Do you want to fuck?

Active 25 hours ago his facebook says. Another 14 hours tonight of missing digital engagement. Once before bed and once when I wake up, I look. Yes I look. Yes, I know what that says about me. This digital engagement or lack there of tells a story. It says girl hanging on against her will to what isn't there. I know what this digital void says about him too. It says so enraptured with someone's company that facebook does not demand checking. It says his phone is lost to the depths of his pocket while he drinks in this new person like cool water on a hot day. It might even say that she spends the night and he lets her borrow his toothbrush, hopefully having traded his bali version for a new model to match his new life so she doesn't have to unwittingly share my own personal strain of streptococcus mucus. 

Ok, so now I am stretching my phychic abilities to thier limit. But, I know this facebook time check works. At least for Correlation being as good as it is worth.  That and the unresponsive void left after my last message. Multiple times I fact checked this against our best days so I know that this data holds weight. P values could be examined. Statisticall viability could be discussed if applied across populations. He has been taken offline for so long that he is no longer plugged in to anyone but her. My imagined generic woman that he has chosen. He has plugged her in to him by searching out just the right songs to play in bed and tickle her female brain enough to make her wet while she waits for him to make the next move. 

This is where my tears finally come like summer rains, fast and hard but over befor morning coffee. Goodbye sweet man, enjoy her. You will spit her back out anyway at somepoint and break her heart like the rest. You are broken and not capable of real love. I feel warm pitty for you in this. Like figgy pudding on christmas day, tasteless but required eating if brittish.

Like some alarmingly large percentage of the population you cannot feel. Like a baby mouse who was not licked enough by his mother. It is a new modern affliction run rampant, adult detatchment disorder. It is epidemic. What happened to all these poor people that can't love. Were all these children ignored in favor of corporate worlds, tv dinners and other sad tales of busy modern life? 

My hansome charming friend platonically courts love while seducing randoms on tinder on weeklong getaways where sex and travel are nicely merged. He seeks out long legs and short skirts and easy access and then tosses them aside like the peels of a ripen and well enjoyed banana. On the ground. He then returns to long platonic hours and days pretending that the blond on the back of his motorbike is not his girlfriend. Because he is not sharing his bed or his skin with her he can let her long hair flow behind her as they ride thru the night. Him letting her hold tightly to the clarity that her hands around his waste are all she can have. He is too broken to share a bed with anyone whose company he enjoys.

Do you want to fuck? The message blinked onto my phone. His dating profile photos were quirky and hansome in all the right ways. He was even french. His image portrayed himself as much more evolved and witty than one who would ask such a question. Black and white with angles and shadows that intentionally pointed out asthetic inclination. Yet, with this one simple line he became not an artistic frenchman but just another human confusing his dick for his heart and wondering why he was unclear about the meaning of life.

Do I want to fuck? No! Do I want to be kept at arm distance from your heart? Do I want to be tested for holes as you saunter in and around me but never thru me. No! I want you to meet me and say I have no idea for how long but I want you fully now. I want you completely. I want you, all of you. The whole apple pie. Sex yes, but your soul and your brain and your heart too. Is this too much to ask? Do I want to fuck? No, I want you to reach in fully and grab my heart tenderly in your hand and turn its contours around in your fingers untill you know it as your own and understand its reasons. Red and fleshy and rawly beating. Hold it gently with the knowledge that it is breakable if dropped quickly. If you need to let it go because you and I don't match up like even rows of corn or the last 15 minutes of some b grade romance, then set it down gently and I will blow you a kiss as I walk away. But do I want to fuck? No.

Wrinkles and such

I am complicated and pithy and real. I am a woman not a girl. I bear stretch marks on my left breast from the time I swelled up to become a cozy home for another human. I have wrinkles between my eyebrows because I frequently squint at people who I percieve as daft or dull. I have any number of grey hairs that each represent worry and heart ache that I have earned with time and sweat and tears. I have skin that was inflicted for too many years by the sun's rays. I am not always charming and sometimes have nothing at all witty to say.

Do you really want that 25 year old just because you can? 

If you don't like me because I make you laugh, make you feel cared for, or will even sort out your troubles in a big pile on the floor on any given rainy day, well then I can't help you my friend.

If this means I have only friends and not lovers than let this be so. If all men want are youth and valid curves than I am not suited to them or them to me. 

