So Various, So Beautiful, So New
Jan. 31st, 2016 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraSo-o, I was texting with the Current Crush – my pretty, blue-eyed Soldier Man – and the other reason I can’t do Internet Dating Sites suddenly occurred to me.
Yes, there’s the deal with context. I need a mythology to plug my attraction into.
But the other thing is that with every romantic attraction, there’s always this kind of push/pull thing that happens with me.
I alternate between dreamy visions of perfect fusion – sexual, mental, psychic; the whole Two bodies, one soul, Wuthering Heights scenario – and this sense of utter revulsion, like Why am I letting this person near me? Neither feeling, strictly speaking, has anything to do with the Other Person. They’re both reflections of my yearning for/fear of intimacy, which are pretty intense, understandably so, given my aberrant upbringing and the many ways it damaged me.
So, with any romantic attraction that’s more than superficial, I have to wait this ricocheting process out. Achieve some kind of internal emotional homeostasis. And this has to be balanced, of course, with the actual process of getting to know the other person, to determine whether he/she/it and I are actually compatible in any true sense.
The whole process is kind of exhausting and gets more exhausting with every passing year.
It’s simpler and easier to give up romantic love altogether.
###
When I was younger, this wasn’t an issue because I basically just fucked anything that walked. Times were simpler before HIV!
And then, I got married. Twice.
###
Current Crush hero-worshipped Rik. I think that’s part of his attraction to me: At various points in his life, I was close to Rik, particularly during that afore-mentioned point in my life when I was fucking anything that walked. No, of course, I did not fuck Rik, which would have been creepy and weird, but Rik did end up dating most of my girlfriends during that period after his divorce from Annie and before his remarriage to Janet. Which, I suppose, could be read as some kind of surrogacy.
I’m not sure that the rest of my family understands the degree to which Rik and I hung out during this period, but anyway, it gave me a kind of insight into him that none of the other members of my family had.
I remember once we were arriving at a party. He was driving. Rik always had a penchant for upscale automobiles, and in those days, he was driving a vintage blue Jaguar.
We got out of the car – I can’t remember now what intense conversation about global economics, T.S. Elliot, or Matthew Arnold we’d been having – we used to argue for hours whether The Wasteland or Dover Beach was a better poem – and Rik turned to me, almost savagely, and said, “You know, the real pity is that you don’t have the slightest understanding of who I really am, you’ll never understand that –“
And I thought, pushing him ever-so-gently out of my way, Lighten up, dude – well, no, I didn’t actually think that since the word “dude” had not yet entered our complex, dynamic, and ever-evolving parlance. But words to that effect.
But anyway, I think the Current Crush kind of intuits I had that sort of relationship with Rik. Like I’m some sort of medium who can bring Rik back into his life to give him the oracular guidance that Rik just l-o-v-e-d handing out to all and sundry.
###
Current Crush and I hung out a bit in the flesh last spring, and of course, I’ve thought of him – not often, but enough – since. I’ve been successful in evading any attempts at communication more direct than text, though.
He was venting about something in his workplace. I won’t get into the nature of his workplace here ‘cause, you know, you may think I have no discretion whatsoever, but actually I have a great deal of discretion.
Can I ask you a personal question? I typed.
Sure, he typed.
Why’d you join [Your Branch of the Military Goes Here]? Don’t read anything critical into the question: I have lots of pals who’ve been in the military. Given yr background, though, -- or should I say: Given what I THINK I know about yr background -- it’s an unusual choice. Maybe not to have JOINED. But to have stuck with it for so long.
There was a ten-minute radio silence.
Okay! I thought. I’ve succeeded in offending him! So that ends that what-to-do dilemma!
Finally, he typed, Wow. Good question. Hard to answer in text. Can we go voice?
Uh-oh.
It was late at night, so I managed to put off any voice conversation till later today.
I fucking hate talking to people on the phone.
###
And, of course, it’s always possible that he won’t call. I mean, despite what I experienced as attraction at our initial encounter, he didn’t contact me again for seven months. Maybe he’s not attracted. Maybe he just reached that point, one night, when he’d run out of people to vent to, and not having the luxury of a LiveJournal, thought: I know! I’ll vent to her.
And he sobers up the next morning.
Kind of like those long, wonderful conversations one has with taxi drivers or other passengers on a train whom you know you’re never gonna see again.
Some of the most transcendent conversations I’ve ever had in my life have been with taxi drivers and people on trains.
There’s that fear of intimacy thing again.
###
At any rate, whatever happens, It’s All Good, as Max would say.
###
In other news, I solved my plot point dilemma by turning June’s 18-year-old brother Sigmund into June’s 15-year-old brother Edward, whom she wouldn’t have seen for five years, and who would have metamorphosed in those five years from pudgy 10-year-old into gangly adolescent, thus giving June multiple opportunities for interior monologues along the lines of: Time! Where does it go? The world moves forward but I stay the same! Etc, ad nauseam. All of which I can take out when it comes time to write the second draft.
