Charisma

I woke up deeply startled a few days ago to this thought, "I will never again get to rescue the Boy."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was in fourth or fifth grade I met a New Boy. You know...or, well, you might not...But it is important that it NOT be the boys you've been going to private, Catholic school with since kindergarten. The ones who try to get you to swing across the monkeybars so they can look up your plaid skirt. The ones you played Lego Pirate Ship with.

No this has to be a New Boy...one who doesn't know you're an uncool Tomboy. One who doesn't go to your school. One that is blonde and handsome. One who likes to use his imagination to read and play D&D. And hopefully one who thinks you're cool...or at least not TOO annoying... because you like those things too.

This Boy was my Ideal of Manhood from the day I met him until I fell in love with my husband. Quite a few boyfriends got short shrift because of this boy. I wrote dozens of letters and bad poetry for this Boy (I still have them all). Mostly because he had "charisma."

I would watch him, when allowed to tagalong with that slightly older crowd. Everyone laughed around him. Everyone looked at him. Everyone seemed - like me - to want to touch him, all the time.

And he was so different. Unlike the other boys, who would slap your hand away, or sling an insult, this boy was comfortable in a puddle of friends. Yes...Puddle. After hours on a D&D adventure, a mystery adventure...I honestly don't remember what we played at all the time...this Boy, and a few others would allow me into their "puddle" of all curling up, singing or laughing or just watching the stars young people. Such a warm, kind Boy.

He is still an amazing Boy. Well, okay Man (but in my head, he's that Boy).

In fact, realizing that this Boy would never be My Boy was instrumental in the realization that my husband was, in fact, perfectly suited to be My Boy. But that's another story...

This story has a happy ending, because the New Boy, who never was My Boy, found and wooed His Girl...and this June they got married.



I know. You're thinking "He's not Blonde...?" The east coast ate his blonde hair. He laughs and says one reason he is my friend after all these years is because I'm the only person who still always remembers him as blonde. I don't think of him as just blonde. In my heart he is in every way golden.

Actually he's my friend because I like to keep things. I try to treat the cherished trinkets of my life as I want to be treated - I want them to know they are loved, and I won't loose interest. Won't be blinded by new shinier baubles. I keep memories, and that helps me keep people. Memories like these:

The old greenhouse on D's property down the street. High shelves originally for plants, now a fort for us kids: D, the Boy, me...there may have been others, but I wouldn't remember them. Couldn't remember anyone when the Boy was there. Singing. The Boy would just sing, sweet and beautiful songs at any old time, but especially at night, even with no campfire. Just because singing is beautiful...and his voice...so beautiful it makes me cry...

OR

There is hair growing under my right armpit, but not my left. At thirteen I know I'm probably one of the last girls in my Jr. High class to get my period, but I don't care, and I don't want to think about it. I'm too embarassed to even think about it, especially after a conversation my mother has tried to have with me in the car about something her OBGYN has said when they were talking about me and being tall for my age: My mother talks about me to her Doctor! Mortifying.

P.E. is over and I hate, hate, hate Mr. Messineo for making us run all up and down the hilly campus. I'm so sweaty in my crotch I feel like I've peed my pants...and when I finally get one of the two coveted dark, close stalls go to pee...there is blood on my white underpants. And I start to shake. And they are cold when I pull them up against my skin again, which feels disgusting. It never occurs to me to tell any of the other girls. To ask any girls in my class for help.

I have an audition downtown for a play, and I'm supposed to change into "free clothes," not my private school uniform. I know my mint green "Thriller" buckled pants are going to show the blood...what can I do? What can I do? I know what I have to do, but I don't even know how I know.