If what we had is not good enough for you then I can not save you from your lonely existance. If you don't realise that my flesh and my soul are connected and that later you can feel both if only you will give up plyable constructed notions of age and beauty and substance in exchange for what is real and good and true. I am a thousand things. I am 39 years of life. I am messy and late and disorganised. I am imperfect in every moment. This I know. This I love. This I have made peace with. 

Leave me like table scraps and maybe someone hungry enough will find me. Let my sweetness find a home in the lap of another because my life and my soul is so tangled that it is no longer recognisable to you as beauty. Let me make peace with the fact that I don't measure up to childhood fairytales of lost glass slippers.

Don't worry. There are 6 billion people in this world. There will be someone who will scoop me up. Love my wrinkles, my well used breasts and my messy life. Someone who will see the well wrapped gift that I will share if they let me. Its ok if this is not what you want. I can not help you want me. But I know the hidden treasures burried in wrinkles, you are the one missing out. 

Letting go of the law

I snuck thru customs. I did. It was scary and hopelessly reckless. A carefully orchestrated scheme to get out of this crazy backwater wild west like country without incident. I became a counting sheep jumping out of turn and wandering off into the night. After a solid year of illigal stamps and a new administration trying hard to eradicate corruption of the democratic variety, my only course was a delicate exit in plain site. Orchestrated like a broadway play, I was texted instructions late at night while I lay awake regretting my laziness in buying stamps instead of jumping on a plane. 

The instructions were precise, approach gate number twelve at 4:00am sharp, give Mr. Oka your passport with 400,000rp neatly tucked in the back like grandma's christmas card minus the note. 

Despite my reluctance I had no choice but to follow orders. So I intended to, but we were late, stuck in line too long. You should have printed out boarding passes like dad always does my son scolded. It was 4:12am. Everything was wrong. We were late and all the custom agents had jackets to protect against the unreasonablly conditioned air which inadvertaintly concealed thier identity. Mr. Oka became unrecognizable in the tidy line of uniformly jacketed men. I couldn't turn back. I had no choice but to walk forward. I was up next. I walked solemnly and blindly toward booth number twelve searching desperately for a sign that I was expected or recognised. There was none. I gave the man my passport first then slipped the bright red bills into the back of my sons passport. The anonymous brown man behind the counter didn't remove the bills. He looked at me and glanced at my many Indonesian stamps and chuckled as if he knew my secret but wasn't playing along. Stamp, stamp and we were thru. Easy as baked beans.

I wanted to cry or run or maybe just hide in the ladies room. But instead I sprinted past gucci bags and duty free Chanel no. 5 until I was safe deep within the magazine racks and trashy airport novels. My son happy to peruse books till we departed. 

I wanted to tell someone of my relief and spill my pent up worry quietly into someone's ear. Like drops of hot wax from a candle, slow and deliberate. I opened Facebook messenger and glanced at his image at the top of my list. His overly exaggerated digitized afro filling up the circle all in black. Active 7 hours ago it said, giving me more information than I wanted to know. I started to type. Then I stopped and closed it. Resist. Resist. Like cigarettes and mento candies, something you enjoy beyond reason but must resist for the good of your health. 

Stop, dwell for a moment on all that is bad. Don't think about the long intellectually indulgent chats over coffee, or the muddy jungle adventures, how his hand feels neatly tucked in yours, or how his music manages to strum all your nostalgic strings at once like we have some strange shared past that happened simultaneously on separate continents.  Don't think of this. You can't have him, you shouldn't want him even if you could. Remember what is true and unfixable.  He is only good half of the time. Half of the time he will loose his temper and scold you like a child for your humble failings, poking you with sharp unrelenting words. Half of the time he will not take charge long enough to sort out anything that is meant to be shared. He will leave hotel bookings and dinner in your care but will respond only with vague displeasure if not anger at your disappointing choices. "It was not what I expected" he complained regarding my impulsive and inadequately planned and executed travel agent services. He only gives you half of the affection you need, leaving you naked and wanting under the sheets and desperate to be kissed even once tenderly for no reason without expectation of orgasm. He will leave you over and over again, running off to scenic locations to share beds with other women, or simply sit in the dining room alone leaving you to ponder his absence in your shared hotel room on the beach. Remember this. He is only half good. There is someone better than fifty percent. Find 80%, search him out. Wade bravely thru the loneliness. Like the thick swamps of solitude you will eventually pass thru this. Remember that even if your white horse sinks lost in the mud you will get him back after the nothing is defeated. All is good in the end and if it is not good then it it is not yet the end. 