Yes, there’s the deal with context. I need a mythology to plug my attraction into.
But the other thing is that with every romantic attraction, there’s always this kind of push/pull thing that happens with me.
I alternate between dreamy visions of perfect fusion – sexual, mental, psychic; the whole Two bodies, one soul, Wuthering Heights scenario – and this sense of utter revulsion, like Why am I letting this person near me? Neither feeling, strictly speaking, has anything to do with the Other Person. They’re both reflections of my yearning for/fear of intimacy, which are pretty intense, understandably so, given my aberrant upbringing and the many ways it damaged me.
So, with any romantic attraction that’s more than superficial, I have to wait this ricocheting process out. Achieve some kind of internal emotional homeostasis. And this has to be balanced, of course, with the actual process of getting to know the other person, to determine whether he/she/it and I are actually compatible in any true sense.
The whole process is kind of exhausting and gets more exhausting with every passing year.
It’s simpler and easier to give up romantic love altogether.
###
When I was younger, this wasn’t an issue because I basically just fucked anything that walked. Times were simpler before HIV!
And then, I got married. Twice.
###
Current Crush hero-worshipped Rik. I think that’s part of his attraction to me: At various points in his life, I was close to Rik, particularly during that afore-mentioned point in my life when I was fucking anything that walked. No, of course, I did not fuck Rik, which would have been creepy and weird, but Rik did end up dating most of my girlfriends during that period after his divorce from Annie and before his remarriage to Janet. Which, I suppose, could be read as some kind of surrogacy.
I’m not sure that the rest of my family understands the degree to which Rik and I hung out during this period, but anyway, it gave me a kind of insight into him that none of the other members of my family had.
I remember once we were arriving at a party. He was driving. Rik always had a penchant for upscale automobiles, and in those days, he was driving a vintage blue Jaguar.
We got out of the car – I can’t remember now what intense conversation about global economics, T.S. Elliot, or Matthew Arnold we’d been having – we used to argue for hours whether The Wasteland or Dover Beach was a better poem – and Rik turned to me, almost savagely, and said, “You know, the real pity is that you don’t have the slightest understanding of who I really am, you’ll never understand that –“
And I thought, pushing him ever-so-gently out of my way, Lighten up, dude – well, no, I didn’t actually think that since the word “dude” had not yet entered our complex, dynamic, and ever-evolving parlance. But words to that effect.
But anyway, I think the Current Crush kind of intuits I had that sort of relationship with Rik. Like I’m some sort of medium who can bring Rik back into his life to give him the oracular guidance that Rik just l-o-v-e-d handing out to all and sundry.
###
Current Crush and I hung out a bit in the flesh last spring, and of course, I’ve thought of him – not often, but enough – since. I’ve been successful in evading any attempts at communication more direct than text, though.
He was venting about something in his workplace. I won’t get into the nature of his workplace here ‘cause, you know, you may think I have no discretion whatsoever, but actually I have a great deal of discretion.
Can I ask you a personal question? I typed.
Sure, he typed.
Why’d you join [Your Branch of the Military Goes Here]? Don’t read anything critical into the question: I have lots of pals who’ve been in the military. Given yr background, though, -- or should I say: Given what I THINK I know about yr background -- it’s an unusual choice. Maybe not to have JOINED. But to have stuck with it for so long.
There was a ten-minute radio silence.
Okay! I thought. I’ve succeeded in offending him! So that ends that what-to-do dilemma!
Finally, he typed, Wow. Good question. Hard to answer in text. Can we go voice?
Uh-oh.
It was late at night, so I managed to put off any voice conversation till later today.
I fucking hate talking to people on the phone.
###
And, of course, it’s always possible that he won’t call. I mean, despite what I experienced as attraction at our initial encounter, he didn’t contact me again for seven months. Maybe he’s not attracted. Maybe he just reached that point, one night, when he’d run out of people to vent to, and not having the luxury of a LiveJournal, thought: I know! I’ll vent to her.
And he sobers up the next morning.
Kind of like those long, wonderful conversations one has with taxi drivers or other passengers on a train whom you know you’re never gonna see again.
Some of the most transcendent conversations I’ve ever had in my life have been with taxi drivers and people on trains.
There’s that fear of intimacy thing again.
###
At any rate, whatever happens, It’s All Good, as Max would say.
###
In other news, I solved my plot point dilemma by turning June’s 18-year-old brother Sigmund into June’s 15-year-old brother Edward, whom she wouldn’t have seen for five years, and who would have metamorphosed in those five years from pudgy 10-year-old into gangly adolescent, thus giving June multiple opportunities for interior monologues along the lines of: Time! Where does it go? The world moves forward but I stay the same! Etc, ad nauseam. All of which I can take out when it comes time to write the second draft.
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Re: "pretty, blue-eyed Soldier Man"
Date: 2016-02-01 07:31 pm (UTC)