Sexeteria

Ah, the way a certain song can just transport you back to a certain time, a certain feeling...

Tonight, I'm remembering a time that felt really good, even in its intense fucked-upedness.

I was channel-surfing and found, much to my delight, that the brilliant film Me and You and Everyone We Know was playing (oh, to be able to feel right this minute like that next-to-last scene with the picture in the tree!). Anyway, in one key scene, the soundtrack swells up with a song I'd totally forgotten about. Spiritualized. From 1990. Their first single, a cover of the Troggs' "Any Way That You Want Me."

And it just took me right back to exactly what it felt to be me back then. Yes, there were dreams in my heart. And shoes in my gaze. And stars in my eyes, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally through...shall we say, artificial enhancement. And this song sounded so damn good under both conditions.

I'll let you reminisce with me:

There was a time when, after long, long, nights of dancing and excess, a group of beautiful, strange, outsider people would collapse on the floor of a certain flat. And certain things would be poured and passed, and certainly, eventually, always--someone would cry for a certain VHS tape to be put into the player, and we'd curl up together like feral kittens, each touching, stroking the other and the other and the other, and we'd watch the same songs play for us over and over again. I still remember the warmth of that feeling; of the exhaustion of balancing on the edge of a blade without rest. Of how safe I felt in the madness of it all.

This next video, Ride's "Like a Daydream," is so rare (it was a pre-first-LP promo) that I thought I was likely to never see it again. Visually, it's a lot slower than I remember. And my, Mark Gardner's hair...I didn't remember it looking that dated. Or how young the whole band looked. But the song is so beautiful--all the time, really, but especially listened to loud, under the influence of certain chemicals. And back in that time, I was often compared to the girl in this video. I'll let you decide if it was in appearance or behavior or both.

And then finally, a song and video that did the best job ever of capturing the feel of that very short era in time, back when the word ""Factory"" meant something other, and much better, than a soulless space full of people mindlessly watching machines. Nothing could have more perfectly encapsulated the scene than this video...and all they had to to was stick Shaun Ryder in the middle of a crowd at the Haçienda (I'd add "drugged out of his skull," but that's redundant), and let him go to work.

Sorry it's a bit blurry; it's a rare video and this is the best one I could find. But just look at his eyes. Look at the crowd around him, see the colors, the lights, how they're dancing, the look of joy and mess and total zone out. Feel the whole thing, and you'll get it. Or maybe you remember it too. 'Cause you're not made of cream, you're made of chocolate.

Here's the Happy Mondays' "Wrote for Luck." Come dance with me. (You can also see it slightly larger here.)

Or, if you want a different and slightly clearer cut of the same video/song, but with more Bez in it (and who doesn't want more Bez?), check below the cut.

There's a song stuck in my head. And you've been wondering where I've been.

Or maybe the second half isn't true. Maybe you weren't wondering at all. But the first part IS true...there's been a song stuck in my head all day.

So, first, in case anyone was wondering, the story of the second part. And then a story of the first part.

Part the second: Where I've been. Life got weird. There was an accident, and a major endeavor to be undertaken and resolved as a result of it, and a trip far away, and also on the heels of all this, a computer issue that has led me to be unable to blog about any of it. The computer issue continues...I've found a brief moment of stolen computer time in which to post this, but I'm not sure how long it will be before the next time I can do so. I've put out an SOS and help is on the way that, once received, will resolve it. But said assistance has been slower to arrive than expected, and so I must wait, as must you, unfortunately. (Oh, and regarding the accident, I am okay now, so don't worry. No major bodily damage to myself.)

And now part the first. Told as a fairy tale.

---

Once upon a time, there was a girl standing alone on the deck of a ferry, with wind blowing her dark hair all around her face. The sun was bright in the unusually blue sky, and the sky cascaded toward a shelf of distant white cliffs which in turn plunged down into the ocean.

She was coming home, after having travelled to many far-away cities.

It had been a very long journey, and it was extremely early in the morning, and the girl was tired. But she stood on the deck instead of going inside to sleep. She wanted to feel the air against her skin and watch the cliffs grow closer. It was the first time she'd ever seen them. And she knew it might be the last time. Because though in her head she was coming home, in truth, she had to leave only shortly after she got there, for the paper home she'd never really been cut out for.

She watched the cliffs get closer. She thought about the dark city she'd be returning to, only to leave two weeks later. The love affair still seethingly alive there, yet also already so far behind her. About how in only days, everything she'd come to know as hers, everything she'd given her heart to, would be gone. Far behind her, fading slowly away. And ahead of her...blankness. She couldn't say. There was nothing she knew she wanted there. She'd just have to wait and see.

And as she stood there in the wind and sunlight, the spray from the ocean touching its cold fingers against her face, the girl watched the cliffs approach, white and blank and treacherous as the future ahead of her. I need this moment, the girl thought. I need to feel it. Need to remember it, hold on to it, before it's all gone. And so she put her headphones on her ears, and she hit play. And this song filled her.

She felt it. The sadness, the loveliness of it. Of one moment and then leaving, yet not leaving. I'll remember this the rest of my life, she thought. She knew this. And then she thought...I wish this song was about me. I wish someone would feel like this about me. And she thought, I wish I felt like this about someone or something.

The girl is older now. Since that time, some of her wishes have come true. And some days she is glad that girl on the deck got what she hoped for. And some days she wishes she'd never heard that song.

