The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress
does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.
– Walt Whitman, “I Sing the Body Electric”
Finding my amorous longings toward men most often reflected in the rhapsodizings of the great queer male writers, I have often wondered whether I’m a gay man who has been rather haplessly reincarnated into a woman’s body: still pronouncedly desirous in a visual and most unladylike fashion, still operating with a male-to-male directness that just doesn’t fly in the straight world.
I am in a sweet agony over the beauty of men.
I told my friend Russ that I feel as if I’m wading through a field of fresh daisies, longing to ‘pluck’ them all…yet I know that in my greed and artless haste I’m very likely to wind up with nothing but grass-stained empty hands. Already I seem to have alienated Rick. He’s pulled a literal and figurative disappearing act ever since I made my sexual feelings plain.
**
I still don’t quite understand how it is that I could be so fascinating and worthwhile to men when I’m benignly indifferent (as I was at two parties last weekend, where I was followed from room to room by doggedly unaware acquaintances) or mildly intrigued (as I was upon meeting this colorful character Rick), but then instantly become repellent the moment I exhibit overt, full-blooded desire. You’d think I was some alluring wood nymph that suddenly morphed into the gorgon Medusa, hair-snakes a-hiss, turning previously warm, living men to stone. That’s really not the kind of hardness I was hoping for.
I’m kicking myself for not taking advantage of Rick that first night, even though I was tired, and not as horny as I had been earlier, and up against a writing deadline. I didn’t know how much worse it would get, or that I wouldn’t have another opportunity. I didn’t know how a dark wisp of hair curling against his neck would pierce me through like a sword (my kingdom for the chance to kiss that sweet spot!), or how his briefly bared, muscular shoulder would make my ovaries ache, or how watching his battered, inelegant hands perform any task whatsoever would make the blood rush blaring from my head like fire engines to the site of a four-alarm blaze. I had no idea I wouldn’t be able to entertain even a passing thought about his more indisputably masculine attributes if I had any intention of maintaining brain function (or dry panties) at work. I want him, that hairy, disreputable, irresistible bastard, who overrode my current taste settings and time-warped me back to 1994.
Desire! — it consumes everything: your time, your concentration, your thoughts, your plans, your best intentions. Like a mirage, it keeps you stumbling across the desert, believing that if you just keep following it, your thirst will eventually be quenched. I find Ms. Johnson’s book is only helpful up to a point now: her thesis is mainly about the love aspect of eros, not the nitty-gritty sexual one. I may be able to court my inner Beloved and find the Divine or the Other or the Outlaw Pothead somewhere within myself, but I’m not about to sprout hair on my chest or face — nor do I want to. I can’t sprout certain other things, either, with which to then perform indecent acts upon myself. The literal, physical hunger for the sexual Other isn’t something you can DIY.
**
The fact that I’ve been spending my recent days as swollen and juicy as a ripe Georgia peach may, perhaps, be why so many other young men at work have been sniffing around me lately, their dog-sense telling them that there’s something to come and get. I can’t tell you how much I love the fact that the beautiful, intense, whip-smart doctoral candidate in history (the first person to actually catch my notice when I walked in the door) has taken to sitting next to me during the evening shift, chatting and joking with a barely detectable but winsome edge of nerdy awkwardness. (And where, as Eliot said, do I begin?) The newest trainee, a classic-heartthrob-looking pup who belongs in 1950s films alongside James Dean and Montgomery Clift, did a mutual triple take before we introduced ourselves, and he has also gravitated to the chair next to mine to play getting-to-know-you. Besides these two obvious beauties in my obvious type-category, there are a few lovely-boned African-American gentlemen who heap their satin-smooth attentions upon me on a daily basis, a stocky, adorable amateur astrologer who caresses me and calls me “sexy lady,” and two affable young supervisors who find excuses to hover around my cube like honeybees.
I love it all, and I love them all, and I am one hundred percent certain that if I tried to act upon any of this in my typical, straightforward, clumsy fashion, it would all go away. Because I have no idea what to do, and never have, as a woman who desires men the way men desire women. (As I said to my coach friend, “Why did God make men beautiful if he didn’t want me to have sex with them? And who do you have to sleep with to get laid around here?!!!!”)
