Thursday, January 13, 2011

spirit steps south

(I've carried the weight of this article inside me for most of the past month. The heavy hand of sadness my constant companion and constant conflict. I've not known whether to write this story now, or decades from now. There is a person on this planet who has asked me to never share this, even anonymously. This person will never know whether i've honored her request. For the sake of her friendship, i would silence this chapter of my life, but she has withdrawn any love she once felt for me, and with it, a proper understanding of her request. More painful than hiding a part of my life is the thought that my silence would be an affirmation of her shame. In the week i lived with her, she walked in beauty and grace. In sharing this story, i rend another tear in my battered heart.)

A few months ago, a woman in Florida responded to an online romance ad of mine. She would later tell me of the enormous act of nerve it took for her to hit the "send" button on her reply. We began a correspondence that culminated in meeting six weeks later. She told me she had been a sexual "hermaphrodite" for three years, wanting nothing to do with males ever again. I called that sensible. She'd had three long relationships, each one ending when the male wanted to marry. For the past year, she'd been making multiple attempts at in vetro fertilization from males of "superior" stock, determined to start raising godlike children. To that end, she drove an enormous car and lived in a big, empty house.
You might ask why a self-professed hermaphrodite would be browsing a M4W romance site in the first place. I asked her after we met, but the answer that came back was so indistinct that i recall no part of it.
In my ad, i invoked a woman who didn't know the color of her own skin. When she identified herself as black in her initial response, i called her on it. She said i was right. But race issues ever did and perhaps ever would overshadow her life (it's a million times easier for a white person to forget their color). She admitted that any time she'd ever seen an interracial couple, she'd looked upon them as traitors, and that before she met me, if anyone had suggested that she would one day be intimately loving with a white man, she would have reacted violently.
She worked as a nurse, and had a huge family of sisters and brothers, with a father a bit like George Jefferson. She had caused much consternation among them for her attempts to have children without a man. I shared some insights i'd learned, as to why artificial insemination has such staggering failure rates. The body knows what it wants and what it doesn't, and for much smarter reasons than science yet understands. When a woman is attracted to a man, her body is pointing her in that direction because of immunological advantages for potential offspring. We play god at the risk of our unborn children. I wasn't trying to change her mind...but knowing the marathon pain of IVF, and how the body dies a little every day without intimate touch and healing sexuality, a little dream was born in me, to be the natural father of her children. I of course had no idea whether i wanted to raise these children...but if children were her crusade, i wanted them to be born of love.
We had one phone call during our pen-palship. On a sad day for her, i asked her to call. I read her a story, written by a woman going through IVF. After a marathon of failures, she finally gets a fetus that doesn't abort. It's beautifully-written, and in choosing that story i pointedly wasn't trying to force my own beliefs. The next day, she wrote that she'd decided she was done with IVF.
And as we wrote, a cybercrush was being born. We agreed to let it flow, keeping one eye on the reality that a cybercrush in no way prepares you for the real world. She fell in love with the idea of my lovemaking. I told her of my gentle ways...of the sexual communion of being inside someone for an hour or more, without mad thrusting to ejaculation. She said all the sex in her life had been short, and a bit painful.
She also told me she was an addict.
A workout addict.
Truly. A few years back, she'd been fat. She'd lost forty pounds, and wanted to lose forty more, but had reached a point of frustration, after a year of working out three hours a day had only gotten her halfway to her goal. She said she ate no sweets, a modest breakfast, and then just an apple and nuts throughout the day.
During our correspondence, she had cosmetic surgery around her breasts, to remove excess skin. She maintained that it wasn't cosmetic...and as she was going through such pain, i didn't have the heart to correct her. When we were together, i told her that any surgery which has no medical purpose is cosmetic. After a little debate, she accepted my point.
So much pain in her life...so of course my weakness for the wounded ones drew me to her. Plus genuine spiritual connection. She wanted to be more open and free, and able to run naked in the rain. She didn't believe in marriage. It turned out she was open to polyamory (or possibly only polygyny...what she actually said was that she could imagine being with a man who had other mates). I was also drawn to her because she was so profoundly enamored of me. She said she'd never dreamt that a white man like me might exist. I tried to tell her that i was just like everyone, full of vanity and conceit. She wasn't buying it, but i knew there would be time to convince her.
