Warrior & Me

My husband has known Warrior since they were at school together. I've always considered him a man born in the wrong time, a man with no outlet for that contradictory energy of protection through destruction, so it was turned in on himself. I always feared he'd either drink himself to death to blot out the pain or have a spectacular bike crash, without having given himself the opportunity to tame his demons...thankfully I was wrong.

Our first meeting was at a music festival. It was Viking-themed that year & a lot of sheepskin rugs had been sacrificed to make costumes. Youngest bairn, my daughter was a year old & had just woken up, so I wrapped her in a tartan rug & went to find Husband. Warrior was with him, long-haired & bare-chested, his rangy but powerful body covered in blue woad designs, a native Celt, untamed & unapologetically masculine...he scared the bejesus out of me! He was also intoxicating for me, seemingly his opposite. His voice was beautiful, his sense of humour infectious, he pulled me in like a lassoed filly...I struggled at first, but eventually calmed down & learned to adore him.

It's difficult for me to describe him in all his splendour on that first day...he blinded me with mythical glamour...someone else might have seen just a man with a dark streak, who drank hard, hardly ever ate & was desperately lonely. I encountered a force of nature, a hurricane trapped inside a man. His eyes were piercing, but there was a vulnerability in them. I spent that weekend falling in love with him, realising that I loved him unconditionally, like my own son. He seemed to have developed a soft spot for me as we spent the night singing together. He tuned his guitar according to his own ear, slightly flat, which was disastrous when someone else tried to play with him, but perfection as my heart drank him in & I sang harmony to the Scots ballads & fighting songs he played. We'd find each other in a connection that was beyond reason looking into each others eyes. It was almost too much for me sometimes, he reached inside me on a level too feral to allude to. No one else existed. I never felt it was sexual; it was pre-sexual, whatever the fuck that is...maybe an absolute alchemical blending of essence, flowing together in a torrent of eyes, communication, feelings. I knew what he was, his innermost being & he knew me, without words, pre-verbal direct perception. He was me & I was him. We existed.

We'd always be the last man standing at each festival & party, singing & talking till light. I felt like I had to look out for him as sometimes something dark would overtake him, a melancholy or a violence turned in on himself, something from his heritage. I'd be there to gently turn it aside so he didn't bear the brunt of it alone. He is a nationalist, intensely loyal & faithful once you have his trust; a Jacobite, a fighting man ready to defend what he loves by pushing a blade into another man's side to watch the crimson gush as the knife is withdrawn. We talked one night (before he found the love of a good woman & had a child of his own) of what we were both capable of if ever my daughter were molested. I realised the depth of violence & vengefulness in myself, the depth of his loyalty to us. It terrified me, that first real connection with the possibility of my using power over another in a destructive way. That night it was he who had to rescue me from drowning in a feeling, by grasping my wrist, dragging me up for air & resuscitating me...just like he reached for my hand & pulled me from the fire that other time.

My first inkling that he wasn't invincible was Hogmanay 2000. His then girlfriend was a fragile woman, big-breasted as he likes them, but emotionally frail & he was suffering under the burden. I have a memory of him in his kilt & leather jacket, Glengarry bonnet on his head, trying to light a fuck-load of fireworks with a dodgy lighter...lit fag hanging out of his mouth, an accident waiting to happen. He broke down later that morning under the weight of his family inheritance. But before that, we sang & sang our hearts out till we were hoarse, like we always do. We burned that night into our souls & brought in a new millennium. We were untouchable in that moment, eyes locked, feeding off our enthusiasm...greater than the sum of our parts, two disjointed people coming together creating something timeless.

I rarely phone him, except for birthday season, because we talk for hours. We're joined at the hip Husband says, without jealousy. We're joined at the heart, joined in absolute loyalty to each other, absolute trust. He has my unconditional love. I've often wondered why. Why this man. He's my alter ego, absolute destruction, annihilation & absolute nurturing, protective love & tenderness, enfolded round each other, tempering extremes...we each nurture aspects of each other. He allowed me to recognise a part of myself that was subterranean, me as warrior. Being with him is coming home to myself. I love his partner nearly as much as I love him...it's unaccountable. She's the most loving & lovable woman I've ever met...she's everything I could never give him, but wanted him to have. It's like being wrapped in a blanket from childhood, familiar & comforting. She has given him a son & made him happy, which is my deepest wish for him.