Update: I woke up this morning and already feel better, and I don't feel like relating to this post at all. I just want to push it out of my mind and pretend I never wrote it. Pathos embarrasses me--and even moreso now. I'm feeling angry and embarrassed I indulged in it. I have half a mind to erase the whole thing and pretend it never happened, but I won't because it's real--the path where I'm going isn't always perfectly paved, and I can't hold that against myself or pretend I'm perfect and that I never have moments of weakness--that's what I *used* to do, and that never worked. And it's important for me to realize I have some more work to do, and this will be a reminder. So I'm leaving the post up, but it's already mostly irrelevant.
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A few days ago I was going to write a post about the fact that I'd suddenly realized I was beginning to forget what it felt like to be me before I started getting better. I'd planned to describe how surprised I was that the memory of it all seemed to have faded, and how shocking it was to contemplate that I might only be feeling positive from now on. How odd that felt, and how strange to start losing something familiar I'd felt for years--to not remember how it felt to be that girl anymore. It seemed somewhat scary, although also probably positive. But I was thinking I ought to record some of the old feelings before they faded entirely and I could no longer write about them with any clarity or realism, which I want to be able to do, for myself and for others.

It's funny, though, how tiny triggers can bring back feelings that you thought weren't there anymore.

It seems those feelings I thought were entirely gone aren't completely eradicated yet, but were instead just sleeping in a distant corner of my mind, coiled up like a dark cobra inside a basket, just waiting for the right tune to lure it back out and strike, sending its poison into my blood stream.

So. I realize I haven't forgotten what it felt like. Not yet. Not totally.

And sensing the first edge of those feelings again brought me back, as it often has in the past, to this song and scene from the film Magnolia. The scene and those feelings are so inextricably bound for me, that experiencing either one will often bring a craving for the other, regardless of which is experienced first.

It has an emotional resonance I can't shake. When I watch this, I remember being the me I thought I was forgetting. I feel everything I did then.

I don't want to go back to the place this scene speaks to me of. But that's where I'm at today, sitting back with that girl in a darkened movie theater, seeing through her eyes, stunned by the grip recognition--this is me. Wanting to watch it over and over, a confirmation of that darkness. And since that's where I am today, I'm not going to beat myself up about it. And I'm not going to disallow myself my desire to watch this scene a few times and feel the dark and frightening and yet somehow still seductive grip of what I used to feel.

But I won't cater to it for too long. I'm not gonna let that win. This isn't me. Not anymore.

I'm not going to take it as a failure that I can still feel something I hoped I'd conquered.

My favorite song about good meetings and good memories and fond farewells.

My parents loved music, though they were also both kind of square to mainstream in their tastes. My parents were teenagers in the '50s and were in their 20s in the '60s, but they didn't grab on to either the beatnik movement, or the hippie counterculture. By the time the swinging '70s came around, they had two kids and a massively June and Ward Cleaver family ethic. How they ended up with an indie-freak-child like me is a mystery I suspect they're still trying to figure out, though they've (mostly) finally grown to accept it and sometimes even admire it.

But anyway, squares or no, they DID love music, and they were GREAT dancers. My mother was a poodle-skirt wearing bobby-soxer in Philadelphia during the original Bandstand era. She played me Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell, Eddie Fisher, and the Big Bopper and taught me to pony, twist, and jitterbug when I was just a teeny-tiny bit of a thing. My dad, who was a little older than my mom, was really into the big band stuff--Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Doris Day, Harry Bellafonte. He was the one who excitedly filled me in one day when I was in the family kitchen, singing what I thought was the They Might Be Giants song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" that the song was really originally performed by the group The Four Lads. And he was able to pull out the LP and play the orignal for me.

They both also loved Broadway musicals (and their movie counterparts) with a passion, and almost every night of my sister's and my early childhood, my parents would put an original Broadway cast recording album on the stereo while we ate dinner, and we'd all sing along throughout the meal. Just writing that sentence and remembering us doing that brings a smile to my face. It definitely ranks a 10 in my catalog of childhood memories. (And also, I can happily brag that by the time I was five or six, I was already the perfect gay male's theatre beard--I knew the songs to every big American musical ever made.)

My parents always took good care of their vinyl LP albums, but for some reason they ceded their 45s to me just as soon I was big enough to stick them on my totally cool Show 'N Tell record player (pictured above--mine looked EXACTLY like that). I remember their singles weren't in any sleeves--they were all just jammed into a fairly large metal 45-sized record case--aqua on the bottom with a cream-colored top. You'd flip open the metal clasp that held it shut, and the cream metal top would flip open and back, revealing the curved tops of hundreds of black vinyl 45 disks, packed one behind the other. For me as a child, opening this box was always like opening a treasure chest--you never knew what 45 you'd pull out next, what odd name was on the record, and what it would sound like when you put it on. It really ran the gamut, from cheesy novelty records to tacky Debby Reynolds ballads to classic Elvis.

Of course, over time, I developed my favorites, and those were always at the front of the box (or strewn on the floor--I was always a messy kid). And so now, I bring you one of those front-of-the-box singles. It's a song that's actually extremely rare and hard to find these days--it took me eons to find it on file-sharing sites before I was finally successful.

I re-discovered it earlier this week when I was sorting through old mp3s I'd downloaded ages ago. I clicked on this unlabeled mp3 and when I heard the song come up at me, I laughed and thought, "Well. This may explain a heck of a lot."

So, I now present to you a rare and hard-to-find musical gem, and one of my absolutely favorite songs to listen, sing, and dance along to when I was just a speck of a girl:

Engelbert Humperdinck - My Wife the Dancer

The beast in me
Is caged by frail and fragile bonds
Restless by day
And by night, rants and rages at the stars

We were young lovers; not in love (well, maybe secretly, a little), but at least very in love with being young lovers. We fucked constantly, until one day he told me confidentially he was so raw he thought he might need to take a one-night reprieve just to protect the health of his poor, aching cock. And then, within minutes of having said this, he was fucking me again. And again and again.

