jessilyn

WOMEN 85
Even as she kissed me, a tiny piece in the back of my brain said, "Damn...now i'm going to have to write about this."*
Not that she embarrassed me, but rather, i was embarrassed to have to offer you such a nothing of a story.
Perhaps happily for you, it turned out to be far more than nothing.
We met at a writers' open podium i hosted at the library. Jessilyn was the only attendee, so we read to each other. She was a poet and author of a spiritual/christian self-help book. Her verse was enjoyable, which ameliorated my disinterest in the material. When we parted in the lobby, i thought such an intimate experience deserved a moment of human connection, so i offered a hug which she happily accepted. In the few moments we touched, i felt a jolt of longing from her. Within a day or two we got together again. She said she was also a bit of a hermit, probably much more so than myself. I read her an essay about how i was trying to approach romance based not on my selfish desires or agenda, but by a paradigm of simply giving and loving whenever asked and able. It was important that she know that part of me, because i sensed that she was inclined in a romantic direction. I didn't want to hit her over the head with the fact that she wasn't my type spiritually or physically...but in retrospect i could have (or should have) been more explicit about that. I also told her about my move to California that was coming, possibly very soon. Later, i tried to reinforce those messages, but the swirl of emotions in her head turned out to be a train we had no chance of slowing.
At the end of our first night together, we lay on my bed and talked. For a few minutes, we chastely cuddled. I wanted to go very slowly, so i could be sure our expectations stayed aligned. As we got up to part ways, it was clear she wanted me to kiss her. I was very raw emotionally from not having been held in a very long time, and was open to a loving sexual relationship...but knew that my vision of romance, and my spiritual/political views in general, were far outside her more conventional worldview. When i found one of her hairs in my bed that night, i felt a wave of ambivalence. What was my stupid idealism getting me into?
We spent an evening at her place, cuddling on the couch. She did most of the talking, opening up about the damages and losses in her life. She cried in my arms as she told about her husband who had died, and then her next lover's death just a few years later. The level to which she opened up was humbling and beautiful. I had a non-urgent response to our closeness, and had no idea whether this was a reflection of our sexual chemistry, or just that i was so aware of the imbalances within and between us. As i was getting ready to go, she told me she hadn't made love in ten years, and had recently given up on the idea of ever being sexual again. As i slid over her on the couch to stand up, i spent a few seconds on top of her. She playfully, frustratedly gave a few pelvic thrusts. When we were standing, she told me i had stirred a desire in her that was powerful and profoundly unexpected. I was still in "let's be patient" mode, so when she kissed me at the door, i allowed it but refrained from really responding. Yet had she taken our clothes off and asked me to hold her some more, i wouldn't have resisted. Would i have made love? I'm genuinely not sure.
I went home and dreamed of loving her...which is hardly surprisingly for any human being (to say nothing of one who hadn't had sex for a few years himself). She was central in my masturbation fantasies that week, which i told her.
There were growing imbalance warnings, though. She off-handedly mentioned that she was writing down every word i'd said. She got upset that i wasn't calling her every day, and pursuing her like every other lover she'd known. When i told her i was visiting family for the holidays, and that i might not talk with her until i got back, she was perplexed, and distressed i hadn't gotten her a gift. I told her i had friends i'd known for years whom i didn't expect to call, and hadn't given a gift to either. She agreed that made some sense. I was glad for the break, as it might give her time to step back and process what was going on. She had asked whether we were romantically involved, and i'd tried to give a non-committal, open-ended response...but it might have come across as something closer to affirmation. I told her that whatever she needed me to be, that's what i wanted to be. Yet i also clearly said that if she wanted my attentions to be a manifestation of my desire rather than an act of giving, we should walk away from each other. I also said that given my wounded, raw state, anything contentious or complicated would make me run.
When i returned from vacation, things quickly went from shaky to worse. I think we had only five get-togethers total, and in almost all of these, she did the lion's share of the talking, which was fine - i told her that perhaps we only talk when our spirits are at unease, and i knew it was healthy for her to share all her demons and hurts. But when i brought up the notion of avoiding romance because of our imbalances, she responded with an overwrought declaration of love. It didn't feel like an act of giving, but more like an ultimatum. I mentioned how short a time we'd shared, and how little of that time had been devoted to my own self-revelations. She talked about our differences in terms of who we might have voted for in a recent election, not realizing that my wildflower ways went profoundly deeper than that. I wondered whether it weren't ME she loved, but merely how i made her feel. Somewhat surprisingly, she absolutely agreed.