Maybe there are no shortcuts. Maybe I’m looking for an easy way to home plate that doesn’t exist for me as a respectable female, or maybe I just say too g-damn much. Standing dumb in this field of daisies, I clench my hands impotently. How do I reach for Eli (the gorgeous grad student) in a way that doesn’t make him vanish like a vapor? Maybe I shouldn’t even try. Maybe I should just enjoy our sparkling rapport for what it is, and leave him to the nice marriageable girls his own age whose mothers would have paroxysms over him. Maybe out-of-the-box-fresh Mr. Dean doesn’t need to be put on the spot by a shameless cougar wannabe having a midlife crisis. Such lovely, earnest creatures they are. Maybe I should just wait and see if Rick comes around, because he is, after all, the sexy and not-so-nice outsider who triggered this human estrus. I just don’t have a clue. A clue is something I’ve never gotten.
The one thing I am confident of, given how intoxicated I became last Monday when Rick stood a little too close (I had to take a step back just to keep my wits about me), is that I can count on my own arousal, at least with him, and if I can count on my own arousal, the rest would take care of itself. There’s nothing worse than play that feels like work, especially that kind of play. But wanting a man — God! — with that delicious appetite…peeling him bare like an exotic fruit…feeling his rough and smooth textures…smelling him, tasting him…swallowing him deep in your belly…all with the lip-smacking relish you might reserve for a savory meal in a Roman trattoria…it requires no more effort than simple, hearty eating when you’re famished. And he wouldn’t have to work very hard, either. (He would have to let me enjoy him…one of my few complaints about the only truly wanted men I’ve ever had is that they rushed or truncated my slow and deliberate worship of their bodies, not realizing how central it was to my own pleasure.)
But I fear I’ve rambled on too long before the fourth installment (which I decided to post after being urged to continue by a Russian-born fan who likes me better than Elizabeth Gilbert!) — this post will be positively unmanageable. (Poor bluemorpho3, he’ll never catch up!) Here’s the first dispatch I sent from Centro d’Ompio post-James, still reeling from the loss. Of course in the meantime I have a couple of unwanted pursuers of both sexes…naturally!
__________________________
PART FOUR: TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW
“…creeps its petty pace from day to day.”
This week’s diary is a day-by-day log, reflecting the way time trudges on when joy takes a holiday.
*
TUESDAY
This laptop is the best investment I have ever made. Last week I was sitting in a cafe in Orta writing this diary for hours — today I’m sitting on the top of Centro’s mountain, having hiked up to the wooden cross at its pinnacle, looking at the whole of Lake Orta. Diagonally across the lake I can see the red roofs of the town of Pella, and high above them, on a steep cliff, the chalk-white church to which James hiked one day, incredibly. It was a grueling journey, certainly more than I would ever have attempted on foot.
Today (my day off) I slept until eleven o’clock, fading in and out of consciousness, my twin futon like a little raft where I floated on a murky river of loss. There was nothing to propel me out of bed, neither duty nor anticipation. Life for the full-time staff at Centro may be a continuous exercise in nonattachment, but for me, experiencing this place for the first (and probably the last) time, there is now and will forever be a James-shaped hole that no one else can fill. We had only seventeen days together, but in that brief time he became like my best friend. And then he was like the best friend who teased me by coming into the kitchen in nothing but a towel. And then he was like the best friend I wanted to pull the towel off and touch in all manner of delightfully impertinent ways. And then…but you know what then.
Not that the soap opera does not continue. Oh, no. Now I find myself fending off a weathered Georgian war veteran and a nascent lesbian. Vaja, the pool man, who fought in Afghanistan and struts around Bisetti chest-out like its resident rooster, is frequently either trying to catch my eye or touching me in some uninvited way. James practically lionized the man — when I mentioned that Vaja had stroked my hair, he joked “I’ve been wanting him to do that since I got here!” — but his kind of aggressive machismo makes me uneasy. I don’t think he’s actually dangerous, but he really can’t take a hint, and now that my obvious love interest has flown the coop it’s as if it’s open season on yours truly. When all I want is to be left alone.
Then there’s Hanna.
