“Who
am I, what and why?
'Cause
all I have left is my memories of yesterday.
Oh,
these sour times” - Portishead
“He
was weak and worn out with crying and this perhaps made him feel
gentle. He put out his hand a little toward Mary, and I am glad to
say...she was softened too and met him half-way with her hand” -
Francis Hodgson Burnett
I
suppose there have been a few incidents that have changed how my life
was going pretty significantly. This would be one. The time I lost
my virginity. Can I call it that? Lost? Not really. I put it in a
cardboard box at the end of the driveway with a shakily drawn sign
that said "Please Take"
and embellished with a
childlike smiley face for encouragement. I would have paid
someone to take it away.
I
was in a daily program at the hospital for people with depression,
anxiety, and whatnot. This was in 1995. I had been extremely
suicidal about the fact that no woman wanted me – had never wanted
me – and I was despairing of understanding what they all seemed to
see that was so bad about me. I thought I was a kind, interesting,
and intelligent man (boy, really), who worked hard, and wanted to
love deeply. I had tried to get help from the trauma of growing up,
but the mental health system is terrible, especially for trauma,
especially for the hard stuff from childhood, and I had all but given
up on that. I had just battled through three years of extreme social
phobia, which developed after the years of crushing rejection from a
woman I loved through high school, and was still slowly plugging
along with graduated exposure, trying to get to a functional place.
A
couple of months earlier, a friend had asked his girlfriend to talk
to me, since he knew I had such a problem with women and feeling so
completely unloved. She and I sat in the grass on the river bank,
and I cried and told her about how much I wanted someone to love, to
touch me, to want to marry me, and I had never even been kissed. She
hugged me at one point, sort of held me, really. That was one of the
first hugs I had ever gotten, and I briefly fell madly in love with
her, almost losing both her and my friend from my life. I was later
the best man at their wedding, and we were close friends for another
dozen years. I still know him a bit, but not her.
Anyhow,
the rejection from her sent me further into a tailspin, and led to
several suicide attempts, and the discovery of cutting. The first
time I cut, I was intending to just cut my arm up so badly I bled to
death, but the first cut was extremely deep, and the severity of it,
and the vividness of the blood, just immediately relaxed my mind.
I
was a wreck, and found myself in that daily group therapy program.
Immediately, I was fairly open in group, and told everyone how I was
a virgin, no woman wanted me, and I was so lonely etc. There were
four women in the group whom I found attractive. L., M., A., and P..
I remained good friends with P. for seventeen years.
I'm
pretty sure all of the four women had some childhood sexual abuse
they were dealing with, and I know for certain two had. They all had
histories of rape. I think I seemed safe to them, and there may even
have been an element of reclaiming innocence by “having” me,
since I was so (involuntarily) chaste, and was quite frightened and
timid. For how experienced they all were, my naivete and guileless
openness must have seemed harmless or refreshing. Who
knows, maybe I was finally a guy who didn't scare them.
So,
I started to see them outside of group. Coffee, movies, that sort of
thing. L. only came along a couple of times. Once, we sat around in
my apartment, they smoking pot, listening to music, and all of us
taking turns squirting massive amounts of Orajel
into our mouths and reciting song lyrics and movie quotes to
the
gales of laughter of the others.
It all felt very out of control to me. They all bugged me that I
reminded them of Grover
from Sesame Street and
found it overwhelmingly funny how clearly I enunciated my words. I
hadn't been told that before, and it just occurred to me as I write
this now, maybe I was keeping such
control so I wouldn't betray
the terror and panic my body was circling. I was starting to feel
like a man, but I realized how out of my depth I was socially. I had
no idea how people behaved in these sorts of situations. How could I
show them I was interested? How could I show
them me
and have them interested, when no one had been interested before?
It was a bit Girl,
Interrupted and I was allowed to
tag along.
“...that in the garden there was...nothing which did not
understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them - the
immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty...”
M.
invited me to her family supper one night. I knew from group that
her father molested her as a girl, and that was obviously a large
reason she had problems. It was a very unusual night. Even before
supper was served, I thought it all reminded me of Eraserhead.