I go to the office. I'm hoping Tina is there - I've known her since I was in Kindergarten, I'm comfortable with her, but no, it is Mrs. Dalmark - Jill's mom, and now everyone in the whole school will know I've gotten my period. I say I've gotten my period - how I blurted it out I have no idea - and I ask for a pad. She tries to be kindly and asks if I know how to use it. I say I do...but when I go into the clean, bright little bathroom off the office, both sides seem sticky. I have no idea what to do. Oh well. At least it will keep more blood from getting onto my pants, and I can go to my audition. I don't even remember how I got there - my mom must have taken me, but I didn't tell her anything. Too terribly, horribly embarrassed by my secret.

And there is the Boy, and for one moment that day I am so excited. Thrilled with adrenaline surprise and relief. Someone safe who I can tell my horrible secret to. Someone kind and warm who I trust after all these years and...There he is, surrounded by a group of pretty girls and boys, all older than me. In the hall of the Unitarian Church, where we are all gathering for Peace Child Auditions. I hear him sing and I see him surrounded by friends and I am now again shaking with fear that he will see the bloodstains, and I will be disgusting and embarassing to him. I do not even say hi. I watch him the whole time, wanting be near him, and hear him sing...sing to me, but going nowhere near him on the first day of my first period.

OR

Left turn onto Carillo in J's beatup, silver Datsun. Just J and me having lunch together before going back to the another class of work on the high school newspaper. Going for Pizza, with his blonde hair and my brown hair being sucked out the open windows. After the turn, I see a figure in black, bright gold hair, sitting on a low sandstone wall, reading.

Suddenly I am screaming, "Pull over! Pull over!" and hanging half out of my window crying the Boy's name. The unexpected sight of him supercharges me with a brand of excitement reserved for him alone. After a bewildered J pulls the car to a stop, I burst from it, running madly down the street and SURPRISE! He didn't hear me call as we drove - too engrossed in his book. I got to surprise him, and make him smile at me...that smile...and a promise to see him later...before running back to my lunch date, and trying to explain the Boy to J. Unpleased J, though it never ocurred to me at the time why...

OR

After I could drive, I got to "rescue" the boy. That's how I always thought of it. His parents lived up in the hills, and he was forever without transportation, sometimes without companionship. He would call my house to see if I wanted to hang out with him and give him a ride home. Did I ever! I'd pick him up from the bookstore he haunted and drive with him up into winding Santa Ynez mountains.

Mountainsides of chaparral and sandstone boulders passed, glowing in moonlight, until we plunged into a close, dark hairpin turn edged on all sides by a stand of live oak trees. So high above the town, it was often hot and windy with Santa Ana's at his house, and I loved to be there, caressed by the hot wind.

He slept in a small wedge of loft off his step dad's office. My mom was so cool: She trusted me completely, and I got to sleep there with him a few times, all curled up in that space that smelled so good to me, and was so full of Him.

If all of that sounds innocent and pathetic, I have to say it was. And when I was a bit older, I regretted that. Regretted for years not trying harder to have more of the Boy or make him mine.

Of course I know now, with a greater experience of love and sex that the Boy and I were never traveling in the same direction, at the same time. Even if I was his type (and yes, after seeing a few girlfriends, I have to say that he does have a type, and I am not it), we would never have been in love. Even if I had somehow managed to convince him to have sex with me in between the more accessible people I was "in love" with, he was unattainable, because of him, because of geography, and because of me. Who wants to destroy their golden idol by actually touching it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"He has a wife. Soon he will have children, a new career, a new family. He will never again need to be rescued, by me or anyone else. He won't find himself alone, or lonely, and needing a friend. He is beloved, and supported, and cared for...just like I am by my husband, my best friend.

I am so happy for him.

And it huuuuurts!!! Letting go of that imaginary responsibility - the thrilling possibility of being called upon to save someone - even from loneliness, even from boredom...free of the calling...oh, deep inside it huuurtsss......"

TechoSavvyaged

Woo-Hoo! I made a link from my post to another one of my posts! Uh-Huh! I rock...

They just shouldn't let people as technologically impaired as I am have a blog..TOO LATE!

If you're reading this, go back and read

This

and then

This

to see what it looks like when I write about Sex!