Well, that's my version of the Warrior & me...maybe one day I'll find out how he feels.

Tagged

I got tagged by bunny, kudos to ol' bright eyes!

So here goes...

1 When I was nine, I went to Holland to stay with my Dutch Aunt. She was a teacher, so that holiday we packed in every educational visit within a 50km radius. I had a great time, attested to by a scrapbook she encouraged me to write. One day we pitched up at a very old building. Inside was bare except for an unfeasibly large set of scales. Aunt told me to hop up & sit on one side which I did & out from the shadows, as if on rollers, glided a sepulchral, aged man in a suit, who proceeded to stack weights on the other scale. He never spoke. I eventually summoned the courage to ask what on earth was going on, to which Aunt replied blithely 'Oh, he's weighing you to see if you're a witch.'

So in my scrapbook, I have two certificates, one in Dutch, one in English, which officially prove that I am NOT a witch!

2 One of my relatives invented the bouncing bomb in order to bash the Nazis during WWII which was immortalised in the film The Dambusters

3 I occasionally work for a good friend who's a psychic medium. She's dyslexic so I do her paperwork. There are usually other people there when we work...only I can't see them. Cue 'Twighlight Zone' theme tune!

4 I have been 'flashed' at by men on public transport & in the parks of most European capitals. All of them were flaccid & I have to say I find this very insolent as I much prefer the erect member, especially when I'm eating lunch!

5 I have been tailgated (transitive verb: to drive dangerously close behind) by the Queen driving a huge, fuck-off Range Rover. She was literally up my arse, but that's a whole other story. (Jeesh, I've got some work to do!)

6 My favourite tipple is dry white wine. When I get a bit tipsy I tend to start singing, which is fine if I'm at a festival or have musician friends at my parties...not so fine if I'm on a shoot...yet another story...I shudder at the horror of my shame!

7 When I'm tired, I stroke a ribbon through my fingers. OK, bear with me...psychologists (god bless 'em) call them transference objects, things that soothe & comfort a child when separated from their parents, like a teddy, or their own thumb. Mine was & is, a ribbon & here is for why...When I was little, I didn't have duvets, I had sheets & a big pink blanket with a silky border. When I was put to bed, I'd rub my fingers up & down the silky bit & fall asleep. When I was older & went to school, the height of fashion was to have your hair tied in two big bunches on either side of your head. Mine were so tight I was given a mini face-lift each morning & to top it all, Mum tied two lovely tartan ribbons round each one...I had the shadow of a were-rabbit & looked constantly surprised. However there was an upside to this, as towards the end of a long day at school playing marbles & the recorder (the only things I remember ever doing that first year) if I got a bit sleepy, I'd lay my head on the desk, stroke my hair ribbon & be asleep in two shakes of a lamb's tail. Later, I carried a ribbon in my pocket so that I was assured of a similarly fast route to forty winks. This was invaluable at uni, but I had the advantage that half of my lectures were in a darkened room as they involved looking at slides. I slept through an entire section on Dutch landscape painting, which was really boring as Holland is completely flat (I know, I've been there), not even so much as a burning witch to alleviate it.

8 However, I get really turned on in art galleries.

So, in summation, I'm a horny, ribbon-rubbing, art-lover, from war-mongering stock, with an interest in the paranormal, who surely doesn't weigh as much as a witch now because I've put on a few pounds & witches are supposed to float, right?

Wow, sounds like I've just written my resume for an internet dating site...royal flashers need not apply!

Unfortunately I can't keep on playing this game as I have no friends who haven't been tagged. I'll have to think of something else to ask them...

Connections

The root of what I'm longing for right now is intimacy, connectedness with my husband. Circumstances over the past two years have subtly eroded this, gently but firmly unfurled us from each other, opened up a space between us which became more difficult to make the effort to span, when there was no time & we were both exhausted. But it's closing again, with a touch, a look, with laughter.

