When I opened my eyes a few days ago, sometime between 6:30 and 7am, the first person I saw was my wife, laying next to me with our dog nestled between us. Outside our bedroom window, I couldn’t separate the giant pine tree that usually sways its bathrobe-wide arms from the dark winter morning sky. “Can you believe a year ago today we were in Vietnam?” she asked. I could not. Wearing shorts in January, swimming in rooftop pools, riding on the back of Vespas through Ho Chi Minh City, and eating steaming bowls of pho in loud markets a few stalls away from women selling pig snouts and other innards felt like just weeks ago, not a year gone by. I thought about that trip, our delayed Honeymoon adventure, for the rest of the day. Here are some of my favorite shots from our two weeks exploring Vietnam together.
0 - The Leap this is when you take the plunge and let yourself begin to fall.
1 - Falling This is the honeymoon phase everyone talks about. Includes giddiness, constant excitement, dreaminess, drawing hearts everywhere, smiling all the time. There’s also a fair amount of anxiety as you aren’t sure yet if it’s right. This is especially true if you’ve been hurt before.
2 - Sinking This is when the crazy giddiness starts to wear off. You’re still falling, but more slowly, there’s more substance, and a warmth and peace starts to grow around your relationship.
3 - Digging You find yourself on solid ground. All the low hanging fruit of getting to know each other is gone, to get deeper you have to really dig into who they are, ask deep questions, have big conversations. It takes effort, but it’s worth it. Deep friendship starts to form. It’s more work, but the reward is also greater.
4 - Building You have become each others’ best friends. You know each other SO WELL. You start working as a team, creating, planning, making memories, establishing relational and life habits and having experiences. What you build now will become the foundation for a life together into the future.
what comes after these stages? I don’t know yet. I guess we’ll find out :)
Quando aquele convidado que até então eu não tinha reconhecido caminhou até a minha noiva e a abraçou longamente parabenizando-a pelo casamento, fiquei um pouco desconfiado. Mas quando o beijo do rosto escorregou para o pescoço e vi sobre o ombro direito dele o rosto sorridente daquela que agora é minha esposa, entendi do que se tratava e sorri de volta para ela que se deixava beijar pelo estranho cada vez mais ávido. Logo se desvencilhou do rapaz com medo que nossas famílias a vissem se agarrando com outro homem na festa da nosso casamento, pegou-me pela mão e feio me puxando de volta para onde estavam os convidados. Eu jamais havia dito qualquer coisa para ela, por um misto de timidez e de perder para sempre a mulher da minha vida, mas ela soube ler os meus desejos mais secretos: que mulher! De repente parou, me abraçou e ficou uns bons segundos me olhando com aqueles enormes olhos negros, até que falou: “Tenho uma supresa pra você, meu amado: você não vai ser o único nem o primeiro homem a transar comigo hoje à noite…” Eu não soube o que dizer. O sorriso dela cresceu a ponto de quase fechar-lhe os olhos. Segurou meu rosto com ternura e me deu um beijo: “Está feliz, meu amor?”
Nossa lua de mel em Veneza: passeiso românticos e fotos para o instagram durante o dia, sexo com homens desconhecidos e fotos para nosso arquivo pessoal à noite. Quem disse que mulheres depravadas não podem também ser românticas com o homem que amam?
Aqueles que olham a foto que minha mãe exibe orgulhosamente em um porta-retrato na sala da sua casa não suspeitam que naquela noite não foi o noivo que a despiu de seu vestido, muito menos que não foi o primeiro homem a transar com ela na noite de núpcias. Mesmo sem saber a verdade, eles estão certos: somos o casal perfeito. À nossa maneira, mas somos.
The city is such an elusive toxic ex. And unfortunately, for me, it’s the one I would still get back with if they asked me to. It’s carved a place in me because it gave me all of these first experiences, and pushed me to do things I would’ve never done. I came here when I was 22, right after college, working odd jobs and living in an 8x10 in Brooklyn. I stayed out late and fell asleep on trains at 4am. I carried a toothbrush in my bag, along with a lot of other things because #commuterlife. It was glorious. I got tired of living that kind of life after a year so I left for a little bit, and now that I’m here again, it’s exactly what I hoped running into an ex I still loved would be like. The red flags are mysterious novelties once again, like letting you be free and whoever you want, but that’s also how they make others feel too, so in the end you’re not even all that special. Here I am, back in the city. I can’t say that I didn’t take this into calculation, putting myself in the vicinity of old love, of potentially running into this ex at any moment, of impulsively falling in that trap yet again.
B.A.P dropped their new album Bluewith the title track ‘Honeymoon‘ and they reallydelivered. Honestly, probably one of my favourite releases of the year. I really hope they do well with this comeback because the song is absolutely amazing.
And Jongup? Jongup blew me away. His voice, his visuals, his everything this comeback literally made me love him all over again.