Just this inhuman,
dysfunctional, bizarre other-ness
to her family. Her Mom was a hyper-enthusiastic and cheerful
fifties-style housewife. When I think “enabler”
to this day, she comes to mind. Her brother was sullen and angry and
wouldn't respond to anything unless absolutely forced to, and then
would fly off the handle in his response with vitriol
and very personal attacks.
He never talked to M. the entire evening. M.
was very nervous and moved in a very clunky and graceless fashion. I
was excited, though, and didn't hold her family against her. How
could I, they were kinder people than my family? I
wish they had put on some Angelo Badalamenti
music, though,
blaring at maximum volume, just to round out the experience, but
alas!
The
Dad was drunk, or getting there, red-faced and overly-loud. He was
behaving like he was trying to impress me, and demanding my attention
like a four year old at a party. He
touched everybody, and had no boundaries. He
massaged the shoulders of everyone present. He
stopped the meal at one point to demonstrate his pig impression. He
got on all fours and did a passable impression of a pig squealing, as
the rest of the family laughed and clapped. I
am thankful I caught no echoes of Deliverance
in his performance.
I think he shook my hand twenty
times that night ... a nice, firm handshake, of course. There
were several racist jokes.
And
the meal. My god. Eraserhead.
We actually had Cornish game hens. I'm
not kidding. “Can you hear the screaming of the
lambs, Clarice?” No, but I
can still hear
the fucking baby from Eraserhead.
When
I went to leave, the Mom filled several bags with canned food from
their cupboards for me to take home, and when my arms were full,
stuck her fingers in my mouth and pried my jaw open. She examined my
teeth approvingly for several seconds, and gave me her official seal
of approval (she actually said that) due to the straightness of my
teeth. If I had known
Roxy Music's “In Every Dream Home, a Heartache”
at the time,
it
would have been in my head.
I can't even say that was the weirdest “meet the
parents” evening
I've ever had.
So,
one night I got a call from M., “Would you like to
come over? A. and P. are here too and we're
drinking. It's a party” I heard my name yelled
from one of the others. I bought a six pack of beer. I barely drank
then. My hands were shaking quite a bit, so I drank two at home to
work up the courage to actually go and be around them and have them
see me. I had heard laughing over the phone and was pretty scared.
But by God, I was going! They were Girls! And they liked me!
When
I got there, music was blasting, and I was awkward and beet red, as
they laughed and joked and danced around. I was like a deer in
headlights. I suspect my face was a horrific melange of ecstasy,
terror, and blank dumbness. All three kept on telling me to drink
more, and to party!!!!!
but I was pretty scared. I was sipping, and was tipsy enough by the
time I had drank two or
three more
of
my beers..
All
three were dancing sexily in front of me, asses wiggling, hands
reaching inside their panties, that sort of thing. Stroking and
groping each other, and kissing each other
aggressively. This
was shit I had been dreaming of every night for the last decade. I
was a whole herd of deer in headlights. I was a madly gleeful
prisoner under the interrogation
lamp, eager
to give it all up.
Words
were a distant memory, and I was just a swirling hurricane of desire
and arousal, terror and self-loathing, hope and the certainty of
despair. A.
in particular amazed me. I was watching her the most, but the other
two kept demanding my attention. I was attracted to them as well, so
I wasn't too difficult to direct.
“And it was like that with Colin when he first saw and heard and
felt the Springtime inside the four high walls of a hidden garden.
That afternoon the whole world seemed to devote itself to being
perfect and radiantly beautiful and kind to one boy. Perhaps out of
pure heavenly goodness the spring came and crowned everything it
possibly could into that one place.”
“Sour
Times”
by Portishead came on. As I sat rigidly on the couch, frozen, all
three began to
amp
it up even more, pushing their breasts into me,
or gyrating
their asses inches from my face, straddling
me.
They all were laughing with pleasure at my nervousness. I
thought I was smiling, like
a stone, but
I suspect
“rictus”
would have likely been a better word. It
took me that long to realize they were actually attracted to me.
