I dialed M's number, cringing already.

"M?" I began tentatively when she answered, "At some point soon, I would like to discuss our relationship." These are forbidden words and I know it. However, as they most accurately reflect what I want, they are also correct.

Emily gasped and immediately apologized for whatever she did that upset me in all perpetuity through the universe. I was not surprised at this reaction, though I almost inappropriately laughed at its immediacy and breadth.

"I just want to talk. I am definitely not breaking up with you," I assured her with every ounce of sincerity in my ordinarily jocular body.

"What are you doing tonight?" she asked nervously. "Can you not do that and meet me at Johnny D's instead?"

We are just a mass of strange hair.

I agreed as I had started this mess and the sooner I put Emily at ease, the better.

The conversation went well, once Emily was confident enough that I genuinely had no intention to leave her and wasn't just being polite or cowardly. My troubles, I regret to inform, were of the most banal variety and escalated within me to the point where her throwing out my dish sponge (it self-soaped) without telling me pushed me into a confrontation. I knew then and know now that this is a perfectly ridiculous catalyst, but I can't deny that is was. I was getting irrationally irritated with Emily and I couldn't stand feeling that way a moment longer.

The real meat of the problem was that I was upset that we are perpetually poor and that she got to go on trips for Tae Kwon Do. The two things are only interrelated to the point where her trips preclude her working and I am stuck at a part-times job until grad school and student teaching are completed, thus I cannot support us nearly as much as I would like to. I hate that money is even an issue as I want to think I am beyond this, but a negative bank balance and impending car payments find ways to poke through my Zen composure. Emily understood my problems with this and agreed that money is an issue, but it doesn't need to be an issue between us. We will scrape by, she insisted, and money will be much less of a problem once some deluded school district is paying my salary.

Beyond fiscal woes, I pouted that I didn't feel physically desired by her. I thought it best to purge everything at once.

"Why not?"

"Because you don't kiss me nearly enough."

"I don't always want to do stuff," she said, using one of her euphemisms for sex.

"Kissing does not automatically result in coitus," I responded.

She looked startled. "It doesn't?" she asked, genuinely surprised at the idea.

"No, not even slightly. I need kisses in my life a lot more often than I need sex. Not to be unnecessarily crude, but I can give myself orgasms. I cannot kiss myself."

"Okay then, I will work on the kisses-that-don't-end-in-penetration if you promise to never" - her eyes smoldered and she grabbed tight to the unguarded cuff of my sleeve - "ever again use the phrase 'I need to talk about our relationship.'" Murder was the implicit threat in this and she, being a ninja, is more than capable of making good on it.

We paid for out meals and migrated to the parking lot, where Emily practiced kissing me with no intentions at sexual release.

"Oh, great," she sighed, "we are that couple that makes out in the parking lot."

I held her face and gave her another kiss. "I'm really okay with that."

Once Emily's car had diverged from my path, I rang Keilaina up.

"How do you feel about Emily?" was my first question, after a brief exchange of greetings.

"I love Emily," Kei stated, "you know that."

"I do. Good. Let's hang out." I needed to be around someone who was just as Emily positive as I was and Zack was too far away to abscond with.

In Idaho

I drove to Kei's house and we quickly found our way to a concrete dock nearby. Keilaina had just returned from Idaho, where she had visited with her boyfriend Dan and his family. She loved his entire family and they reciprocated, Dan's sister going so far as to refer to Keilaina as her new sister. Then again, Kei also claims that there are social activities in Idaho that I would enjoy, so she may have just been locked in a cage in complete darkness. Obviously, despite the photographic evidence (which can easily be faked), she wasn't actually where she said she was.

Keilaina is fonder of Dan than I have seen her ever be in a boy before. (By the way, since she admonished that I intimate such, Keilaina is in no way "boy crazy." At worse, she has been "boy smitten" or possibly "boy keen." She is selective, even in these crushes. Really.) Even with Ian, her interest in him precluded the rest of the world and was fraught with jealousy and isolation. In fact, Keilaina went so far as to say, as she gazed at the dark surface of the pond, that she "would have had a wonderful relationship with Ian if no one else existed in the world." Though the relationship is just beginning in some ways, this seems more like the mature sort of relationship she should be having.

At the very least, it is the sort of relationship that will allow her to continue to see me long after Dan moves to New York.

Soon in Xenology: Zack's girlfriend and Kei's boyfriend in the flesh. Christmas. Sacrifice.

last watched: Shrek
reading: The Librarian
listening: Our Endless Number Days
wanting: No money woes with my scodger-puppy head. Yeah, my cuteness disgusts even me.
moment of zen: Sitting on the dock of the bay.
someday I must: Meet this "Dan" and "Katlyn."