The bane of my life one term of English in my last year of school was E M Forster. I remember struggling through an essay entitled "Explore the theme 'Only connect' in the novels of Forster," which for me, whose ideal vocation was to become a hermit, seemed nonsensical. Why connect? I had a boyfriend, but had been taught by certain members of my family that relationships were draining. I had poor boundaries, or perhaps it's better to say that certain people had not recognised or respected my boundaries & I'd been too young to reinforce them. I had concluded that the best way of dealing with this in later years was to maintain distance from others, except the ones I loved. I loved humanity as a whole, but disliked people, or rather disliked their potential to invade my space. I remember sitting in church, praying that one day I would be able to love 'people' every last one of them. It felt like an affliction from which I was praying to be released. Meanwhile, I continued in my serial monogamy & although I had a group of friends I'd known since age eight, I didn't really feel close to any of them.

I met a fellow Cynic at uni, but whilst we were united in our mutual distance from others, he especially took pleasure in belittling them. I realised that my friend's attitude was deeply unattractive. He has since gone into teaching, has had few significant relationships & his views haven't changed. Mine were forced to change when I had children. Children expect you to connect, look for attachment, crave love & I had to provide those things. My heart melted then & lost it's hardness. Now, I believe Forster was right...'Only connect'...with integrity, compassion & love.

I live out in the country now & if I chose, I could live the life of a hermit, but I don't. I can enjoy company other than my own, not be completely self-contained, give a little or a lot. I've also learned to love people & not view them as a threat from which I have to be protected. I may still dislike some people I meet, but I can make a connection with them. I'm comfortable now.

Moongazing

I woke up at the last full moon, it's light falling on my sleeping husband; on his side, the bedclothes pushed down round his hips, his body carved from marble...perfect. I drew away from him, lay drinking him in with my eyes, inhaling his smell, the hot sweetness of his breath. Every nerve ending in me was erupting in coronas of electric desire. Wanting to feel his skin under my fingertips, but not daring to touch him in case he woke...he was beyond being tired, he was exhausted. So I gently pushed my desire & let it float away.

I lay in the aqueous paleness, fully alive in that moment, no thought, empty save for the light & shadow which sculpted his rounded muscles & the planes of his beautiful face. I watched him till my eyes grew heavy & I fell asleep.

Father's Day

This Father's Day was a bit bleak for me as my best friend's father in law was diagnosed with cancer, admitted to hospital & won't be coming home. He is such a kind, gentleman, funny, caring & so proud of his grandchildren. He had so much he wanted to do with them & teach them. He really reminds me of my grandad who also died too young. Grandad taught me, by example, the two most important things in my life; to love yourself & others unconditionally & to have integrity. Myself, I'm learning to appreciate each day of my life & everyone I'm with...living in the past & daydreaming about the future are escapisms that I indulge in now & then & I forgive myself for that.

To all the father's, past, present & future.

Infidelity?...It's in the timing

So, what happens if you believe in reincarnation, are born, grow up, get married, then are inexorably attracted to a spouse from a previous incarnation & make love...is that infidelity, because technically, you were married to them first?

Imprinting

So I was musing about this imprinting thing, you know, the baby chick hatches & the first thing it sees, it thinks is it's 'mummy', even if it's a bare-assed baboon. What sparked this train of thought was a newspaper article this week about people who date folk who look like their parents...& brain went into gear. Through work, I've studied a lot of child & developmental psychology & theory of attachment, but not so much the sexual imprinting side of things as it was more the mother/child bond I was dealing with. And I've never really looked too deeply into why I am attracted to dark-haired men. So...

First of all, my husband looks nothing like my father, but my dad only came into my life when I was five. (Mum left my biological father just after I was born.) Before that, mum & I lived with my grandparents, so my surrogate father was my grandad, who had almost black hair. We lived in Malta...not many blondes there huh...one of my favourite photos is of me at a few months old with black-haired 'uncle' Manuel, probably the only other male I saw regularly. So no surprises there. What is surprising is how it can affect me. I was once in a supermarket with my baby son. A dark-haired lad kept passing me in the aisles & had an instantaneous effect. My face flushed, my stomach flipped, the whole array of physiological responses to a potential 'mate'. I ended up behind him at the checkout, wet & thoroughly worn out.

