nos. 5-7

5-7. The last few weeks have been this strange blur of starting school but not starting classes yet, new kids moving into the house, group trips, and spending nearly every night with my stranger. My classes are going to be amazing: 'Anglo-Saxon Archaeology in Early Christian Britain' and 'Short Story Writing,' both one-on-one with Oxford professors. I already have so much to do, but I'm loving every moment of it.
The new kids are SO different from last term's group. I feel very disconnected from them.
I wrote to my friend Isaac:
so i'm on this trip to cornwall with all the stanford kids
and i thought last quarter--damn, i actually like these folks (they're not like normal stanford kids)
but these kids this quarter are like normal stanford kids
and you know that feeling you get, when someone is just SO happy that you have to be melancholy, just so things balance out?
everyone on this trip makes me feel like that.
know you'll understand. feel like coffee and cigarettes and lots of rain.

And he wrote back:
you n me pea
we're p's in a pod.
er...
but know what i learned this quarter? it's fully my problem and not theirs that their existence bothers me.
or....looking at it more optimistically, they are simply not worth it.
:) feel better.
-ip

And my stranger--he said, "I love you," a few weeks ago. He says it in the mornings, when I'm all wrapped up in his arms and not quite awake yet. We have this amazing, bedrock-shaking, intimate sex that leaves me feeling whole, not empty. He gets my dark and twisty, likes my hair back brown, and watches me sleep.
Today, I went to meet his family and, standing in his childhood room, I told him, "I love you," because I suddenly realized that I do.