Thursday, September 13, 2007

HERE'S A NEW WRINKLE...


I have spent a fair amount of time wrestling with the fact that I cut the Goat a lot more slack than I often cut Isis. My relationship with her, fraught as it was, was one of equals. While that may be true of my relationship with the Goat, if a "relationship" is what it is, it is true on quite a different level. We are miles apart in experience, and apparently in emotional range. I am used to being with someone of far greater sexual experience than I, and while it's not an issue for me, it's true the difference is now exponential rather than arithmetic. The issue is emotional asymmetry.

Anyway, the Goat really seems committed to me—even when I am acting as though I ought to be committed—but he is not channeling a fifteen-year-old girl. He is being incredibly patient with me while I am channeling a fifteen-year-old girl, and seems to have made his peace with most, if not all, of the fall-out that comes with that particular territory. He earns all sorts of gold stars, even with me.

He has in fact earned a far better deal than he is getting...


Here is a new/old problem. When I get really comfortable, I stop paying attention to what my mouth is up to. And I simultaneously stop worrying about how differently things may appear to other people. The combination of these two things is dynamite. I dredged up an e-mail he had written me back when I first went off the deep end, telling me to go slow, meet other people, take it all a little easier. It was really good advice, but it was spitting into the wind at the time, and in the meantime he seems to have come around to sail with the wind rather than trying to buck it. I found the contrast between some of what passes between us now and what he was trying to say then amusing, but it became increasingly clear from his reactions—or would have, if I had been paying them any mind—that he did not share my amusement.

He asked me to destroy the e-mail, which I more or less refused to do. I'm a pack-rat, and don't feel that the fact that he has stream-lined his life to the point of asceticism is any particular argument for me to start throwing away the things
that have come to replace what used to be a working memory. I need this stuff or I have no idea what happened when.

[That's one reason why I love
Google so much; it even finds it for you!]

But it was not just my refusal; it was that I seemed, to him, to be holding him up to ridicule. That was not my point at all, but it was definitely how it arrived. This is where it began to get creepy. Because it reminded me of nothing so much as Isis' demand that I give up my blog, and the BlogBrothers; my denial of that request was the beginning of the end. But that's a detail. The big picture is the hurt that was, in retrospect, completely clear in his voice. And the contrast between the pain I was causing him, and the hope I had led him into only days before. There's more to it than that, of course.

But why can't I learn to keep my mouth shut and my eyes and ears open?
If I lose this love now, when it is all standing between me and the despair I dwelt in for so many months this past year, I am a fool as well as lost. A damned fool. And it would make me wonder if I can ever be trusted with another human heart at all...

Oh, God, let this cup pass me by. Let me not have @#$%-ed it up again.

Please.

*******************************************************************************************

You will not tell me what to do for you.
I’m left to offer what makes sense to me:
To offer what you valued once, to do
With as you please. And I will let it be.

There were few things you could not ask that I
Would not have done before—and now I know
That to restore our balance, I’d deny
You no act, no request, no shame. I’ll go

Wherever you would lead me, if you come
Along and do not leave me on my own.
I’ll yield; come make me deaf and blind—and dumb—
But, oh, my love, don’t leave me here alone.

I wronged you, love; that knowledge is my pain.
Come lift me up and make my loss your gain.

*******************************************************************************************

Well, that was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. After letting me marinate in my hand-wringing anguish for twenty-four hours, the Goat called. He talked to me.

OK
, I called and left him a covertly pleading message first. I admit. But he called, and we talked.
I apologized, he apologized, and so all is right with the world. Our world, anyway. And at this point, I can't really claim to see far beyond it. That is, I do, but I keep coming back to the bit that keeps me sane. I really am hopeless...

Well, if I have anything to say about it, we are going to kiss and make up on Saturday morning. Come on, Saturday.

Oh, dear God, don't let me say anything else stupid before then...
Not to him, anyway...
And remind me to TRY not to hurt anyone's feelings, but especially his...

Please.

C

2 comments:

  1. "kiss and make up" after arguing is good! You do analyse yourself alot so you know your quirks. This is a good because at least you can temper it! lol. Goat will have to learn to appreciate the whole of you, quirks and all. (I suspect he does.) :)

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  2. "When I get really comfortable, I stop paying attention to what my mouth is up to."

    I love that line because it used to be the bane of my new existence: overthinking every line for fear of its effect. "Will I seem aggressive, uncool, not gay enough, too gay..." You get the picture.

    And now while I try to deal in common courtesy and think before I speak, I do not overthink. Ultimately I want someone to like ME - the one that is nice and the one that is an ass. They are going to see it sooner or later, so why not sooner.

    It sounds that with all your Trollness, you are not in a bad spot.
    HakaN

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