The eternal quandary

I qualify everything I’m about to type with the fact that I am sick. Therefore, if a sentence doesn’t make sense or there’s an obviously misspelled word, please forgive me. I’ll probably catch it later, but it has flown through the holes in my brain for the moment.

What to do? What to do? I am so confused. I think I’m in a phase where I actually have an attraction to men. I don’t mean a specific man, but men in general. That scares the daylights out of me! I have no idea what to do. I am not straight. I haven’t been straight since I was about four years old. I admit that most of my intimate emotional and physical relationships have been with males, but that general attraction pretty much stopped in my late 20s. It was then that I came out as bisexual, but I wasn’t a “true” bisexual. I didn’t like men and women equally. I definitely preferred women even though I was involved with a man at the time who was the lover of the woman who became my first female lover. If there was a box I could check that said “It’s complicated,” that would be the one I’d mark.

I think there are two factors at work. The first is that Prof. B brought up the issue of me sleeping with men and having to become monogamous AND completely lesbian. I can understand both desires. If there were a woman who connected with me intellectually, emotionally, socially and sexually, and I with her, and; who didn’t think that developmentally disabled children were things, not people and certainly not “its,” I would be happily monogamous in a lesbian relationship for as long as we both shall live, as it were. I so want that! It physically hurts at times that I don’t have a mate. The yearning is so strong that it threatens to tear me in two. I’ve been alone most of my life. Yet, I am not someone who is emotionally equipped to be alone. I need that person I can trust to have my back. I need that person I can turn to when there is no one else who will listen, even if that person doesn’t have answers for me. I need someone who values me as a person and as a bright, loving person who has a great deal to give to someone else and to the world. I need to know that I really do matter to another person. If I could build that person, she would be a woman with a penis. Really! Thank the good Lord that penises can be ordered online!

The second factor is that I’ve been spending time at the gym, although I haven’t been in over a week because my body feels like crap due to a fibro flare I thought I could exercise through, but couldn’t. While I haven’t really spoken to a lot of men, I do have an opportunity to see more of them up close and personal. They don’t stink the way they used to. Did my sense of smell change? I also saw a couple who fit my two, very different, physical profiles of attractive men. The first profile is what gay boyz call a “bear.” That means big, probably bearded, strong, very masculine. The second is one I didn’t realize I had until men kept physically reminding me of the-ex-who-shall-not-be-named (TEWSNBN, maybe I’ll pronounce that “twos’ nibin”). That type would be a bit on the short side, no taller than about 5’9″; canine teeth that are noticeably sharper, and; arms that are slightly long for his height. As TEWSNBN once said, he looks a bit simian. At the time, I tried to deny it, but he was right. Like it or not, black men with that look immediately grab my attention.

There are a couple of each kind at the gym. I’ve said a few words to one of each type. Nothing I actually thought about, but things that came out of my mouth organically. For instance, there was this machine where I couldn’t lock in the weight and I asked this big, handsome bear of a man if he could help. He was a doll, as “bears” frequently are. He not only showed me how to do it, but explained a couple of the other machines too. The more “simian” guy just happened to catch my eye in the mirror as I saw him leg press an incredible amount of weight and I said, “Wow!” as my eyes grew big. He smiled back and I asked him how long it took him to be able to do that. He said that he’d been at it for years. I couldn’t help but notice how cute he was. Eh, I’m human.

I know that sexuality can go back and forth like a pendulum with some people, me included (I suppose). It’s as though there’s this smorgasbord out there and I want to taste it all. In many respects, I’ve had the sexual adventures of two or three people’s lifetimes. I just haven’t found the right person for me and s/he has yet to find me either. I’m not the kind of person who likes sitting around and waiting for things to happen to her. I like going out there and making things happen for myself. However, I think this is the most difficult task I’ve ever faced. I don’t know how to find the right person or how to be found by the right person. I feel as though I’m alone in a fatally opaque bubble where I shall remain until my dying day. I, like the rest of humanity, do not want to die alone. I have too much love to give and I know that I’ve got one hell of a hot-danged love affair in me full of intense passion, great sex, opening of windows to allow fresh air in and peace. I need to share it with someone who will appreciate it. I think my problem now is accepting that it is possible that person could be male. I’d have to do a huge mental make-over, but if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes.