We used to argue good-naturedly about her, the limey and I. Over time I became certain that she felt more than friendly toward me, and that that was the main reason why she regarded him through slitted eyes and spoke to him curtly (if at all). He said that she simply hated him, and that I was horribly conceited. But now that he’s gone, she follows me around and stares at me intensely as if I were a cross between Jesus Christ and a Belgian chocolate truffle. I don’t know what to do. I’ve never had anyone, not even a lesbian, look at me with such adoration and ferocious longing, and, as I told James, the chicks dig me! Also, she’s not “out.” For all I know, the young woman is at a delicate turning point in her life, and I certainly don’t want to give her a bad experience. So I’m not handling it well. Most of the time I’m simply in flight from her and Vaja. Any advice you queer friends of mine (or for that matter the straight ones) can give me is welcome. Aiuto! as they say in Italy. HELP.
Marjorie and Christian have become close. I never had a chance to tell you about Marjorie — there was just too much else going on. She’s a pretty, fairly uncomplicated but very sweet blonde account manager from Bolton, England (near Manchester), who is built, as they say, like a brick house. When she first arrived, my heart sank, but James had no interest in her whatsoever, preferring to spend even more time with me (which was more gratifying than I can tell you). In the meantime Alessandro and Christian attached themselves to her like barnacles. Ultimately, 19-year-old Christian seems to have won out (I think she has about ten years on him), and they are planning to leave early to go restore medieval houses together in San Remo. Their last day at Centro is Sunday. I’m just realizing how much I’ll miss them, and how much I envy them, those crazy kids.
Gina is still here, the voluptuous little Italian harlot (no, I’m sure she doesn’t deserve that) staying in Raffe’s room. When the hell is she leaving, for God’s sake?!! I see her coming and going, and we regard each other briefly, unsmilingly. I can’t help but wonder what, if anything, he said to her in parting. There’s that extremely petty, jealous and injured part of me that secretly hopes it was shattering, so that she knew at once and beyond a doubt that their little romance was all a lie. Gina happens to look a lot like my fourth grade best friend, Adriana Giametti. Adriana and I had an intense love/hate relationship — we were always competing for grades, attention, boys, you name it. I could never stand for Adriana to get the better of me, and I couldn’t stand for her lookalike to think she’d gotten the better of me now. Even if I know she meant nothing to him…I want her to know she meant nothing to him, too. Stupid cow.
Yeah, I know. So sue me. I’m not the Buddha.
At least I have a new friend I can actually talk to, without Raffe’s language barrier or conflict of interest. At the end of last week Finn arrived from Vienna. He’s a slender, easygoing young web designer with sensitive green eyes and a deep baritone voice who practices yoga and plays the guitar. His English is impeccable, honed by years of enjoying English-language films and books. He’s been to Centro before, and has known Robert and Mila for years, having lived with them in Australia. He has a serious girlfriend back in Vienna, so that’s not on the table, in case you were wondering. He’s a lovely person, inside and out, but I really couldn’t go there right now anyway. Almost immediately, just being in his company with others and hearing the way he expresses himself, I knew that I could trust him. He would feel at home at the yoga center (he practices Ashtanga for two hours in the morning) and comfortable at a party with my closest friends. He’s not put off by “girly” things. I wonder what James would have said about him. Would he have thought he was too much of a “pussy?” I’d certainly much rather hang out with Finn than with Vaja.
This morning, after finally dragging myself out of bed, I found Finn reading a book about globalization on the sort of mini-veranda on the second level of the house where the smokers go to smoke. He asked me how I was. “I’m kind of depressed,” I admitted. I would probably not have admitted this, at least so readily, to any of the others. Gina was in evidence just then, getting ready to depart for the day, and I waited for her to leave before I confessed, “I was in love with the Englishman.” It felt good to say it out loud, right there on the premises, and I gave Finn the bare bones of the story, including the reason why I can hardly look at the woman. A little later, after I had showered and dressed, he came to get me for lunch, and showed me the secret back way to hike up to Centro.
The others have seen us hanging out, and I know what they’ll conclude, but what I really need right now, more than anything, is a friend. I feel as if I’ve tumbled almost traumatically from my state of grace. Walking down from Centro after dinner, I felt the loneliness I hadn’t felt since my first night here, and the sudden emptiness of grief. I know that this too shall pass, but I wasn’t ready. Are we ever ready? You find a shimmering pearl, you hold it in your hand, and then you lose it again. Cosi e la vita. Such is life.
