---

We'd spent Sunday traipsing around the New Jersey Pine Barrens. However, we never really "traipse" anywhere. We share a strange synergy - when we're together, spooky and fascinating things seem to pop up at every turn. If I ever discover a portal to the underworld, it won't be in Dar-es-Salaam or Kamchatka... it'll be behind Mr. Awesome's couch. In any event, what had begun as a routine nature walk had ended with us emerging from the woods with half-terrified grins, holding a mysterious animal skull on a crowbar. We tossed the skull in the trunk, screeched away from the scene... and went out for barbecue.

An hour later, we were both in agony.

"Fuck you, Sonny's Salmonella Shack!" I said, shooting daggers at the empty tub of mashed potatoes.

Two hours later, Mr. Awesome was asleep. I was prostrate in bed, tears oozing from my eyes, thinking dark and irrational thoughts.

"Maybe we never should've removed the skull from its rightful resting place? Maybe it was a sacred mystery-skull burial ground? Although it wasn't really 'buried' so much as 'tossed next to some empty orange soda cans'? Maybe we should return it? Maybe I should wake up Mr. Awesome right now and tell him this?"

Over the next few days, Mr. Awesome continued to experience intermittent pain and nausea. My symptoms, however, were a bit more alarming: I was unable to eat without experiencing a subsequent five-hour bout of searing abdominal pain.

"This is worse than genocide!" I hissed one night in mid-writhe, "And I'm a Jew, so I'm allowed to say that. Actually, I think I just depleted all of my Jew credits right there. Better go rub a Torah or something."

I was comparing my tummy ache to the Shoah. Clearly, something had to give. A trip to my doctor's office led to a trip to the friendly neighborhood medical imaging lab. A quick ultrasound (Ed. note: why is the transvaginal ultrasound probe so ungodly... generous? Where, precisely, are the expecting to insert it - the gap of the Pyrenees?) led to a diagnosis of "nothing visibly amiss - take a Zantac". Which, several agonizing hours hence, led to a trip to the ER, a tentative diagnosis of a peptic ulcer and a prescription for Nexium. Which - wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, praise G-d and pass the noodle kugel - allowed me to eat without crippling pain for the first time in four days.

"Gee, that's fascinating, Jul," you're saying, "But as enthralled as I am with your gastrointestinal tract, what does this have to do with your three-month dating anniversary, the illustrious Mr. Awesome or the Pine Barrens Mystery Skull Preserve?"

I was getting to that, damn it. Cut me some slack, I have a strange digestive aliment. I intend to spend the next several weeks confronting the tribulations of modern life by falling to the ground and shrieking, "Ow! My gastrointestinal tract!"

---

While investigating the fascinating, fiery world of peptic ulcers, Mr. Awesome stumbled upon an interesting fact.

"I wonder if we gave this to each other?" he wondered, "According to the National Institutes of Health, H. pylori can be transmitted from person to person through close contact and exposure to vomit" [emphasis mine].

I've had a hard time conveying how this relationship has affected me. I've trotted out a parade of cliches... "hit me like a ton of bricks". "Totally gobsmacked me." "When it's right, it's right."

Nothing really captured it, however, until the sudden realization, "Wow… we HAVE been exposed to one another's vomit!"

What can I say? It's been an intense three months.

---

"How high your highest of heights? How low are your lows?"
- Great Lake Swimmers, "Various Stages"

---

Yeah. We've breached the vomit barrier. In addition to "nauseated", we've also seen each other lost, scared, exhausted and depleted.

We've dealt with illnesses of both the mental and physical ilk.

We've visited five states.

We've broken... let's see... at least six local and federal laws. Sorry, Massachusetts.

We've stayed at the worst motel in Elizabeth, New Jersey (for precisely 40 minutes, before decamping to less-terrifying pastures) and the best campsite in Promised Land, Pennsylvania (where the moon shimmered on the lake, the trees slow-danced above our heads and we drank cheap wine out of empty Dr. Thunder cans).

We never thought "we" would exist.

Our previous lives were dissimilar in some ways, eerily parallel in many. Mine was often comfortable; his, often hellish. However, they shared a certain character, a queasy quality best analogized as "purgatory, if purgatory were a strip mall in Hoboken."

We were fat, half-comatose, trudging circles over scuffed linoleum. The blue-light specials were self-negation and futility.

There was the occasional upwards glance towards the skylights (something brighter? something better?), but that world wasn't for us. This was the best we could hope for. The exits were hidden. "Hell," we thought, "Maybe there aren't any exits.

And it's not like this is Darfur. There's climate control, for fuck's sake. And Orange Juliuses. You keep your head down, you enjoy the Gap clearance sales, you accept what you've been handed."

It wasn't until we were thrust outside - stunned, destabilized and squinting in the sun - that we realized exactly how much we'd been missing.

It wasn't until I met him that I realized how much was possible... that behind the skylights, there was an another world.

Bright, rich, hyper-saturated... and it wasn't for other people. It was for me.

We could part ways tomorrow and I'd still consider myself tremendously lucky to have known him... and this.

I'll never accept anything less.

Turns out there's a lot to be said for adoration. For deep, mutual respect. For plans based on hope and excitement rather than duty and capitulation.

For ripping up the east coast, exploring abandoned buildings, getting sloppy-drunk by a campfire, being exposed to one another's vomit, stealing kisses in the kitchen while the children run wild.

For lying prostate on the couch, cursing the deities of the upper GI tract... then cracking a weak smile as you reach out to hold the hand of the man suffering beside you. For remaining legitimately grateful, from the bottom of your miserable, dyspeptic soul.

For love, for trust. For more... for much.

Happy anniversary.