It has occurred to me that maybe my mate could be a male amputee. We could understand each other on a level no one else can. The idea only came to me a few hours ago as I was watching Thursday’s network evening news about vets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan missing limbs. That led me to think about the photos I should have already taken and have been stressing about because I have zero energy, but they must be done because I’m utterly broke. I don’t do “poor” well because, frankly, I’ve only been poor once in my life and I could have hauled my butt back home, which is what I subsequently did. At any rate, it is my hope that my very tastefully suggestive photos reach a good man among some of the . . . shall we say . . . less than desirables. I know that I have to treat each with respect and I will. However, that doesn’t mean some won’t earn a greater respect than others. There are days and nights when it sucks to be me. I am, however, trying to make the best of it.

Lonely on the Great Lakes

The deal-breaker

It came out of the blue during one night’s conversation. I’d already been told to “shut up” in so many words because Professor B had a point to make. I didn’t make a sound as she went on and on for ten straight minutes. Being the daughter of an educator, I know the syndrome: Prof. B was in “lecture mode.” It is annoying as hell as well as presumptuous. However, I allowed her to go on because I knew that I’d tell her how little I appreciated it once she figured out how pissed off I was. How I wish it had stopped there, but no, she had to do the nearly unforgivable: She referred to a profoundly developmentally disabled child as an “it.” A few sentences later, she used the phrase “these people” in reference to the same group. I suppose I should be glad that she did count those with developmental disabilities as people on some level the second time because they were not people at all in the first reference. She said that she was on her way to bed when I’d called and I suggested that she continue on her way as I quickly hung up the phone.

After I’d gotten rid of her without completely going apeshit on her, I fumed. There were so many reasons for me to be angry that I am too tired to recount them all. Suffice it to say that I’ve known and seen too many people who treat those with disabilities–be they physical, emotional, mental or developmental–as less than human that I left “outraged” about two train stops ago and have ridden into “thermonuclear.” I have a serious congenital defect. My mother was told to let me die just after I was born. She didn’t. When I didn’t die fast enough, the doctors suggested that she institutionalize me. She didn’t. A lot of other children with my condition were not so lucky. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my brain. There is something wrong with my musculoskeletal system. So, because of that, according to too many doctors, I should have been in an institution. That was the topic of the monologue Prof. B was having with herself. She was remembering what it was like to work with what used to be called “mentally retarded” children. Obviously, there are different levels of “mental retardation.” She was specifically speaking about those who were severely and profoundly disabled. She would have been the kind of person who’d be responsible for raising me if I’d been placed in an institution. Thank you, MOM!!

When I finally got around to making a serious phone call to her to talk about what happened some 48 hour earlier, we got into a yelling match. She couldn’t understand why I’d be upset. In her mind, it was perfectly reasonable to call a developmentally disabled child an “it.” The child’s parents called him/her an “it.” There have been very few times when I’ve wanted to reach through the phone and strangle someone for whom I had feelings. This was one such time. She told me that I shouldn’t take what she said personally and tried to quote some goddamn male pseudo-philosopher on the meaning of being a human being. I could care less what that son of a gun had to say because he had and never would carry life inside of him. Therefore, his feelings on the subject mean less than a damn to me. Then, Prof. B asked if I was pro-choice. Wrong question!! I spat out the difference between talking about a few cells that had divided and a fully-fledged and born HUMAN BEING. The argument went downhill from there.

A bouquet of yellow flowers

Prof. B said that she thought I’d never speak to her again. Well, I won’t say “never” only because I know how we women are–at least the lesbians and bi-femmes among us. We tend to become friends after being love interests and cross the line from one to the other without even thinking about it at times. We either have the nastiest break-ups anyone has ever seen or the ones where there is still love, but the realization that we’re not good together . . . only to go sleep together again and again and again ad infinitum until someone says, “Hold it!” By the time that happens, both have half their wardrobes at the other’s abode or they’ve already moved in again. Women are complex creatures, to be sure. That’s why I love us.