This
had never happened before, so I still wasn't sure.
“Nobody loves me, it's
true, not
like you do...”
Was this love in front of me. It
certainly felt like it in my heart. I wanted to fuck them all, yes,
and touch and kiss and
explore every inch of their bodies, but
my heart was just exploding with warm tenderness, too.
Wanting to cuddle them, please them, do everything in my power to
make them happy, delight
them. I wanted them all utterly. And to learn all that they were.
To see them utterly open
and be utterly open with them, too.
But I was so scared, too,
this
wasn't what I wanted. I wanted this to happen without being
terrified. I was mentally practising saying “I'm
not ready for this yet”
if anything happened. It had never happened before, although I
wanted it so desperately, so most of me thought I was just deluding
myself and they would never
want me that way. But the
mental rehearsals continued.
God, I wanted any of them, all of them, so badly, but I wasn't ready.
“There is Magic in there - good Magic, you know, Mary. I am sure
there is."
"So am I," said Mary.
"Even if it isn't real Magic," Colin said, "we can
pretend it is. Something is there – something!"
"It's Magic," said Mary, "but not black. It's as
white as snow."
I got up and went to the bathroom.
I was planning
to announce I was going home when I got out, but who knows if I would
have. Maybe not. Considering how it went anyways, I never would
have made it home.
The door opened and M. came in and
pushed me against the wall. She kissed me and stuck her tongue in my
mouth. That was the first time I had been kissed. It was strange
and wonderful and terrifying. It
was the best thing that had ever happened in the world but I was also
so afraid. I was shaking
pretty badly. In the years since, there have probably been a couple
of dozen women who have commented how I shake during sex, so I have
no idea where arousal starts, and nervousness ends.
I
tried to open the door a couple of times but she pushed it shut hard
with her butt and
blocked it.
I said “I'm not
ready for this.”
and she said, “I'm
not giving you a choice.”
She pushed my hands away from the door a few times and shut off the
lights so we were in blackness. There
was nothing I could do to stop her, so I went with it, and committed.
There
was quite a bit of noise from the other two and the music for a bit,
but after P. pounded on the door a couple of times, it got quiet.
She was quite aggressive, and we
kissed and groped for a while. I
still remember stroking my fingers on her bum, and the texture of the
jeans, expecting her to freak out: “You've
gone too far, mister!”
I have no idea how long, but
it must have been quite a while. I had the thought go through my
head: “I guess this is
how this happens” and
was no longer
trying to stop it. I knew I wasn't ready, but I guess that's how it
goes. I couldn't breathe very well.
Finally, she said we were going to
her room. She opened the bathroom door and pulled me along by my
belt. I felt really
submissive and docile, like
I was a prize. I still didn't really understand what was happening,
but simultaneously exactly knew.
A. was standing crying
putting on her coat, and not looking at anyone. I could tell she was
hurt and angry but didn't understand why. She never talked to anyone
there again. Her brother had driven there and was standing in the
entrance waiting for her to put on her boots and jacket. I was
completely baffled with what
was happening. P. said she couldn't go home since it was too late,
so she would sleep in M.'s parent's bed. We
must have been in the bathroom a long time, but I can't remember it
being so long, since A. had gotten upset, then called her brother,
who drove halfway across the city to get her.
M. led me up the stairs and into
her room. I had such a strange dreamy sensation at that moment. I
was in a woman's bedroom for the first time. It was almost a
religious experience. In this case, it was a strange religion,
though, since the walls were plastered with posters of George
Michael, largely without a shirt. The perfume-y smell of her room
stunned and awed
me. The piled clothes, frilly, pink, feminine! The
cute little knick-knacks that I was privileged to be allowed to see,
showing me inside a part of her mind. Allowed
to be in a place where she
was she. I was
the crippled kid,
brought
by the girl into
The Secret Garden.
Fucked if
I remember what
age I was when
that book worked
into my heart as a quite young boy, or
the belief
there would be a girl who could lead me to a place that would give
me space to cure my
brokenness. It was finally happening, though.
