thinking “maybe he’s just drunk or stoned and he’s going through some ruminations in his mind…”

You came into bed naked, and spooned me over the sheets and you weren’t drunk, you didn’t smell like alcohol and you weren’t stoned, because you held my hands and you brushed them against my lips and your fingers didn’t smell like weed, it smelled like that tattoo ink

Dear Liam, I want you to know that my goal in life is to be your bestest friend.
I pretended to wake up and turned over to you.
Liam I wish you would understand what it feels like to graze my hands over your stubbly face. I wish you knew what it feels like to feel so helpless, when my dry lips caress your lips.
Dear Liam I also wish you know that it feels so empty to know that, yes, I know and understand that physical affection for you means being close to you… that’s your language of love, but my language of love is knowing that you had a hard day that’s been a hard week, that’s been a hard month and it’s been a hard year since this pandemic. I love you silently. I love you secretly. I’ve been studying you for years and years and I know what I can do to manipulate your emotions.
Dear Liam when I kissed you and whispered into your mouth “you’re my everything. I absolutely love you until the end of infinity”
Dear Liam you pulled off the comforter of of my body, ripped off my underwear, and yes it’s sexy, you pulled me on your lap, and where you got lubricant from is a mystery and as I straddled you, it didn’t feel like the two versions of sex we’ve had. The one version of sex we have is kind of like a mechanical, pipe cleaning and the second version of sex we have it’s intense and visceral, perverted, but incredibly in love, with unabashed amounts of communication it’s not a means to an end, it’s a mutual intrinsic communication. This version of sex felt dirty, I feel like you could’ve done it with a fleshlight… the only person that was there as you fucked me and came inside me, was you.
Dear Liam… I want to be your vessel… I want you to be courageous to tell me that you’re weak, because I will be your protector and I’ll find ways to defend you. I don’t want to be your sexual, barbaric conquest, that you just shoot your babies inside of.

Dear Liam…

I love you. I love you in ways that you will never, ever fully understand. I love you secretly. I love you blindly. I love you unapologetically. I love you intrinsically. It feels natural to me to love you. I love your quirks, your awkwardness—I love the scariest parts about you that you have only let me see briefly. I love the most intimate things that you don’t even know that I know about you. I love your ugly, I love your pretty. I love you so much that I allow you to treat me as an empty, unfeeling vessel for whatever it is that you’re hiding from me. I dream of you, while you lay right next to me. I love you so much that I want to absorb you, as some sort of loving-aggression.

Dear Liam… I love you until infinity has a tangible idea for an end… and even though I love you this painful way, and I may seem like I love you more than myself… I don’t love you more than me, I will sacrifice myself to you and whatever problems you hide from me… I’m not asleep babe. I don’t know why you’re so defeated, and yes I love getting fucked by you, I love seeing your face as you reach your orgasm—-but tonight I just want you to know that great you used me as a masturbation toy…I love you Liam, but not more than I love myself.
And it’s been for a very long while that I feel like if I don’t forge a connection with you, you’re totally okay with just fucking me.

Dear Liam, you know I’ve never been impressed by expensive gifts, or super show-y displays of affection… I can get that 1,000$ infinity rose bouquet for myself and yes thank you for knowing I’d prefer candy over chocolate, but I’d much rather prefer neither because I don’t like sweets because it scares me that I’ll have cavities… yes thank you for the Valentines Day gift, and getting me a tangible object of your affection.

If you don’t put your best foot forward with me Liam… I absolutely adore you, my day begins by not wanting to leave your side in bed and my day ends pushing forward, working hard, working as best as I can, so
I can be with you again.