He lived in a flat with others, so we would go to his bedroom when we wanted to be alone together. We always wanted to be alone together. And, since the wardrobe and his big bed took up most of his small, crazy-wallpaper-patterened, bay windowed bedroom, even when we weren't fucking, we more or less lived together in bed. We talked, ate, played, read, fucked, dressed, undressed, and did everything else together in or on his bed, surrounded by a floor strewn with books and ash trays and empty Bulgarian wine bottles made into makeshift candle holders. We fucked with the bay windows open, on purpose. And wondered who in the long rows of flats on the opposite side of the street had seen us.

But it is not him I want to tell you about. It's about a moment I remember that happened with him; a moment never completed, and one I've always tried to find since.

We were, one night, as all other nights, in bed. We generally slept naked but in this memory we had on some clothes. He had on some old sweatpants and I had on an old, worn-out t-shirt of his with some punk band logo on it. We were lounging around, chatting, doing nothing in particular, and then somehow, a pillow fight started. I can't remember who initiated; it is gone from my memory. It might have been me who suggested it; he was always far too intellectual and serious and, well, English to click into goofball play mode unless I prodded him a tiny bit--but I knew he was always dying for the prod. So I would prod, and then he was off. This was probably one of those times. "Let's have a pillow fight," I might have said, and I think, after some teasing and goading, perhaps it was he who first lightly, good-naturedly smacked me with his lumpy, worn feather pillow. I grabbed the other and smacked him back. We were laughing; he hit back again, a little harder. I jumped to my knees while he was still half-lounging below me, raising my pillow above my head to deliver a fatal smacking blow. While I still had the pillow raised over my head, he smacked his full into me, across my face.

And suddenly the air became charged. Delighted at his dirty fighting, I howled with the fake anger of wounded betrayal and pounded him with my pillow, seeking revenge. He leapt up out of bed and I pursued. We ran around the room and scrambled over the bed, smacking each other over and over, each time progressively harder. And each time I got hit, I loved it. And each time I hit him harder and harder, I loved it. It was like my whole life had been slow up to this minute, and now, now I finally knew what it was like to have blood coursing--rushing--through my veins. It was a delicious, delighted rage I felt. It was a heady insanity; an intense reverse evolutionary rush that changed us from adult to child to--yes, yes!--animal in mere moments. We ran, screaming and laughing and hitting each other harder and harder. And it was so good. I couldn't stop, now that I had found this feeling. I could feel him fighting and I fought back; it was so good; beyond words.

I hit and hit and hit and hit again, harder, harder, teeth bared with effort, noises coming out of my throat, hoarse and growling with delight... and it was better than orgasm; better than heaven; total release, complete freedom, no sense involved, just sheer rage-filled adoration and arousal---and I wanted to live there forever.

And suddenly he wasn't hitting back anymore...I heard him shouting something....I held back for a moment...and everything zoomed in to a hyper-suspended moment of stillness...

And there we were staring at each other...him barefooted, bare-chested, breathless, on the floor at the foot of the bed, looking up at me as I stood above him on the rickety bed, barely clothed, pushing my hair out of my face, panting, eyes locked with his. My pillow raised and ready to defend or strike, shakily balancing myself, watching him for any sudden move. I stared into his eyes, a strange kind of exhilaration coursing through me. I felt like a wolf, like a cougar, some wild thing, circling another of my kind, ready to run in for the final fight. And oh, I wanted it. I wanted to feel the moment of engagement. I wanted to feel the fight and the rip and the kill. I wanted to feel myself doing it and I wanted to feel him doing it to me. I looked deep in his eyes, ready to howl in ecstatic rage as we leapt at each other. And he looked back at me and I could see...fear.

No, no! I thought. Don't back down! Don't leave me here! Fight back! Stay up here with me in mad animal nirvana! Show me what you're made of! Make me fight you! Wrestle me down and roll with me on the ground, biting and scratching and growling and fucking and fucking and fucking me till we lose our minds.

I tried to say this with my eyes. But I could see the light had gone out in his; all I could see was fear. And then hidden close behind, anger and possibly disgust and...was it humiliation? But above all, a desire--a begging--to turn to back to normal. Not just begging for him to. For both of us to. For me to not be this thing I had become. And the feeling inside me, it was like a balloon slowly being leaked of its helium.

I have never found any man, ever, who wanted to stay there with me at that level of animal savagery; who didn't hold back or back down and stop it before we'd really gotten there--beyond. It is a crossing over, allowing oneself to be in that state, and one needs to be willing to turn certain things off to be brave enough to stay there. Most people are not comfortable with the absence of those things.

This doesn't mean my relationships aren't good. They are; the sex is good and very satisfying within the boundaries of how far the men I am with are willing to take it. I understand that most people don't want to go to this place. And I don't like my lovers to feel afraid or uncomfortable, and I like lots of the other places they do like to go.

But for me, the lack of someone who can understand and connect to this state with me often leaves me feeling like a prisoner who has been kept in seclusion for many years. I long for that feelng of release; but it will take at least one other willing person to make it happen.

No matter how many years you keep a prisoner in the darkness, though, she can still remember what a sunlit garden looks and smells and feels like.

I still dream of the garden. And of someone who also dreams of it, who gets it and who's willing to open the door to it with me.

I hope I can find him so the seclusion can be over. He's who I'm looking for.

The other day, I received a phone call from a long-time female friend who, while traveling, stayed at the home of one of my former lovers. She wanted to tell me about a long conversation my ex-lover had with her about me.

