Two people with lives who choose not to take our relationship to another level.

COOPER LEE

T: Good afternoon, Cooper Lee. Well let’s start this off on the right foot and come out of the gates asking why aren’t we sleeping together?

C: Tara I don’t know, why haven’t we slept together? I wonder, I don’t know, I think it would be more like a Boston marriage like when we lived together (ten years ago) I felt like we were heterosexual life partners. We were great around making a home, cooking meals together, we were like domestic partners. The sex part we just forgot about.

T: We did have a very functional home.

C: I felt like we were like chosen family making a home, it was nice, it was a lovely home and relationship.

T: With whom are you currently making a home?

C: I’m living alone with my dog friend Roscoe and I haven’t lived alone in many years. I lived alone one summer in Provincetown. It’s interesting because I love making my Taurus space very homey as I want it to be, it’s surprising how I miss roommates after years and years of roommates, there are things that are wonderful (about living alone) but there is that thing of eating a meal together that I love. My space is very tiny so it’s strange to have people over for a meal because you’re like a foot from the bed. I’m not talking about sex right now, sorry.

T: Totally okay, things get to go where they go.

C: Why do you think we’re not sleeping together?

T: I do think it’s that family thing like Michelle was talking about, I think we’re like deep in family living you know, like you’re my brother.

C: That would be kind of gross. I’m not trying to pooh on anyone’s choices but that would be kind of weird. Just a few years before we became friends I had an affair with a Scorpio and it was like WHOA and there was magic but the Taurus/Scorpio combination can be too fire-y like passion, everything in its wake is burned to the ground. The older you get it’s harder to live that way.

T Yeah god. How do you experience passion now in more functional relationships?

C: I think it’s more like being a marathon runner than a sprinter, you have to figure out how to make it last, you can’t just go until you run out of gas, you want to burn time like a wood stove and have it last for a longer period of time. I think keeping things fresh and passionate is work. When you’re young and high off the experience of how amazing people can be, that can sort of be enough but when you’re down for the long haul with somebody you have to work to keep passion alive. I think a lot of it is not becoming co-dependent and spending time being excited about your own lives as individuals so when you come together you have this energy to bring of your own personal passion being fulfilled. Having the space to be a whole person and do what you love. When you come together you’re already a complete person doing what you love and when you come together you’re like “you’re the frosting on the cake of the life that I love.” That was a lot you don’t have to write all that down.

T: Are there specific tricks of the passion trade that you like to employ?

C: I think in long-term situations I’ve been in the key is to make intentional time, especially if you’re co-habitating. You don’t want to be the person who is just scratching their ass and leaving dirty socks on the ground, you want to have specific time to have a Hot Date.

T: That seems right on. My typing is a mess right now. My cat wishes I was being a passionate life partner to him right now rather than typing. How do you keep long distance love alive?

C: My relationship is new, it’s been seven months. We try to visit back and forth fairly frequently. This last period of time apart was 2.5 months which we agreed was too long. We think 1.5 months is best but it’s hard with school and finances. We talk on the phone and we have you know daily hello how are you stuff and we recently started to Skype, that’s a new thing. We were really shy on Skype, we were giggling the entire time. We were like teens or something. We write letters and send each other packages as well. I really enjoy sending little packages in the mail.

T: That is amazing, that is so thoughtful.

C: It’s kind of funny, we have the newest technology of Skype and the oldest with letters and I actually need to sit down and write a letter in the next couple days. I like to write a letter once a week if I’m not too swamped. You think about what you have to say in a different way. Oh my god there is a squirrel that is vandalizing our garden! It’s digging in the dirt we just put in yesterday. It’s all fat and shiny and healthy. I think writing letters you go to a different thought process than when you email or text.

T: There’s just a different connection to your heart and brain.

C: I like to find random…like that Lionel Richie flyer. Just random shit, I’ll find a flyer and write a letter on it then there’s a connection to things happening here that might make her laugh.

T: That’s sweet. Would you like to offer any advice to those in love? Or out of love, for that matter. Either one.

C: Let me see, let me think about that for a second. Well I mean I’m kind of like a sappy romantic person at heart even if I seem cynical in my old age I very much believe in love and the power of love, not just sexual but the love of family and friends and the kindness of strangers. I think that there really is something to that idea that the more you give away the more you get. The more you put out there the more there is, the more that comes back. There’s never a shortage of it, it’s more whether we’re tuning into it. And sometimes it’s important to think about self-love, I think that’s the piece that gets overlooked, we get focused on putting love out but it needs to come inward too so we can be friends with ourselves. I think there’s a period on that, that thought is done.

T: I like it. Thank you very much.

C: Thank you, I appreciate it!

SARA SEINBERG

T: So Sara, throw back the veil, why aren’t we sleeping together?

S: You know Tara I’ve had some time to think about this and I think there are many reasons. The first is that generally I am attracted to a more masculine presentation which is not to underline any of your fabulous masculine qualities. I do not have a ton of experience with the femme gender other than Shoshana as noted in previous installments of this project, which was fabulous. Shortly thereafter when I was going to explore that I happened to fall in love and really I wasn’t that excited about having sex with people I’m not in love with anymore and once I’m in love it doesn’t leave room to fall in love with someone else, I’m just not wired that way.

T: Do you refer to your current relationship?

S: I do refer to my current relationship.

T: So your trajectory with Shosh was truncated by Ginger.

S: No by (Shoshana’s now-Life Partner) Laurel after we had a hot make-out session, at that point Ginger and I were just friends and I was telling her about it and she wanted to keep hearing about it, you have to keep me posted so I told Shoshana I wanted to dip into the honey pot again as it were and Shoshana said she started seeing someone and Laurel didn’t like it so Shosh said let’s not do it anymore. And she and Laurel seem to have done just fine. I think for a moment there was time where maybe Ginger and me…Ginger said don’t bring me into this so I’m gonna stop that sentence.

