Anyway, it's fine.
Seriously.
Well...
I do miss sharing certain things. Like a rainy day. Or the Sunday paper. Or a walk. I just don't miss them enough to give up what I'm always asked to give up, I suppose. I'm not sure I ever will. Although, sometimes that's what I secretly hope for.
Or maybe I'll find the woman who won't ask me to...
I struggle with it, this thing. Sometimes I wish I didn't care as deeply as I do about the things that draw me in, about the things I want to enter, and become. Most times I don't think there's a choice in all that we do. You know? We navigate with a cheap hotel thermostat that only one person is allowed to change: The one who owns it.
Intimate Myth
Nobody told me that was possible before. No one said anything except 'get married'. No one told me the depth of intimacy we attain is a decision. They said intimacy is a product of a LONG relationship. Period.
Bullshit.
They were wrong, or lying.
It's courage. Courage leads to intimacy. Courage, and then the decision to enact it.
A long marriage can be happy, and intimate. Absolutely. It can also become a silent agreement that, when translated in kidspeak says, "I'll make dinner and have sex once a week and fold your socks and have vacations with your family.... and you'll never ask me to show a genuine emotion, or keep the light on for sex. Shake?"
Don't kid yourself.
Sometimes a cultural expectation, or tradition, becomes one because the majority of those within the culture need it.
Not because it's right, or best.
Crop Rotations
I'm a farmer, so I tend to the crop that grows in my field. I don't fertilize for corn if I'm growing watermelons. The same is true of relationship. If I enter one because I want the comfort of it, I feed it with whatever will preserve the comfort. I bury anything that might threaten it, and take it away.
If I enter relationship, and want it to serve as my identity, I hold it up for all to see. I take it to parties, and social events. I take it out in public. I don't stay home with it, because that's when it starts to crumble. I don't need it to inform me of who I am. I need it to convince the world I have what it takes to fit in. I need it to meet its criteria.
If I enter relationship for security, I feed the part that provides it by learning what it likes. If it likes sex seven days a week and the TV remote, DONE! Just don't leave me in the big, scary world alone, or nada sex para you. Capiche?
In my lifetime, I have seen only 1 relationship with decades behind it, where the individuals in it genuinely seem to be in it to elevate the other, and not to enact a trade. It's the only long term relationship I've been around where neither partner has begun to shut down any facet of themselves. It's the only one I've seen where both partners have been left whole.
Being Easy, Isn't
Because sex is never just sex, just like marriage is never just a vow.
If I enter relations with you for an agreed 'one & done', I can pretend to be something different than I am, and you'll never know. I can choose to avoid intimacy, and call you Baby, oh Baby, oh Baby.
I choose how much I want you to know. I decide who I'll allow you to see. And because I want to be known, because I want to be seen, I'm going to show you more than I've shown anyone. And you'll show me the same, because that's what we agreed. It's what we both need.
It's what happens after the objective of sex is met, that confuses the one night stand.
If both parties were full tilt in pretend mode, Tuesday will still be Tuesday. They'll stop to get coffee together, and ask about the upcoming day. They'll exchange an awkward, or relieved hug, and drive off into the sunset.
No harm.
No foul.
No problem.
That route's easy, the one through pretending.
Does anyone know the name of the guy who played the Lone Ranger? Does Tonto, who calls him "Kemosabe"? Who cares. I'll call you 'mommy' if we're just pretending, and that's what you need. Now let me focus, alright Kemosabe?It's the dilemma that arises when both players go all-in for 24 hours that ties a blindfold over the eyes, and spins you.
- All-in for the truthful, panoramic dialogue that gives equal time to Jeckle, and Hyde.
- All-in on the authenticity of emotion that textures the night.
- All-in on laser beam attention to each other.
- All-in on synchronized sex gymnastics, and the first, mutual, perfect stuck dismount.
And it's her homely kid sister asking what you're problem is with just agreeing to half the medal, and being happy about it.
"I'd be fine with that because I've never had a medal so if we got one together and I only got half that's fine I'd still wear mine would you wear yours?"
No.
I'd rather have a dozen perfect dismounts than a thousand with a stutter step. I'm sorry, that's just how I am. Or how the world made me.
Reckoning Day
I was fine with that approach, and the years it took to rationalize it. I was. Until that punk Rob, and his Matchbox 20, punk friends showed up with a beat that got me dancing on the couch in my underwear, singing words that transformed into prayer.
Then I realized Rob is one of them. He's married, and the words he planted in my head are his fellow gang members, his Homies, and they're trying to claim my turf:
"Waking up at the end of the world.
But it's feeling like any morning before.
Now I wonder what my life is going to mean when I'm gone.
The cars are moving like a half a mile an hour,
Started staring at the passengers waving good-bye.
It was the last line that stung. It stung because of what it speaks to, and what I want to know. I want someone to tell me what my life meant to them on the day the world ends. I want someone to tell me what I had, or did, that was special.Can you tell me what was ever really special about me all this time?"
There's no possible way for someone I've seen once to do that, no matter how open we were. They haven't seen me rolled out, and unfurled. They haven't seen the patterns of behavior, the pennies I put in a jar, everyday, for years.
Then it hit me.
It's not the solitary, grand gesture that exposes character. It's the little one that's done daily, the one so easy to miss it often is, that blossoms into legacy. Someone would have to agree to stick around for a very, very long time to know which one it is. Someone would have to stay until your last good-bye for that one.
I gave my partners the packaged version because that's all they asked for. It wasn't until I heard that song that I asked myself why I agreed to that. It wasn't until Rob pulled a blade on me that I realized I was scared, and playing it safe.
"CUT ME YOU SON OF A BITCH! CUT ME! COME ON!!!"
He wouldn't.
It must be 3 a.m., and I must be lonely.
I put myself in a box because I was afraid that if they saw all of me, they'd leave, and if they left, I wouldn't have my Good-Bye Person for the day the world ended.
It never occurred to me I'd have to do that dismount nightly to insure that I did.
I want a Good-Bye Person.
I want a Good-Bye person before it's actually time to say good-bye.
I want her to see me unfurl.
Matchbox20- 'How Far We've Come'
