Wish I could say something about love, lust, marriage, jealousy and divorce. Boy, have I made a royal mess of these. I think my major problem has always been to reconcile my desire for a “true love” with a more universal kind of feeling. They are both so different.
Lack of communication is the single greatest factor in the destruction of relationships. Often there are crossed patterns of communication, with one partner speaking past the other instead of to him.
Many people suffer physically and emotionally from the dearth of honest, objective information about human sexuality. We are told: Sex is everywhere. Enjoy it.
A friend insists he’s got a major New York publisher
A friend insists he’s got a major New York publisher interested in this. We pass along, without comment, his table of contents, penciled crudely on a Kleenex.
Ah yes, thinking back of the turbulent history of mouths and fingers, mouths and toes, not only makes my mouth water, but my toes as well. Toes and fingers, once thought to be good only for the production of hangnails, are enjoying an erogenous zone revival, especially when coupled with the inside of one’s mouth.
At 13, it seemed so confusing. I had to check out the symptoms in the “Facts of Love and Life” — quickening pulse, heavy breathing. What a thrill to know that I had turned someone on. And the fantasy of potency, marking good night kisses on the calendar.
Warm fantasies are easy to weave on this pleasant, sunny day. I look into people’s faces as if well acquainted with their pain and joy.
I have wanted you, wanted you, out of what? love? need? true love is not possessive, jealousy is a learned response, but oh god, how to let go? how to love you, not own you, how to let you be?
Confuse love and romance too long and you end up a suicide. Aloneness is the final, undeniable reality of life.
Can’t you understand? Can’t you see people cannot live together, freely and with love, till they have learned to live alone, to be alone . . . Neither he nor you are at that point.
When asked “am I happily married,” my unquestioning response is yes. But why? Before I was married, I definitely felt a need for love, something deep, and someone to whom I could completely open up without being afraid of rejection.
The city so easy, after all, alive for me like some lover never truly left behind, never truly known: the perfumes, the hidden places, the exquisite fears and sweet temptations of the night.
Here I am, at the end of another long-term relationship. This time seems easier than the last, but I can’t really tell — time blurs my memory out of focus.
*NOTE: Original copies of this issue are no longer available. Unbound, laser-printed copies will be provided for print orders.
If you cannot bite you cannot kiss. If you cannot curse you cannot bless. Who cannot be a good hater will be a poor lover.
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