Sigh

As I’ve written, I am looking for a former lover/FwB, Morgan, I knew my last year or so in undergrad. I’ve asked two sources, only one has gotten back to me, a longtime friend, and he didn’t remember him, but did remember the first name. I can understand why, actually. It wasn’t my longtime friend’s job. He booked, we had a stage crew chief and I directed publicity. However, since I know when and where I first seduced Morgan, and since it was our favorite watering hole, I’m almost surprised he didn’t have a face to go with the name. But, boys will be boys and my longtime friend is definitely a straight male. I haven’t heard anything from my second source as yet, but I kind of thought he may not check his e-mail regularly based on what my former besty wrote back. I really miss her. It’s a damn shame she’s married to an ass.

I have been very dissociative since July 4, especially today. I had to go to the main post office to mail off the final known insurance and benefits forms and almost rear-ended a car in the lane ahead that had stopped to make a left turn. Thankfully, I have quick reflexes when I think about my insurance rate getting higher. I just barely missed him by turning into an adjacent lane. If I was six inches from the rear bumper of the other car, I would be surprised. It’s one thing to dissociate at home and quite another to do so while driving. If I tell my therapist how bad things have gotten, she’ll probably insist that I see someone who specializes in dissociative disorders. As long as things were at least somewhat under control and didn’t interfere with therapy or daily life on a consistent basis, she could deal. I don’t remember ever having this kind of dissociation while out in the world. I’ve had other kinds, but in their own way, they were better.

In trying to find a reasonably thorough explanation for the condition, I ran into one that said dissociation is a risk factor for PTSD. Nooo! Ya think? Thankfully, I haven’t had any flashbacks and the memories I’m getting are, for the most part, either benign or pleasant. That is, they are where Morgan is concerned. The most present memory of Glenn, I truly hate to say, was the last time he actually communicated with me. Believe me, it was anything but pleasant. Then, he cut me off with no explanation, apology or anything. I was devastated for weeks. It got so bad that I attempted suicide and almost made it. There are days when I wish I had. Today isn’t one of those days, though. Today, I just want Morgan to be OK and I want me to be OK as well. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask, but I guess it is, at least for now.

Robin Thicke shares love and sensuality on his Sex Therapy CD

There are other, happier memories with Glenn too. They give me good flashbacks that are more visceral body memories than visual. Let’s just say that I can’t listen to Robin Thicke’s Sex Therapy CD at all anymore.

In re-reading the above paragraph, I am just sad. His non-responsiveness is why I had to ask myself if he was a narcissist. Narcissists love hurting people and watching the fall out. I don’t think he is, but there is that possibility. I am hoping my mom was more on the money when she said that I represented a threat to his marriage. Otherwise, I just have to lay this down to simple cruelty. I don’t want to do that. That would hurt even more than I’m hurting now. If my longtime friend can interrupt his working vacation with his wife and stepson to play phone tag with me and temperamental cell coverage, then Glenn can pick up the fucking phone or type. I guess 17 years doesn’t count for much. Yeah, there’s something that I’m missing and I think I know what it is. He can be cruel, but not this time, although that is the unintended consequence. I’m going to look at that in my next post.

On another front, I got to hear Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band’s three-hour concert from the Prudential Center in Newark taped in early May. It was great! The only song I missed was Thunder Road. I’m going to guess he played it within the first 20 minutes or so because it wasn’t there for the close. Between the van and my iPhone, I got to hear LOTS of Bruce and that made me happy.

Bruce warms the thrilled audience for then-presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama

I saw him in person performing an acoustic set when Obama made his last campaign appearance here in 2008. Alas, the view was horrible because it was raining lightly and I was slightly behind and on the side of the podium because that’s the space that was set aside for disabled people. I think I’ll have a word about that when I get back in touch with the campaign. I took photos, but I can barely see him. I had a great view of his younger kids who traveled with him on Obama’s plane. That was the second time I’d heard an acoustic version of Thunder Road. The first time I heard it was at the funeral for NBC’s Meet the Press anchor, Tim Russert, who died tragically, but quickly, while doing what he loved–working politics. I sobbed for hours because it fit so well with the very romantic story of Russert and his wife, also a journalist, but whose name I can’t remember at the moment. She works for Vanity Fair. Russert and Bruce both had an affinity for this city and Russert had more than an affinity for Bruce. He was a diehard FAN! It was only logical that Thunder Road be performed at the funeral. The acoustic version changed my entire perspective of the song, even more so the second time.

I don’t mean to write a disjointed post, but I’ve just remembered something. Yeah, the bar I hung out in with my group of friends was almost always crowded, and I could/would often find Morgan there smiling wickedly once I made my presence known. Even so, at that time, an interracial couple composed of a black woman and a white man, especially a redheaded wild man who was visibly older than his “companion,” should have been noticeable. I have to grin thinking about it. I got pretty good at pussy blocking. There were times when Morgan got a kick out of it and there were times when he left me sitting there steaming. It was probably about 60-40.