After a month of letters, i'd impacted her life profoundly...she'd abandoned IVF, and reversed a lifetime of racism by dreaming of loving a white man. I had to meet her...all of these changes were too sacred to not pursue into the real world.
In practicality, i knew there were any number of reasons why we mightn't be compatible as lovers. The lack of self-love inherent in cosmetic surgery is alien to me, and we seemed at different levels of spiritual growth. There was also an imbalance in how much we'd "seen" of each other. She'd seen many photos of me, yet i'd pretty much seen only one image of her, a distant shot from when she was at her fattest, which didn't trigger an attraction response. She also straightened her hair, a spiritual/physical turnoff for me. We discussed all these things, at least a little.
But the time had come to leap off a cliff. If she could leap by inviting a strange man to stay in her home, how could i not leap in return? I knew the dangers...she was walking on thin ice, trying to step beyond a whole lot of pain and gender/race hatred. She assured me that she trusted me implicitly...that any direction my spirit turned, she would cherish me 100%.
There's also a big part of me that just needs to jump off cliffs.
The only thing she made me promise was that when we first met, we would share one of those hugs that has no end.
No problem.
I had no time constraints for my visit, other than a ten-day maximum. She told me she was going to tell her family that she would be out of town on a business trip. Secrets shatter my spirit. We talked about it, and understood each other's perspectives better. The one concession she made was that she agreed to tell one of her sisters the truth. As the trip neared, i suggested we live out a dream i'd had for years. When we met, we would speak no words. Only once the sun had risen on our second day, would we talk. She agreed.
I arrived at the Homestead bus stop, and we hugged...not as long as i'd imagined, but still nice. In the car, it became apparent that she wasn't going to be able to handle not talking. She tried, but words kept slipping out. I finally freed her of the burden. After some pleasant talk, i mentioned the spiritual truism that words are a sign of someone not at peace with themselves. She laughed.
Her house was less rustic than i'd imagined. She'd talked of a lake, but i hadn't pictured a gated community. She had a bidet (which she never used!). I was in heaven. She told me she always slept downstairs on the sofa, and that she never felt comfortable in the master bedroom, where i'd be sleeping. None of the other bedrooms had any furniture. I'd imagined us making love on that bed. After talking for a while, i went up for the night. She joined me a bit later. I was naked, and we held each other. As we caressed, i became erect. She was on her stomach and i was on her back. She said she could feel my erection through her clothes, and asked me to move it faster. I did so. After a while i fell asleep, and she returned to her couch.
The next night, as she felt my erection again, she said she wished we could go further, but she felt so self-conscious, and needed to wait until she was slimmer. I smiled and shook my head. Of course she was being silly, but...i already knew that my physical attraction and spiritual desire for her weren't strong enough to support an ongoing sexual relationship, so i didn't mind that she wasn't ready. It would give us a beautiful window where we could just be intimate and loving.
We had six days of profound beauty without walls, even more so than i'd dreamed. She was so present and free. We shared our lives. Every night, she asked me to read some of my writings to her. One night, lying together after a perfect moment, i gave her the gift i'd brought from home...a felted scarf made in South Africa by one of the women a friend of mine is teaching trade skills to. She wore it everywhere the next few days. She suddenly felt self-conscious about the gift she'd gotten for me. She said she was going to return it, it was all materialistic and wrong. I nudged her into telling me what it was. An IPad. I told her i was touched, assured her i saw myself using one someday, and that any gift from her would be perfect.
One afternoon, we were sitting on the couch, and she was going on about how surprised she'd been at the softness of my hair. I knew there was an element of that she didn't appreciate yet. I took off my pants and put my legs across her lap. She was entranced, and gently explored my penis as i became erect. That was the single most beautiful moment we shared...knowing how far she had come to be living in that moment. She loved my size, and said it would be perfect in her. The next day, she asked if she could put oil on my penis. I happily agreed. She masturbated me, and i was able to push myself into having an orgasm...a verrry surprising occurence, as the tightness of a vagina has been the only way any woman has been able to make me come in a long, long time. My pushing notwithstanding, it stands as the only time a woman has ever masturbated me to orgasm. The next day, she oiled me again. I knew that she very much wanted to see me ejaculate, so i offered to masturbate for her. She sat between my legs as i went to work. For a while it just wasn't happening, so we talked. Finally i got it going. She moved her head closer, and asked if i wanted her to lick me. I wasn't expecting any kind of penetration, so i smiled and said "No, that's okay." When i ejaculated, she was amazed...she didn't think there would be so much.
