Sleep and Tenderness

Preface: The threat of tragedy is what makes a romance significant.  Without the risk torn open by vulnerability, love would be without gravity.  You must risk something that matters.

Sleep 

I awake trembling to the scent of lily-white love.  The sun is surreptitiously streaming in through narrow glints that sneak past the heavy opaqueness of the drapes.  But it provides no warmth.  I can't stop shaking, even beneath the leaden blankets.  I cautiously, meticulously, move to my left, towards this monolith of heat on the far side of the bed.  He's so comfortingly warm; he's almost glowing.  I burrow and nestle my way in, eradicating any discernible space between, the contours of our bodies paralleling consummately.  Within minutes the heat magnifies to an unbearably beautiful pain, searing my skin at all contacts.  I endure as long as a physically can, to bathe in it; I'd just as soon stay there forever, but my body is red-hot with fire.  Fuck it, I think.  Let it engulf me in flames.  I want to feel that magnificent burst, that instantaneous powerful flash.  An event horizon.  The only stripe of white light to be seen in the piceous and necrotic universe.  I know not who breaks first, but I find myself staring at the opposite wall, huddled in a pitiful ball, soon enough.

I love the way he looks in the morning.  So genuine, so raw, so human.  Unspoiled by the rigors of the ensuing day.  His eyes, so brilliantly blue, are oceanic, with hypnotizing tidepools of aureated gold; chiaroscuroed tactilely against the freckled and sunken-in nature of his surface.  It hurts my heart to see him drip with insincerity and feigned pretension.  But the world demands it, or seemingly so.  His subjects eat it up like candy, leaving nothing but spent wrappers in its wake.  I want the goofy guy with the bullhorn, wearing my viking helmet, dancing around in his thick socks and fleece cargo pants.  That's the man of my dreams.  That's the man.  The man too busy living and loving to care what anyone thinks.  Wholly himself, genuine and selfless, innocent and understanding.  Courageous in his sincerity.  Real.  Alive.

If we are who we pretend to be then a frightening reality awaits.  So most people choose not to wake up.  They just keep pretending.  The more involved we get, the deeper I fall, the more I feel like I was sent to him for some specific purpose.   The universe continues our course, despite the obvious and more cunning diversions.  For better or for worse, I love him.  I can't help it.  Embracing the vulnerability eases the fear, somewhat.   The make-or-break point came and went and I was left in the lurches of love, with less of a choice in the matter.  But there's a thin line between devotion and chump.  But it's simpler to just fall all the way down the rabbit hole.  To live in a twisted dream where everything is sutured by love.

I'm almost in tears when recalling the strange and vivid dreams of the previous night.  I dreamt a before and after dream, but they are out of order.  I dream the after first: A little boy, maybe three or so sits at a picnic table with a few presumable friends some sunny afternoon.  His eyes are so brightly blue, with those familiar gold flecks.  Shaggy blond hair falls into his labyrinthine eyes and he smiles the most heart-melting smile, with a mouthful of adorably crooked baby teeth.  He's drinking out of a miniature glass, like a shot glass.  He's seated next to the little boy, almost uncomfortably.  The little boy I suddenly realize is mine and there are tears in my eyes.  He pours something into the little boy's glass and the little boy says, "I love you, Daddy," to which he can't help but soften.  I've never felt happiness like the happiness I felt in that dream.  Cut to a party a few years earlier, this strange woman won't stop asking him about having kids.  At which point, he gets mad at me for whatever reason.  I respond by saying I wasn't the one bringing this up, so don't take it out on me.  This sets him off on a ten-minute harangue about how he doesn't want kids because he's got so much going on career-wise.

I'm taken back to the present, to the intensity of the morning, when our bodies entangle like thorned vines in the twilight dimension between dream and reality, between consciousness and sleep, between cognition and emotion.  The only time I breathe in deep and securely.  "Sleep and tenderness, that's all I need," he says.  It sounds like a vaguely familiar song lyric.  I feel incredible.  All I need is to live right here in his arms.