First Time - Draft 2

I left the post-it on his desk because I couldn't end the day without making sure Jack knew he was wrong: JP call EB.

This morning, Jack sat across the table in the small conference room and said, "I will not, Evan. They refuse to participate."
"What...?"
"They refuse to participate. So. I have respect for the hierarchical structure of this organization. I have informed my manager and it is his problem now. The organization's problem - Not Mine."
"Did they give a reason why?"
"I don't care why."

I couldn't look him in the eye. The issue I had stumbled across was a hot one. I tried again and again to elicit a clear picture of the conflict from his information. Even after an hour all I could see was a gaping hole where the "big picture" of the situation should be.

Like a black cloud, it hovered above and to the right of his close-cropped hairline. Beyond a shoulder that leaned hard, aggressively nonchalant on the arm of a blue chair.

"I'm not upset!" he said again, raising his voice. "I also don't care why and I won't do anything about it until I'm asked. Until then, I don't know there is a problem." One of many conflicts in our organization; Dogging him, and like a stray mutt, just as pointedly ignored.

I hate recognizing it when he acts like a five year old. I feel compelled to cover his ass.

So I spent my workday in someone else's problem. Not Jack's problem, not mine: a problem that should have been confronted by the whole organization...but was instead being tossed over cubicle half-walls like a hot potato.

A conflict averse work environment with no management leadership. A fun place to work. Places like this one need lubricant in the form of neutral third parties, troublemakers...HR managers. The organizational caretakers and problem solvers of the world who are powerfully motivated to solve heated and divisive problems. Not necessarily urgent ones: the ones all about communication and personalities and styles of interaction.

As HR Managers go, I am good at my job. I challenged, asked questions, developed a plan of action. I used individual discussions with each personality to understand the whole picture. I spoke with everyone struggling busily to avoid solving the problem.

Suddenly, after 6PM, my own yellow sticky note was in front of my face. Between me and my monitor, I saw my own scrawl stuck to Jack's clean hand. Polished, even nails confronted me at the end of an arm, covered by the softest brushed cotton twill.

He walks up silently, but I never jump anymore. Every part of his body invades the typical, American "personal space." Jack knows he is mandated to keep the distance clear, and he is reminded in a painful waste of two productive hours, every two years, at the Sexual Harassment Prevention course. Maybe I should make him go annually.

"Is it brief? I want to go home," he said while draping himself, quite at ease, in my guest chair. I turned a few pages in a nearby notebook, then swiveled to face him.

"You're wrong," I said, knowing I was safe. "I want you to be successful, and I can't take it when you are, instead, being a complete ass. Change your attitude. I spoke with everyone individually today and the only person with a problem is you. Come back Monday with that problem fixed. Because you're my hero, and I can't stand it when you're wrong."

"Allright. That's fine," came from a tired Jack. He stood up to go, but only moved a foot away. He picked up a magazine from the cubicle next to mine, and stood, looking down at a picture of a famous actress. Well, once famous, then an obesity poster child, now a slim sexpot of a woman again.

"Amazing," he said. And then stood there. With that invitation, I got up to stand next to him. He wanted me to look at the picture I had already noticed returning to my desk a half hour before. I couldn't see the picture this time.

-Comment-
All I could see was the rough stubble across his face at the end of such a long day. Striking on someone meticulously clean shaven each morning.

-Response-
I realized that he smelled fantastic, and I took a deep breath, staring down at a Cover Girl but seeing Jack's chin, neck...an open collar.

-See you Monday-
My strong urge to rub a hand, a cheek, a chest, a groin...across that abrasive surface was overwhelming...and stifled immediately.

I returned to my chair, feeling pumped with the ache of arousal and weak with the cold of imagined betrayal. Emotionally unfaithful for the first time.

The First Time

I wrote a post quite some time ago about a loosely 'sexual' experience with flirting I had...at age 33.