Some history:

I met this man when we were both in our very early 20s and still quite young and fresh to both love and sex--and when my expectations about being able to attain a life full of both with one person who loved me beyond measure were not too heavily marred by cynicism or fear.

When I met him, then just in the earliest stages of his full manhood and virility, I experienced feelings I have never had before or since with any other person. Whenever he'd appear, I'd get those "butterflies" people talk about--a giddiness I'm not prone to in romantic attachments. But in truth, "butterflies" is too delicate a word for what I experienced; it was much more than that--more like, whenever I saw him, my insides did their best imitation of that old amusement ride the Rotor, with my stomach serving as the drop-floor. It happened every time, followed by sheer joy and surging pleasure when he would smile at me or take my arm or simply walk next to me. The smell of his skin near me made me hunger for him; in pubs, in theaters, in shops, everywhere. When at a restaurant, he put his chopsticks up to my mouth to let me taste his dish, and I put my lips around the morsel accepting what he'd offered, it had an intimacy, sexuality, and arousing naturalness about it that could not be described.

But it was more than just sensuality that drew us to each other.

Well, much has happened since I decided to take my break--some big and unpredicted disruptions (like unexpectedly getting laid off), and some small and encouraging glimpses of things I'd hoped to gain through taking a break. All in all, though, both the disruptive and the planned for will ultimately help life move forward to what I hope is a more positive place.

Because life does move on, and if it's going to, it might as well move on to a pleasant wood rather than a thorny forest.

I bring this up because what I'm doing tonight is reminding me quite strongly of how life does move on.

Tonight I decided to do something radical. I decided to throw out all my cassette tapes I'd collected from my childhood onward (until the time I went digital).

This may not seem like such a big deal to you. But for me, it is akin to throwing away old photographs of friends and old love letters from former lovers.

Music has always been a huge part of my life. I always knew this to some extent. But lately, I've begun to realize just how incredibly important it's been. Looking through these hundreds and hundreds of cassettes I have, I realize that it's literally been a means of survival for me during many, many parts of my life. And every single little box I pick up tonight documents in my memory a particular time in my life, a particular feeling, a particular person or situation. I've never been one to keep a regular diary of my daily comings and goings. It's these cassettes that have done it for me; and looking through them, I can remember the girl I was, and the woman I turned into, and how exactly that happened.

It's in everything:

Jewel case inserts I meticulously designed with cut-out scraps from colorful magazine photos and calendars, sitting by my roommate's stereo as I dubbed albums to cassette.

Tapes with song lists written in the hand of old boyfriends who have been long lost to me.

A live Duran Duran concert taped obsessively off the local top-40 radio station, the background thick with the wind-like sound of a hundred thousand teenage girls letting out a never-ending scream.

A tellingly transitional self-made tape with Wham! on one side and Fear on the other.

An entire Elvis Costello discography, with each case insert colored with a different shade of highlighter--still almost as bright now as the day I created them back in the 80s.

The Cocteau Twins. Hearing them for the first time, when I came over to have dinner in a candlelit apartment with two women who would soon become my college apartment-mates.

The Dear Johns. An obscure English band my best friend saw in a pub and sent to me from overseas, when I was missing her very much.

Husker Dü - Flip Your Wig. Staying up at college in the summer after the semester was over. Because I just didn't want to go home, and wishing I didn't have to at all. Sitting in a house with friends, realizing that I was finally able to be the kind of person I was, with the kind of people I wanted to be it with. A freak and an outsider. And very happy about it. Knowing (thinking, then, at least) it was the ultimate in cool.

Gang of Four. Driving insanely fast on a country road on a sunny new spring day, in a car full of boys and girls with hardcore haircuts, angry piercings, 12-hole steel-toe Doc Martens, and torn up army jackets and flannel shirts. The wind whipping through what was left of my shorn hair, the man coming through the speakers screaming, "Your kiss so sweet/your sweat so sour"...

And then. Coming across a homemade cassette with the House of Love on one side and the soundtrack to Something Wild on the other side. Not recognizing the handwriting on the insert. Opening the box and finding a simple yet incredibly touching note written on the inside from an old friend who I'm no longer in touch with. And suddenly remembering after all these intervening years the first time I'd read that note--when I opened the cassette for the first time on an airplane, flying away from a country and a life I couldn't bear to part with, flying toward one I suspected I couldn't bear. Seeing that note and knowing someone back there loved me.

I wasn't one to be sentimental back then. And yet, this note made me tear up, sitting there alone on that plane.

Now that I'm older, I find I am more affected by sentiment and nostalgia than my younger self was. My younger self would have rolled her eyes at my older self tonight.

But Colin, if you're out there somewhere, I read your note again. And you made me cry twice.

Throwing away these cassettes is turning out to be harder than I thought it was going to be. Touching each of them is like touching down into a moment of my past. It's hard to let these touchstones to my history go, tossed into the garbage like something worthless. And also, on some level, I know I'm afraid without the physical solidity of the tapes themselves--without seeing the varied handwritings of old friends, of or my own handwriting as I went from a child to an adult, or the cracks and scratches and markings on the boxes and tapes themselves that remind me of particular incidents--that I'll lose my ability to access all that history and the emotions attached to it, the way I'd forgotten that moment on the plane until I picked up the cassette again.

But it's okay. It's time. They're taking up space I've needed to free up for a long while now.

And, you know, even if they're gone, they're still walking in me...still talking in me...

A few days ago, I dreamed about you. Something I haven't done in so long that I can't even remember the last time I did.

In the dream, we were in an English country house. There was a gathering of old friends there from back when we'd all lived in the same city. All of us were our current ages; it was some kind of casual reunion after many years, like they show in movies, where all the old friends come to stay for a week in some charming old place and everyone sits around and reminisces and laughs.

