Truth revealed.

I wanted to take stock of all that we are. I am mad for you, the kind of madness that makes me want to plunge off emotional cliffs for you. I find it hard to make the sum of our parts add up. I find it hard to understand intellectually how it is that I feel I have known you all my life or that I know exactly who you are without you saying a word. Like I can feel your core and it somehow matches mine. But I also know that I am under the influence of powerful drugs. That I can't even see straight right now. That the chemical cloud we are floating on is so thick that you and I may as well be passing our days lounging on low tables puffing pipes in an opium den. We would make love all day amongst the cushions. I know we would. 

So I decided to exercise my left brain and make a list. This is my small list of the tangibles. The stuff that makes us something together. The stuff that we both are. The shared little bits we have in common. The stuff that is beyond the core of just getting and loving your soul, the you inside. 

This is what I have at the moment, I know there is more. Lots more. 

Let's start with food. Good place to start. We both like food, good food. Home made food. We like to cook. We don't know how much yet but both of us have this strong. We like coffee and red wine. I know you prefer craft beer but if we were in France you would drink wine with me. "Il etait une fois". I Saw this written today. You speak some French right? "Once upon a time" it means. This is how our story should start. It's better in French because it translates more to "it was one time" this is our time, our chapter in the book of life. It's a fairytale for me, it really is. And France... We would live there together by the sea. We both love this idea. But we would travel always to strange remote crazy places. We like adventures, even muddy ones. We like babies, babies that grow into amazing kids. We would make them together if only our genetics could find each other in the dark. Curly auburn haired babies with my eyes and your smile. 

We are both optimists, we know that everything is possible, if we can dream it we can do it. We believe in working hard and getting things done. We push past obstacles as if they were just simple rock walls to climb. Imagine if our forces were combined what we could imagine, what we could do? It's part of the reason I am willing to walk down this impossible path with you holding my hand. Because we know all things are possible with faith and hard work. For this reason we have the power to overcome even impossible romances. Mount them like black stallions and ride off into the sunset together. 

We are sensuous dare I say even romantic creatures you and I. We crave nuance and share some sort of taste for unusual passions of the senses. We have so much to share in this, so much to learn and experience  about this part of who we are together. This tangled mass of sex. 

We have some shared interest in biology. I like bugs too you know. You are just smarter about this than me. But I could certainly chat you up about these creatures invisible to the naked eye and their role in the immune system. The only book I own in bali is called "the art of fermentation". I make sauerkraut, you prefer wine but we like this I think for the same reason. This is life, alive before our feet. Science and magic together. 

I feel like there is more, it's not just an opium den we find ourselves in. We are real. Two pieces of a puzzle that have floated out to sea and found each other in the the dark. Found. 

I love you. You are no longer my imaginary boyfriend. I know now you are real.

Imaginary Boyfriend

You are my imaginary boyfriend. We have never met but I know I Love you. You told Me yourself that this was how you felt The other night as you drank one too many beers. That you were falling hopelssly thru the air, nothing to catch your fall. Your breath caught permenantly In your throat. 

You hold my hand as you walk me thru this imaginary world we create together. We are like avatars blue and capable of becoming anything that pleases us. 

"Is this just about sex for us?" I ask you earnestly seeking your answer. 

"No" you tell me and I believe you, but am suspicious that we are the victims of oxytocin's chemical intoxication. Heady And thick like lounging about in an opium den for hours as the smoke fills our lungs And makes the world outside slowly dissapear And feel pointless. 

We need each other. The kind Of need that is thick and sweet like honey. Dripping down My leg need. The kind Of need that makes my belly ache and my mind spin. We thirst for each other, its unquenchable, we keep drinking but It keeps coming. 

You seem to see me thru special glasses, rose colored ones, imagine I am more than I am. Describe me with superlatives that don't match my jean shorts and missmatched tan lines. I have one grey pubic hair, should I tell you this? A super model who is your biggest sexual fantasy. You feel lucky But I know I am. You make lasagne on a sunday For The week ahead you say. Meet me first and look at My frown lines close up I counter. 

But There is something There between us that goes back and forth. I like you. I like you in so many ways. You work hard traveling the world because you love your work. You will tie me up in bed and watch as I make love to another woman, in our minds, together, all befor morning coffee. We laugh, hard and long. I have not enough hours in the day to devour your mind. And then we drink The coffee. You just the right combination of sexy and requisite geek to satisfy my desires for a brain in bed and not just a body. But you are not here in front of me, you are but an apparation. A ghost. You will disapear as quickly as you have arrived. Return to your family and stop being my imaginary boyfriend.