Thus far, everything about this story may feel reasonably familiar to you. But it was about to go to dark places, the like of which i'd never known.
And let me stress that i have nothing but love and understanding for her. If after this story you think she's some kind of horrible person, i will have failed as a writer completely. She is as we all are - just varying degrees of damaged (if you're reading this, jessilyn, stay to the end - it will surprise you).
At one point, i thought the literary message of this piece would be a commentary on how broken and needy we all are, with the admonition to NEVER open up the can of romance/sex unless you desire that person with EVERY fiber of your being. Even then it's probably going to end badly, but at least your hormones will be happy for a while. That's a fine message, but this affair turned far more deep and destructive. I was going to mention that this kind of disaster could only happen to ME, with my pie-in-the-sky idealism, and that my gallows humor response while it was happening was that if i was going to "do the time" so brutally, at the very least i should have gone ahead and "committed the crime".
But nothing funny was about to happen, and "Fatal Attraction" ain't Hollywood bullshit.
My memory is imperfect, but i think we never again met in person after i got back. It all quickly and horribly descended into a place of literal insanity. Her messages grew ever more off-balance and hateful...but not in a way that can be understood through any rational lens. Even as i try to put it into words, i fear the flavor of the insanity will be lost...partly because my mind wasn't trying to hold on to each bizarre detail, and partly because you really had to be there to appreciate the disconnect between what had happened, and her reaction. "Disconnect" is the perfect word - i think she was in some kind of mental breakdown, and not fully cognizant. She said that i had fucked her over, and that she wasn't someone whom i could use and throw away. She asked whether i was afraid that she would report me to the library.
Report me??
Her barrage lessened after a couple weeks, but went on for a couple months...hate-filled words denigrating every aspect of my life. It came mostly in e-mails, with an occasional phone message. When i wrote back, she replied that she wouldn't read anything i wrote, and that i had to call her. I realized that ANY response would only feed the fire, so i stopped trying. She later wrote that i probably wasn't even reading her notes any more, which was untrue. Even though i'd done nothing to deserve this, and even though every assault was an unprotected blunt trauma to my stomach and already weakened emotional walls, i read every word. In my perverse sense of duty, i felt i owed her that. I understood that her mind wasn't in control.
The inhumanity i experienced in those months...not knowing whether she would show up at my door, or whether she were capable of physical violence...i imagined the sound of a bullet being the last thing i heard in life. I tried to smile at the undercurrent of terror. All this from someone who had written a spiritual, holy book filled with messages of universal love. One night i was having a disquieting dream about fire, and slowly awoke to the crackles and pops of a burning building. Was it my own home?? No, it was the cabana bar across the canal. Chalk one up for poetically brutal coincidence.
Adding to the mindfuck was the fact that every sixth or seventh message was almost conciliatory...as though she halfway understood that what she was doing was wrong. She wrote that she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (during those three years when her life's two closest lovers had died, her sister and mother also died). She sent me a snail-mail letter with three words - "god loves you".
Are you ready for perhaps the most shocking element of this story? I never, up to this very moment, stopped dreaming of making love with her. In some ways, her breakdown actually increased my desire. We had gotten to a point that almost no lovers ever reach - nothing was hidden anymore. I had seen her at her most horribly damaged. There could be no more pretense between us. I wanted to spend hours gently fucking her, then hold her while she tried to talk about what she had survived.
Some of that is noble and good...but much of it isn't. I dreamed of her coming to me, and telling me it was all a mistake, and all she can dream of is being held by me, with no expectations of any kind. Terrifying...but i swear i don't know what i would do if she knocked on my door right now, and said those very words. I dream of reaching out to her, with perhaps an anonymous "i love you" left at her door. The rational part of my mind knows that i have no idea what she's capable of, either in act or accusation, so if she did show up i would spend time with her, but only in public places. I want so much to love her...but that also gives me a sweeping insight into all those women who get involved with, or stay with, men who abuse them. We're all so needy and damaged, and spend our lives covering it up, sometimes even from ourselves. A man who punches you, physically or emotionally, has to CARE on some level very deeply, right? Being brutalized or raped is a small price to pay for that certainty, right?
Right?

*That's one of the benchmarks for inclusion in these memoirs - anyone i've kissed, or with whom i've had a significant shared romantic attachment.