We'd just fought over gender inequality and women liberation and coz she thought I was a tad chauvinistic, I told her straight up my problem with babes orientation these days. I said. "You know what? you're not realistic. You want me to adore you, to be really in love with you, to treat you like a virginal queen. As they did in the old days. But you reject those values that surrendering love is built on. And You want us to love you like the Holy Grail, but you want to live like a liberated woman. You won't accept that if your values change, so must mine. I can't love you as you want me to. As I used to."
We'd been continually fighting for several weeks now and I'd been trying hard to get the words out of her mouth…this time, the magic worked. And she started off.
HER.
"All my life the men I really loved always put me down, and they put me down for what they said they loved in me. But they never accepted the fact I could be interested in other human beings, not just them. That's what screws everything up. They fall in love with me at first and then they want me to become something else.
He was the best man I ever met and I really loved him and he really loved me. And he tried as hard as he could. And I tried as hard as I could. But we could never beat that masculine thing. If I even liked another man, he got sick. I could see that sick look on his face. Sure, I couldn't stand it if he even got into an interesting conversation with another woman. So what? But he was smarter than I was. He covered up. When I was around, he never paid any attention to other women even though they did to him. I wasn't that smart or maybe I felt it was too phony. And what he did was phony. But it worked. It made me love him more. And my being honest made him love me less.
I loved him because he was so smart in almost everything. Except women. He was really dumb about women. And he was dumb about me. Maybe not dumb, just that he could live only with illusions. He said that to me once and he said that I should be a better actress, that I should give him a better illusion that I loved him. I really loved him, but he said that wasn't as important as the illusion that I loved him. And I understood that and I tried. But the more I loved him the less I could do it. I wanted him to love the true me. Maybe nobody can love the true me or the true you or the true it. That's the truth—nobody can love truth. And yet I can't live without trying to be true to what I really am. Sure I lie, but only when it's important, and later, when I think the time is right, I always admit I told a lie. And that screws it up.
I admit a lot of things about myself. That if a man I like walks up to me and chats me up and has good conversation and is cute looking, I really wouldn't mind hanging out with him and clubbing with him and all that. There's nothing to it as far as I'm concerned. I could even kiss him even though I was in love with somebody else. Why is that so horrible? Men do that all the time. It's OK for them. But the man I loved the most in the whole world thought less of me when I told him that. He couldn't understand that it wasn't important. That I just wanted to have a good time. Every man does the same thing.
I never deceived a man about important things. About material things maybe I mean. I never pulled the cheap tricks some of my best friends pull on their men. I never intended to accuse a guy of being responsible when I got pregnant just to make him help me. He always told me a Chris Rock joke where the comedian said guys lie about small everyday stuff like how much they had or where they were per time. Babes he said however, lied about the really important things like the paternity of a child.I never tricked men like that. I never told a man I loved him when I didn't, not at the beginning anyway. Sometimes after, when I stopped loving him and he still loved me and I couldn't bear to hurt him, I'd say it. But I couldn't be that loving afterward and they'd catch on and things would cool off and we wouldn't see each other again. And I never really hated a man once I loved him no matter how hateful he was to me afterward. Men are so spiteful to women they no longer love, most men anyway, or to me anyway. Maybe because they still love me and I never love them afterward or love them a little, which doesn't mean anything. There's a big difference between loving somebody a little and loving somebody a lot.In my time though, I've come to realize that lovers are so cruel, more loving, more cruel. And no, not the Casanovas, Don Juans, the "cunt men" as men always call them. Not those creeps. I mean the men who truly love you. Oh, they really love you and they say they do and I know it's true. And I know how they will hurt me worse than any other man in the world. I want to say, "Don't say you love me." I want to say, "I don't love you."
**smh** Oh, God, let me live in dreams; when I die, send me to a paradise of lies, undiscoverable and self-forgiven, and a lover will love me forever or not at all. Give me deceivers so sweet they will never cause me pain with true love, and let me deceive them with all my soul. Let us be deceivers never discovered, always forgiven. So that we can believe in each other. Let us be separated by wars and pestilence, death, madness but not by the passing of time. Deliver me from goodness, let me not regress into innocence. Let me be free.
I have to fight against regressing into innocence. When a man loves me, I want to be faithful to him and never even look at anybody else for the rest of my life. I want to do everything for him, but I know now that it never lasts with him or me. They start putting you down, they start making you love them less. In a million different ways and so often time, I decide not to put my mind to it and love them back.
There was this one time when he was said himself and a colleague had to scout out corporate gifts for some clients and that I met him at Park n Shop and he asked me to meet him there in about 30 minutes. I was there in 35 minutes and saw him for the first time in several months. Two things stood out for me that day. First was that he had so much power on me no matter how hard I tried to resist. The thing was that at the time his call came in, I hadn't even had my bath. But once that came in from out of the blue, there was no way I was going to fail him. It didn't matter that all he needed was my company. I'd have done the same thing if he wanted my car and most especially my heart. I didn't know if I loved him or hated myself for this though. I really didn't care. I still don't. Secondly, I made him feel like we were the only two people in the entire mall. We held hands, made jokes and we even kissed. We just really didn't care. We were together. That was all that mattered.
And arogzz, he always said that he felt safe. And I knew what he meant. When we were alone together, I could see the strain go out of his face. His eyes became softer. And when we were lying down together warm and soft skin touching, and I put my arms around him and truly loved him, I could hear him sigh like a cat purring. And I knew that for that short time he was truly happy. And that I could do that was truly magical. And that I was the only human being in the world who could make him feel like that made me feel so worthwhile. That I really meant something. I wasn't just another random babe he "pointed and killed." I wasn't just somebody to talk to and be intelligent with. I was truly a witch, a love witch, a good witch, and it was terrific. At that moment we both could die happy, literally, truly die happy. We could face death and not be afraid. But only for that short time. Nothing lasts. Nothing ever will. And so we deliberately shorten it, make the end come faster. And finally the day he said he didn't feel safe again, I stopped loving him!
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