The Mens

(Double-posted over at the other datinggod blog home) Oh, let's just continue on with my favorite dreaded subject of the past few months, okay the past few years, okay fine the past few decades: my ex-boyfriends. Each time I get involved with a new guy, it feels so luscious that it seems as if This is The Big One, this is It, and through the outpouring and inrushing of love my living is transformed into something where all of the pieces fit together in a way that only heavy doses of endorphins coupled with massive infusions of oxytocin can provide. But eventually I see that it is less about having a hormonaly stimulating break from my regularly scheduled programming and more about yet another foray, Osiris-style, into the bowels of my stored patterning, like a mystical-emotional scavenger hunt where what I am looking for is Who I Am Not so as make Who I Am show up more brightly. But screw The Spiritual Stuff, what about the ex-boyfriends: what about Them? Who were They really? If I were to line them all up so that you all could get a good look at them and ask them probing questions of motive and intent, you would see some dang beautiful men. They were the men left of center, who because of uniqueness, oddness, Otherness flew under most people's radar in one way or another. But when asked the right questions, when patience was applied to help them release that outer layer they hid behind, they revealed that they were amazingly, achingly, heart-breakingly beautiful. One was tall and lean, dark haired, light-eyed, a motorcycle man, a bowhunter, a literal rocket scientist, and a goofball. He showed me that I take in the world through the food that I eat, and that living things die so that I might live. He fed me bear and deer, and wrapped us in their pelts and snuggled me like I've never been snuggled before. And then he disappeared, but he returns every half decade or so like a human cicada. One was a computer geek yogi, a daily meditator, a tantric, a gourmet vegetarian chef, funny, sweet, ridiculously smart and insightful and able to talk for hours at a depth that boggled mind and heart. He lavished me with attention and the Healing Vibes of Tantric Love, but then Real Life began to intrude and he took off for the land of leprechauns. He was really only in it for the Spiritual S*x. One was a lethal combination of goth-creative and purist-health zealot, his face generally wearing more makeup than mine, his perfect body honed from many years of daily weightlifting and perhaps one bite of sugar every six months or so, having never so much as taken a single toke of chronic or sip of alcohol in the entirety of his life. It took three separate rounds for me to finally get that he wanted the Concept of love more than Love itself. He was hot, though. Seriously hot. And he gave great pedicures. One was a sculptor who had never held a 'real job' for so much as a day, who dressed in a mixture of men's and women's clothes, who rarely bathed or brushed his hair but perpetually smelled lusciously of fresh sculpting clay and clean testosterone, who drug his mattress out into the living room so that we could sleep and dream and love by the fireplace, who when out in public would cause conversation to stop as people watched his wild appearance and energy walk by. He was simply just too freaking much for me to handle. I was just not the kind of woman who could handle a Picasso kind of guy. But being a muse was the sh*t. I hung around for a good extra month just for that. C'mon, can you blame me? One was a dreamer, charting them, watching them, sharing them, teaching them to others, a man with long black hair, daring eyes, huge gentle hands, brilliant with words, a closet shaman. He showed me how to Dream Big. He was just lost in the mists of his mind. He broke up with me by bringing me my things in a box. On my birthday. By saying he 'needed some space'. Last I heard he was dating himself. And giving himself some space. One was sweet and gentle and soft and surrendered, a boy in man's clothes, a man with a boy's soul, a vegetarian chef as celebration of food and life, a musician in celebration of Why Not? He showed me how gentle it could be between man and woman, how we could be quiet with one another and let go of the endless and endless talking and talking. It was genuinely lovely. Now, he occassionaly pops up to tell me of his many female conquests and to extend his judgments on my life, my beliefs, my interests, and my choice of menfolk. I tell him where he can relocate his judgement. He says that I use this blog as a way to mythologize my living. I tell him to shove it up his godhole. Our friendship soldiers on. One was an artist who threw himself at living, at the world, at nature with passion and openess and fearlessness, who sought out snowstorms and rain and mountains with the same intensity as he threw himself into ballroom dancing and art and making love and arguing, who saw life and people in vibrant swaths of color and energy and shape and texture. He showed me that I was absolutely, unequivocally beautiful and luscious at any weight and showed me through his art that the glow that lives in the center of me was alive and well. I still think about him way too often but when the urge to call him becomes overpowering I just remember the moment when he said to me: this is *your* chosen hemorrhoid and I may do a little something to help but your problems aren't my responsibility and don't you think at some point you have to grow up and be a big girl? And I put down the phone and whip out the wand instead and Gloria Gaynor gets another rotation in the soundtrack of my life and life boogies on. One was a hero cop, an urban commando, built like Batman made manifest but with no need for the padded suit, brilliant and crazy and strong and possessed of an insight so keen that he could see straight through a mind and into a heart, to the the bedrock of loving and the screaming efforts of all of us to be fully alive. He woke me up. He caught me as I raced by him in the free fall that was my life. He showed me the landmines that lived inside of me. He deactivated the worst of them. And then the Batlight went off and he soared away to save other lives. Yep. That's them. Well, some of them anyway. I'm lucky. Grateful to have been so loved, to have had so many interesting guys play Isis to my Osiris, glad that it has been such eye-opening and hilarious and awe-inspiring and wahooing Wow. But my heart is much much much heavier than a feather and I wonder where I can buy helium for the heart, or where I can get liposuction for the heart, or where I can go to have the love I still feel for them surgically removed. Because I do still love them. Every single one. And even though the soul retrieval I did a few weeks ago helped tremendously, I still have a lot of letting go to do before my heart can open again and have enough room in there for another dance with Man. But really, this may be all I Get in this life, and if I face it all honestly, if that were the case, I wouldn't be disappointed. I have had such a good time, even when it was bad. I have been lucky. I have known love. And I still love them all, every single, beautiful, luscious, weaselly, butt-headed one of them. And here, Right Now, in this moment, I see what a truly beautiful gift that is . . . (but really? i think i may have another turn or two on the dancefloor waiting for me in the not too distant future. to be continued . . . yeah . . . :)