allergic to love

Photo:Jill Posener, Sydney 1985 ©

I dunno about the rest of you, but I sometimes wonder if the thing I want most in my life is the thing I'm most allergic to. Not chocolate. Not cats. Or even peanuts. Except when they are from the Peanut Corp in Georgia. Isn't that a trip? One of America's largest peanut processing plants giving us the gift of salmonella? A reporter from USA Today on public TV breezily said to 'throw out' anything you aren't sure of. Excuse me? I think central collection points of potentially fatal foods should be set up in every city and reimbursement from the government - state or federal - who have not checked this particular plant since 2001 - is in order if you have to toss food you spent your hard earned money on. I speedily checked my Whole Foods Organic No Salt Creamy Peanut Butter and smiled happily at the 'Made In Canada' notice on the side.

No, I'm not allergic to things - I hate oysters and anything slimy that might have once lived, I loathe artichokes and eggplant and don't like to see the head on a fish or the snout on a pig when I'm eating their bodies, I'll gag on many things that come from the Dim Sum buffet, and have been known - discreetly - to spit out a jalapeno. But not allergic.

I have a physical aversion to cigarette butts, and avoid even stepping on one in the street, and can't sit at a cafe table if there is cigarette ash on the table top, especially when it is mixed with food remains. I'm gagging just thinking about it. However, I do love watching Lauren Bacall smoke in a movie. Yeah, go figure. I just don't think about the cigarette butts, or her coughing yellow slime up in the morning in the sink. Like my mother. And I admit - I have an attitude towards recreational drugs. Watching a spliff pass from mouth to mouth is enough to make me head for the hills, especially when it is damp and short and people still take it from one another. Aw man, I feel ill. But the way in which people ingest their drugs, the inventive ways of using a soda can with holes punched in the side, the way drugs get hidden, talked about, it's just...well it's too damn intimate.

And there we are at the point of this blog. Finally. It seems I'm allergic to love. Actually, not to love. But to the demands of intimacy. And let's be even more specific. Romantic intimacy. Because I am very intimate with my friends, some have said, almost 'partner' like in my solicitousness and caring. What a freakin' shame. Because I'm a romantic, a sentimental slob, a crushed out starry blue eyed hopelessly sensuous seductive, charming Chinese Zodiac snake, a big hearted Leo, amusing, generous and, if the girls are to be believed, as good as Adam Sandler says we Jews are in bed. Last but not least I'm refreshingly politically unsound given my history as a feminist icon (screw that). Mostly I like myself. Nothing wrong with that. But my inner critic seems to spring into action as soon as someone else really likes me....

I've always wanted to be 'married'. Well, not during my radical lesbian feminist days when 'marriage' was universally despised as the tool of the patriarchy to keep women enslaved (huh, nothing has changed...sorry, all you gay marriage endorsers, that's just the way I feel). But I have had, as long as I've been a butch in 501's, a constant desire to wake up next to the same woman each day (or given my need for some space, in the next room and crawl in to bed with her at 6.30 am), to bring her tea in bed, to feel her emerge from sleep with my body curled up around hers. I love the feel of those tiny hairs at the nape of her neck as they stand up when I kiss her in that little cleft.

I have always loved the searching out of her in a crowded place and the mutual decision to go home. I have always warmed to the sensation of the girl with her hand seeking mine in the middle of a London street with eyes on her suddenly becoming aware that she is with me - the un-girl. And going home to the same place, not having to stop by her place to pick up a toothbrush and her dogs. But. But I can't handle her need. And the instant effect of it is to blast me back into a dark claustrophobic place of hyper vigilance and fear, of constant watching and waiting, of terror of abandonment, of losing all my charm and my sweetness to anxious defense. Trying to adjust to the constantly changing needs and volatile mood swings of a mother will truly fuck you up for life.

I'm not alone in this, I know that. I listen to my friends, my exes, my casual acquaintances. I watch love affairs fall prey to the 'sell by' date, marriages collapse in acrimony and hate, into violence and vengeful partings, the debris scattered behind like the leavings at the landfill, and children and pets pulled apart like in some crude chalk circle judgement. I know, I know. Thin line between love and hate, right?

I've rarely been 'alone', I've usually had lovers, partners, romantic attachments and sexual affairs. And I miss her. I miss what I thought might work. I feel sad for her cruelty to me, I feel sad about my failures with her. Yet my life is filled with exuberant joy and friendship and oodles and oodles of love and gravy. 

So here's the deal. I want a girl - a girl that gets a kick out of that sweet and sour dish called 'butch' - and please don't be trying on femininity as a costume, a girl that might just as easily be attracted to men, but chooses me, you'll want to live in co-housing, or a compound on 40 acres with border collies (of which I am one) cruising the neighborhood making sure you are where you should be, you'll want your own room and your own bathroom, but wanna sneak into mine. You'll let me be alone and you'll like to be alone. You won't make snide comments about my animals, and I'll happily take yours on walks with mine (and Susie's, and Tina's, and Joann and Cynthia's). Expect a fight or two. And though I have a reputation of never running away, I'll do anything to stop you doing so, while back-pedalling myself. Bring your friends to the party, and you're welcome to borrow mine (for movies and dinners I mean). And no, I won't be signing up for online dating - that ranks along with oysters for me. I'm too old, too short, too combative, too poor, too butch, too many animals, too British, too American, too much....

Comments

[Deb in Minnesota]

Ohhh, what a good blog! So honest too. "Expect a fight or too."

Give all the animals a little pat from me.

[JP]

Hey, thanks Deb! Sooner or later tho' I'm gonna expect the butches who read my blog to give a little more!! :-)

[Deborah Wolfe]

Well it is a good post and you've said a lot about who you actually are.

Having your own room is a damned fine idea. I like that arrangement best myself.

You've compiled quite the 'check list' for a mate, so be prepared to receive. And when you start feeling panicky and in abandonment mode....get real still. Don't move. Don't say anything. Just let all those emotions roll over you or pass through you, just like coming up out of the ocean when you've been knocked down.

As to being too old, short, combative, poor, butch, animal infested, Brit or Yank...that's just being butch. We're always too much. And yet, there are women out there who simply can't live without too much.

Deborah, The Great AND Powerful

[nina]

there is no such thing as "too butch"

lucky will be that woman

nina