Today I am flying on a plane to you. Crossing oceans and borders just to touch you. RiskingFlying from my island home of Bali to the big sterile city of Singapore. I will arrive at our hotel and change into tight jeans and heels, casual and just sexy enough. I will walk to a small bar and order a glass of red wine, warm and thick and In the perfect round wine glass It will keep me company as I wait for you. 

You are a stranger to Me. I have never kissed your lips nor have I touched your skin, but I know the inside if your mind. You have seen the inside Of mine. An old friend, a lover, that I have never met. 

I am a sure thing that you now get to devour without hesitation, But first you must drink wine with me across the table. Look at me here I am right in front Of you. No longer a screen In the way. 

A sea of strangers and random shirts and magic

I walked up to the nearest stranger I could find and asked in hurried poorly worded French for the nearest ticket counter. He smiled warmly and kindly offered up English, ushering me with sweetness from place to place across the busy Gare de lyon train station. We hurried as we talked but somewhere in the midst of the rushing there was just the faintest glimmer of a sparkle. I had all of ten minutes to print my ticket and get on the train leaving from Paris to Bern Switzerland. In typical French fashion, no one would help, but he did, and he was tender in silent ways for mere seconds of my life. I felt like fairy dust wabeing sprinkled on me thru the sunlight shining into this grand French train station. I suddenly noticed his hansomeness as not a mere coincidence, his beard and a scarf just the right thing to soften his smart conservative attire. Kindly allowing me to avoid the slow drudgery of my own French by letting me borrow his as he introduced me to the train attendant and showed him my ticket. I said goodbye as I jumped on the train just moments befor it departed. I wanted to hug him and say lets be friends or maybe even kiss him for sport but instead I just smiled and said thank you. I will never see him again. There were sparkles. I saw them in the sunlight.

We bump into strangers like this, share these moments and then let them go. It happens a million times over the course of a life. 

Weeks ago I shared two passionate nights with an inapropriatelty young frenchman on my island home. We had candelight dinner on the rice fields, we drank red wine on the patio of my villa as the warm tropical night filled with fireflies. We shared sheet wrapped moments of fingers and toes tangled together, of stroking hair and feeling skin. For those two nights I loved him as if he were mine to keep. On the second day, I felt him pulling away, slowly letting go. I dropped him off as he gave me one last twirl of my hair. I squeezed his hand and released him. I knew I would never see him again. My gut ached like fresh heartbreak, like it mattered, like it was real and not the lusty short lived game we were playing. I walked the slow long walk thru the rice fields towards my construction site saying "ouch" oultloud to no one in particular. Letting the sound come out of my mouth like releasing pressure from a baloon. Letting out the ache in slow small grunts. "Ouch, ouch ouch". 

Logic was clearly not at play here. We had little in common, our conversations would not even carry us to the third night that was available before his flight home but was being silently declined. His position as a regional manager of all Parisan outlets of a common American clothing brand gave us little common ground. But there was sparkle, we passed it back and forth between us. But It was not a sparkle I was meant to keep as eventually we would need real topics of conversation and less distance of age to hold us together. The pain in my gut would subside I assured myself. The grass blew in the wind as I walked. I will not see him again. Ever. Ouch.

As a married person with a child you are like a small celestial body. It matters not where in the world you are, they are always in your small orbit, your people. Now I am this solitary vessle with no anchor to steady me I am left to float about. I am becoming comfortable with this idea. This sense that I am carried by the wind bumping into people and exchanging small moments. I am starting to even understand this power. The gift of this. I am starting to see what is possible. 

I now begin to look for these moments. Seek them out like easter eggs in the grass. I sit on this train full of strangers wondering if one of them could light a small spark in me. 

Days ago I imagined the process of searching for people as no different than wading thru piles of used jeans. Trying them on over and over again looking for just the right fit. Like Digging in heaps of broken and ripped and out of fashion pairs at a third world market hoping that somewhere is a pair that hugs all my curves and has just the right pockets and I don't have to bargain too hard to call them mine. This image for too long has left me feeling broken and hopeless, like repunzel being asked to perform the impossible task of spinning straw into gold but lacking the magic to make this happen. This morning as I sat in a perfectly parisian coffee shop eating a chocolate croissant and sipping a cafe au lait I found a small secret that I had until that moment kept from myself. In an instant and for no reason, I let go of this image of used and broken jeans. Without warning a new image floated up and out of my coffee. The image of a grand easter egg hunt. The kind thrown for the royals before it became unfashionable to be ostentatious. A hunt with real rabbits, unimaginably large cakes and women toteing parasols. With each sip of coffee this image grew stronger in my mind and I realised that It is like searching the corners of the earth for just the right kind of magic, this sparkle that only exists between the right combination of people. Something that fills you up and makes you explode. If you know that it is there, if you believe that it is there maybe even a million times over, then it is just a matter of looking for it. It may be partly hidden, and surely unrecognisable if you don't look, but it is there. 