This story is about a similar experience. I was not going to blog it here, because I know my husband reads my blog...and the idea of him reading it made me feel guilty. I believe the content may "hurt" a little bit in some way, and I deperately want to avoid hurting him - I love him so much.

But there is this need to expose the experience to the light of day and examine it before it becomes a secret: I hate secrets. Hate secrets in a way that only an adult who has a vestigial molested child lurking inside can.

In my further defense (though I don't need one, Dammit!) my "Blog Hero" thinks nothing of descriptions of cute chicks at Hooters, and hot Booth Babes, and being struck senseless by beautiful women. He has eyes, he has a dick, he has a libido. He expresses the thoughts that are wound up with those things. Yet I shrink from doing that.

I read a short story called "Tastings" by Neil Gaiman last week, in a short story collection which had lots of not-fun sexually explicit stories. In his preface to "Tastings" he talked about how writing the story took him a long time (paraphrasing from memory here) because the content was embarassing to him...made him blush, and made him have to stop, then come back to the story. The content was extremely sexually explicit, which might have had something to do with the embarassment.

From that preface, I am choosing to take away the idea that there is some value in getting out the ideas...even when as writers we have huge emotional reactions to the content. And in this case, it is probably best to get it outside of me, into my "clear" space.

So, from the assumptions that:
1) Finding someone other than your partner attractive is not something to feel guilt over (as long as you don't act on it), and
2) Sharing the fact that attraction is evidenced, may hurt your partner, and fundamentally if they choose to read your blog after you've warned them, it is their own fault, and
3) Telling a story and letting an idea play out can only strengthen storytelling and writing abilities, even if it doesn't feel good to do so....here's the story.

Alone in a crowded room

I'm so completely off balance that I desperately need to write and the words aren't coming...It isn't everyday that I learn - deep, in-your-gut-learning - something about sex. And attraction. And dancing.

Last night though, while dancing with a friend of mine, a doorway inadvertantly opened into the room where my sensual self lives. A room I honestly, even though it seems a bit sad, don't visit all that often.

The last time I felt as highly charged with burning, erotic energy was in 2000, before I began to seriously date my husband (but in fact during an encounter with him). Before that was an incident back in high school. So few vignettes of complete, mind-bending, muscle-melting passion...without the "watcher" of my rational self commenting in the background.

Certainly I've never had such a thing occur before on a crowded dance floor, let alone all because of a little eye contact.

A part of it was the dance, I suppose. When your chance comes to be the active couple in an English Country Dance, you get to do all of the fun bits. The other couples support and treat you like royalty. You are Honored Personages throughout the dance when you are A One. I danced one of these dances last night with a fun, handsome man, who is married to a lovely friend of mine. We dance together often and generally bring out the wacky and silly in each other.

Tonight though, after we did a couple of rounds of this difficult dance, and I was just getting the hang of it, my friend said, "Great - Now do it, but keep flirting."

Keep Flirting? Well...okay. and Oh. My. Goodness.

My emotional and visceral reactions to acceptable dance "flirting" (this amounts to smiling and a mini staring contest) were insistent and unexpected. Suddenly I was locked in an encounter much more intimate than any dance I had done before.

First came the playfullness - ah yes, a staring contest, simple! His eyes were there, seeking mine with every step, turn and swirl of movement. Whenever I lost, then regained eye contact, I felt a whole-body SNAP!

Finding my partner's eyes within the flurry of movement over and over again started to heighten my enjoyment of the dance. By the halfway mark of the set I was giggling, and then laughing out loud because it felt so different.

I think it would have been an unusual, but not really an impactful experience if the dance hadn't gone on. And on. And on. But in fact, there were many, many couples, and the dancing did go on.

By now, I had mastered the mechanics, and been through a few full rounds of feeling his eyes constantly seaching for mine. The effect now started to multiply with each turn of the dance. The invisible visual connection materialized - as compelling and powerful as Superman's optical laser beams.