Tenderness

I've never seen a human being so content before.  That look of sheer ebullience.  I'll never forget it.  I never want to.  It made me euphoric.  I was filled with pure delectation.  I'm tired of living in fear, waiting for it all to fall apart, missing out on even the lightest moments.  Constantly trying to fortress my emotions for fear of getting my heart ripped out.  I was so scared to fall again, I superficially cursed love, but never really believing it.  I wanted it more than anything.  And I was finally open to it, but when the going gets tough, old habits tend to die hard.  To my credit, certain fears were justified, but they took over.  They ran amok, Lord of the Flies style.  My pride or more aptly my survival mechanism masquerading itself of pride refused to allow me to do the things I so longed to do.  I longed to touch him, live in the sanctuary of his arms, tell him I love him a thousand times a day, which still wouldn't have been near enough.  I wanted to pine for him while away and dream he was doing the same.  I just wanted to love him, nothing else, but I don't have a balanced middle ground.  It's either all love, all the time, or I shut down.  I play the nonplussed, too-cool, don't-need-anyone, icy, sanctimonious loner.  The dictatoress, the one no one can touch.  The one that escapes into her head, instead of her heart. Where she truly belongs.  She dismisses all of mankind with a smug wave of hand.  But that negates the other half.  The undiluted lover, the self-less nurturer, born to make a man happy, even at her own expense.  She does need him.

Sometimes, I wonder if my clothes dictate my mood or my mood dictates my dress.  When I dress provocatively, I feel powerful.  I feel like I have something to lord over the men that leer and molest me, both past and present.  I am now in control instead of them.  They relinquish control as they are occupied reeling their tongues up off the floor.  It's simple misdirection.  Sex is an easy disguise.  No one gets to the sweet nature.  No one gets to the vulnerability.  They don't get the privilege of the real me, as if that's some great prize.   But it's all I have.  It's something to me, my core.  What was it I saw in those piercing eyes that chilly winter night?  It was as if only his eyes existed in the incandescence.  Just these floating orbs of cerulean light dancing and flickering their way to me.  They made what paltry breath I had left catch in my throat.  My heart sputtered and stalled.  Trying so hard to look slick, but his eyes betrayed him.  I saw right through, so glassine, they were.  It was as though each man I met over those nine months, were another premonition or hint at him.  Because something about each one of them wasn't quite right.  "I'll give you the nickel tour," he said.  It all felt so real, so unbelievably authentic, overwhelmingly so.  I never stopped for a moment to think that he might be insincere, using canned and rehearsed lines.  It was genuine to me, everything I felt, the whirlwind I'd searched for slapping across my flushed cheek.  Slamming like a neglected shutter as the hurricane raged through.  That night, that second night, after he came over and then left so abruptly.  I didn't know what to think. All I knew is that I was choking without him.  I couldn't breathe.  I was left feeling so empty.  I decided right then, that no matter what, no matter the bruise to my pride, I had to know whether or not is was as real as I felt it to be.  I figured it could go either way, completely fifty-fifty, but at least I would have settled the matter, so I could start breathing again,  however shallow and asthmatic the breaths.  It turned out in favor of, the universe working its cosmic voodoo once more.  I chalked up all the strangeness to fear and uncertainty; letting the disingenuousness wash out to sea.  I know I saw something luminous and fragile in that first second, it was only after that the posturing came into focus. But by then, it mattered not.  He just kept staring at me with no regard for decorum.  I found it incredibly infuriating and interminably sexy.  Of course I wasn't going to just let him stare without me staring right back.  But to his credit, he didn't look away much.  We kept our eyes locked on each other.  I remember saying to myself, "Who is this guy?" In part to ask, "Who does this guy think he is?" And in part because, God damn it, I had to know.  Once I laid my eyes on him, I knew I never wanted to stop. It took all I had to look away coquettishly; a patented move.  The repartee was ridiculously wry and tense.  Dripping with deadly serious innuendo.  The air was thick for being so dream-like.  It was all happening so fast.  There was no time to think, but then again enough time had passed already.  Thinking wouldn't have done much good anyway.  Primitive and visceral emotions were in total control.  I wasn't playing any game, despite the lethal roll of the dice.  I knew I was too eager, but so was he, so what did it matter?  "Can I just kiss you now?"  My heart was as fully realized as the low-slung moon that hung in the obsidian sky that night, casting the same eerie grey shadows of arcane romance.  It was never the smoothness that turned me on, that attracted me; it was the roughness.  The missteps, the weirdness, the goofy smiles, the stumbled-over speech, the lisp of a radiant heart.  The flaws he would never let others see, that's what I fell in love with.  When all the swagger and ego and oily cons drained away, what was left was so rich in beauty, so purified in sweetness, so distilled in innocence.  The innocence of a child filled with innocuous thoughts of model airplanes and catching frogs, and being tucked in at night.