The train rumbles across the track and the green swiss fields roll by. The sun sparkles. I am on a hunt for magic. It can be found. Magic. 

50 dates

He was date number three, this is where I froze. This is where things got stuck for nearly a year. When I started dating for the first time after 17 years of monogomy I set myself the random numerical goal of 50 dates. Being a goal oriented person, this apealed to my sense of achievement. I also decided that this meant I was doing my part to be an active participant in the selection process of a long term mate. A process I had always chided my younger self for abandoning the academic rigor I would otherwise apply to other parts of my life. Much like standing at a shoe store and not trying anything on but complaining that you walked away with the first illfitting and unfashionable pair the clerk handed you, if I wasn't trying men on I had no bussiness complaining about the results.  And so it began. 

I remember my second date when my third suitor accidentally walked in on my dinner. I remember seeing him from a distance, lumbering with large unrooley hair and no attempt at fashion and thinking damn why did I agree to go out with him. I remember leaving my second date abruptly to stand out on the curb and take a phone call from my ex partner. I stood outside the restaurant on the phone reveling in the firmiliarity of his voice. The traffic hummed by and with quiet tears running down my cheeks I blandly admitted I was on a date with no one I cared to see again. I stood still, phone pressed to cheek longing to undo the damage that I had caused, but It was done. 

Despite dismissing date number three from a distance, I ultimately succomb to the unshakable effects of time and procimity and fell in love with him. This  lumbering stranger with big hair became mine for a all too brief a time. But afflicted with an unfortunate fleeing condition he was compelled to continously run off leaving me to my solitude. 

Now I am forced once again to pick up where I left off, the dating, the counting. I may have lost count. I must be nearly half way to my goal by now. 

Most recently there was the spaniard, who propositioned me for quick sex as we sat eating cheap indonesian food in the back of a dark warung. He oozed compliments like a tube of toothpaste with the cap left off. He could have been hansome and charming if clothing, education and context were different. But instead it appeared nothing more than an indecent proposal by a small, lost, unkempt and slightly dusty man. He subjected my last bites of fried rice to a series of rapid fire demands that I provide a valid reason for not letting him take me back to his cot on the floor and show me what a fine spanish lover he was. I had no response worth verbalising. 

Then there was the german, muscular and greying, he was hansome and well apointed. He lacked all experience with women and that combined with him being both german and working as a computer programer in a bank, meant that he gave the illusion that any future encounters would be conducted with the precision and sterility that germans are famous for. Fortunately his shy demeaner prevented any possibility of my needing to interface further with his german engineering. 

Then there was the bearded aussie from melbourne. We had quick banter together and his sweet warm accent was allready a part of something I wanted on account of my most recent love affair. But he was 27 and leaving the next morning. If he would have been braver I would have let him stay. Instead I sent him on his way. "You showed me all the houses but yours" he later texted me with a winking emoticon.

There was the portuguese skinned young canadian who wore his baseball cap backwards and talked of getting his certification in accounting over pizza.  His uncomfortably firmiliar accent only highlighted his inappropriate young age. His genuine sweetness showed in his followup text asking why I had left so quickly after dinner.

There was the 27 year old duchman who despite his guant and overly effeminate appearance seemed well versed in bedding women. He ran his fingers thru my hair as we walked. When I said I was heading home and would not be joining him for the night, his disapointment came to life. He suddenly transformed into a small child fully equipped with arm flaps. He whined of all that we were missing. "But we would have so much fun." He snorted. 

Of course there was the one I chose to bed after several well spaced disipointing dates in which I contemplated wheater a PHD could compensate for illconcieved tattoos. For reasons of lonliness and proximity I tried him on more thouroughly than the rest. The experience was disapointing and sad. I cried in his bed next to his slumbering flesh whose smell did not make me want to nibble it. I cried at all that he wasn't as he lay on his back, mouth open, snoring. 

Mixed in there was the argentinian with long ratty braids who chose the intersection of two streets to start our date which culminated into nothing more than a walk around the block. 

There was a lonely dutchman who claimed online to be sailing around the world but in practice turned out had yet to find a boat. I abruptly and somewhat incoherently walked out on him without so much as finishing my coffee because the agony of his company was more uncomfortable than the solitude I would shortly return to. 