It is quite probable that I will speak with Prof. B again. In fact, *sigh* I have to communicate with her in some way because she sent the most beautiful bouquet of yellow flowers I’ve ever seen. It has yellow daisies and the most exquisite yellow roses in a nice, heavy vase. I’m not a heathen. I will send a handwritten note or I will call. That is, assuming I still have her address in my GPS system. I saw the flowers as I was leaving the house to head to the gym Friday and figured out who they were from. They were better off in the slightly-above-freezing sleet than in a warm minivan, so I didn’t pick them up until I returned a few hours later. I had a lot to clear from my mind as I worked out. I didn’t need to have that clear mind punctured with holes upon entering the van. Right now, they are sitting on my piano where they look happy.

I am going to miss Prof. B. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that I would have gone absolutely ballistic had it been someone I liked even a smidgen less than I liked her who dared to call a child an “it.” The rage I feel at the suggestion that there is some justification for doing so is more than I can describe. There is no justification. Period. End of story. How dare someone, especially a woman, say otherwise! And did I mention that she can’t get why I don’t want to have my reproductive organs removed? Her answer was, “I did it!” “Yeah, and look at you now,” would have been my answer had I been being a human bitch. All in all, I think this end was going to happen one way or the other. Not in my wildest dreams did I think it would be about this. The subject wasn’t even on my radar until she brought it up. I don’t even remember the context of how it came up, only that it did. Damn shame. Damn shame.

Oh well, time to sleep. I’ve got a lot of things that need to be done later in the day, including attempting my first photo shoot for the fetish site I wrote of in “Help with a decision.”

She did it

Because I’m a decent person, I sent Glenn a letter and a copy of my last post here since it has his name in it for the first time. I also summarized everything I’ve felt and written in the last months about him, including my contempt and the fact that he could have had what he wanted–a promise not to sleep with women–had he chosen to commit. The thing is, he is the only person who could have done so. I would have told anyone else, and did tell anyone else, that I’d give up men before I gave up sleeping with women. All he had to do is say that the craziness of long absences where he seemed to think I should have been sitting around waiting for him were ridiculous and finding a way to be together if only a few times a year as we’d done before would continue OR, better yet, stop lying to everyone, especially himself, about what I meant to him. He had a hard time giving me up. I know it. He knows it. He just couldn’t give up the money, the arm-candy, the able-bodied mate. It is that mate who I now believe was at the keyboard when the words “It was a joke” came across my screen and sent me to the nadir of hell. I remember running to the phone to dial his number to tell him his wife was online telling me that she was him and that it was all a joke. They killed the person he knew as me. What’s left is someone else. It sucks that this other person I became still has the unrelenting pain hiding behind a door clad in black that would be capable of forcing me to destroy myself if I allowed it. I won’t allow it. I won’t allow THEM. Not again. Never again.

So I sent him this letter that tells him of the recent post and summarize the last several posts and letters I’ve written because I had to assume he didn’t get them for a variety of reasons. I send it, take the girls out, try to figure out how in the hell I’m going to keep Prof. B. because I do think she’s going to be an integral part of my future one way or another, and it hits me: That thing he married–the mean girl with the sceptic cunt–did this. I want her to suffer like she has never suffered before. I want HIM to suffer as well because he allowed this in exchange for keeping the money, arm-candy and able-bodied mate. He knew what would happen more or less. Still, he has allowed this to go on for 10 very long, painful years without any apology or acknowledgement of what they did. Everything finally made perfect sense. I’d dismissed this possibility whenever I thought about the possibility that it was that thing he married typing in her husband’s name.