Detroit’s Bob Seeger & The Silver Bullet Band’s Greatest Hits CD is a must-have for any rock & roller.

Now that I think about it, it’s kind of funny. No, it is funny! I admit to being a bit hypocritical since I just wrote a letter to Glenn this past weekend that decried the possessiveness of straight women. Well, although I knew I was bi, I didn’t come out until I was in my late 20s, many years later. So, I guess I had reason to behave like a possessive hetero girlfriend, although we weren’t girlfriend and “boyfriend.” We were friends who very often found ourselves exchanging bodily fluids of one sort or another. Bob Seeger & The Silver Bullet Band’s We’ve Got Tonight is appropos for both Glenn and Morgan at different times. I hate to admit it, but I kind of miss those exchanges. He was definitely one of my better lovers. Halcyon days. *sigh*

I also remembered why Morgan and I didn’t make our liaisons public unless they happened in public or semi-public spaces, which was frequently where they started. There was already a really intense relationship going on between a staff person and a student that was not making things great in the organization. For that matter, it was making things difficult throughout the department. I remember sitting up with both of them at different times, drying tears, seeing that they didn’t get too drunk and just listening. I was younger than both of them. I’m sure our faculty adviser, a colonel in the Army Reserve, wanted to aim a Sherman tank at our office at times. We kept him in aspirin and Mylanta. I think it was my longtime friend who said he wasn’t having any of it, especially since our stage crew chief was in the midst of a nasty divorce. The only person who knew who was in my bed, or whose bed I was in, was the intermediary I contacted to reach the aforementioned second possible source of information regarding Morgan. At that time, about the only thing we didn’t do together was sleep with each other or anyone else.

I’ll end with Bonnie Raitt and I Can’t Make You Love Me. That song was released long after undergrad, but I’m pretty sure it was at a time Glenn and I were still seeing each other. Whenever I’ve heard it since then, he’s the one I always think of and it almost always makes me sick to my stomach. It reminds me of the day he told me he was going to marry someone else. I thought I’d die right there, but I didn’t. I cried all the way home, including the days I spent with a cousin who didn’t know what to do with me. Neither did the flight attendants. Had it not been for Jeff, someone I don’t think I’ve written about here, I doubt I would be alive. Or, if I were, I would have been self-medicating my way into an overdose or cirrhosis of the liver or both. As much as I loved Jeff, and I did, I’ve never loved anyone like I love Glenn and doubt I will. I’ll have some sort of relationship with someone, I guess. However, emotional intimacy? I can’t see it.

Tears On My Tuxedo

By the time I finish writing this post, it will officially be my birthday. I was born at 6 a.m. on March 16. I was never looking forward to this one. It’s one of those “milestone” birthdays that basically says, “Yay! I’ve raised a family, my kids are all (or almost) gone, the husband/wife/partner and I can just kick it!” If only that were true for me. I am single and have been for far too long. I’m not really all that upset about it, but it would feel so good to lay wrapped in someone’s arms right now as I try to make sense of a new life.

My mother died February 27, 2012. We lived together and helped each other since I have disabilities and she was getting older. Then, one day, she collapsed on my bed and was gone. Oh, she stayed conscious long enough to reach the hospital, but crashed three times shortly thereafter, with the doctors and nurses bringing her back twice. Had I gone with her in the ambulance, I would possibly have had a few more minutes with her. However,  I was in a vehicle that had to obey all the traffic rules and in my heart, I knew she’d either be gone by the time I got there or shortly thereafter. It was the latter. I’ve known since the beginning of the year that some catastrophe was going to happen to her and I’d lose her. I just didn’t think it would be this early in the year. I thought I’d have more time to say those things we needed to say to each other. I, especially, needed to tell her something so that she could rest in peace. Hence, this birthday and all those to come, will carry with them a sense of sorrow because I may be alive but my mother isn’t.

I have this “thing” where I try to dress better when I feel like shit. Today was one of those days. I wasn’t in my usual jeans and polo, but jeans and sky blue twin set with a little lipstick. I had a horrid day that saw me begin with one bank my mother used telling me that I can’t have access to my mother’s records without a court order even though I’m the executrix of her estate as well as the sole beneficiary. I had my lawyer offer help while the other just did not get it. This was my mother and some dick of a branch manager was working under an incorrect interpretation of the law. I don’t even want whatever money might be in the account. I need to find out who she was paying so that I can begin to fight an insurance company that doesn’t want to pay, telling me that the policy lapsed three years ago. Knowing my mother, that didn’t happen. Now, the only thing left to do is go through her check copies which will probably tell me less than nothing because I’m fairly sure this was a direct withdrawal from her retirement payments.

