We had about sixteen hours of sunlight on Saturday. Unfortunately, the sky was overcast for most of the day, and I drove through a thunderstorm in the afternoon.

But Laura and Riley Jane Dog and I went to the Fremont Solstice Parade anyway.

We got there, had a bite to eat, and then wandered up the parade route to look for a spot to hang out for an hour till it started. Riley is a sweet pooch, and made friends with everyone who was sitting around us. The Chalk Faeries came down the way and drew on the street once they closed it off, and then the parade began!

The Solstice parade is the result of about six months of focused creative energy. I was in it a few years back, so I know about the work that goes into this three-hour-long explosion of color and light and music. But, the day of, you believe that perhaps all of these people and these costumes and these floats were conjured by magic.

The Solstice parade also has a long tradition of naked bicyclists. (Caution: the next few links contain nudity.) It used to be just a bunch of streakers who pedaled through the parade, but after law enforcement arrested a few of them a couple of years back, the people in the parade reacted in time-honored tradition--they painted all the bicyclists pretty colors and called them part of the parade. I'm encouraged by this display of community standards that are pretty close to my own personal standards.

(okay, everyone from here on out is more or less clothed.)

There were creations that were half puppet and half costume. And then came the group that I'd been waiting for--I wanted to see Chris in VamoLa!, the music and dance group that he's been with for a month or so now. In front were the dancers, who were, um, yummy. And then came the group Chris was in, the musicians.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that I was on the wrong side of the group, I didn't get a good picture of him, but he was wearing sunglasses, a cape, ringing his bells, and dancing around. He looked like he was having an excellent time.

After that, we stayed to watch a few more groups, some cool floats (CDs as scales! cool!), and just watched people go by, the swirl of interaction and energy. There were more dancers (and more dancers...and even more dancers...can you tell what *I* was paying attention to?) and, yes, a family of Elvises. Elvii? Something.

And then Laura and I decided to call it quits, as it was threatening rain and we were both getting tired. We took Riley Jane Dog back on the bus (she wasn't altogether sure about the whole bus thing, but she seemed to cope pretty well), and I took the two of them home.

I then proceeded to lie around and read Harry Potter for a while.

And then Sterling came over.

We'd kind of been dancing around our attraction to each other for a while. (as in, years now.) We flirted, but neither of us made anything like a definitive move. Right before we went to see the new James Bond movie, I basically propositioned her with a "Well, if you ever want to..."

It took us until Die Another Day came out on DVD to actually make a date.

So I picked her up and took her to my house. We watched Die Another Day, having fun laughing at the holes in the plot you could drive a truck through (sure, James, throw away your thingie that lets you breathe underwater. It's not like you might, oh NEED IT LATER. Don't you have pockets in that silly suit of yours?) and I made dinner.

Then we started watching some of the bonus stuff. And then, we figured out that we weren't actually watching the TV.

And that's where the curtain comes down and you get to imagine for yourself what happens. Suffice it to say that we were up very, very late. And that it was a good thing that neither of us needed to be up early for anything the next morning.

Tiptoe off, stage left.

Things with Chris have been...interesting.

There was a while there that our lives diverged almost entirely; we both needed some time away from each other, and we pretty much just took it without a lot of commentary. Both of us plunged into our separate lives with a passion, which honestly has been very good for both of us.

We're like planets; we orbit each other, coming close together and then zipping away from each other. (I think i'm a comet, honestly. It's a hell of an orbit.) Right now, we're at aphelion, the farthest distance emotionally that we can stand.

And gravity is starting to come back into play.

We had dinner over at my house a couple of weeks ago; a friendly snuggle took a turn for the, ah, over-friendly, and we spent a little while walking the line between friends and something else, getting a bit too close to the fire. Enjoying every minute of it, and knowing that if we kept on, both of us would regret it. A lot.

We're both determined not to repeat the stupid cycle of the last four years, where we quarrel and I stomp off and then we start hanging out together again and we both realize that we actually do love each other, we fall into bed, and then a few months later realize that this is Just Not Working. In the moment, though, it was hard to put a stop to it. We have four years of habit, of familiar responses to minor signals, and we have this bond between us that pulls on us both.

The nice thing about Chris is that sex never got boring. There was always something new to do, something else to try, and we both have such all-consuming sex drives that we're more than a match for each other in bed. Resisting the not-so-subtle pull of my memories is occasionally difficult.

The problem with this is that, eventually, you have to get out of bed.

He's told me that there is no way he ever wants to date me again, as there's just too much about me that he simply doesn't like. He didn't seem prepared for me to actually break out in cheers at that news. I was happy because I think, eventually, it'll be freeing for both of us to just be friends, without the prospect of a relationship looming on the horizon.

The key word here is eventually.

It's taken me a while to admit to myself that I do miss him. I miss being the center of someone else's universe. I miss being able to lean against him, I miss sleeping with my head on his shoulder, and I miss the delightful things he used to whisper to me in bed. Among other things.

And there's the six-year-old in me that sometimes reads the things he posts about other girls, stomps her feet, and says, "but he's mine!" He's got that same six-year-old, too; at least we're coming from the same place about this. And there honestly isn't any help for it. Time and distance will help; when he becomes really truly off limits (with, for example, a new girlfriend), that will help, as well. (I'm no help on this one, since I'm not really planning to settle down with anyone for a while yet.)

But for the moment, it hurts. Not a huge, world-ending hurt, just an ache as if i'm finally becoming aware of what it is that I've lost.

It helps, a lot, that both of us are happy in our lives. He's gotten involved with VamoLa and it's really been good for him. I've been doing art, writing some again, reading voraciously, and rediscovering the joy that is flirting without worrying about anyone else's jealousy.

So this is aphelion; I'm hoping that this time we can alter our orbit. We've been getting much too close to the sun.

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