We went garage saleing and thrift shopping, a passion she kept secret because her family wouldn't approve. I found her THE PRINCESS BRIDE, which she'd never seen. I found an album i love by the Notting Hillbillies, which she fell in love with. She shared her comic porn collection. I was a little surprised by it, and delightedly so. Most of them were plotless dreck, but there were two i liked, one about witch sisters, and one called "Alrayne", i think, which is just exquisitely drawn. She was extremely surprised at how i loved certain "black" TV shows, like CHAPELLE'S SHOW. She said she never watched any show that didn't have at least one black character. I laughed and called her on her racism. She disagreed. I constructed a counter-argument, and she relented.
I told her i too was surprised at the softness of her straightened hair. And she did make me understand a certain practicality to it. Natural black hair can take thirty minutes to comb out. Straightened, only five. But she conceded that there were a significant percentage of black women who straightened because they thought their natural hair "ugly". For me, once that admission is on the table, that's the end of the story. Malcolm X was right, and straightening is racial self-hatred. Why why WHY would anyone then choose it?
Especially when natural black hair feels soooo amazing.
She had another cosmetic surgery planned, to excise excess skin on her lower body. She'd also had a nose job a couple years before. I asked her what she might say, if her daughter one day found a picture of the "old" her, and asked "Mommy, am i ugly?"
One day, she took me to work, doing outpatient consultation with an AIDS patient. His mother confiscated me to help her on the computer. A beautiful afternoon.
Occasionally, she had a sad moment, telling me she was going to miss me. I told her not to do that...that by drawing that thought unto her, she rendered me already out the door in one corner of her mind. Doing so, she wouldn't be able to commit her entire spirit to our togetherness.
I had been working on her to lower the "secret" factor of my trip, and one afternoon she asked if i wanted to visit two of her sisters, and two nieces. I was thrilled. On the way, she told me that no one in her family had ever had a white lover. The scene at the door was nice. She was nervous, but kept it together. One niece was a toddler, and the other around six. The first sister was friendly, and when the second came down the stairs, there was an immediate spark between us. It was sexual, and the look in her eyes told me she was entirely comfortable with that. We chatted and visited for a bit, ending up in the backyard, where the older niece became quite taken with me after i climbed a tree. We lounged on the grass. When my friend said it was time to go, her sister said we'd only just gotten there. She made us promise to come back for a meal. I was delighted, and my friend was happy too. Back in the car, i told her that it was possible she didn't know her sister as well as she thought, and urged her to ask whether she'd ever been with a white man. The next day, she found out her sister had had two white boyfriends in college, whom she'd kept hidden. Bringing about that conversation was the second-sweetest joy of my trip. I told my friend that i'd felt a sexual spark with her sister. If that seems strange to you, gentle reader...if it seems dunderheaded or insensitive, well, i almost agree. Even at my semi-advanced level of spiritual development, i can't declare myself entirely free of the emotional minefield that surrounds our lovers being attracted to a sibling, or vice versa. But you must understand the state of grace my friend and i seemed to be in. We were sharing ourselves with no perceptible barriers. Perhaps subconsciously i needed to test that, but mostly i just wanted to offer up all of myself for her...feeling that if i held anything back, it would come back on me, creating the same energy in her. If you find contradictions with that position later on, well, i do too. We humans are all so broken, that always knowing the right thing to do is perhaps an impossible dream.
I had fantasies about her sister the rest of the trip, imagining beautiful shower sex. I wanted to give the sister my contact information, to explore our connection and talk about all my friend had been going through. I decided, however, that reigning that desire in was the wiser choice. And through busy scheduling, we never saw her family again.
