October 10, 2010 - 8:09 a.m.
It started as a joke. A facebook status update. We've all said things we don't mean, partially for effect, fully out of frustration.
LF: man. must have nice shoulders, nice teeth. relatively smart. confident. minimal body hair preferred. must be willing to put ego on line for experimental date with former lesbian.
It was followed by a flurry of concern, disbelief, scoffing... panick.
I had to qualify a bit. Re-assess.
"hands, what about hands, Shayne?!"
Fine. Must have hands.
and as for intelligence, I recognized that I'd set the bar low and decided to amend the criteria from 'relatively smart' to very.
Fine. Done. And still, I knew from the start - this was not something I should be writing.
You knew it too, which is why, my lovely ex, we made our pact secret. You needed a wingman. and what started as a joke became a plan. But it had to remain covert. In our mid-twenties we couldn't just... date whoever we wanted.
I have spent so much time establishing my identity, getting to know myself as a person, exploring the many options out there and feeling my way through short and long-term relationships with beautiful, interesting, fucked up women. It had taken years to build my street cred as a femme looking lesbian. How could I risk coming out of the closet, and suggest that maybe, after over a decade of loving women - now that I knew myself and what I wanted from a partner - that I might be willing to explore the forbidden territory of men?
It was a scary step to consider. My life could change forever. What would my friends think? Would I be okay with it? What if, in the moment, I freaked out and ran screaming from the idea of being intimate with someone who seemed great, but who might shatter my entire sense of identity? What would my parents say?
I like my life. I love it. What if everything changed? Like the first time, in that kitchen in Brazil, terrified of crossing that space and putting your lips against mine... this step could change everything.
That's exactly the point. And now, at 28, we have even more to risk and gain. Comfortable in my skin, in a way that I wasn't aware that I wasn't back at 16, maybe the things which made my stomach uneasy for the wrong reasons would produce a different effect. Armed with self-knowledge, a new sense of power and the furthest possible thing from desperation - I am no longer the teen seeking self-definition from the awkward, puzzling encounters of the late nineteen nineties.
I used to wonder what was wrong with me. Why other girls talked so giddily about their boyfriends and crushes...I could certainly point out the ones I should be attracted to. I could even maneuvre my way into close proximity, but missed the feeling they kept sighing about. I pushed on, looking deeper for that elusive feeling, wondering if removing my clothes and his would help locate it.
Sex with men became an experiment. No, he wasn't using me. I was applying the scientific method, establishing and testing hypotheses to figure out what was missing.
Finding my connection, years later, deep in the blue eyes and pouty lips of a girl who scared the shit out of me, I figured out what wasn't wrong with me. And now, after 12 years of right, that weren't quite right, I am not so scared anymore of exploring once again.
This is a totally inadequate explanation.
I think it takes getting to know yourself well to make it possible to revisit the scenarios that used to make so little sense, enterring them with a new awareness and control may just allow me to learn new things that the mind I had before was not capable of grasping. For all the confidence I exuded then, there was a vacantness. I was not aloof, because I didn't even know what was missing. But with my now-adult brain I have caught up, and can now, perhaps, go backwards. It's like going going back to a place in your childhood whose significance you only understand now that you can see it from a different height, with eyes that can handle the reconciliation of multiple vanishing points. I lost myself in those situations, was absent, searching and unable to see past a shortsighted horizon. I didn't know who the fuck I was.
Dream decoding. I had several repeat offender nightmares. Onein particular stands out: as a child, my fear of not being able to control everything manifested in a parade of lion-headed people carrying off my family in cages. The things I didn't know then made my experience confusing.
One: I am no longer a child.
Two: I am not afraid of confusion.
Three: The things that make us most afraid can teach us about ourselves.
Our fear is designed to protect us. But sometimes ignoring fear is what allows us to sail out towards the edge and reveal the world to us in an entirely new way.
The world is not flat.
Doing what was once taboo has proved to be the most significant mistep I have ever made.
Perhaps now, with the roundness of this world, of hips and thighs, these ideas spinning round in my head (and hers) will show us a new edge, take the edge off, and reveal a point beyond the perceived horizon.
Maybe the boat will go crashing over and send us scrambling for the safe harbour of smooth arms and curved bodies. But perhaps, with the knowledge of that body of water, our safe harbour, we will pull up that anchor and find that our vessel can handle rough water and rapids.
All hands on deck.