Adolescence was a dream for me during the eighties. Scotland was the land of mousey-brown or ginger-haired lads till then, but the punk & goth scenes changed all that. The local chemist regularly ran out of black hair dye & the lads in the years above me suddenly started to look appealing (or appealingly if I bothered to look out from behind my four-inch-long fringe). I was in a very conservative year at school, most of my friends parents were elders at church, so none of the boys had long hair, or god-forbid, dyed it. But the year above...they were like creatures from another planet...especially the punk who wore black drainpipe trousers with a tartan bumflap & lots of bondage straps. He earned his nickname when his dad burnt all his clothes on the bonfire & later joined the Military Police.

Some emulated the guys in certain bands, had an androgynous look & wore make-up. I had a huge crush on Phil Oakey from the Human League & spent, long, damp hours wondering what his 'Love Action' would be like. God I loved his voice!




Then I realised there was a lad at school who looked vaguely like him...beautiful, glossy, dark-brown, poker-straight hair with a long fringe & so First Boyfriend & I got together.

I'll give you fish, I'll give you candy

When I was about 13, one of the only ways of being subversive & sticking two fingers up at the status quo of tribal, parental, religious control was through music. How many times have we heard that, from the fifties till today? It's nothing new, but it's new for each person who feels constricted by cultural rules & expectations, who kicks against constraint. I was born in the autumn after the summer of love, I was too late for punk, too early for the rave scene...but what I had was an insatiable ear for anything that was different...didn't matter what genre, if anyone else had heard of it, if it was cool...I just followed my gut instinct...if it hooked me on some level & I wanted to hear it again,I'd tape it off the radio. That's how I came upon this gorgeous gem from the B52's. They've since become synonymous with fright wigs, a parody of the fifties with 'Love Shack', but back then when I heard this at 13 I was transfixed. Remember, this was before the age of video, the UK only had four TV channels

Enjoy...

Billy, make me laugh

Whenever I need to laugh till the tears run down my face, I turn to Billy Connolly & I've been way too serious lately. I need to hear about... incontinence knickers...

Go girl!

Daughter went to a concert last night with a friend, her older sister & her band. She called me afterwards to let me know she was ok & had been picked up by friend's mum. She was sooo excited, buzzing! She'd been crowd-surfing & got pulled out by the bouncers; she'd been right at the front & a nice man had stood behind them stopping the crowd from crushing them against the barrier (thank you nice man!) She'd hung out with the support bands, but missed meeting the headliners as they were on their way to casualty...my heart flipped...friend's sister had caught a foot in her face & her eyebrow was split open. 'See you after school tomorrow' & she was gone. Husband was looking at me expectantly... 'Go girl!' I laughed & told him about her night.

Don't need no Private Dick, just click

After I wrote that last post I was left feeling a queer mixture of trampled-heart/Zena Warrior Princess...very weird...but the gist of it went something like...'I know it hurts, so I'm going to fucking find that man & when I do...I'll have to wait till my 'rational' brain catches up & start thinking about why I'm doing this shit.'

So I brought up the online US phone book & entered his name... & I found him.

In two minutes.

I thought my brain would have more time than that...two minutes...fuck me.

He was a doctor.

He'd married the girlfriend he'd cheated on with me (her name was with his in the entry).

I had his work & home phone numbers & addresses.

I must have blinked a couple of times, then I Google Earthed his home.

I hung out a few metres above his roof for a couple of minutes.

Surreal. 'Walk across the rooftops.'

I closed down the computer & left the house. My brain's still catching up.

Aural gratification

Have you ever heard something that has transfixed you to the spot, washed over you like a heatwave, stopping all thought, leaving you absolutely fascinated & craving more?

...the first time I heard The Blue Nile's album Walk Across The Rooftops I had to play it again & again & again & again as I couldn't really take in what I'd just experienced...it was a huge soundscape & it took me a long while to concentrate on Paul Buchanan's wistful voice & even longer to take in the words he was singing. But when I did, this song gripped me by the entrails & twisted 'em for the following reason. I had been seeing a Young American at uni...our time was up, he went back to the States & I was left behind...again. I hated being in the city because he wasn't there with me. I hated being anywhere we'd been together, even the beach. We would phone each other once a week, I would be wet at the sound of his voice, but I couldn't, or wouldn't, sustain the intimacy we had, so the talking became as the song says 'bravado' on my part to disguise my longing. I was blase when he said he was thinking about coming back to the UK to work in the city, because I knew he wanted to go to med school & become a doctor. I was burnt out & couldn't afford myself the hope that he might give that up to come back. He took it as rejection, so the phone calls stopped, a few letters later, those too stopped...& I never heard his husky southern drawl again...& then there was this song...

