New music...!

My ex, Michael, turned me on to Iron and Wine today.



We were IM-ing, he in San Francisco, me in Dublin. How would I manage without the internet? Living as I do as many as 8 time zones away from so many of the people I love.

I've experienced many deaths in my life, from an early age. Lost my beloved nana when I was 14. My mom at 17. One of my first loves, in fact the man who set my feet on the path to eventually healing from my mom's death, at 22. Another first love, many years later at 44, when he crashed his airplane into the Pacific. Many friends passed away to AIDS when I was in my 30's. And others died from various causes throughout the years.

Breaking up can feel like death. Especially when the breakup is bitter, leaving no possibility of a gentle re-connecting after the initial searing pain dissipates. In those cases, the separation feels nonnegotiable, like death.

Blessedly, I'm still close to my sweetest, most extraordinary exes, Michael and Nicole. I was with each of them as a guy, Michael shortly after transition when manhood felt like a gift to be opened each morning as if it were Christmas; Nicole years later, after I'd settled more into my masculinity.

They are both much younger than me, although ftms tend to experience puberty and young adulthood at whatever age we find ourselves when we first start testosterone. Many of us look a good 15 or more years younger than we are, too. I got carded when I was 43: the waitress refused to sell me a beer because I didn’t have my id. Thus, my age difference with Michael and Nicole wasn’t an obstacle in the usual sense of shared interests, excitement for life, first times, and mismatched egos.

Where it did pose problems had to do with larger developmental issues. There simply are certain adventures and misdeeds a person needs to be footloose and fancy free enough to take on, else resentment and frustration sets in. No amount of love and longing can bridge that gap, believe me.

In each case, the breakup was extremely amicable, though far from painless. With Nicole, it required three attempts and me to remove myself to the other side of the Atlantic to finally make it happen. And yet, we still manage to think so much on the same wave length that out of the blue we’ll email each other simultaneously after a silence of weeks. And Michael still makes me smile like no other person in the world.

I will love them both as long as I live.