There was no letting up of the continuous contact. A flirtatious game, and my partner was clearly winning. An overwhelming impulse to drop my eyes rushed at me. It was accompanied by uncontrollable shyness - a hormonal and adrenaline surge that I have not felt since puberty. I recognized the reaction, and was astonished by it, but simple realization did not prevent a sudden difficulty in breathing and desperate instinct to break the eye contact...Simultaneously with a stronger impulse not to.

Now began round after round of romance heroine cliche incarnate. The rush of blood to my face, then the heat and butterflies behind my navel. Breathlessness, and surges of desire each time my partner and I would flow tightly into a gypsy turn and finally touch for a two-handed spin that seemed to last hours each time we revolved, only inches apart.

The rich, yet unspoken relationship increased between us as I managed to hold eye contact for longer and longer. This allowed us to better gauge and anticipate the drifting away and uniting again of our dance steps.

Succumbing to his direction was certainly a source of erotic energy for me. Committing fully to this interractive game; Flowing, turning, spinning, dancing...holding a tight focus on my partners eyes - just because he had told me to - increased the impact of each dance movement a hundred fold. Searching for his face instantly each time passing dancers forced a break in welded lines of sight caused an immense awareness of arousal and anticipation for me.

I started to feel guilty about dancing only with my partner. There were other dancers there, and they did their parts admirably...but I literally had eyes only for my partner. I acknowledged no one else who held my hand or moved in concert with me. Even the briefest of polite, flickering glances immediately gave way to the magnetism of my partner's countenance.

The small, seemingly insignificant limitation: "Look into my eyes," was so stimulating that I began to also feel guilty about dancing such a dance, in such a way, with another woman's husband!

This idea spontaneously burst in my brain, and I went cold as I perceived that I might be so exposed in an act my superego considered a wrong doing. I broke eye contact to look for and watch my partner's wife as she danced down the line in front of me.

Sweetness, and the embodiment of Austen's Jane Bennett, she was partnered with another incredible dancer of our acquaintance. A man capable of generating the same intensity of gazes...of bringing dancing beyond the mechanical to the emotional level. Ah, well, I thought. She is probably giving and getting and dancing with the same relish as I am. It stopped MOST of the guilt. After all, perhaps she dances like that all the time...(lucky girl!)

Some guilt lingers today. It is hard to admit that last night, if I was unattached and so was my partner, I would gladly have pursued that eye contact and roaring hormone level straight to the very nearest horizontal surface. The experience was worlds beyond my previous ideas about being a "good" dancer. This was the electrical enticement of dancing.

I suddenly understood how once the emotions are there, it is hard to bottle them up. Keeping the flood inside, and the very effort of not letting it show, merely compounds it. The act of connecting energetically through dance - whether by accident or design - suddenly translated from a simple non verbal communication straight to a compulsive desire for more of the same and-by-any-means-possible!

As we finished up at the bottom of the set, we crashed shoulder to shoulder. We vented our enormous reservoir of affective energy in a fit of belly-laughing. I can never know for sure what my partner's experience was, and yet somehow I do. That level of intensity doesn't build in that way without a feedback loop to reinforce each emotional reaction in layer on top of layer.

Breaking the spell of the dance and allowing my autonomic nervous system to claw its way back to earth, my partner talked about dancing being so popular historically. It was the only possible way to feel alone, and acheive that divine intimacy with someone despite chaperones, crowds and onlookers.

I felt such a resonating comprehension of those once living, truly romantic heroines of the past. Empathy flooded through me and I knew precisely what their lives might have been like - denied an evocation, let alone a control, of these passionate emotions...with the exception of a ball here, and a party there.

While we waited to re-enter the set as lowly threes, my friend confided:

"That's what they mean by 'Alone in a Crowded Room.' For me, the ultimate experience is couple contra dancing, because the whole world spins so fast that it cannot be seen and there is nothing in your world except you and your partner."

Luckily for both of our spouses, I don't contra dance...yet.