I know that there is something that I’m not delving too deep into with your business, because you’re MY MAN, and I respect you as my Man… I know that it probably has something to do about finances, especially post-quarantine, with your business and I have an inkling of an idea that, you may feel envious and defeated because my business is striving and it makes you feel emasculated in some odd way…
This is the last thing I say:
Dear Liam, YOU ARE THE MAN IN OUR RELATIONSHIP. I know you’re super Puerto Rican and you feel that YOU need to be the sole provider and as I just start throwing a little money here and throwing a little money there and providing for us more when you were so proud to be like “Nah I got it, put your money away” I want you to know, you are, will always be and forever be THE MAN in our relationship… it bothers me that it says more about how you think of me, than how I think of myself…and to be honest, as a neo-Puerto Rican man myself, I will complain about feeling emasculated, but at the end of the day I always tell you “stop feminizing me, I can get my own shit!” And you’re like “yeah I know you can, but I just wanna get it for you babe” and it’s the same motto with you, Except that what I am providing for you is a lot more expensive than just splitting the check. My butthole is expensive. The emptiness you fill me with and my insatiability has a lot more to do with the inability to reach you, to find you, to protect you, defend you, more than it has to do with fulfilling orgasms. I haven’t said anything to you or to anyone about this weird emptiness that I feel with you, because I know you don’t like it if I share my emotions with other people about our relationship. I also know you don’t like it if I have no true instances of our experience with each other that causes my unhappinesss, because then it’s all about feelings and feelings are very subjective… because in reality you gave me a Valentine’s Day gift, you were super attentive to me all day, but I know you… and I know you know me… and I know that you like to have a superficial front that everything is okay… and superficially everyone would still think that our relationship is perfect, it’s beyond perfect… Liam got you infinity roses and he got you candy cause he knows you hate chocolate… but I know you did that as a front—-so that nobody in the outside world, who isn’t in our relationship, would ever know that there’s something not right at home.
I’ve kept my mouth quiet long enough babe. I know there’s something wrong, I don’t care if anyone knows that there is something wrong… I am always the distant, aloof partner… but Superficially everyone see “aww look at Andy, pushing Liam’s hand away” “damn Andy is a fucking bitch with Liam, Andy most likely doesn’t even love Liam ” “Damn Liam bends over backwards to Andy, and Andy is just a piece of shit” the difference between you and I Liam is that I could care less that people think I have no emotional interest in you, that you cater to me hand and foot and you look like my bitch in public…
but when we are home alone and no one to see us Do they see that you fall asleep on my chest, cause I am trying to learn and watch all of Star Wars, not because it’s something I like, but it’s something I feel like I need to watch to understand you more? Do they see that I wake up before you do, to make you breakfast, every single morning, I never complain or mention it to anyone that you get breakfast in bed… Or that I make your lunch every single day and put it in a little lunch Tupperware for you to take to work ? Or that I hand wash your expensive ass one of a kind Supreme shirts from Japan? I wash them so hard that my knuckles are peeling skin off of them because you have heavy armpit stains and I cant have you looking like that, and they are hang dried and I use starch to iron every single one? Or that while you’re chomping down on the dinner that I’ve made you, I’m on the floor as you watch tv, giving you a pedicure, cause you don’t like going to the nail salon I go to, cause you don’t think that it’s nice for the Asian woman to work on your feet… but apparently it’s okay for your fiancé to scrape your feet. Yet, I always look like the bitch, I always look like I’m throwing my 300k bag for you to hold, I always look like I’m at the nail salon while you’re working and I’m such a superficial bitchy diva using the Amex card that has your name on it, meanwhile, at home you get upset, GOD FORBID if I use my own money to get my manicure/pedicure done. GOD FORBID if I go shopping, whether I am at H&M, Bloomingdales or at Alexander Wang and I dare bring something home that you didn’t get that alert for on your phone “Authorized user $1550 at Sandro-Soho NYC” and I get it… I love you with everything, however you want to control me, however you want to be seen in anyone’s eye—You are the man of this relationship and that’s the way you want the public eye to see you, I could care less if they see me swiping your credit card, or see me throwing my bag at you to hold…they don’t exactly know who pays half of that credit card, under your name… you get to see all of my extravagant purchases, and I know you get better rewards and points, but I have the same credit card with a much higher credit limit—but I am very okay with being submissive to you in whatever way that gives you an ego boost and we both know WHY, when I say “I feel emasculated and I don’t like it” you rip around in circles and apologize and try your best so I won’t feel like I’m castrated. I think we also both know why your dick tingles and you feel super excited when I go into that little box of La Perla lingerie, those Christian Louboutin stilettos, that 26” blonde lace wig, because it’s the ONLY way that you feel completely empowered and it’s a visual representation, almost a humiliation of me, that shows you that I truly, and only am fully invested and in love with you.

You get off on visual representations and superficial acts of loyalty and subservience to you… I am not upset about that, I know who you are. And like I’ve said I am in love with the deepest, ugliest, darkest parts about you, that you don’t even know about, and before pandemic it was a very symbiotic relationship. Post-pandemic I feel like the little house of hay you’ve made, isn’t as strong enough as you thought and you overcompensate by super extravagant displays… and at home, in our home, where no one sees us, you’re so insecure and so completely disconnected with me that I am not Andy, the guy you once said was attractive, intelligent, strong, delicate but also resilient. I am just Andy, a hole you fuck, use like a masturbation toy, incapable of connecting with me because now the world has been flipped upside down to you and you don’t confide in me.
I love you so much Liam… the world has flipped upside down for us… pandemic has made us re-evaluate our financial existence, yes, but there’s no need to be intimately emotionally connected with me, sure our finances have changed, but our emotional intimate connection never should, will or ever have shifted…
I haven’t delved into the finances, or how deep or maybe not deep in the hole Liam is with his business. I love that Liam thinks that I have no access or knowledge of the 3 bank accounts he has. I have no reason to look through those documents, but my very, very intuitive mind, feels like his disconnection started a few weeks after NYC quarantine and mandatory shut downs of all non-essential business. And then his kind of arrogant disconnection began 1 month after the 3.5-4 month shutdown. And as I became lucratively busy in the salon with post-quarantine hair and he just had a schedule of clients he had to cancel because of Covid and trying to reschedule them, unsuccessfully, I feel like he became a little bitter to me.
Dear Liam,
I want you to be home with me, and home isn’t an actual physical space, it’s our intimate space with each other…
I want you to come home to me.