I wrote that I really don’t mind being single. Actually, I do. My problem is that there was/is only one man I could consider spending my life with and we were over a very long time ago. I haven’t met the right woman yet and I have this penchant for younger men. Let’s face it: men in my age group are prone to erectile dysfunction and rely on those little blue pills or something similar. I don’t need or want that. “What does that have to do with that Robin Thicke image just above?” you ask. It’s simple and complicated. In essence, I’d fuck Robin Thicke in a heartbeat if given the opportunity and permission from his wife. More germane to this post, there’s something about his music that makes me feel really sexy and totally wanton. (There’s also a song on the CD called “Tears On My Tuxedo.”) It’s a feeling I love, but there’s no one to satisfy the hunger. Yes, “hunger.” I am so used to suppressing my sexuality because I could do nothing about it. I still can’t, but for different reasons. I was suppressing it because I was too ill to acquire a lover. I had nothing to offer. Now, I may have my disabilities, and there’s one very pesky problem I’m dealing with, but I’m pretty much as well as I’ve been in a decade. It’s OK to feel sexy, sensuous and ravenous. To put it plainly: I need to get my freak on. Sometimes I want a man and sometimes I want a woman. However, the word “bisexual” doesn’t really apply. The energy has to be right for me to pay attention to a man OR I have to be horny as all hell and not care who slays that beast.

My sexuality totally confuses most people. I avoid putting a label on it because that confuses the issue even more. Men, as lovers, can be good. Men as partners are just not going to do it for me. I’m working on someone male right now. I don’t know if it will go anywhere, but he reminds me of someone I once had as a lover ages ago. His hair is a darker red, but when I see that curly red mop, I smile. I saw him Thursday for a few. He was as sick as the proverbial dog. I’m trying to figure out if bringing him a fifth of bourbon tomorrow for a hot toddy would be too much. There’s a part of me that thinks it would seem as though I’m trying too hard. There’s the nurturing part of me that says he needs it.

The new reality of my life is that I can have a lover in my home now. I couldn’t before. That, too, was an impediment. Unfortunately, that son of a bastard child at the bank is making it impossible to determine whether the house is automatically paid off when I tell whatever insurance company holds the policy that my mother is deceased. (God, I still can’t wrap my brain around that.)  Nevertheless, the reality is that I can have whoever I want in this house wherever I want them. I have two drawers full of fabulous underwear to perk me up, a closet and other drawers with clothing that makes me look better than I feel and I can paste a smile on my face to show the rest of the world I’m good until I actually feel it. And yet, the tears fall.

Crushed!

Something odd is happening with me that is at once disconcerting and exciting. For the first time in a very long time, I feel a deep desire to share a romantic and sexual relationship with someone(s). There are several reasons these feelings are unfamiliar to me. The primary reason is that I’ve had to suppress them to concentrate on my health. It was not always so, but has been the case for nearly seven years now. I’ve made half-hearted attempts, but I always felt that there was something missing within me that kept me from getting serious about anyone or even finding a suitable person about whom I could get serious.

Another reason I find this reawakening of my romantic self odd is that, for the first time, I am making a conscious decision about what character traits I want my partner(s) to have. I don’t know if straight males ever sit and consider exactly what kind of mate they want, but girls usually do this in their teens. Being a teenager is, for me, a distant memory that involved so much emotional chaos that I wasn’t able to think about such things. In fact, I didn’t know that I even had a right to my own desires and needs, much less the right to actually have them met. That is what was missing in my earlier half-hearted attempts at companionship over the last seven years: a feeling that I deserved to have needs and desires; have those needs and desires met, and; most importantly, be treated with respect.

If anyone had asked me if I believed I was deserving, I would have answered affirmatively because I didn’t acknowledge to anyone, including myself, the extent of my low self-esteem. I had to learn to like myself, love myself and respect myself because no one ever taught me. For a girl, especially a disabled girl, that’s a set-up for disaster. We all know that disabled females are far more likely to be sexually assaulted than our able-bodied counterparts because we are more vulnerable. If we are not taught that we have a right to object, we can be utterly destroyed psychologically and not get the help needed to recover. Unfortunately, too many parents of disabled girls don’t consider the danger in which they place their daughters by not teaching us we deserve to have romantic and sexual needs and that we have an absolute right to decide who touches us. These are things I work on every day in some manner.

Trying to explain my sexual orientation to most people is a lesson in frustration for me. Most people view orientation as binary: heterosexual and homosexual. A few enlightened people understand that there is a great deal in between the two extremes. If I am particularly lucky, they understand that there is often some fluidity within that spectrum. I went from pretending to be straight to coming out as bisexual to coming out as lesbian to, only recently, carefully acknowledging that, every once in a while, I might find a male pleasurable.