I think that makes eight plus three? Solitary, empty interactions with strangers who I won't see again. This is called dating. I will try and make it to fifty just for sport.  

Of course I am not counting the men in my life who ocassionally stop to ponder if our status as friends has any bussiness being upgraded. 

Sitting too close together on the blanket on this ones land while he surveyed trees and continously invoked with intention the term "we". 

Or the lone solitary dinner that one initiated before reuniting with his ex girlfriend but in practice occurred after the fact. A detail that left us to speculate without words over vietnamese spring rolls slowly dipped in two types of sauce the unknowable possibility of an alternate order of events. 

And of course there is the one who has taken me on as his unpaid personal asisstant as a hopless ploy to spend legal time with me while contemplating wheather my tits and the quality of our banter measure up to his girlfriends pedigree of sweetness.

 

I will count all these men as friends and none will go towards my 50 dates. 

Tonight like most nights I lay alone, i may message the stranger from chile who is leaving too soon to meet me or scold befor un matching the american who only would consider the hour drive to come see me if I could assure him in advance that I would sleep with him.

But in all of this I am alone, left to only count. What do you imagine will happen when I make it to 50? Will I still be alone. 

Feeling in writing

I feel like he may be returning. Some combination of womens intuition as faulty as it may be and subtle language on facebook. I am not sure how to properly resist him if I see him. Returning from motorcycling around vietnam and sleeping with random women. How to keep walls in place and not let him in while simultaniously enduring loneliness. It feels like a chinese juggler on a tightrope, dangerous and certain to end in broken plates. 

I need to remind myself how I felt when he left. How broken and damaged he made me feel. 

What I said to him befor he left was imbued with kindness and honesty. A delicate balance that was meant to speak the truth but not hold him responsible for his own actions. It followed a long night on my porch drinking wine and listening to the crickets in the long dark as a backdrop for hashing out why and how we had ended up where we were. Him sitting daily on my porch unable to touch me as he sought out sex from strangers. Him admitting that he was adicted to the high of aquiring new women and convincing them to sleep with him and that he didn't see giving that up. The next day I tried to recover my generosity and offered up this sentiment via messenger.

 "Sorry I reacted that way. I did appreciate your honesty. You have every right, you have been honest and transparent all along and deserve none of my contempt for trying to find the woman that does it for you in every-way. A women who instantly makes your cock hard and your knees go weak. A woman who wrestles you to the ground in witty intellectual duals and is only sweet to you after sarcastically putting you in your place. I want you to meet that woman and I want you to one day tell her you love her (even if you only keep her and that feeling for three to five years 😉 ) and I promise I want you to send me a message no matter where you are and tell me so I can be happy for you.  

But just so you understand what this feels like on the other-side, I am compelled to dump one of my patented PMS induced indulgently honest emotional Facebook messages on you. 

Part of the reason I have been considering dating women is that I have been sexually rejected by every man in my proximity for the last couple years and am starting to go all Ani Difranco (yes, I was once a 20 year old ani Difranco listening feminist) and really hate men for wanting some sexier version of female that I can't provide and they all only enjoy long enough to discard after a bit of use like cum soiled tissue. 

I am starting to realize that although I am trying not to let my psyche be impacted by this. It clearly is. 

I know you are a good guy (don't worry I won't put the bad guy stamp on you) i know that it is just unfortunate that we became as close as we did and somehow don't want a real relationship (which if it were left up to me and my lack of intellectual rigor we would have). 

I try daily to override my emotions when I am around you in the same way I might try to override car sickness by staring at the horizon ahead. But for me car sickness is automatic and no matter how much I stare at the horizon I can only at best keep myself from throwing up. 

My feelings may have both biological and cultural underpinnings that I in theory should be able to to use my well developed frontal lobe to override. I should be able to intellectualize my way out of all this, but the reality is feelings are mostly automatic and my efforts to override them are only successful in some sort of dull lifeless way that feels like fighting against what this short biologically fueled life is really for. You don't like the way my firefly blinks well, someone will. I don't think the female firefly sits there in the ricefields wishing that the male flying above would stop hanging around and pretending that her blinking light was good enough company but did little to make him want to copulate. She would just ignore him and find the next flashing male that liked her blink. 

I have over the course of a year (with a couple of interludes of incredibly satisfying love, sex, and friendship) chosen this pain, self inflicted this car sickness while staring at the horizon. I have chosen this myself over the loss off you, this person whose company I cherish, wit I enjoy, and intellect I want to dive into like a deep pool. I have chosen this pain over the loss of you and the ensuing loneliness in this stupid small town. In the end it is a sad, desperate trade off. 