I want to hear your keys jangling on our door. Your burst through the door and I smirk at you, our dogs jumping up on your shins and you rip off your shoes, hang your jacket as you stare into my eyes.
You’ve stripped me naked staring into the abyss.
“You’re so fucking hot. You know that?!” He walks toward me. I blush and awkwardly roll my eyes. “The best thing a guy like me could ever hope for after a long day” he said standing behind me, wrapping his hands around my waist. Kissing the bend of my neck. Slipping his cold, calloused hands underneath my t-shirt. I giggle and push his hands away. “Aww c’mon baby” he said as he turned me around to face him. “Don’t be like that, may I please touch you?” He said as he pressed his forehead against mine.
“I’m sorry Li” I held his hands and slid it under my shirt, gliding his hand all the way up to my shoulder and gliding it down my side, pushing it down to the top of my thigh.
He’s kissing me deeply, biting my bottom lip, as he pulled off his shirt. “If I were another type of man, I’d shove down your undies and make you take me” he said as he wrapped my legs around his waist.
He kissed me, as he carried me to our bedroom, gently laid me on top the bed, pulled down my underwear, sliding his tongue down my navel, licking past my dick and holding my legs apart as he feasted.
He held my hands against my sides, slipped out of his pants, released my hands , positioning himself perfect between my legs. He smelled like musk, like sea salt, like riptides of the cold Atlantic Ocean, he smelled like the center of sour candy, like honeybee hives, like warm sun, like the deafening sound of crickets.
Kissing me, pressing himself against my chest. I love the way he loves how I love to love him.
His hazel eyes stare into me, his cheeks are flushed, the veins on his neck are raised. He puts his calloused fingers to his mouth and drools on his fingers. I manage to escape his grip, and try to resist him. I just have to resist him because I can’t allow myself to be so intoxicated by him.
“Nah-uh” he says as he bites my nipple, and I slither in pain and let out my own muffled squeal. “Don’t push your papi away, this is mine, it belongs to me” he said as he pushed himself inside of me. He bit his lip and his forearms pulsated, as he held my hands above my head, I tried futilely to escape his grip.
“Andy…Andy… Andy” he said as he drooled on his fingers to put on him to lubricate me. “I love you so much” he said as he kissed my neck and slid completely deep in me. He released my hands and I wrapped my legs around him. I felt like I was being ripped in half, but the pleasure outweighed the pain. It’s not wholly pleasurable to be anally penetrate, but it’s wholly pleasurable to be penetrated by him.
“How do you get so tight like this baby?” He said as he rested his forearms against the bed. “I can’t last long” he said kissing me. “I want you to have my babies” his voice quivered. “I—-I—-love—-you” he said as he thrusted deeper and longer. “I’m gonna breed you” he said as he grunted loudly, cementing his feet into the ground… kissing me, laying on top of me.
He collapsed on top of me. He smelled like closed streets and fire hydrants in summer. Like jump rope doing double dutch, like the skin of a cantaloupe, like rained soil. He smelled like cold weather. Like clorox in a bathtub. He smelled like dandelions, fresh white linens. Like peppercorns and acrylic paint.
“I love you Andy” he said as he kissed me and slowly slid out of me. He hissed as he was kissing me feeling himself sliding out of me. He laid on the bed and held me on his chest, as he drew circles on my back with his middle finger.
I closed my eyes. He smelled like wet wood. Like cocaine, long lines of blow inhaled through a dirty bill. He smelled like glass molded by fire. Like rainwater caught in a barrel. He smelled like cotton candy and river rocks. He smells like a beginning of anything and everything.
Alas that’s not the way we made love. That was my imagination and my hope for our love. Rather, It was empty, vapid, mechanical and it smelled and tasted like the period after a short sentence, with no beginning, no end, no context.

In love with your forever Liam. Please come home, come to our home, the one we made for ourselves. It’s not a tangible place, it’s a space we’ve spent years creating.

Forever and always yours,

Andy