beneath the diamond sky

I have so many things I want to write about; there have been many interesting, beautiful, educational, painful things of late. I’m going to light on some topics, all to be explored soon. I’m very, very sleepy and don’t know how far it will go.

I don’t know what I am comfortable writing about in regards to sex-ish stuff. Over the past several months/weeks I have had some insights, or at least some areas that I would like to further explore by writing them out, but we are talking about some very up-close-and-personal details, and I’m just not sure where I am with that and with this blog. I am grappling, as I have for many years, with what it means to be single and sexual and loving and satisfied and safe. And by satisfied and safe I include the psychic, psychological, and emotional. Some people have compared my writings in this blog to those of Carrie on Sex and the City, but this would go deeper, really freeze-frame, and I don’t know if I’m going there. So stay tuned.

I had this amazing night out a few Tuesdays back–it is a story in like, five parts. The most exciting part is Brett–no, that’s not true. The most exciting part was partying with some cast members of Saturday Night Live. But the most important part was meeting Brett, a lovely gay man, potential BFF, but seriously potential musical collaborator. Being as we were both a bit drunk when we discussed this, I wasn’t sure if he would come through (gay or not, a drunk man in a bar can make promises of love that he won’t keep) but we are currently working on scheduling.

My weekend with Joe. Maybe. I don’t know how much I’ll write about it here. There was a massive late-discovered misinterpretation of communications prior to the weekend. Late-discovered as in = when the weekend was almost over. This misunderstanding had us (Joe vs me) having two entirely different weekends. So I had a wonderful weekend with him, but then this gross disconnect was revealed. And then it was like that moment in the Sixth Sense; I sank against the wall, my hand holding my bloodied shirt, as the camera revisited scene to scene to scene of the weekend, each conversation being replayed with a different meaning, each moment with a whole other twist. I’m doing better now. But I see dead people.

Speaking of, I went to a memorial service yesterday of an old school friend, Paul Ducharme. He died in April. He was my age. Paul was a sweet and influential character and his death sucks. Yesterday’s event was a picnic and concert in the park we all used to hang out in (across from my junior high school), followed by an after-party that went far into the night where God Street Wine played. So it was this sad occasion, but also sort of a high school reunion with the jumbly memories and face-sifting, and sort of a party to end all parties with the jam band to end all jam bands. And I cannot yet begin to describe, though I do intend to, what a learning experience it was for me. I learned about people and connections and tribes that exist; I learned about how who I was in high school and the years that followed was so horribly confined by my own rigid beliefs and fears. And I learned a bit about how loving we can all be.

I know, right? What the hell do I sound like?

So I will write about one thing from yesterday. There was a guy there I’d known since elementary school. I barely remembered him, to be honest. But we saw each other and pointed right at one another and said each others names (first and last). We are both impressively recognizable. And I found him very attractive. He’s married with little kids, and frankly, I didn’t think much of my attraction, except that I suspected (barely remembered) that back when I knew him I hadn’t noticed him as attractive. That was as far as my thoughts went, Wow he’s attractive, and You probably never thought of him that way back then, ya dummy.

But as the day went on I found myself drawn to him–I was very much enjoying being around him. And at one point someone was making a very tacky pass-like thing at me (kind of pseudo-jumping me) and this guy, the married attracted-to guy, was there for it and walked away like, I’ll leave you two alone. And I was horrified. I played it like, Please don’t leave me alone with him, when in fact I didn’t want him to think I wanted anything to do with a guy like that (the jumper). It was from there that I pieced together how my reaction to his witnessing this was a little too strong and that this thing, this attraction, was really vibrant and not a frivolity.

It wasn’t like, high-end sexual, it was gentler in its nature, though incredibly potent. I wanted to sit and talk with him for 16 hours. And it was very… large. In me. He is beautiful, and kind and sane, and warm but contained, he is interesting and intelligent (he did go on and on about boy stuff that I knew nothing about, the way boys do, but in a way that I enjoyed converting to soft-focus–I liked listening to him talk), he is sparkly but grounded, and he just felt like someone I would never tire of.

Which–whoah. That is quite a conclusion. All those thoughts leading to that place was exhilarating, despite the futility. I think the exhilaration was because it was just so refreshing. I don’t remember the last time I felt this way around someone I’d just met, or ever feeling this way. This is definitely not how I felt about Joe. And this is how I want to feel–I want to meet someone who just excites me (but in a calming way?) to be around. I want to meet someone and know they are good and lovely and a good balance for me.

And maybe my clarity was because of the limitations. After all, I wasn’t basing it on chemistry or wondering if he liked me, and so that wasn’t an influence. It was perhaps clearer because it was just him, not him in relation to me or to possibilities. I was just digging him for his sake, and not in my head about it.

I recognize, here in the next day, here in this little box that is my blog into which I place these words, how crazy this all sounds. It didn’t feel crazy yesterday. I mean, the obvious gap in the ‘he’s so right for me’ logic is not unnoticed by me, it’s just not what I’m focused on for the purpose of this experience. What I’m focused on is how I keep meeting men who I kind of like, and then I spend all this energy bargaining about the rest of it. Bargaining like…I know he’s not really that smart, but he is so nice and he’s into me so let’s see what’s there and figure out the rest later. Or…Yes we dig each other in this vacuum, but he ultimately won’t be able to tolerate my hippie ways.

This experience had no bargaining. And the ‘crush’ aspect wasn’t even troublesome because A) he is so very married, and B) I wasn’t even getting a sense that he was attracted to me. But if both of those things were different, had he been an available man who was interested in me, had I left this event having begun something, I would have been sure (right or wrong) that it was the last something I ever would start.

And all of that, strange as it is (considering it was totally fictitious), was exciting and comforting. It did not make me despair or feel like, there’s one more that I can’t have. Rather, it felt like, oh I can meet someone who is awesome. The possibility of meeting a wonderful man seemed more expansive, not more limited.

And because I am me, I felt compelled to tell him. I spent hours trying to find the right moment, and when I finally found it (we were alone but not too alone) I told him that I was fiercely attracted to him and just wanted him to know. I assured him that this was a non-solicitous communication, and non-delusional; that I wasn’t feeling it because I imagined that we had a thing or something; I was clear that this was all me. That I just wanted him to know because I thought it was beautiful and that he should receive it as such, and also because I wanted the universe to hear it come out of my mouth so we (the universe and I) can start to cut the path. So that next time the universe wants to throw someone my way, (except, y’know, maybe actually my way) it will already know how I would like it to feel–there is a template for how effortless it could be.

And he was just lovely. He was flummoxed, understandably (no way he saw it coming; because like I’d said, it wasn’t born of something being in the air between us, it was all mine) but he thanked me and he said, I’m feeling a little shy right now, which was as up front as I was. I dug it. Through the rest of the night he didn’t seem burdened in any way, thank goodness. And hours later when we hugged goodnight, I asked if I had caused any indelible discomfort. He laughed and assured me I had not. It had stayed pretty light.

He is already fading. It was that kind of day, and I have no reason to keep him vibrant for me. Which is why I needed to write this tonight, because it is already distant, and by tomorrow might be more so.