Other People's Voices

Well, the drought continues. But after the discussion LJ and I had on the phone today, I am willing to take at least a little responsibility for that.

He's right--I don't initiate anything either. That's a holdover from the CR days, when even mentioning sex was enough to bring on a tirade. I just accepted that CR didn't want me; it was a very small step to assuming that no one would. Particularly after his parting shots--about how I was "boring" and "lousy in the sack" and how he'd "rather fuck ANYBODY else." These were verdicts delivered without heat--as though he was discussing the color of the sky.

They were particularly devastating to me, the one who had always reveled in sex, who had always thought that it was something I was fairly good at. I was still carrying the memories of JP's praise in that regard...along with many, many other memories I don't think about unless I have a box of tissues at the ready. It seems very unfair of whoever runs the universe, to have given me 18 months of exactly what I wanted, early in my life, and then to expect me to live without it for the next 50 years. I try not to dwell on that unfairness--so many other people have dealt with things much, much worse--but the thought of it keeps coming back. I remember a session with my therapist, maybe two years after JP died. She was a very kind lady, and she told me she often wondered if I would ever really let myself grieve for JP. And one day she said something about how no one could take my memories of him away from me...."But I don't WANT memories," I said, in the tone of a four-year-old faced with broccoli instead of birthday cake. I think it's a fair summary of how I view my loss---I'm 35 years old, but when it comes to my loss, I regress to my four-year-old sense of fair and unfair. It's been nearly ten years, and for the most part I have learned to deal with it. I have learned to tell myself it's not about "fair", it's not about "wrong", it's not even about ME, really--it happened, and as much as I wish it didn't happen, I have to live in this world, with what I have left.

For the most part, I succeed in that. But when it comes to sex...

When I'm actually getting some regularly, I'm fine. But when it's been a while--and it's been QUITE a while, at the moment--that's when I start to remember. And I do not want to remember. I can't bear it. I do not want to remember that long summer in the third-floor apartment in Humboldt Park, sweat-soaked, bathed in light, with Nirvana on endless loop. I do not want to remember the nights in the room at his mother's house, lit only by the blue radiance of the TV. I do not want to remember our little storefront apartment, where it was an aberration if we went for two whole days without fucking. It was like that til the end. We understood each other. I don't want to remember what it felt like to be understood in that way, because I know I will never again be able to open myself up to another human being like that.

I don't say that in the tragic, God-hates-me tone you might imagine. It is not God's fault that I have closed myself away--it was CR's fault that it happened, and my own fault for letting it stay that way, out of a terror of ever being rejected like that again. I will not be able to open myself up to that possibility; I am strong, but not that strong. The only kind of love I am able to accept anymore is an arm's-length, detached kind of love; the kind of love where you know the other person will do anything you need, as long as it doesn't involve emotion. LJ and I stand by each other, and I know he'll do anything I ask; but I also know he will never be a cuddly, affectionate kind of guy. I'm fine with that; I don't think I could handle it if he was suddenly all sweet. We love each other--it's just not something that's ever discussed, or expressed often. It used to bother me, but I understand it; in fact, I've come to accept it as a good thing. I don't want any more memories like the ones I've already got--the ones I've got are already too damn much. And they always seem to surface when I haven't been touched in a while.

Don't get me wrong...LJ, when he IS paying attention, is not the problem. My journals from the first few months we were together are fairly pornographic, actually; in part because my last two men were 5'5" and 5'2", respectively, and quite...proportionate. As is LJ--who is 6'7". I shall say no more on that.

I think where things went wrong was a few months after we moved in together; when it stopped being a novelty, I guess. He doesn't think about it much, he says, and doesn't talk about it much; I think about it a lot, but I don't talk about it at all. I don't ask for anything, because CR taught me well. That's not LJ's fault, not at all. I hate that it leads to misunderstanding and mistrust. (I discovered today that we've both apparently been having the same thought: if there's nothing going on at home, it must mean that something's going on outside... I know that's not true for me; knowing that, I have to take at face value his statements that it's not true for him either.) I hate that the silence on my part isn't by choice; it's because I really CAN'T talk about it. That's not a fear I can get past. I can't even get past the fear of getting past the fear, if that makes sense.

We're two noncommunicative people--me by choice, him by nature--and I guess we shouldn't expect everything to go smoothly. It would be easier if I didn't remember how different I used to be.