You were there with your wife. A woman whose name I've included on holiday greetings I've sent to you, and whom I've heard about from others, but whom I've never actually met or spoken to in person. In the dream, I'd been introduced to her, and in the midst of the crowd in the kitchen, I was trying, as I always do when meeting the partner of an ex-boyfriend, to bond with her and make her feel at home with and unthreatened by me. I was being casually friendly, showing an interest in her, to the point of even showing more interest in her than I was showing in catching up with you. To give her the feeling of security; allow her to know me and to relax, to show I respected her position and nothing weird was going to happen. Which, in the dream, was fully how I believed and wanted it to be.

But it was odd to see you after so many years, and after so much silence had passed between us. I knew through others you felt uncomfortable and ashamed of certain things you'd done in relation to me, though I'd let go of them a long time ago. I could feel you watching me, nervous, uncomfortable, trying to sound out my feelings for you now that you had to face me in person. I smiled at you occasionally for reassurance that I was fine and continued to chat with your wife while you silently stood by, nervously looking for small ways to make it appear like you were concentrating on the conversation. And yet I could also tell you very badly wanted to talk to me. I knew this because even now I still know you well enough to sense when something's off for you, and I could feel you sending me signals. The feeling in the air coming from you, though unfelt by the others, was...agitated. But while I was there with everyone else, I chose to pretend I couldn't feel this and everything was normal. I tried to decide whether or not that was how I would play it for the rest of the vacation, and figured I'd just see what happened and how I felt.

Then, suddenly, the dream shifted and I was in an upstairs room by myself, unpacking my things. You came in, pretending to be curious about what the room was like, and stayed as I unpacked, attempting small talk and looking nervous, anxious. I small talked back in a friendly, polite way. I remember feeling that perhaps I hadn't made enough positive contact with your wife yet for her to feel comfortable with you being alone with me in a room, and breaking through the chit-chat to be direct like we used to be once-upon-a-time, I told you this. I suggested maybe we wait to talk alone until she got more comfortable first.

When I suggested that maybe you should leave, you started to cry, and sat down on the floor as if you'd run out of the strength and energy to stand up and act fine for one minute longer. It shocked me. I'm not sure I've ever seen you cry in the whole time I've known you. Concerned, I came over and sat next to you on the floor. I touched your arm gently, and asked if you were okay. You told me, your voice breaking, that you were very, very unhappy. That you and your wife were having problems. That your life was not what you had hoped. That nothing was the way you'd imagined it would be back when we'd known each other, when we still had time to dream about being adults. That you'd become someone you didn't even recognize or understand. That you'd become the type of person who, back when you knew me, you used to speak of with disdain. As you went on, you hid your face on my shoulder to hide how miserable you looked, and how ashamed you were of what you were saying. I sensed you were afraid to look at me and see what I saw in you.

It was very sad. I understood; I knew how that felt. And it broke my heart that you of all people should have to feel it. I suppose I thought I'd carried it for both of us. I realized, sitting there, watching you cry, that I'd been wrong.

And suddenly I was overcome by an overwhelming feeling of tenderness for you--a deep, limitless, unchecked well of affectionate love that I hadn't remembered I was ever capable of feeling. I lifted up your head gently with my hands and you looked at me, hoping. Hoping to break through everything that had happened and bring back into the familiar understanding we'd always had. Hoping to be understood. Hoping for me to tell you it was okay, that there was still time, so that you could believe it was true. Your eyes were begging me. Do you still remember me? Can you still see me? Am I still there?

I kissed your cheek, near to the mouth, but carefully not on it, even though it drew me. I kissed you where your tears were, one cheek and then the other, lightly. And then I looked straight into your eyes and I said gently and firmly, I recognize you. I recognize you. And your eyes welled with tears. And I kept looking at you and caressing your face and I told you I'd promised you I would always love you, and you were still you, so I loved you now.

And you kept your hands on my arms like you were afraid if you let go that I wouldn't be real anymore. And you wouldn't take your eyes off my face, gazing at me like a child being nursed, and then you tried to softly kiss me on the mouth, and I let you for a brief moment, just so I could remember what your mouth felt like, how lovely and soft and matched to mine. And a part of me yearned to move towards even more, but the other part thought, this has to be water under the bridge. That things had changed so much since that time so long ago, and so many choices made, that simply loving each other in a way that touched places in us no others had been able to was no longer all there was, and so it no could longer mean the same things.

And we could both feel in how tentatively we touched each other that this was true, but it was also true was that it felt good to know it was still there.

And the dream faded out with us still holding each other, gazing at each other's faces. Faces that had some signs of age but whose eyes still, still, still knew each other so well. It faded out out with us still lightly touching each other's arms and shoulders, knowing we'd have to pull apart again soon, any moment now, but not quite ready to do it.

And then I woke up. And through the rest of the day I felt a profound sadness and longing. Because the dream had been more vivid than any dream I'd had in years. So vivid that I could remember the actual feel of your arm as I touched you, and the smell of you next to me, as if I were right there. I could taste your tears as I kissed them. I could hear your voice. Feel the warmth of your hands on my shoulders. I didn't even know I still had enough memory of you left to remember what those things felt like. But there they were, and I was experiencing them again as if I'd never left you.

And worse, I felt that feeling of tenderness for you, a level of unchecked emotion I'd forgotten how to feel. And I realized since you that I've never felt that for anyone else. How unbruised my heart was at that time, how open to loving you I was. How completely and utterly satisfied I was in who you were, and how utterly ready I felt to offer you my heart, the minute you'd have asked. How romantic I was over you.