Singer/songwriter/producer Robin Thicke shares love and sensuality

I usually describe myself as “mostly-lesbian” because, in a nutshell, that about covers it. I identify as lesbian in my heart and soul and, frankly, that’s all that really matters. Someone else’s perception of me has far more to do with them than it does with me.

Keeping my self-described orientation in mind, I am in the midst of a mad boy-crush on singer/songwriter/producer Robin Thicke right now. I discovered him fairly late on, of all things, the soap opera General Hospital. The executive producer of the ABC flagship soap began her career as the show’s music director many years ago and, consequently, consistently makes exceptional use of music. In this instance, it was Thicke’s delicate ballad “Angels” from The Evolution of Robin Thicke CD that was used for the reunion of über couple Luke and Laura after nearly a decade of separation. Evolution also included the mega-hit “Lost Without U,” a song I strongly suspect he’ll be performing when he’s 90 years old. That CD was followed by Something Else, which also did well, and; now, we have the red hot CD Sex Therapy. In between his own work, he’s produced for Lil Wayne and others, winning a couple of Grammys along the way.

Thicke is married to his childhood sweetheart, actress Paula Patton who graces the cover of the May 2010 issue of Ebony magazine while about seven or eight months pregnant with their first child. I can honestly say that I have never seen a more beautiful woman. Some may remember the Vanity Fair cover with a very pregnant and very nude Demi Moore many years ago. Uh uh. Demi’s star pales in comparison not only to the cover shot in which Patton is fully and beautifully clothed, but the inside two-page spread that shows a very suggestively comfortable and nearly-semi-nude Patton that will take the readers’ breath away in its artistically exquisite daring.

Actress Paula Patton as the sexy madonna

My only criticism of the article is that, while dense, it is too short. Someone with her intelligence has a whole lot more to say that’s worth quoting than the, perhaps, 1200 words used for the article–and I’m probably being generous in the word count. There is also a Q&A with hubby Robin that is equally far too short. However, an argument can be made that the article is about Paula and not Robin. The “problem” is that it ends just as he begins to speak in-depth about his thoughts on becoming a father for the first time. Personally, I would very much like to know his thoughts on raising a child that may look more black than white. I should mention that Paula is biracial, so this is not completely unexplored territory for her.

My crush on Thicke isn’t based on looks, though he’s got an adorable baby face. It is based on the emotional and spiritual content of his music. He admits to writing extensively about his own life, both ups and downs. One thing that is abundantly clear from his three latest endeavors is that he utterly and completely adores his wife. Now that is something I find super sexy and something I want for myself. Thicke’s unabashed sensuality, romanticism, respect and love of his partner are traits I want in my own partner. Add to that the fact that he’s very much aware of the emotional, spiritual and intellectual consequences and complexities of racism in the U.S., which indicates he’s got a brain that functions in a way that is all too rare, and there is about 95% of the reasoning behind my hard crush. Brains coupled with sensitivity are the ultimate aphrodisiac!

Did I mention that Sex Therapy is smokin’ hot? There are going to be a whole lot of babies conceived to that CD. Be that as it may, my specific attraction to it and the principal songwriter who wrote it is that it fits my sexual proclivities, be they with men or a women. It may be difficult to believe, but I was talking to one of my priests about my re-awakened sexual self yesterday afternoon in great detail. One of the things I said was that I was very sexually active and adventurous from my late teens until my early- to mid-30s. As a result, sex doesn’t hold any great mystery for me. I know what I like, what I don’t like, what I might be willing to try, what I need and how to be careful. I have zero interest in fucking the first Johnny or Mary who comes along even if they come along at a certain time of the month and I’m as horny as a rabbit in heat. What I want is a connection. Here is where things get tricky.

I am not looking for a man with whom to settle down. I am open to finding someone I genuinely like, and who genuinely likes me, who will share with me those times when only a flesh-and-blood man will do. It would definitely help if he’s a Dominant male, but that’s another post. After that itch is scratched, I’d like him to back off until one of us needs that physical intimacy again and be a real and true friend in the interim. In short, I am open to having a boy toy. It is very unlikely that I’d see myself making a life with this guy or asking for a monogamous relationship. I remain a lesbian in spite of that occasional craving and strict monogamy would not fulfill my needs sexually or emotionally regardless of the sex of my partner.

I’ve written about the extraordinary metamorphosis I am experiencing, but only in part. To write of it fully, even to the limits of my partial understanding, would be to serve a rich dessert during every course of a five-course meal. Digesting it all would be difficult, if not impossible. It would also require a great deal of intellectual exercise for me to continue at this moment. It is enough that I have simply begun.