What I have realized is that being around you all the time is a constant reminder that you would rather seek out strangers to fuck than me and this leaves me constantly feeling like a slightly sub par female. A female who is nothing more than just placid good company. This feeling is destructive to my mental health and slowly picks away at my sense that I am both sexy and desired. 

You are leaving on Wednesday, I will still enjoy your company as you offer it until then. This is not meant as an ultimatum as you will be gone anyway but I thought that you should know what it felt like to be me in this strange twisted version of us. I will still keep you as my friend no matter what, I just need somehow to find a way to stop torturing myself and needed to say this outloud to you, so thanks for induldging me in a bit of self reflective angst on the nature of the beast that is our relationship."

What I should have added is that I am responsible for puting myself in this position and allowing this from you, but you are responsible for your actions too. What you do matters. What you do does impact peoples feelings. It all matters. Don't do it again. Lord help me to keep steady in the face of you. I can say I am over you but the fact is I fell for you and though time may soften the daily thoughts you will never truely be wiped clean from my soul. 

Say fuck off more often

Helen miran was recently quoted as saying: 

"at 71 if I had one piece of advice for my younger self, it would be to tell people to fuck off more often" 

I concur, and will try to implement that advice swiftly and with a heavy hand. I will use it as a measuring stick for knowing what is right and what is plainly wrong. This is a reminder to myself, do not put up with the wrongs of human actions. Seek out only the good.  In an attempt to set the record straight I will conduct this retrospective analysis of wrongs. Let me say in the loudest of voices from the tops of mountains for all to hear, fuck off.  I deserve better. 

To you, the guy who I was merely trying on for size but who none the less stopped making out with me, stopped mid kiss to state the obvious that I was in fact less than nothing to him. His lips still nearly touching mine he reminded me that this was merely a "friends with benefits" scenario. As if romance was no longer a required pass for entry. Fuck off. 

To the same man later in the evening who felt that sexual liasons should be conducted with little or no concern for my enjoyment, resisting any attempts I made to rectify the situation by stating that infact that wasn't going to work for him. As if being a bistander of his pleasure was sufficient reward for my company. Fuck off! 

To further inspire injury over insult he chose to post photos soliciting the company of strangers naked in his pool instead of inviting my company only days later. Fuck off. No really, I am serious, fuck off. 

To the man who periodically tries to court me by suggesting tempting and exciting joint bussiness ventures, making plans, concocting ideas. He uses the term "we" in sentences about our future and engages my expertise in his projects, and invites me for breakfast and lunch. But ultimately in the end always chooses to run off with girls with short skirts, tan legs who smoke and drink heavily but offer sex on a platter, served and delivered. To you, fuck off. 

To the man who I fell in love with and who dumped me seven times to run off with other women engaging instead in the seemingly innocuous game of just friends. A scenario that is akin to having a platonic boyfriend who withholds sex from me, and tortures me with his slightly out of reach loveliness, making me feel like his unattractive little sister who he is gerously letting tag along. Well, let me say loud and clear with anyone willing to bear witness. Fuck off!

To the man who ages ago ended my marriage by taunting me with all that was him and teasing me with cake, grandiose bussiness plans and unhavable romance but who ultimately left me for a russian model when I needed him most. Fuck off.

I say this mantra because I deserve someone who wants me and loves me and cares for me. I deserve someone who sees me and knows what he has found when he has found it. He knows that i am the perfect ven diagram of beauty, brains and heart. Someone who doesn't need to think twice about this equation. To the rest who want to play with my emotions and leave me to dine alone, fuck off. Really, fuck off!

Its going, flowing, moving

Nyala. My mind seems oddly stuck on this word. Like a strangers voice repeating in my head over and over again. Nyala. It is the word in Indonesian that people use to describe when the water starts running thru the hose after being blocked, or the motor starts to turn over after being stuck on idle. Nyala, Nyala, nyala.

My life is flowing, like a river, flowing. 

I think I may have finally let him go. Let him drop like a rock. My obsessive daily thoughts are starting to slowly fade like the sun setting over the horizon, dusk is gradually enveloping me. Yesturday I floated thru my day surrounded by firmiliar faces. Nyala, nyala. Its unstuck, its moving, its going. Nyala, nyala. I felt singular but surrounded. Wrapped up. Men were suddenly everywhere, coming out of the woodwork. Like men in camoflage stepping out from behind trees. Texting me, inviting me out, hugging me and showing up at my house. Nyala, nyala. 

Something has shifted, like the wind. Nyala, nyala, nyala.