there is rhythm to affection and sharing. sontag in the pages up to this and after deals with the increasing chill of her lover's touch. the connection seems one-sided and numb. sontag is dealing with this great opening of her real capacity to love fully, and rightly celebrates it for herself as a victory, but the slow unraveling is heart-wrenching. she is also deconstructing the parameters of a film, sprinkled in and out of the passages of despair. it is remarkable. as much as a journal, it is a gorgeous piece of writing.
honoring my own defeat in risking love with yet another man, and realizing i was gay right before a visa approval and a marriage which would inevitably follow, i identify. love is an immense pleasure, and one i always gave free reign to my psyche to chew completely; with the exception of sex. for me, sex made love harder work, and vice versa. i was, obviously, having it wrong. having the wrong kind of sex with the wrong gender and trying to completely love, still... i was going mad. i went mad. sincerely, most definitely mad.
sontag goes on to write about her lover "C." as only being able to love - and *be* - on an intermittent basis. i also identify with this, from the lover's point of view. i tend to write from an emotional place of personal experience, rather than in a communicative way. i resent it in myself, because art and my love life often so readily hold hands, figuratively speaking. it seems a little sophomoric and a *lot* selfish. but i have been for many years weaving this tapestry with two very incompatible yarns. when i came out as a lesbian, when i felt that to be my truth and said it out loud, wrote it, i wanted to keep saying it, over and over...
"i am a lesbian." there is so much power even in that. am i afraid that, like many of my ephemeral studies, this will be another project? i think to some degree, yes, but only in the sense that the sexual orientation is not new, but the excitement is. i feel a dizzying anxiousness, a giddy naiveté and a celebratory reconnect to my heart. that's good shit. it's a drug for sure, and i want to just stick in the needle over and over, because i am an addict and that's what i do.
i have been really digging in lately, not with needles, but opening myself up to non-judgement. to risk, is to be brave. it's the bravery i want for myself and expect of others. when i see myself as the only brave one in giving my love or my ideas, i am so turned off. a coward, for me, *to* me, is the anti-drug. weakness is fine, vulnerability to intimacy all that, we all have it i think, especially those of us with lots of cock in our walk. but the MAIN thing is digging into my true compass, the truth of what i need hypothetically speaking. i have yet to be with a woman in a relationship that is ongoing and sexual in nature, so it's all "research" then isn't it? i do know what love is, but maybe i don't in the context of my heart and mind and body flowing into that true path.
maybe that's a decision. like staying in love. or continuing to go work at a job. or writing everyday. for a writer, the terrible ache of failure comes not when there are no words, but when there is no flow. no timing. no pace that puts our life into context of other people. it's not so much audience appreciation, as it is- a sacred meditation that makes real synaptic connections. and so, too, is love. that pace, wow. i love it. i anticipate it. i love to feel it and write about it. the story of love is so vastly different for everyone, but i have yet to have that storytelling with the sexual connection. a lesbian connection that, to me, feels so right.
i begin new chapters of my life with learning things i never knew. i pick up a sort of cultural evangelistic approach- i code switch. i walk and dress and think in a complete cinematic way. i become my own narrative because my identity and personality as a borderline is so fluid. but that's my own therapeutic way of unburdening myself with being bored or going crazy. i have to step into a new realm and live there for a little while. immersive and often, drowning. i find that in this state of creativity, my art comes alive. a new series reveals itself. new people. new loves. intuitively i know exactly what moves to make, because i let it be what it is, one day at a time, just like in AA.
so how i relate, and the pace at which i relate to another lesbian might be revealing. i have brain crushes, particularly on accidental elitists. i get crushes on words. i get crushes on the sound of falling leaves. i have crushes on good sumatra coffee with cinnamon sitting on a balcony, like a big fluffy cat, watching the world. these nostalgic fancies are what sinks me into life. without them i'd just hang myself. [i always ask this question when i have been suicidal in the past; "will dressing up as another character help?" and usually i do that, document it. and move on to sleep sometime around 3 am.] the truth is, i am a tough nut to crack, not because i am unlovable or slightly mad, but because of my own shifting paradigm. about the only thing that sticks, year after year, is my relationship with my mom, my daughter and my dogs.
i wonder, now that i have become open to the real chance at loving someone i am also physically attracted to, what will become of the pace and tempo of life? i am already, in classic online fashion, relating to another lesbian, sexually. many others as friends. but i am very certain i do not want to run the pace of these potentially lifelong friendships. it's clumsy and awkward, even just being friends, with other women and always has been. so how do i do this?
i think i find out, first of all, what it means to be a lesbian to me. i mean, i just figured out that two girls can enter a girls bathroom and have sex and nobody thinks about it because girls are supposed to be in there. i am also learning that just because my classic role of nurturing mom to most of the people i care about is rewarding, it isn't enough. i need to let myself be nurtured. i need to be surprised. and i need to, at the risk of sounding crass, get fucked. i have been the dominant partner for so long, controlling and micromanaging details down to "send this email and thank this person" that i am literally exhausted. i have not even cleaned my house in two weeks because i just need that to be okay. i need to just play and rebuild right now.
...just a few things i am thinking about as i come out.
i wonder if i am alone, or if many people have a pace for new chapters of life?
do we change eating habits? clothing.
are these mini-mitzfas throughout life reason enough to celebrate and put on some new music, or take ourselves out to buy a new pair of shoes?
i think so. love is an incredible rite of passage. i am finally open to it, in a real way, with no mask, no armor. i want the exchange of power to be fluid. i want to touch and be touched how women do it. i may have had that in another life, but it wasn't my time to be out of the closet then. i was young. i had a husband. then i had a child. before all of that i was a teenager. i am not certain how this version of myself touches another woman. or even how it feels. my imagination knows though. or at least she thinks she knows. it was enough to risk a lot of my comfort zone to find out. whatever is going on, my body is so tender, so responsive- to music, to art, to sexual fantasy... that i literally feel like electric energy pulses through me. and for a girl who thought her vagina was literally broken and all her dopamine used up- this is quite a magical place to be.
i wonder if i am alone, or if many people have a pace for new chapters of life?
do we change eating habits? clothing.
are these mini-mitzfas throughout life reason enough to celebrate and put on some new music, or take ourselves out to buy a new pair of shoes?
i think so. love is an incredible rite of passage. i am finally open to it, in a real way, with no mask, no armor. i want the exchange of power to be fluid. i want to touch and be touched how women do it. i may have had that in another life, but it wasn't my time to be out of the closet then. i was young. i had a husband. then i had a child. before all of that i was a teenager. i am not certain how this version of myself touches another woman. or even how it feels. my imagination knows though. or at least she thinks she knows. it was enough to risk a lot of my comfort zone to find out. whatever is going on, my body is so tender, so responsive- to music, to art, to sexual fantasy... that i literally feel like electric energy pulses through me. and for a girl who thought her vagina was literally broken and all her dopamine used up- this is quite a magical place to be.
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