i started out with a headache but it went away eventually. maybe thanks to the advil o had in their bag, or the food we ate (probably not due to the intense situations the labour committee was mulling over as i ate) or the nice company. it didn't even come back during the information session on university b.o.g. politicking, so i knew it was safe to drink a bit of red wine and hang out with my colocs from the board.

it was cute: j & l in particular are adorable in familiar ways, which i tried to get across but probably failed at communicating. and it was a beautiful little setting, behind the hole-y white wall with a little box of wine.

afterwards o & i ventured across the street to eat burritos (& chips & green salsa) and talk for a moment - i gave them a summary of some of the conversations i had this weekend, and to my surprise and happiness it turned into a more in-depth conversation about it. 'it' here being the complicated role that gender, both one's own and one's partner's, can play in the dynamics of a relationship. particularly in cases in which you're both strangers to everyone around you.

i think the best part is that o & i don't usually have these kinds of discussion. generally i'll talk a lot and then get a little back - well-chosen words, to be sure, but few of them. today they fell out of their mouth like a little waterfall of understanding and similar experience and theories and anecdotes and analysis, and i loved it. i wished i could remember some of the exact words, but i knew at the same time that i wouldn't be able to, that i couldn't translate them accurately beyond that one moment. but still, i guess i'll try.

with a caveat that this generally applies to straight world/stranger world circumstances:

+ the frustration at having one's gender erased a bit because yr partner is read as a boy & therefore you must be the girlfriend, nevermind the truth.
+ the way this reading of a dynamic can interact with p.d.a. - our relationship is by no means a heterosexual one, but knowing that when we hold hands in public people see a boy and a girl holding hands makes me feel fucked up. fuck straight privilege.
+ ultimately, in my case, both of us are having our genders erased in some ways
+ more, and more eloquent things.