*
WEDNESDAY
Padma is a gift.
Her Sanskrit name was given to her by her spiritual master in Costa Rica, where she worked on a commune for several years. She’s probably around fifty, with long, thick, graying hair and an ample bosom, but she seems younger in spirit. Her room is next to mine and Elke’s; at night, I can often hear her picking her guitar and singing some soft Portuguese lullaby. Her room is cozy and inviting, and she has set out to beautify every single common area at Bisetti. She’ll be a full-time kitchen worker at Centro for four months, and explains her Bisetti project by saying “this is my home.” Last night I came into her room and sang along to a Sanskrit chant I recognized from a Krishna Das CD that gets frequent play at my yoga center.
Padma believes that people are healed through music. So I may be coming to her room quite a bit in the near future. Just now she came up to me from behind, and enfolded me in a mighty embrace that reminded me of being a small child in my grandmother’s lap. God bless Padma. I’m never one to push away a life preserver.
*
THURSDAY
My very first friend in Pettenasco is gone.
Mezza Coda, “half tail,” the blind, deaf and slightly lame cat who had resided at Bisetti for nineteen years, or the entriety of Christian’s lifespan, appears to have gone away to die. She’s been missing since yesterday. Finn found her hobbling down the road Monday, and brought her back to Bisetti, but she had probably been trying to go to her final resting place. She never strayed far from the kitchen steps, and countless times since that first night I picked up her small grubby body and held her cradled against my shoulder until she purred loudly and stuck her head under my chin. She loved to be held; she just couldn’t get enough affection. Even James picked her up and petted her, sometimes, although her copious drooling would cause him to utter a stream of hilarious curses worthy of the saltiest English sailor. (I told him that she couldn’t help herself — he had this effect on females.)
Earlier in the day it had hit me, hard, that Alessandro, Christian, and Marjorie are all leaving Monday morning, as is Cosmo (due to some sudden family problem or emergency). The losses are piling up like wrecks on a freeway. Alessandro and I have been spending less and less time together since he moved in with Christian, so I’ve lost him piecemeal. (I really must get a picture of him, so that you can see him.) He’s managed to become something of a sidekick to the comparatively more worldly Norwegian. I never fell under Christian’s spell the way Alessandro and Marjorie did, but he did walk with me all the way to Orta that day, and I decided that he was all right. At any rate, I’m losing most of my original cast, my companions in Oz, my witnesses.
Coming back to Bisetti, I saw the candle Padma had lit for Mezza Coda beside the cat dish, which was now filled with flowers. For the second time I sat down on the kitchen steps, put my head in my hands, and started to cry silently, my shoulders shaking. I had meant to take a picture of her. I had wanted to help clean her up. I never got to say goodbye. And now my little friend was gone, as surely and as suddenly as my other beloved friend was gone.
Marjorie came up behind me from the kitchen, reached down, and stroked my hair, which just made the tears come that much faster. Raffe came along, too, and took my hand (which was welcome), and Vaja crouched down and petted me a little (which I could have done without, but I suppose he means well). “This is life,” he said, a statement which is true, but absolutely never helps at all.
It was only partly about the cat, but her final gift to me, I suppose, was this opportunity to let go in front of the others.
Mercifully, Gina had packed up her things and was retrieving her luggage that night. What I found out from Raffe was that they had had a major falling-out, partially precipitated by the James episode, but not limited to it. Somehow this made me feel better about Raffe. “She has lots of problem,” Raffe explained. “I don’t know she will be back.”
All I have to say is — Ciao, Gina, won’t miss ya, don’t let the door hit your enormous Italian ass on the way out.
Mezza Coda may not have had any claws left, but I guess I still have a few. Me-ow. You may rightly say that I’m directing my anger at the wrong person…but in the end I realize there were no real winners here. Not Gina, and not James, except in that toxic macho bullshit sense of having scored, of having fucked one more anonymous chick. No, I’m just being hateful because of course I wanted to be the one up there, giggling in his room, releasing all that delectable sexual tension we created over time. It ain’t fair, is it? You cook up this tasty international treat, and then some random Maria comes along and dispenses with it in one gulp.
