She described the experience of feeling obsessive love, which she disclaimed as not really being love at all, from a distance… but then when confronted with the object of her desire, everything was cruel, all about her, and abusive.
Then she described the experience of being loved and not feeling the same intensity of emotion in return, and how that made her feel bad about herself and wonder if everything she felt was in some way a lie. The book ‘The Road Less Traveled’ helped her a lot — a rarity in and of itself — because it described love as an action, and not as some internal feeling. But the disconnect was never really mended. I mused that love in one direction is doomed.
She talked about how laying beside a woman felt right somehow, but in a way it was wrong. How laying beside a man felt wrong, but in a way… right. In the end we talked about how she has never really felt ‘love’ the way poetry, cinema, and society have portrayed it.
I talked about how much I love to love, and how it is the only way which i really enjoy sex. I love to make love with a man. Oh how I love to be taken. But somehow it never reaches me in my heart, or anywhere near my soul. And with women, somehow my heart dances completely. And yet most women can not, or in my experience have not often been able to meet me anywhere. A lot of laying there and hoping I could hammer them like a man.
It is ironic to me that I am capable of this type of interaction, this thoughtless use of other human beings when I am with the mirror of my own self, my sex, my gender, and yet somehow when I am with the opposite sex, I want to be met by the tenderness, devotion, adoration, and poetry of what lives and burns deeply within my heart of hearts.
I drifted from the conversation and thought of you. Your smell rose and filled the cockpit of the car. I drooled a little, and almost burst into tears. If I hadn’t been required to maintain a manual control of the vehicle I might have come undone.
It is horrible to think that my devotion is not returned. Not wanted, or needed. It is a betrayal so deep I can not even inspect the idea for very long. My task now is to step away, to let go, to say ‘hurray’ that I was able to be vulnerable, able to love, and now let go. Let go and walk away, I am supposed to let it fade.
When I think about the look on your face when you see me, that wrinkle in your brow, the involuntary turning away of your body… as if you were about to sprint off in the opposite direction… then it is easier. When I think about the soft skin behind the backs of your knees, your cheshire eyes, and your hips opening, and shivering toward mine, it is impossible, unthinkable, and I am blind with tears.
As I returned to the car, the sound of the road rushing below my feet, I imagined that I must be clinging to something which is not real. This love for you, this longing for an intimacy which you appear to have no capacity for, despite my appetite for acceptance, tolerance, and faith in you… it is not about me. I am amazing. I am capable of the most radiant love. Yet I am selective, and never, ever give this part of myself to anyone. I devote it to my music, my son, the sea and the sky… it’s true… but I never share it with people. I am better at listening, or being an example of what not to do. Still, there is no point in living for ground which God has not yet formed, or space which does not exist, intimacy which is neither wanted, nor required.
No this makes an excellent case for me to back away, to be still, to silence all dialog, and depart. When I look at what’s wrong, something I no longer do intuitively, then I blush with embarrassment, and can’t believe I have stayed so long.
I would rather live for love, for the ground between us, honoring the space, as deeply as the inroads, and build something which might last. As common as connection seems to be for you, for me I have never known anything like you. I suspect there is nothing else like you. That may be true, or I may be a romantic fool. I think both are correct, but what do I know? I would rather live for the communion, the common ground, and spend my time looking at what is right, what is beautiful, and undertake what must be done.