Posting it has become the consummate act. Gone are the days of telling it to your girlfriend whilst huddled in the corner of the room, as far away from the phone and your parents as the curly, twisty cord would allow. It's no longer shared over coffee between two, chatty women or gay men at 90mph, words slurring into a language slowly crafted by decades of rapid-fire-back-and-forth.
For me, it is no longer told to Shannon.
For years, nothing was real for me until Shannon knew about it. I thought, during those years, that my inner core was connected to her inner core as though by a chord or chain. That connection assumed that I had, at some point, felt confident that I'd accessed that inner-most entity and found it to be like mine, and I'm sure that that's exactly what I thought happened a time or two; but as time has shown me, to assume that there's a singular, unified inner self is not sensible considering how much and often people change over the course of a lifetime. The part of me that I thought had connected to a part of her... those parts existed in and for that moment. There may be traces of past parts, loosely connected for a time, but even that's a residue and not a real, live, breathing, thinking, evolving person. To access that would be... wow... something else entirely. But to believe that I connected to something solid and permanent in another person is a belief I now recognize as flawed.
But to connect is exactly what I crave because I'm human. So are you. It's this need to connect to something solid and permanent that has led humans to construct God. You and me, reader, are probably connected in some way. I probably feel, at times, like telling you something makes it real, makes me real. You probably fill (or are now filling) that role for me at times and in ways. But I know you know what I'm talking about when I say I want a deep connection. I'm talking about penetrating--yes, penetrating--to the uttermost sanctum and deepest interiority of another's being. Some call it a "soul mate."
Notice that so far I'm talking in metaphysical abstractions. I do that. I do that here because I don't really want the body enveloping that inner core. Sure, I think I'd like "a body" now and then, but not "the" body for life--the one body that will be with my one body while we try to penetrate each other's sanctums. I mean, maybe I do want the body, but from all my experiences with lots of other bodies... I don't know. All I know is this: I once thought I wanted to be with bodies, so I did what I was supposed to do and experienced lots of boy/men bodies. When that failed to satisfy me, I switched sides and experienced lots of female bodies. Now that that's not getting it either, I find myself in a paradox: I want another mind but not another body.
John Locke on LOST hired a phone sex operator for this very purpose. But even he, eventually, bought two plane tickets, one for him, and one for "Helen."
Maybe someday the "right" kind of person will come along. I'm not sure at this point if the mind will arrive in a man or a woman, but his or her body will have to turn me on as much as his or her mind does; otherwise, game's over. I guess I'm looking for someone who's pretty intense, like me. Someone who likes to listen and to talk, who speaks freely about what s/he's thinking and feeling and has the intellectual perception to distinguish between and among those feelings in order to articulate them. Someone who likes to analyze and play around with the thoughts that arise from such sport as people watching, reading, watching TV, listening to music, exercising, having sex, drinking wine, eating, traveling, dreaming.
Not that I really anticipate his or her arrival. I guess I'm just saying this because It's not real till I tell someone else. Not yet, anyway.
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