T: Is there a way to do this without using Ginger’s name?

S: She said “You can talk about me and you but don’t bring me into the honeypot.” There was a night we thought we should shop for a third for the evening. Now she’s saying that’s what she meant when she said don’t bring me into this. Then we never found anyone because everyone was crazy.

T: Can I ask you more about that or is Ginger banning it as a topic?

S: You can ask me and I will just answer for myself and keep Ginger out of it.

T: So did you actively interview people and they were crazy?

S: I didn’t actively interview them and there was one person who was interested but it seemed to me she was basically interested in having sex with Ginger and I was something to be tolerated as part of the package deal and I’m a Leo so that’s not sexy. That ceased to be a sexy possibility.

T: That sounds awful. Have you ever shopped again?

S: No.

T: It was a whim.

S: Yeah ugh it just felt like if something is that much trouble it’s not worth it, we just shop for houses now.

T: How long have you guys been together?

S: Almost 4.5 years.

T: What do you do to be a passionate couple?

S: Well I’ll answer what I do. I um I like to try and be a good listener, um, I like to get out and go on vacation, get out of the house. I like holding hands. You’re asking me about passion and I’m answering for romance.

T: Either is great.

S: I like to get a special outfit, not like $400 in lingerie but like we’re going out to dinner I’ll put something nice on. Though if anyone has $400 they want to use to buy me lingerie with I wouldn’t be mad about it.

T: What kind of lingerie do you like?

S: Something classy but not fussy, not too busy, good fit I think is important. Yeah also I’m done with this juniors thing I’m 40 years old, I’m a woman, I don’t want to pretend I’m not. It was hard to get here, I’m happy to be here, it’s awesome.

T: Juniors thing?

S: You know sometimes there’s a tendency for women of a certain age to emulate youth culture? To retain a sexiness of the younger years? It doesn’t work for me. But anything that makes a lady feel sexy, go for it. It just doesn’t make me feel sexy. I don’t think it helps Ginger in any way.

T: I truly don’t understand the thing for youth culture. It feels so good to be older.

S: The whole time I was in my twenties and I would see older lesbians and they didn’t go out anymore and they seemed to be in longer relationships that looked boring to me but really they mellowed out and they were peaceful and they were happy to have a house with a garden and window pot and as I got older not only did different things become fun to me but different things became sexy and denoted love to me. Those things keep growing and changing. My sexuality is not static and my ideas about love keep on growing and changing and that is sexy to me. But, this is probably happening to you too, but it’s possible that at some point we could have sex together.

T: In light of how things keep changing we have to accept that it’s possible.

S: Nothing is really off the table but you have to keep checking if there is a table. What about you, Tara? How have your ideas about what you find sexy changed or how have your ideas about the ways in which you want to have love in your life changed?

T: Well, I don’t feel that the yearning for the free-falling alcoholic is indigenous to my being anymore. There was a point I knew I was dating addicts and I truly didn’t know how to stop, how to want something healthier in a way that felt good and exciting. A few years ago I finally understood that on a functional level, on a structural level it (a relationship with an addict) could not function for what I truly want in my heart. That alcoholism and addiction in their nature hinge on denial and an active practice of self-deception. I am obsessed with truth and clarity and I find it THRILLING to conceive of being with someone who has clarity and self-love. That is my goal. I feel capable of a profound and joyful partnership and at this point I would rather be single and just skate a lot rather than dick around trying to force a connection where it doesn’t exist. I also feel like I have gotten way better at prioritizing, knowing what shit is important in a relationship and what is petty crap that will change or just isn’t worth worrying about. Sometimes I will get preoccupied with something stupid and gladly I have Beth and Michelle to just say NOT IMPORTANT. And I know they’re right. And I can’t be afraid of losing something that is easy to lose. True love is not fickle, and it can survive all manner of mishap, including breaking up for the wrong reasons.

S: You have an alter-ego named Mitzi Fitzsimmons who you don’t just play but embody and I’ve been acquainted with her for many years. She has a lot of sex and makes her choices in a way that is different than yours. I wonder how you connect to that? Maybe some of your fans don’t know Mitzi as well, but she’s kind of a slut.

T: She and Carole are unhinged, sexually. Carole and Mitzi are entirely non-judgmental in their approach to the world. They just don’t have the mental structures in place to excessively criticize. They know if something hurts them personally and that’s it. Other than that they are only interested in their own lives, which are perhaps lived at a startlingly low level. They have lots of nights in which they drink some disgusting alcohol then have sex with one or more people, and occasionally each other, though never on purpose. But they like their lives and they’re living exactly as they mean to. They like having sex and they’ll take it however it comes. IF YOU WILL.

S: So blatant. They’re so not attached to the cultural tropes of sexuality at all. Do you think they’re happy?

T: They’re so happy.

S: Carole and Mitzi: everyone’s role models.

T: Absolutely.

S: I wonder what their house smells like.

T: Ew…probably a little sour.

S: Dirty granny panties.

T: There’s the thing where they spilled all that creamed corn on the couch which never got properly cleaned up. They just used a bunch of dry paper towels from work and dabbed at it.

S: Ginger said: That’s horrible.

T: They’ll only really do something about it if they get ants. In which case they’ll go totally overboard and dump bleach all over everything, discoloring and ruining it. They have no grey areas, just extremes.

And then Sara had to run off into the day, driving up the 580 back to San Francisco with her butch, Ginger.