Look we were all adults now. She knew about me before I reached the age of majority. Maybe she felt threatened. I wish I could say there was a reason for her to feel that way, but I can’t. At least I can’t with even 80% certainty. She bought herself a husband. That’s not to say he didn’t love her because I am very sure he did and does. I am equally sure that he loves his family. Even so, I know him. There are a lot of days he has regrets. What I regret is that he has no fucking balls. He allowed this to happen. My suicide was totally and completely foreseeable. They turned me inside out and shredded me. It has taken me a decade to be able to truly love anyone else again and I’m still not sure I can give my whole heart. I am very sure I can’t give my entire heart and self to a man. Yet, there is a part of me that still loves him. I don’t know who is sicker, Glenn or me. I’m very sure that the thing he married is sicker than either of us. The very last thing in the world she should be doing is taking patients’ lives in her hands. She chose a specialty that doesn’t require much contact with patients while they are conscious. That is so like her. I knew she would emasculate him and she did. I was collateral damage. And Glenn let it happen. That’s all that counts. Bâtard!!

I feel sick.

This is all Glenn’s fault!!

The scars of your love remind me of us
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless
I can’t help feeling
We could have had it all

That’s me speaking to Glenn. OK, forget about the rest of Rolling In The Deep for the moment and just focus on those words taken somewhat out of context–but just a little. That was definitely Glenn and me. If nothing else I ever write or have written thus far is worth believing, believe me when I write this: The memories of him do leave me absolutely breathless. For the longest time, I thought that he would be the only person I’d ever feel that way about. I was with someone else for three years during the first years of his marriage. After all, he’d chosen and there was nothing I could do about it as much as it damn near killed me to continue to draw each breath afterwards. That man, I’ll call him “Gregory,” was my first Master and I loved him in ways Glenn didn’t need and kept closed to me. The difference is that I knew that I’d never spend the rest of my life with Gregory. So, although I had feelings that were nearly equal to those I had for Glenn, they fell short. Still, Gregory was probably the person in the number two spot on my list of “Loves of My Life.”

Now, there’s someone else I’ll call “Professor B.” I am head over heels in love with her mind and her heart. I don’t give a damn about her body, but her body is a real factor. It’s a miracle that we found each other to begin with. It’s an even greater miracle that she, a woman who takes love and all forms of sex far more seriously than I do, is willing to wait for me to figure out: 1) If I can promise to never sleep with another person, especially another man, and; 2) Out and out told me to go to a woman with whom I was very much in love once, and talk to her about why and how lesbians of their age tend to turn off their sexuality or take sex very seriously. That takes guts! I should say that she, feels about me the way I feel about her. There is so much to say that I should start from the beginning.

First, know that I’m typing this through curtains of intermittent tears. I’ve been confused about relationships before. This is not new. What is new is that I’ve been caught in this fucking lesbian disdain for women who sleep with men! It’s not like I sleep with men in general. I don’t. There is only one that I know of at this moment I would even consider sleeping with and he’d have to work like a motherfucker to get me to let him back into my pants and actively into my heart. We all know who that man is so I won’t bother with naming him . . . again. I can wrap my mind around making that commitment if it weren’t for Prof. B’s disabilities. Neither of us is sure she can have sex now. I am going to GUESS that if her doctors say that she can, they will also say that she will have to take it easy. That is going to be a problem.

You see, for me at least, there are different kinds of sex. Each kind has its own rewards. I have made love so achingly slow and carefully that, for me, orgasm was not going to happen and I was perfectly fine with that. The only thing I cared about was that my partner reach a pinnacle he’d never forget–or, that she would never forget. I have had sex to satisfy a craving and that meant absolutely nothing afterwards. I have been fucked royally to the point I can’t forget it if for no other reason than its raw physicality and I don’t want to. Furthermore, I want to have that experience several dozen more times in my life. Fucking can happen with a stranger or it can happen with someone you’d die for. I’m coming to realize in this moment that I would probably die for Glenn, even now. Then, there is this great woman I’m falling for and who is falling for me that I’m going to have to promise to give away part of who I am if I expect to keep her. I am so absolutely torn I’m almost incapable of forming a coherent sentence.