The next night, she came to me in bed, clothed as always. We were spooning, and i was erect. She told me she was ready to have me inside her. My spirit eyes went wide. In those few seconds, i had to process one of the toughest choices of my life. Understand too, some of the ancillary energy that was swirling my brain around. At that time, i was reading one of the most amazing books i've ever found, "Sex At Dawn", a study of human sexual nature. I was tapping into a scientific basis for ideas i'd always been drawn to...the idea that radical sharing is the "natural" state of humanity. In foraging societies we're able to study, any form of withholding is a social evil, and no one is "so self-important that satisfying a fellow tribesman [is] less gratifying than personal gain". How could i possibly not give this woman ANY happiness it might be in my power to give?
But i knew we were still on thin ice...added to the imbalances between us was my attraction to her sister.
So i told her we didn't have the right balance yet.
Whether i made the right spiritual choice, is something i may live my whole life never being sure of. Had i already done wrong by not telling her about my lack of physical lust? I rationalized it with the idea that i was trying to operate on a higher spiritual level, and that i didn't want to shut doors...we might be coming to a better place of balance, and even if we weren't, how many walls might be created by a pre-emptive"no"?
She seemed to take my decision as easily as she had taken everything that week. But in her talking the next day about how other women would have been so insulted, i knew that she was struggling a little. Still, we were okay.
The wheels fell off the following day.
We survived the family hurdle, and i thought we could survive anything.
I was wrong.
The friend hurdle laid us low.
While at work, she opened up to a group of friends about what she'd been doing. They were scandalized, and in one way, i absolutely agreed with them. I didn't like their being upset that she'd let down her walls, but they were also horrified at how she had been putting me on a pedestal. I'd been gently chiding her about that for several days. She was catering to me too much, spiritually and literally. I still couldn't make her believe that i could be vain and foolish.
Whatever combination of words they laid on her did their job. Her walls had gone so high that nothing could top them. We talked about it, but kept coming back to her telling me i didn't understand who she was, and when i pushed her to explain, met only silence. She was in a state of shame and self-loathing. The best she was able to manage was one morose joke about wanting to have a neuralizer, like in MEN IN BLACK, to erase the last week forever. She held back from being overtly hostile, and threw me one or two bones about how she still thought i was spiritually advanced...but she peppered that with vague allegations about my shallowness. The only time i became impassioned was when she reduced me to my skin color. I told her that if she didn't understand that "white male" is not how i perceive myself, then she'd misunderstood the most important piece of me. She said the biggest thing i'd misunderstood about her was that her wanting intercourse had not signified any desire to have an ongoing sexual relationship. Yet i knew that a part of her spirit had been in that place, and that she'd happily imagined me "bringing her home" to meet my family. There were little glimmers that not everything had been lost. She said she would probably return to in vetro...but that she was open to having a romantic relationship with a man. But only under conditions of total emotional control. I tried to tell her that the need for control comes from a place of fear, and was that the emotional legacy she wanted to offer her babies? It's unlikely that anything i said at that point could have touched her, though. I tried to lighten the mood, saying i had NO idea how i was going to write about all this. I'm not one for regret, but a part of me wishes i'd never said that. She asked me to never write about us. I told her my reasons for hesitating to promise that. I made my own feeble attempt at a joke, saying that subconsciously she must have planned everything that week to lead up to that precise moment, because "hurting whitey" was her darkest dream, and she must have realized that no request could ever wound me so deeply as forcibly silencing my voice. I think she understood my maudlin attempt at humor. That night, while i was eating, she fell asleep, and her feet came to rest on my lap. That unconscious act gave me some tiny measure of healing - the thought that subconsciously she hadn't been able to convince herself that she hated me. She dismissed that idea out of hand the next day.
When she dropped me off at the bus station, i had about an hour's wait. She sat in her car. She'd given me a present, which she told me to open on the bus. After a couple minutes, i told her she was obviously so unhappy, and that she didn't need to wait.
As my bus pulled away, i unwrapped the gift.
A bookmark.
A little part of me hopes we'll laugh together again one day, with that bookmark nearby, doing what it was made for.
A foolish dreamer walks on.

(Afterword: Despite the pain that came with the writing of this piece, i realized something midway through - this is the first time i've been able to breathe in the month since i returned. For better or worse, sharing my life with you has become my very breath.)

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