*
FRIDAY
Today I determined that, if it was the last thing I did, I was going to get to the waterfalls.
At the risk of boring you to death…it was one of those places to which a certain Englishman I knew loved to go, packing a lunch of bread and cheese with tomato. And I had not yet been there. He had spoken of bringing me along sometime, but we never made it.
So after lunch, I hiked up over Centro’s mountain and through a good deal of woods to the village of Agrano, and then followed the instructions Finn gave me, walking up a mountain road to a small co-op farm and restaurant called Alpe Selviana. The waterfalls were just a short distance beyond. It took me an hour and a half under a blazing sun.
I was incredibly sweaty and winded on the road up to Alpe Selviana, and stopped to pour water over my head at a freshwater spout by the side of the road. Just then a compact car sped past me, and the person in the driver’s seat looked an awful lot like Adriana Giametti. Her dog barked at me (almost viciously, I thought) out the window.
Of all the places in Lake Orta she could have been, she had to come to the waterfalls on that day, at that time. I had to laugh at the allegorical import of the situation — I had worked and sweated hard to get this far, and she just motored up in her neat little auto. Quality.
“Puttana,” I called after her, for no one’s benefit but my own.
Elke had started out ahead of me, in the morning, from Bisetti, and I found her sitting on a rock platform above one of the pools. I left my backpack with her and ventured down toward the water. These falls were more spectacular than our little waterfall at home. An algae-green river cut through a steep, plunging canyon of wrinkled metamorphic rock; there were myriad platforms and pools for swimming and sunbathing, accessible by climbing precariously over the rocks alongside the water. I had thought the place would be much more isolated and private, but there was one male nude sunbather up above, and another down below. Nearby was an old man in a Speedo. And then there was Gina, sunning herself naked, looking very fertile and National Geographic.
I staggered back from the edge of the rock where I stood, feeling nausea again. Seeing her au naturel was, for me, about as pleasant as seeing the neighborhood dog eat his own vomit. (I think I would rather watch that, actually.) She must have seen me see her, because promptly thereafter she passed by Elke and me, fully clothed, with her dog, uttering a cursory “Ciao” to which only Elke responded.
It was awful, running into her there, and it seemed like too much of a coincidence. I found myself wondering: did he bring her to the falls, his next to last day before he left? I even wondered, like a true paranoiac, if they’d met here before.
I knew I could torture myself with endless speculations (I’ve excelled at it in the past), but what’s the point? I’ll never see the man again, and I’ll be rid of her for good once the plane leaves the runway. Besides, someone had told me that she works in Omegna, the next town over, and none of the locals could be ignorant of the falls.
But some of you will no doubt remark on the synchronicity, regardless. And yes, perhaps the universe was trying to coax (coerce!) me into making some kind of peace with the one character in this story I simply cannot abide, but, as I said — I am not the Buddha. I’m just doing the best I can, dammit.
After Gina had gone I said to Elke with a sigh, “I wish you understood more English. Or I knew some German.” Elke agreed that this would have been a good thing, and haltingly expressed her frustrations with the language barriers she was encountering.
“Elke,” I said, “what’s the German word for ‘broken’?”
“Gebrochen,” she said.
“Gebrochen,” I repeated. Thanks to the Bach chorales I’d studied in college, I already knew the German word for ‘heart.’ “Mein Herze ist gebrochen,” I said.
That she understood. A sorrowful, compassionate expression passed over her open and kindly face. “Oh, oh,” she said, and moved to squat beside me and embrace me around the shoulders. No other words needed be sprachen.
Which was really nice. I think that’s the most significant communication she and I have ever had.
Soon after that, Elke departed for Pettenasco, and I went down to the pool by the elderly Speedo guy. He watched me most intently. I dipped my feet in the pool, and then had the idea to dunk myself fully clothed — a baptism, of sorts — which I proceeded to do. He motioned to me that I should take off my wet things, in response to which I thought — yeah, I don’t think so, Gramps. I climbed back up on the rocks and enjoyed the cool of my sopping clothes for a while. It was so hot that I was dry by the time I reached the Agrano town limits.
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