Don't give into urges that feed a want for something that eventually will only break you. Find a new habit. Take up knitting, start jarring peppers in oil or dancing salsa. Dance, dance every day. Dance till all urges vanish like morning mist. Garden even, plant things and water them daily. Squeese your son when you need squeezing. Squeeze oranges, and drink the juice.  Seek out some poor friend to inflict your thoughts on, spill them all over their open palms, like my sons cup of noodles in my lap on the plane, wet and messy.  Or write, write it all out. Get it all down in black and white type. Treat it like good journalism, fact checked for accuracy and edited for clarity. Read it again and again then ask if that is in fact exactly how you feel about this situation? Confirm that it is and then release it to the world. 

So what you snuck across international borders like a deviant spy in your red scarf. So what if it was dumb and stupid if full of bold triumph. So what if you made it to singapore with your shiny new immigration stamp ready to spend the day eating Swedish meatballs and shopping at ikea for items rare in Indonesia, like stainless steal pots and colored sheets. He doesn't need to know these trivial details of your life. Don't text him. Resist. Give up the nicotine. Don't take a hit and inhale deep. Quit that habit. Find a beter one. Eat salads, dance and find cherished friends to lean on. Ones that will not leave you or at least invite you with them and help you sort out a plan when they go. Quit the habit, give up getting high on his pheromones. Forget burrowing your face in his beard. Don't text him, he doesn't need to know, you don't need to tell him. You can live without that future, you have yourself, bold and fierce and hopeful.  Its ok to admit you love him. But let go. Let go my dear. 

Winter is here

The winds have changed. Suddenly overnight winter has arrived. The strange tropical version of winter that only those lost too long on islands can imagine is a real proper shift in seasons. Only real Island dwellers can sense the now cooler windy mornings. The crisper clear nights. This subtle change that hints at the fact that we share the seasons and the hemisphere with Australia. Seasons shift, marking time. Time for jeans and extra blankets. Seasons change. Everything does. 

Just days ago I kissed you and said goodbye. You kissing me hard and hugging me bigger than you ever have. Lifting my feet off the ground as the driver patiently waited while precariously parked on the sharp part in the road. Just last week you had asked me how I felt about you leaving and never coming back. But then today you carefully spilled out honestly tender words that resembled uncooked meat, raw and difficult to handle. As we held eachother under the shadow of your mosquito net, you said I had come to be important to you too, as you to me. Sweet words of goodbye. Not coming back, going to vietnam instead. This was all code. Code for away, gone, departed, us no longer.

Our season finished. The hot season is over and now we are ushering in the cold season. 

The cold season is allready here and you are now allready gone but I have yet to find a way to wash you from me. Wash you off my skin and out of my mouth. I need hot water to pour over me till my heart no longer sheepishly leaks out a thick feeling of want. I need to stand in the rain and let it wash your smell out of my hair. I need to let ocean waves crash over me till I no longer hear your voice or imagine your brown eyes and curly hair and smell your sweet skin.

Wash it off of me damn it. Its cold and you are gone, but I am left behind with not enough sweatshirts and a feeling of want.

I know that your love can not ever be enough to subside my ache. I know this. I know that you will never do the things that make me feel cared for enough. Not enought to want my eggs to drop willingly, like ripe fruit falling and then planting your seeds by burying themselves down deep in my womb. I know that I will never feel you search out and grab that spot hidden inside my chest that contains all of the love that I hold. I know that you will never take a deep warm breath and sqeeze it tight. I know that you will never come so far into me that for moments I loose where you end and I begin. I know you won't do these things. I know instead that you will always only maintain a slight distance that allows for a safe passage. I know these things. I know that trying to make you increase your emotional proximity as you deny me will only give this ache inside my chest permission to knaw away at my soft snuggly edges, till what is left begins to question its worth. I know this like I know the contour of my hand, the shape of a circle or the sound of rain. I know this for sure, but I still can't wash you off of me. I also have now seen your dark side, irrational and scolding even with the dropback of clear tropical waters this angry man startled me. This is surely not someone I should forever attatch myself to. My brain knows this but my heart constantly betrays me with blind willingness. I can't wash you from me. 