Love is the only thing that matters.  When I turn away from love, for whatever reason, be it insecurity, paranoia, fear; my life commences to crumble and erode.  What motivates us to cower in fear, despite knowing better?  You have to risk something that matters.  Anything less is a waste of time and talent.  Anything worth anything is difficult.  For if it came easy, one could never appreciate it fully. And appreciation is the medium to lasting happiness.  Materialism , corporate culture, greed, all feed the beastly Cerberus.  The Tao says by quelling desire for these frivolities, we remove all reason for crime; crime of law or crime of spirit.  Coveting leads to the world's worst ills.  Why can't we just be happy with the things we already have?  What is this motivation for more?  It is never enough, so you can never stop.  The snake that eats his tail.  Materialism leads only to human objectification.  And inanimate objects can never fill the void of love.  Dissatisfaction only begets more dissatisfaction.  We are supposed to do our work and forget about it, according to Tao.  We are not to wait around for praise or exaltation.  The lure of  success is a tempting Siren, but it is a hollow endeavor.  It only lures man astray.  If we sync into the peaceful flow of the universe, we will have peace.  To paddle upriver is an exciting, but foolish errand. Peace and excitement are at direct odds with one another.  Lasting happiness is bore from peace, not excitement.  We need only food, water, and companionship to survive, not cars or phones or computers.  But yet working towards these materialisms is not only acceptable, but lauded under the guise of "success" or "drive" or worst of all "high culture."  I often dream of living in a hunter/gatherer society where everyone has their specific and necessary role to fill for the survival of the community.  You get a sense of self-satisfaction whilst contributing to the greater good.  The world is wrought with takers and only a handful of givers, read:suckers.  It's hard to balance basic human decency (assuming such a sentiment exists) with not being a mark.  It's a basic tenet of survival.  Take advantage when you can.  But there are those recherche few that embody altruism.  One-offs from the species, I suppose.

I smile at a shuffling old man passing by my table.  His weathered, but kind face lights up with a stretched and contorted smile.  He waves and I feel good.  It's these seemingly inane interactions that fill my spirit.  "I'm so happy to come home to you," he chokes out.  Is it raw emotion that makes him sputter?  He shakes me up, flips me upside-down.  I burn for the waves of his intensity to wash over me.  He keeps me taut with these currents of electricity sparking and coursing through my synapses.  I've never had what I wanted so dangerously close at hand before.  It makes for a strange and presumably poisonous cocktail, albeit an interesting one.

Post Script: If we are who we pretend to be (See Vonnegut's Mother Night), then we are just that.  Pretenders.  If we pretend to be smooth, or pretend to be cool, pretend to be callous, all that makes us are phonies.  Fakes. Prevaricators.  Nothing more. But what of those who refuse to pretend? Ah. For another time.