And the ironic thing is that while I felt all that for you, and while in the dream I told you that I'd promised you I'd always love you, in real life, I never said any such thing to you. I'd never told you I was in love with you, let alone that I always would. I never said any of that to you--instead I said it to many other men after you. Men for whom my feelings were a pale reflection of what I actually did feel about you.

So, you know what I think, _______? I think it's time we just fucking said it. I think I was in love with you. And I think you were in love with me. And I think you never told me you were because you didn't want to be in love with someone who was so much like you, because you hated you. And I think I didn't tell you because I knew you didn't want to be in love with someone like me, who was so much like you, someone who you wished was different. "Better" than you. I let you have that feeling, even though it hurt. I didn't intrude or insist. Because I wished I was different, too. How could I blame you for feeling the same? In the end, I think it was easier for us both to believe we were inferior than to believe we had something transcendent. Than to believe we were both okay the way we were. That we were enough, individually and together.

I wanted just once to be able to say that to you out loud, without shame or fear. It's time.

And, from where I am now, I want to say I'm sorry we felt that way about ourselves. That we allowed ourselves to be cheated of so much for so long because of it.

And I hope, my dear, dear friend, despite having not talked to you for so long, and despite having heard some things that make me fear otherwise, I hope that you aren't as miserable as you were in my dream. I hope it's going okay. But if it's not, I want to tell you I understand, deeply and fully. And I want to tell you, even though we may never speak in real life again, that after all these years I'm actually learning how to be enough for myself. Learning how to believe it's actually true. And I'm learning to admit I that I was in love with you; and that with you, I did know what it felt like to love someone without conditions. I'm learning to recognize and admit that after you I was never able to really feel that love for anyone else so far. And I'm ready to release that into the world and not be ashamed that I did feel that way, despite my being too afraid to do so at the time we were together, and long, long after. I'm ready to realize that my heart isn't dead or incapable of love, that it did once feel real love for someone--I just let it get shut down in the lost hope of us for a while. But I'm ready to accept that if it was capable of feeling it once, it can feel it again. And I'm learning that none of this is anything to be ashamed of. I'm learning that there is no "inferior" or "better" other than the ones I choose to make up in my head.

I want you to know it's not too late for these things. That there's always time, there's always hope. That dreams have no expiration date.

That love is not a weakness.

I want you to know it's possible to not be ashamed or afraid to admit we love ourselves despite lack of perfection. Or that we loved and still love each other.

I want you to know that you were the great love of my life so far, and I thank you for that, and for giving as much as you were capable of at the time. And I want you to know I release you from anything else you were incapable of giving at that time.

I want to say goodbye, my dearest friend.

And I want to say that I believe what I said in the dream was true. As long as I am, I will always love you. And I will always recognize you. Always.

When I was younger
I lived in fear
That incarceration of some kind is near
I checked my head in tact with rules
I nearly became
A goddamn fool
But I heard voices--not in the head
Out in the air
They called ahead
Through ripped out speakers
Through thick and thin
They found a shelter
Under my skin

I was an...interesting...child. I initially wanted to say "unusual," but I'm not sure if what I'm about to say is unusual or not. Certainly I've never heard anyone talk about it except for, say, religious mystics and occasionally someone like Eugene Hütz up above in those lyrics there. It is possible, though, if these people have mentioned it, that this is a common experience but no one talks about it. Or it may be in fact somewhat unusual. Regardless, let me get there already.

I've told many of what used to be my secrets in this blog, but this is one I have rarely confided to another person, and of the very few I've mentioned it to, I don't think I've ever mentioned the full breadth of it. I used to keep it to myself for fear it would be misunderstood or ridiculed or attempted to be over analyzed and explained away with logic or psychology, but now, today, I find I just don't care.

So. When I was younger, I was an interesting child. Just walking around in the world--and especially when I was on my own--I could hear and converse with things things most people don't think talk. Trees, for instance. Or the ocean. Or voices of people who weren't there. And I could have entire conversations with these things, if I was in the mood and if conditions were right.

I'm not talking here about schizophrenia. These things didn't tell me what to do or try to control my psyche. They weren't scary, angry, or destructive. And they didn't in any way take over my personality. Just the opposite--they were quite separate from me; they had nothing to do with me, and yet, I was aware in some way they were also a part of me, in that I was a conduit for them. I knew only I could hear them, and I knew others couldn't. Like Hütz says, not voices in my head, but out in the air. I heard them "in my head" the same way you would hear voices "in your head" if I were standing next to you and speaking and you heard the sound of my voice in your head. I processed them like speech, so they were in my head, but they weren't OF me, exactly--though, I guess I understood that without me they wouldn't be heard, sort of like that tree falling in the forest Zen koan. And I guess, thinking about it more, I also understood on some natural level, just by the fact of the way these voices transmitted, that everything IS "of" everything else--so in this way, of course, these voices were me and "of" me, at the same time they were also not. This probably sounds confusing, but that's the best I can do to explain it.

They also weren't voices like normal voices, exactly; particularly not the nature-based ones. Trees and water don't speak with human voices. Which makes perfect sense if you think about it. (And by the way, I don't necessarily think this is a "special skill,"--I maintain anyone can hear and speak with these things, if they want to; and if they listen carefully enough. The only perhaps special part of my story is that I happened to be able to connect to it without trying much. Which I'd described more accurately as "lucky" than "special.")

The more "human"-like voices--the ones I can best describe as seeming like invisible individuals (although that's not entirely accurate--I didn't and don't think they were human) were always to me the voices of friendly companions. They just showed up sometimes; for instance, to keep me company when I was walking home from school, or when I was thinking through a particularly knotty problem, or when they wanted to point out and share something particularly cool that was worth absorbing that I might not have focused on on my own. But sometimes they just showed up for the hell of it, just to say hi and just hang out and joke around and chat and...be cheerful and encouraging, I guess.