At the moment all I can hope or imagine to be true is that some yet unknown human has the magical power to take you off my skin. May this person waste no time in bursting forth from hidden trap doors standing tall and strong and smother me with so many kisses that your spell is vanquished. May it be so. 

I am lucky beyond words

Normally happiness doesn't make me write. Wallowing in sarrow and bitterness brings me to the pen. But recently My life feels like its been transforming, slowly shifting. I am an observer watching from above as I become something new, like a moth slowly unfolding her wet wings after releasing herself with effort from the confines of the chrysalis. Slow, deliberate change with a growing realization that flight is now possible when it once wasn't. 

A month ago I had a fleeting moment of gratitude. I was sitting on my upstairs porch, the sun setting, the rice fields flowing green until they vanished into the sea. My sweet son reading to his hearts content next to me. Me sitting there holding a decent glass of red wine in a land deplete of such novolties. An organic salad was being made and hand delivered to me. The smell of purple sweet potato french fries in homemade coconut oil were drifting up from the kitchen where a young man who works for me was preparing them for my guests. I had just finished a long but fruitful day of presenting a months work of research to my funders. The results of a compolation of interesting days and nights interviewing HIV positive balinese transvestites and transexuals about condom usage. I mean really, who gets to do that? I spent the second half of the day managing the design and construction of a house that I alone have had the pleasure of designing. Every inch of which is full of hand carved bits and daily induced laughs and fun as I enjoy all of the people who work so hard to make it happen, all while practicing my indonesian. I am lucky beyond words.

Unfortunately this beautiful feeling of fullness in my belly was fleeting. It was way too easily over taken by the grief of loosing someone. I spent days on the beach, a perfect farewell to a sweet man who had kept the lonliness at bay. I spent the many weeks after his departure battling off this feeling. This pang of lonliness of unwantedness, rejection and loss. The emotional stew that was too large and heavy to not overtake the feeling of gratitute for all that is my very full and rich life. I was overwelmed by the feeling that my life was doomed to be perfect but unshared and that there was only a sea of strangers in front of me that I had to endlessly sort thru for real genuine human connection. The kind that makes you feel like your whole being is understood and wrapped up. But now I feel even this part of my life shifting. Lifting up like a hazy fog as the sun pokes thru.

A few days ago I went to a party. The kind of party where you have to compete with loud background noise for the attention of strangers. Normally I would leave feeling miserable at how foriegn this space is to me, but at this party people noticed me and talked to me. Suddenly even the handsome latino salsa dancer who ignored me in class walked across the room to remove me from my conversation and pull me over to one corner to privately charm me. 

The british boy who usually swivels like a chair between enticing me into trips and bussiness plans and turning his back on me for others, spent real moments wrapping me up with his attention. On the way out even an American I had fancied ages ago asked me if he could lift me off the ground, he spun me around in a circle and told me we should spend time together before letting me go.

What was lovely as I left alone to ride my motorbike home was that suddenly I realised I would have none of them and I was ok, not alone. They were just the few random grains of sand in front of me yet I was standing on a beach. On our way to 7 billion people the world is overflowing and the "N" as they say in statistics is large beyond measure. I don't need to share my bed with them, share my pillow and my kisses and my skin. I can simply talk to them and hug them and travel with them. I felt so fine in that moment and greatful for my phenomenal life that I lacked nothing. I felt surrounded by possibilities as I suddenly realised that I infact had the perfect life that everyone should want, that I in fact held all the cards. Like a gambler who has allready won and knows it.

My life is full and amazing. I need nothing. 

Dropping, catching, falling

We walked thru the jungle in the rain, the night was just about to slip its vail over our vision and the trail had vanished amongst the ferns and choclate trees heavy with bright orange rotting pods. In front of us, was a raging river, newly briming and thickly churning from a heavy afternoon downpour. This was the direction we imagined was forward, whatever that nebulous concept meant in this context. 