There are some people who’d say that I was very lucky to have loved two very different men and one woman, going on two. This is true. However, it should be noted that I am not with them now, except for the one that is current. Of the three people, only two were viable in the sense that a very long-term relationship was possible. Gregory was, I do believe, a love/sex addict. In the end, we wore each other out emotionally. Anytime ALL of a Master’s slaves get together and say that he’s in trouble, he’s in trouble. He wasn’t happy with any of us afterwards, but that’s neither here nor there. I know that I stayed with him and tried to help him, terrified half the time that I would lose him. He kept the woman I loved dearly (I’ll call her “Khat”) and, although he consistently failed to acknowledge it, was really his primary partner. There is so much pain there still that I’m going to move off of him as a subject. Suffice it to say that Glenn and Khat were the only viable relationships. Although memories of Glenn turn up in odd places, he is effectively gone from my life and has been for many years. The same is true of Khat.

The title of this post was half in jest. The other, non-humorous part, is true. I don’t think I’d use the word “fault,” but he showed me how all forms of sex, but especially the combination of fucking and making love, can have a power that is absolutely indescribably, utterly, wonderful. I want that again and Prof. B cannot give it to me. I’m not sure it’s even in her to give it to me regardless of her disability. She’s more of the slow, aching kind of sex. That is going to leave me very frustrated and ultimately unhappy. I know that I absolutely must have the raw, physical kind of sex from time to time to keep me happy. She’s said that if I or anyone she’s with has an itch that just has to be scratched, she didn’t want to know about it. I can deal with that. However, when I pushed the issue tonight, she told me that she wants total monogamy even if I end up moving out of the state. I don’t think I can promise that to anyone. That’s not to say that I’d fall in love with someone else because I am damn hard to satisfy intellectually and keen intellect is a deal breaker. Therefore, I’d say that falling in love with someone else is remote. That notwithstanding, wanting to jump someone else’s bones, or vice versa, is inevitable in that circumstance. For that matter, it’s inevitable in the circumstance I’m trying so hard to get my mind around.

It has occurred to me that maybe I’m just not ready to give Glenn up. That is to say, to put him in the proper perspective of someone I loved more than I loved life itself and would have laid my life down for if need be. Notice how that’s all in the past tense. I think there’s some small part of me that knows he did what he did to me for a real reason and has a damn good idea of what that reason is. Yes, what he did was unforgivable. However, I just know/knew him too well to accept that he’d be vindictively cruel to someone who’d been his lover for 17 years. Add to that the knowledge that he knew I’d tried quite hard to kill myself due to his words and actions and I still can’t see it. I know that he’s a coward in some respects and to be pitied in others. He’s both in this one, for sure. I deserved better and I deserve better. I deserve, if anything from him, that he be a grown ass MAN and not some cowering manchild afraid of wifey and me! I don’t know if or when he will do it. I do know that I can’t put my life on hold waiting. Nevertheless, can I promise someone else that I will forsake all others, blah, blah, blah when I’m pretty sure that she cannot give me what I need sexually? We won’t even talk about our different needs where people are concerned! And, she says there’s a large class difference that I don’t see. I just see two people with different, though not incompatible, life experiences. I don’t care that she’s the first in her family to go to college or be ABD. Why should I? Yeah, there would be some things that she couldn’t relate to in my long-ago past, but I don’t even relate to them now!

Prof. B and I talked off and on all day today from the time I woke up this afternoon until I went to bed very early. I was busy going about my errands and so forth, but she was on the other end of the line. It’s a good thing she’s on leave or I can imagine a whole lot of things wouldn’t have gotten done on her end. It took a very long time for me to know through experience that I belonged with women. Glenn had gone and Gregory and I were temporarily off for the zillionth time. I was actually with someone else who I inadvertently pissed off that weekend, but he should have said something. *sigh* My point is that I’d known since I was four years old that I liked females be they girls, young women or women. That didn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t like men. Glenn was my first whole-hearted love and that’s something he can’t take from me, nor can anyone else. He married his first whole-hearted love. I should be happy for him and, on some level I am. That doesn’t mean that I don’t know I had a right to expect more from him, especially since we both knew that he wasn’t wild about the idea of giving me up completely. Had he been honest with himself, with me, with his wife, we’d have had different lives. Mine, for sure, would have been better. Then again, he would have done what Prof. B is doing: He could not deal with me being with another woman and loving it.

Whatever I do, I can’t win unless I choose. I can’t choose. Not now.