And that's what they were at almost all points, whether the human voices, or the nature voices; they were calm, open, supportive, inclusive, familiar. Most spoke to me like they'd known me a long time already; sometimes the human-like voices in particular took on tones that felt as if they considered themselves like affectionate aunts, or friends, or even occasionally a former lover from another life (by that I don't mean sexual, just casually affectionate in the special somewhat-romantic-tinged way an old-lover-turned-friend tends to be). Actually, I suppose some of the nature voices weren't always quite as casual. Trees, for instance, tended to be somewhat formal initially, in a "pleased to make your acquaintance, small thing from another species" kind of way, but even they still had that sense of familiarity and connectedness--as if they recognized the ability to exchange and it was no real surprise to them. In any case, they were all positive and I was glad to communicate with them.

It didn't happen all the time, every minute, by the way. It's not like every time I walked by a tree I could hear it talking or that all of nature or invisible voices were randomly screaming out at me at all times. Not at all. But if I took the time to slow down and WANT to talk to it, or to just to listen or happen to be quieter, I could. And when it did happen, it was a very quiet, calm experience, like passing a neighbor or friend on the street. An exchange was had and recognized and then we both moved on to do whatever it was we were there to do in life.

As a little kid, this was quite natural to me and I never thought anything about it. I never mentioned it to anyone else, but I don't think this was because I thought I had to keep it secret; it just seemed beside the point, and not important to bring up. As I got older, though, I began to realize other people thought that kind of stuff was weird. Talking or showing respect to trees like they were neighbors (or even, in the case of forests, like they were inhabitants of their own special "kingdom" that I just got the privilege to visit)? Uh, no, other kids didn't do that. And as I got older and the voices moved from just natural-based things to more...what...spiritual?...I don't like that word, but whatever the human voices were...I realized this was something that--though again it felt fine and natural to me--other people were not going to get, and might be alarmed by. So I did become conscious that it was better not to mention it to others. But given I'd never felt any need to share these experiences with other people--it had never occurred to me before I realized other people didn't hear this stuff to care if they could, or to try to bring someone else into these conversations---I decided to be, as before, just happy to experience them whenever I did and then just move on with my life as normal the way I would if I met any old person or friend on the street.

So I went along just quietly enjoying the company of this special gift I had. And I did think of it as that sometimes, a gift--particularly when it came to the nature-based stuff, which I could tell most people didn't easily experience. But then, as I closed in on my teenange years, I started to get concerned. At that time, I tended to have one particular voice companion more often than the others, and I was used to him, and I somehow decided that having these conversations, or this connection to other worlds or whatever it was, was going to be problematic for me as I grew into an adult. I also remember worrying for some reason that it would be hard to have boyfriends as long as this one particular "companion" was hanging around. I don't even know why--there was no connection to real life dating or romance in the conversations. But I suppose I was concerned the affection I felt in that "relationship," which was sort of a Buddhist-type divine, universal, limitless love sort of thing, wouldn't ever allow real-life love to measure up. And so I reasoned that if I wanted to have real, human love in the corporeal world, I needed all of this go. Let go of both the feeling of "other worldly" beings following me, offering me love and support, and of the natural world talking to me, connecting with me. I felt I needed it all gone to become the kind of "normal" that was necessary to succeed in the somewhat dry, rules-bound adult world I was destined to have to live in. That world didn't have time or patience for adults who had "fairy-tale" conversations with rocks and streams.

How many darkest moments and traps
Still lay ahead of us
How many final frontiers
We gonna mount
And maybe no victory laps

So, I had one last conversation. And I told my current most frequent "companion" voice that I needed him to go. That I needed it all to go, that I needed to just be a normal girl now, like everyone else. And he was very compassionate about it, if a little sad, and then...he left. Poof, just like that. It all left. And though I felt the absence from time to time--it was WEIRD to look at the world and not hear it talking back--I convinced myself it was the best thing and I moved forward into teen and adult life like a normal girl. Because--from limited view of adulthood garnered in the suburbs--well, voices, they weren't part of the rules of growing up. Adults didn't talk to the ocean. And they definitely didn't hear disembodied voices (if they didn't want to end up in the nuthouse).

I guess I don't want to judge the choice I made back then. I don't want to say it wasn't all for the best. Because at the time, it was what I needed; so it's what was meant to be. But I do think in making that choice/request, I chose to cut off something that was a vital piece of who I was. And with it, other vital connections to myself and the world around me might have gotten lost for a good long time.

At some point in my late thirties, I thought better of my choice to tell it all to go away. And I tried to bring it all back and found I couldn't. I'd look at a tree and feel...nothing. Almost less than nothing. I felt blocked. And it felt like I'd blown it; like I'd had one special chance and I'd thrown it away. I'd been given a gift and I chose to return it, and now it wasn't up for offer anymore. But there was nothing to be done about it, so I became resigned to the fact it was gone.

But if you stepped on path of sacred art
and stuck it out through thick and thin
God knows you become one
With undestructable

Around that time is when the beginnings of a pretty deep depressive period began to set in (seemingly unrelated to me at that time). It started small, grew slowly and steadily bigger and lasted and worsened for many years, until I could no longer bear it and sought out help. And this resulted in my finally realizing that for these and many more years the self I thought defined who I was wasn't a self at all, but an amalgam of the selves I thought other people thought a self should be for a girl like me.