In an atempt to beat nightfall we had to cross this beast. We had no real choice. We examined large rocks and currents and then you plunged ahead with the help of a bamboo pole. I however, became imobilised in the middle of the rushing water, afraid to take even one step in contradiction of the strong current for fear I would be swept off my feet, the muddy river pushing hard against my legs. Me ludricusly wearing jeans that were now wet up to my waist. The rain continued down in a steady sprinkle that somehow implyed that wetter was even possible in this context. I stood there for far too long trying to will myself forward. Then, just as I lifted my foot and the water gave its strongest push, you came back for me and stretched out your arm, offering your steady hand as solice from the forces of nature. With one quick grasp we were both across and once again standing on thick firm jungly land. 

You normally are more of a egalitarian than a shivilrist. More likely to want evenly devided pie and checks than cavalerly throwing down your coat in a puddle for me to fooloshly walk over. But in that moment, in that context, you reaching out to me was worth a thousand withheld sweet kisses on the back of my neck. Your strong hand in the midst of my fear was the same as a thousand doors opened in front of me, a thousand dinners ordered with me in mind. You made me feel cared for and safe. In that moment I loved you hard and strong like the mossy rocks that held back the rivers force without even budging. 

Once safely on the otherside of the river the trail magically appeared again. One step at a time we made it home, faith that the path existed and could be found was all we needed. That and the willingness to move forward with knowledge that being swept away is not the only answer. We made it home, the last bit on a motorbike, me stealing your heat on the back as we sailed thru the balinese night talking and laughing away the raindrops. I wanted to go home with you and steal more of your sweetness against your will as you slept. But I had another man waiting for me at home, a steady and humble eleven year old who needed my company more. I said goodbye without even a kiss. 

This is what will happen again soon, saying goodbye. Will this time be for good? I don't know. Do you? At the moment I can't see beyond next week. Our future is muddy and blocked by long forced time apart across vast oceans. Our connection to one another not being swept away by the black abyiss of the unknown is all but impossible. I will take a moment, a deep lingering pause, to have faith that a path exists. Hidden only by jungly vines that only need to be pushed away. I will find faith that no matter our distance we can be there to take each others hand when raging rivers require it even as we have found different paths to forge in life and in love. I love you like a rock, steady and strong, take my hand if you ever need it. 

Loose edges always meet up

I am building a house. Because I live in Indonesia where the rules are limited I can build it inch by inch without planning too far ahead. I can look at today and decide what needs to be done. Lets put a wall there, lets lay tile here.

People from western countries find this to be ludricous if not impossible. They can't fathom the emptiness of not having the complete vision written on graph paper ready to be neatly orchestrated. 

The other day a sweet british man interested in my construction project attempted to explain his disbelief by asking "how do you decide what to do when you get to two edges?"

When two edges of two surfaces planned and implemented at different times come together they may need a bit of imagination to join them. Where floor tile meets the edge of the pool, or a wall meets a counter. But allthough it seems impossible from afar or before they come together these two surfaces present thier own logic once complete. This logic may not even be visible untill you get there. You have to wait for the edges to meet and then translate the logic of that moment. Add a bit of trim, smooth out the surfaces, sand them down. Like magic they become one. It works, I swear. This makes sense in construction if you let it. If you let go of control and let loose imagination and all that is sensible in this present moment. But you have to let go, let things happen. Watch and then play. This works in life also. 

This is my new mantra. Keep going. Wait for the edges to meet. Wait for whatever it is that is happening now to go somewhere, to make sense. Follow that road in the dark, don't be afraid of the unknown. See what happens, trust that you will know what to do when you get there. Let go and play. Know that it will all become clear. Trust, let go, let it happen. 

I am right now doing lots of thing. Right now I am interviewing transvestights for public health research.  Right now I am building a house. Right now I am dating a sweet and yummy man with a creamy voice. In two months most of these things may be done. I am not sure where the edges are. I can't see them yet. I am not sure where the next edge starts. What does it look like, how will it meet up with my current life? What happens when this man leaves? Will I go to him, will he come back to me? Will there be another man? I am not yet sure. Will my house rent, will I get more public health work and continue to be an academic? I am not yet sure. Wait for the edges, they will come. Know that they will meet. It will all make sense and come together in neat lines. Keep laying tile, one at a time... Don't look too far ahead. Keep going. Enjoy the details of now. The present moment. Keep going. Wait for the edges to meet. Trust that they will.