15 August 1996

11:40 am, Shreveport (!)

Needless to say, things felt good with Mary so I came up to visit her. And haven't had time to do the journal thing until now!

Last Saturday afternoon was nerve-wracking, trying to finish cleaning my room and waiting for Mary to call and tell me she was in Houma. Finally it happened -- she called & told me she was at the Conoco station on New Orleans Blvd. Which totally shocked me, since I thought she was going to come in via Hwy. 90 and stop at the Red Carpet Inn. So, anyway, I slapped on some shoes and hightailed it to the Conoco station.

I saw her standing next to her red Subaru Justy as I turned the corner, and I felt a big grin cover my face. I pulled up, stopped, and before I knew it we were giving each other a huge hug! Then after talking a bit, I led the way back to the house -- she came in, met people (including Brandon), then we hung out in my room for a while. I showed her stuff and we talked. Then after it stopped raining, we decided to go have a walk around the mall. I'd really like to go into detail about this but it's still a big lovely blur. We just had lovely fun and got home about 8 or 8:30.

We hung out with Brandon until around 11pm, when my mom and dad got back from the class reunion (my mom's 35th), by which time we were tired and about ready to collapse from exhaustion. I'd taken the mattress from Mark's bed and put it on my floor, so I slept on it and let Mary have the bed. Mary tried to give me a nice back massage, but the way she touched my back brought up body-memories of the rape -- memories I'd never had before and which shook me up quite a bit, but not so much that I couldn't go to sleep. Actually I slept very well, considering I hadn't slept in the same room with a "stranger" since Tina -- and I felt very much with Mary as I had that first night with Tina, very safe and comfortable.

After that wonderful sleep, the first thing I did was get the suitcase out of the kitchen (or wherever) aand started packing for the trip up here. The ride up was fabulous, because the 7 hoiurs gave us a lot of time to communicate and bond; by the time we neared Shreveport, we were already to the handholding stage.

The past four days have gone so quickly, but so much has happened between us in that time. I've come from being tentative about being touched Saturday to being comfortable enough to (I can hardly believe I am writing this!) let Mary make love to me. It happened very unexpectly this morning, but it wasn't scary at all, and it felt so good. There's no doubt now, I've got a lot of change-of-address forms to fill out! I could fill up pages and pages stating our similarities, but all I care to say is one thing: we are soulmates. Now I have to write and tell all my people the happy, happy news. I'll write more later, I just wanted to make sure I got all this down.

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