There was no love there, though. No intimacy. No connection. She
undressed us both quickly and efficiently. There was no physical
conversation. It was just cold and mechanical. When I tried to
touch, she would swat my hands away. It wasn't even very wet. I
know now she wasn't aroused at all, and I'm pretty sure she was just
doing it to “claim” me, somehow. She moved rapidly and abruptly,
and then it was over. She immediately turned the light off, lay
down, and pulled the covers over her. I had been so excited to go
down on her. There were a million things we failed to do that I
wanted to do, damnit!
That wasn't what I expected at all.
"It makes her think of ways to do things - nice things. She
is a Magic person. Tell her we are... extremely grateful." He
was given to using rather grown-up phrases at times. He enjoyed them.
He liked this so much that he improved upon it. "Tell her she
has been most bounteous and our gratitude is extreme."
Later, P. knocked on the door, and M. got mad when P. informed her
she wet M.'s parent's bed. We were all the same age, twenty-three.
This was weird, and I felt guilty for P.. I sort of connected that
she had wanted to be the one to take my virginity. And then I
understood A. as well.
I sat in bed, naked with the blankets covering me. Vulnerable and
naked as these two women argued for a few minutes. M. was kind of
gloating, and P., as I learned afterwards when I saw her in other
situations, was probably on the verge of slamming her head into the
wall. I didn't like the hostility going on around me, but I liked
feeling vulnerable in a woman's bed. I liked how physically and
emotionally naked I was there.
I thought I would feel completely different inside after it happened.
I didn't. I felt different, but the change was not as profound as I
thought it would be.
“...and the Magic - or whatever it was - so gave him strength
that when the sun did slip over the edge and end the strange lovely
afternoon for them there he actually stood on his two feet -
laughing.”
“Wow. I guess I have a girlfriend, finally,” I
thought, like a dunce.
There wasn't a massive change in me,
but I immediately felt like I could find a life I wanted. But I was
no more equipped to do so than I had been an hour earlier. Just that
I now knew could be wanted, it wasn't impossible. It's
kind of like if you spent your life wishing you could juggle, but
never had a chance to try. Then you finally do, and
you automatically know how,
and it's cool, and you're
happy about it, and kind of proud, but at the end of the day, it's
just juggling. It turns out what you wanted was to juggle in the
circus. Okay, cool, good first step, but not actually the dream you
really wanted. It was the same thing. That was sex, and I wanted
physical and emotional intimacy.
"Now that I am a real boy," Colin had said, "my
legs and arms and all my body are so full of Magic that I can't keep
them still. They want to be doing things all the time. Do you know
that when I waken in the morning, Mary, when it's quite early and the
birds are just shouting outside and everything seems just shouting
for joy - even the trees and things we can't really hear - I feel as
if I must jump out of bed and shout myself. If I did it, just think
what would happen!"
M. and I met up a few more times for coffee, but she refused to let
me touch her, even though she agreed I was her boyfriend when I
asked. It kept me coming back briefly, but to my mind, there should
be affection, so I moved on.
P. and I had sex a few times. She was just as aggressive sexually,
but their was a warm passion to it, not the coldness of M..
“They both laughed but it was not because the idea was laughable
but because they both so liked it.”
After
that, I sort of became a whore for a while. Life was good. Women
could love me, so
I could
meet them and have sex and eventually I would
meet one whom
I could
connect
with the way I dreamed
and wanted.
I
guess life was pretty good until my relationship with T. fell apart.
So, nine years or thereabouts where
I felt love was either happening, or possible.
Then
the nightmare began again. It
hasn't really
ended.
There
are periods, usually lone nights after the bar, or a few days
anticipating a first date, or a few weeks where it seems to be
starting again, but mostly, it is still that waiting, hoping, and
uncertainty
if I will ever walk in the Garden again.
“When the boy began to walk by himself and even to move more
quickly it was an immense relief. But for a long time - or it seemed
a long time to the robin - he was a source of some anxiety. He did
not act as the other humans did. He seemed very fond of walking but
he had a way of sitting or lying down for a while and then getting up
in a disconcerting manner to begin again.”