And it's been a slow journey towards first realizing that, and now it feels like a slow journey towards deconstructing the false selves and finding out the true core that's been buried underneath. But I think the voices may be part of what's underneath.

I say this because I stayed home from work today. And after an inexplicable episode of joyful laughter that took over me this morning from the moment I looked in the mirror and said good morning to myself, I went and took a walk along the river in the sunlight of almost-spring. And I turned off my iPod and just listened. And the trees and water started talking to me. For the first time in such a long time.

And I think...no, I feel...this is a very good sign.

And so no longer live I in fear
Them are too greedy to pay my asylum bills
This is my life
And freedom's my profession
This is my mission throughout all flight duration
There is a core
And it's hardcore
All is hardcore when made with love
The love is voice of savage soul
This savage love is
Undestructable

When I was young, I loved you so much it scared the fuck out of me. So much that I wouldn't dare tell you. So much that I wouldn't dare ask you to love me back as much. Because I didn't think that kind of love got given to girls like me. I loved you so much that I told myself I didn't.

When we were a couple, I used to fantasize about us in the future.

About us meeting up again when we were older. In some diner, in Manhattan or London. After we hadn't seen each other in decades.

Because you see, even when I was with you I knew we wouldn't end up.

That we wouldn't wouldn't end.

Because I didn't dare dream of love neverending.

So I dreamed of: Love. Never. Ending.

And I dreamed of you meeting up with me decades later in a coffee shop, our lives long separate and full of things we hadn't shared together. The coffee shop smelled slightly of stale cigarette smoke and strongly of brewed coffee. Your hair had gray in it. You still looked good to me, though. And I imagined you speaking quietly and sadly. I imagined the world had worn on you a bit. You were more tired, less prone to judge. I imagined you could, mostly, just see me. Not me with symbols or measurements. You just saw me, sitting there, a human. Me, and the long stretch from when we were young and together through to now. A long path. But nothing had gotten less. The connection, the need for each other, still there after all these years.

In the scene, though, we still held back. We had a very politely intense conversation. And I can't remember what I imagined back then we said to each other; I just remember the look I imagined being on your face. It was full of "should have beens" and "could have dones." I remember you being less ashamed of your human sentimentality. I remember me imagining us both at different times on the verge of misty eyes. But not actually crying. I don't remember me imagining us touching. I remember looking down at my hands around my coffee mug. And looking at your face. I remember wanting to reach out and touch your hand or your face. But i don't remember imagining me doing it.

I never fantasized about what happened after the conversation in the shop. I kept us suspended there, older, more world-weary, you more capable of seeing me, sitting across from each other in a booth in a coffee shop, touching each other without touching.

When we were still a couple, I once asked if you imagined me in the future. And you told me you thought I could do extraordinary things. But that you weren't sure if I had the capability to live up to my potential.

For years after we ended, when I did anything, I saw two things concurrently: myself doing it, and you watching me doing it and making a judgement on what I was doing. I walked through the world still trying to be worthy of your love. Was I being interesting enough? Too bourgeois? Was I informed enough about world events? Could I expound impressively on politics? Philosophy? Would the books I was reading and the films I was seeing impress you or make you sneer? Was I wanted enough by others? Was I living up to my potential or falling short?

Was I extraordinary enough?

The answer was always no.

At some point, some year, I stopped thinking about what you would think. At least directly. But, though it became not about you specifically, the fear of not being extraordinary enough remained. There was this constant belief that I had to be "more special" (than what?) and achieve something (what?) that said something (what? to whom?). And my assessment was that I was always falling short. I won't blame this all on you. This was already a budding fear of mine well before you said what you said. But I loved you. And you were supposed to care about me, to believe in me. And that's what you believed about me--that I might never be capable of being as good as I could be. You drove the last nail of my own shaky sense of self into my no-confidence coffin, and it stuck.

These days, though, I'm trying to let go of the whole "supernova or empty space; no other options" mentality. When I can manage to let go of it, I find that's where happiness lies. I'm ready to be happy.

These days, I'm almost at the age at which, when I was 21, I imagined us being when we met in the coffee shop.

But these days, I don't fantasize about meeting up with you anymore.

And these days, for the first time since we ended, I believe that if we did meet up, it wouldn't be like I'd imagined. Because, I'm no longer the girl I was then. And I haven't grown into the woman I imagined myself to be back then.

And I can also see for the first time that I'm not going to grow into the woman you imagined me to be, either. Though your words were like a curse that led me toward that fate for a long time, I'm not headed in that direction anymore.

Recently, a friend brought me news of you, unsolicited. I heard you were asking after me, as I've been told you always do. I was told you talked in great depth about our connection to each other. You told this friend-in-common that I was the one person who knew you best in the world; who truly understood you at the deepest levels. Not that I had been, at one time. That I was. That you still think I am that one person who knows you. After all these years of non-communication.

It was suggested that instead of asking after me through others for all these years, that you just get in touch with me.

I was told you shook your head ruefully and said, "There's nothing about my life that would be worth telling her."

And now I suddenly remember that another person once told me that you'd said to him that you thought I was you in female form.

And It finally sinks in. After all these years. It was you who feared you might not live up to your potential. You who felt you had to be worth something. When you said that to me, you were saying it to you. You in female form.

Of course, that was a big fear of mine, too. So I suppose we were alike. Except for one difference. I believed in you. I would have been proud of you, no matter how grand or simple your life turned out; no matter how radical or mainstream you became. I was proud of you, even then. Even when we were so young and without newsworthy achievements.

I loved you. So much it scared the fuck out of me. So much that it would have never occurred to me to wonder if you were capable of being as brilliant as I knew you were. So much that I could have never said anything so cruel to you.

So I think we were different, after all.