Reading · Museletters by Bela Divine

“We all wondered who he was going to end up with,” Nate says, topping up my glass. “He never really brought anyone around.”

We take the train to Amsterdam to eat lunch with his friend Nate. He’s waiting for us at a french bistro, legs crossed on the patio, leaning back with the confidence of a Leo, face soaking up the sun, a bottle of white wine waiting chilled in the cooler. Glorious.

Nate is a charmer, and exactly what you’d imagine when I say picture a gay dutch man. Tall and handsome and blonde, with an ease to his movement and a laugh that hypnotizes you to smile. He stands immediately and gives us both a big hug and a kiss. His hug is sincere and thorough. He pulls off his sunglasses even though the sun is cascading down into his face, so that I can see his eyes. So that I can feel him. His eyes are blue. His presence is one that demands to be felt.

He asks about our engagement and I’m shocked.

“You didn’t tell him?!” I ask H.

But I also know H. He is a man of few words. H & Nate have known each other for twenty years and the way that H announced our engagement to him was by sending a 20 minute video of our Burning Man proposal with no context.

“I had to fast forward through to see what was happening,” Nate laughs. “It was just you two at Burning Man fumbling around in the dust and the lights and then suddenly—he’s on one knee.”

I smile and Nate demands the full story.

I sit back and I watch my man tell it in detail for the first time.

He doesn’t skip anything. He loves this man, because he wants him to know.

Nate is the most engaged listener you’ve ever met.

"We all wondered who H was going to end up with," he tells me, ordering a second bottle of white wine and topping my glass up. "He never really brought anyone around."

I don't drink, but the moment calls for celebration. When in Rome. Or Amsterdam, I guess.

“No one was ever worthy.” H says with complete certainty. And my heart melts, because he means it. That’s one thing about H that I can count on. He always means what he says.

The Last Nate and H had seen each other, I was in Costa Rica about to sit in ceremony with Ayahuasca and I was very much in denial that I very much loved H.

I had no idea. I'd just lived through the craziest year of my life—my house literally burning down in the Palisades fires, a reality-warping breakup—and I was pretty much starting my life over. I was hoping Ayahuasca would give me answers. And even though I knew H and I were good together, I was half-hoping Aya would tell me: "You're not ready. You need a mandatory year of solitude before you can surrender to love again."

But H knew. Once he realized I was it, he decisively chose me day after day while I tried to figure out if I could fully reciprocate. I was writing him poems and sleeping over all the time. But when people asked us I smiled coyly and told them “we’re just friends.” I was fucking scared.

So while I was offline in ceremony trying to figure it out, he was having a late-night conversation with Nate,telling him he was certain I was the one. That he was going to marry me.

And Nate was like, okayyyyy slow down there soldier.

I smile because when H & I were just friends I would always speculate as to why he was always single. He’d been waiting for the right one for years. Who knew it would be me.

“Nate knows, I’ve never spoken like this about anyone.” H tells me with utmost sincerity.

And I know it's the truth. Because if there's one thing I know about my man, it's that he carries the sword of truth like it's an extension of his body. He doesn't speak unless it matters. He doesn't promise unless he’s certain. He doesn't love unless it's absolute.

The part of me that yearns to be loved and chosen wholly, truly, deeply, entirely, smiles within. You did good kiddo, she tells me.

And I’m like, I know.

Thank god I blew up every other relationship I thought could be it, because God, this is it. I had 70 percent, 80 percent, 92 percent, but I always wondered if 110% was out there and damn am I happy I held out because this — this is my husband.

I don’t doubt that.

Nate and I are going at it and H is sitting back and observing with a smirk on his face as per usual, only injecting when he has something concise and meaningful to say. He’s good at conserving energy like that.

But me and Nate? We are story-tornados.

We talk about my abuela. We talk about dementia. He reaches for my hand across the table, emotion raw in his eyes. His dad too. He died 3 months ago. Long weeks of suffering as the spark of spirit faded.

We both know the excruciating pain of watching someone that you love become a husk of themselves and die slowly, and painfully, and brutally. It's hard to reckon why the hell the universe lets that happen.

We begin talking about afterlife.

I'm three glasses of wine deep—which is rare for me—and I'm not holding back. Neither is he. H sits back, pleased to see us riffing, contributing expansive thoughts here and there to guide us along.

"Do you think dementia is a choice?" I ask Nate.

He stops mid-breath, eyebrows furrowing.

“Why do you say that?”

“I’m not certain,” I tell him, even though I feel pretty certain that I know. “But I think it might be. I think when a soul has avoided facing the truth or meeting the lessons it’s here to learn, eventually it can’t take hiding from itself. It begins to leave the body. I think it’s an unconscious choice. At least for my abuela, it was.”

I’m treading carefully now. I don’t want to offend him when his dad died four months ago. But he’s intrigued.

"I never thought about it like that," he says slowly. "I need time to sit with that."

I understand.

We continue rapid firing stories and conversations and eating burrata and drinking wine, and every twenty minutes he reaches his fingers across the table to H & I and does a little wiggle with his finger tips. Magic fingers. Resonance. I get it.

Nate gives me a sincere hug and says, “welcome to the family”

H looks at me with such decisive adoration.

I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.

And it’s natural. All of this is. We say our goodbyes and H pops into a shop and orders us some food to sober up. I can’t remember the last time I drank, but once in a while, life calls for indulgence. No regrets. We eat gyros and head back on the train and I think to myself, that this is how love and integration with another person and their people is supposed to feel.

Natural.

Right.

Chosen.

Hiiii friends. So I’m in a putting my greatest passion (writing) first era and I’ll be sharing here more frequently for free & paid subscribers. paid subscribers; you’ll be getting at least one of these intimate diary entries every week.

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i held out for 110%

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