Tinseltown In The Rain

Why did we ever come so far ?
I knew I'd seen it all before
Tall buildings reach up in vain
Tinseltown is in the rain
I know now love was so exciting

Tinseltown in the rain
All men and women
Here we are, caught up in this big rhythm

One day this love will all blow over
Time for leaving the parade
Is there a place in this city
A place to always feel this way
And hey, there's a red car in the fountain

Tinseltown in the rain
All men and women
Here we are, caught up in this big rhythm

Do I love you ? Yes I love you
Will we always be happy go lucky ?
Do I love you ? Yes I love you
But it's easy come, and it's easy go
All this talking, talking is only bravado

That old Reptilian brain

Well, I thought I was a rational, modern female, but apparently there's a pre-mammalian part of me quietly tucked away at the base of my skull which is secretly controlling a whole gamut of responses, which might account for my unsettling experience. It's my reptilian brain. What a comforting thought that there's a horny lizard inside looking after my survival! Perhaps that's what accounts for that pre-programmed type response...if you've imprinted say a certain voice, smell i.e.perfume, sight i.e. stockings etc as arousing, then you're bound to respond even years later, just like one of Pavlov's dogs... That's how fetishes are born I suppose. Hmmm, I'm not as sophisticated as I thought if a bundle of neurons left over from 200 million years ago is in control of my mating instinct, so I shouldn't beat myself up about it!!

So what brought this on?

This for me is a stolen pleasure, a time & space for me alone as the rest of me is shared with others, husband , children, parents, sister, friends...this is the inner me that I used to share with a journal & it feels good to be writing again. It feels juicy, capricious, playful, deliciously secretive & ultimately sexy. It also makes me feel scared because I want & need to explore aspects of myself which have been pushed deep down whilst I've become a wife & mother...the inner me, the deeply sensual me, the core of me. It's time to open up the bud, gently unfold the petals; to explore the grit which causes the oyster to form the pearl around it; to look into the shadows.

So what brought this on?

Last month my First Boyfriend sent me an email. We haven't been in touch for over sixteen years, so it was quite a bolt from the blue. We started going out when I was fourteen & he was a year older. He was my first kiss, first frustrating fooling around, first hungry lovemaking...first broken heart when he left for university & left me behind for good four years later. But I wasn't conscious of any 'unfinished business' with him. He left a phone number in the mail & before I knew it I'd dialled & heard his voice. We spoke for about an hour & a half, catching up on each others lives, friends we still knew, filling in the gaps, all above board. His voice dragged me back through the years & as he spoke I noticed my heart, which had been racing for the first 5 minutes had slowed right down. My body was fully relaxed. I felt langorously melancholy, almost sleepy as I listened to his beautiful scots accent, his incongruous giggle, his slightly sibilant s's. He said he was coming up in June & maybe we could meet up. I said I'd like that, maybe he could help me with the pigs (keep it on home turf, besides my parents would be here, so he had no illusions of an illicit tryst). I didn't have any emotional reaction to him. I just didn't want him to stop talking, although some of the time I wasn't even taking in what he said just listening to his voice, slipping deeper into a feeling that I'd almost put my finger on...& then it was over. I put the phone down, my mind blank for a few seconds. Then I was overcome with a memory of him hard up against me pressing me up against the wall, kissing my neck until I could hardly stand the sensation of his tongue, my face buried in his soft, glossy brown hair, my whole body melting away in a vibration. I realised then with startling clarity that I felt like I'd just been made love to. My breath was shallow. I could barely believe it, but I couldn't mistake when I usually experienced that langorous sadness. Had my body just had phone sex without my brain's permission? I had to laugh at the sheer perversity of the past two hours of my life. And marvel at the power an old lover's voice still exerted over my body after all these years.

What else am I not even conscious that I'm not in control of?