My Fuckface at 70 years.

Wednesday, November 10th, is my husband's 70th birthday.  We're having four very good friends over for dinner.  I asked them to write something about Barry.  "Talk about why you love Barry" I said.

Sounds like an easy question to answer, doesn't it?  But stop and think about it.  Seriously.  Why do you love your spouse?  It has been a long time since I really thought about this.  I'm at an age now in which friends talk freely about KY Jelly, as if it were WD40, but we don't talk about why we love our husbands.  Besides, a lot of my friends don't have them, or don't love them, so it would be a difficult conversation.

Thirty two years ago, on Barry's 38th birthday, I moved to New York City to be with him.  I could have answered so easily then why I love him.  It would have come burbling out of me.  I probably couldn't have stopped it.  I was besotted with him.  I loved every single thing about him.  Or thought I did.  There's a picture of the two of us.  You can tell how we feel.

But today it's different.  I love him as much.  Maybe more.  But it isn't always burbling up like it was then.  Though I dare you to criticize him.  Then something would burble up all right.  But that's a different thing.

Just a side thought.  I recently sent a friend, Bert, a letter about what a good guy he is.  I'd written it a couple months before for his birthday.  It was hard to write.  But it was so much harder to send.  I think I'm not used to saying such nice things to people. I say it about them, but not to them.  It felt gushy and over the top.  I finally sent it.  And I'm glad I did because he said it made him feel good.  Anyway, off the topic, but I'm having as much trouble writing this as I did that.

Okay, I love his humor.  Barry has always made me laugh.  He has a very good, dry sense of humor.  He's quiet funny.  Really quick.  He says he's funnier than I am.  I'm more obvious: he's subtle.  And he likes subtle.

He can be funny in a less subtle way-- in a physical comedy kind of way too.  He does a great raised eyebrow and some decent funny faces.  And he's a very apt mimic.  I'm always jealous of that ability.

He's very smart, which is almost as important as his humor.

And I love his hands.  I have always loved his hands.  They're sensitive and beautiful, without being effeminate.  Not the long fingers of a piano player.  Just right.

I love how kind he is to most people.  And to animals.  And I love his strong sense of right and wrong, even if I sometimes don't agree with the specifics. Actually I usually disagree, but that's a topic for another day.

I love it that Barry thinks about me.  He goes to the market, and even though I didn't ask for it, he buys something he thinks I'd like.  Or he notices that I have no keyboard batteries left so he orders them.  He puts the little stickers on my car that the DMV sends yearly to show that your car is registered.  (He still shudders from the story of me trying to sell the little Opal GT I owned in San Diego and LA.  The buyer asked if I had an up-to-date registration sticker because the one on it was 6-7 years old.  I didn't know what he was talking about.  That's because I opened the DMV envelopes enough to see that my payment had been received, my registration updated.  Then I threw the envelope away and the sticker with it.  Didn't even realize there were stickers.)

So if Barry dies before me, in addition to hiring the recycling boy, I'm going to have to hire a sticker boy.  I don't think I could replace the one who thinks about me though. And the funny one.  He'd be hard to replace too.  Let alone the one who holds me in the night.

On Barry's 38th birthday I had a birthday cake wishing a happy birthday to fuckface, which is what I called him then.  Still my fuckface at 70.  Yikes!