Dazi writes regarding my delay in opening the boxes.:

“I wonder if Elsa is savoring the moment to open the box or savoring tormenting the Special Forces guy by not opening it more so.”

This is astute, Dazi, because it’s almost like that, but it’s not. The soldier and I very much like pushing up against each other, defying each other, daring each other and so forth. This may even be one of our main attractions, but there is no way either of us would knowingly torment the other or in fact do anything under the sun to cause the other pain.

And the relationship was precisely set up against this kind of thing, thirty years ago when we wore matching jackets and called ourselves “our own gang”. If you were going to take one of us on you were taking the other one on… this was always understood. So torture each other? Forget about it. We were more like Bonnie and Clyde. Wherever he goes, I go. If he’s in trouble, I’m in trouble and vice versa. We were living in our own world.

So on the delay of things; it might interest people to know he’s taking a very long time to finish reading my book! And why is that? It’s because he has an emotional reaction to it. It gets him upset. He becomes overwrought and he has to put it down until he calms down. And he has been calming down for awhile now, you know? Months. But I don’t care.

He’ll read my book and I’ll watch his tapes just as soon as we do. Because what’s paramount to both of us is the other’s well being. So while we are trading energy we take great care. Because as he puts it, our relationship is like playing with wires, highly charged. You don’t want any of them to touch the ground. But we still like to play…

“Well if you’d finish my book, you might actually know what you’re talking about for a change,” I said. “That would be a switch. That would be something new, if you actually knew what you were talking about.”

He laughed. “I’m going to finish that book, E. You know I am…”

“Yeah, I do. You’re just slow. You are one slow bastard (Taurus). But that’s okay. What’s the hurry, right? If you’ve gone this long not knowing what you’re talking about, there’s no reason rushing to correct it. You may as well wait until you’re blue because I’m totally used to you not knowing anything. It’s been this way a long time and we seem to get along just fine…”

Do you have someone you can banter with and bat back and forth?

skip to the The Story In The Box