Thoughts tangle.
I trip inside.
An abrupt disrupt,
Attempted temptations
Collide with Puritanical
Whispers in my marrow
From ancient stern-lipped marms.
Harnessed and restrained,
My instincts choke,
Wane and die.
Only their ghosts remain,
Ricocheting within.
Snuggling against your body
I feel your warmth
The rise and fall of your breath
My own heartbeat
As I press my chest into your back
My face fits cozily
Between your neck and the pillow
This is everything, I think
This is everything
I was raised to be mild
All the wild in me tamed
Strong desires in me shamed
Made an adult while still a child
Now at mid-life, the end in sight
I’m awakening my wild
Reviving my inner child
Letting loose my appetite
Lay your hands on my body
Play me like a drum
Let our bodies’ percussive rhythms
Make our hearts begin to thrum
The first time I really fell in love was with a very talented chef.
We met each other just as the whole celebrity chef phenomenon was starting to really cook. He was just beginning to rise as some of the mega-star chefs of today such as Bobby Flay were just starting to blaze.
The restaurant world was abuzz then, and I was a small part of it. I was a server at the newly opened second restaurant of a long-time successful NYC 3-star chef. Being a perfectionist and a Betty-by-the-Book type, I was an excellent waitress and often asked to serve food critics and VIP fellow chefs.
One morning I went into the kitchen before service started and something felt different. Like some animal sense, the hairs on my arms stood up. My body vibrated. My back was to it, but I literally felt compelled to look over at the line.
There I saw the most incredible pair of hands at work. I was mesmerized for a moment. The way they touched the produce was so…intimate. So sensual.
My cheeks blushed with heat and as I looked up to see who belonged to those hands, my eyes met the sweetest almond-shaped hazel eyes.
It felt like I literally poured into him through his eyes. Time just sort of expanded and the moment felt like forever.
I gathered myself together, and just before I turned to go back out on the floor, my eyes found his lips, which had a sexy little smile dancing across their fullness.
That was it for me. My life changed course in those moments.
I fell hard that day. He had been brought in to the restaurant as sous chef, and our paths were to cross daily. I was involved with someone else at the time, though it was a dying relationship.
I literally fell under a kind of spell. I made some choices that I am not proud of today.
Chef and I began what would end up being an extremely important, passionate, ultimately heartbreaking (twice) relationship.
We were young, emotionally wounded, and both out of control and lost. But boy, did I love him.
It still makes my head swim to think of it. The story of us is epic and blog-worthy. But not today. I’m not quite ready.
When I tell you that he was the most talented of them all, of all the star chefs then and the star chefs-to-be (the ones who were behind the star chefs who have since risen to fame,) and maybe even of the current culinary stars, I am not exaggerating or talking from my entranced heart.
He was truly gifted. His food was the most flavorful, exquisitely layered food I have ever tasted, and I have had the pleasure of some incredible meals then and now.
A meal under his talents was a total body sensual experience and left you with an amazing high.
People became diehard fans, literally traveling across countries to follow him wherever he went.
Our relationship ended dramatically, not once but twice. My heart was totally shattered.
But I was gifted a love of fine dining that remains to this day.
Much of my adult life has been about coming to terms with lust.
Having grown up in a fairly conservative family with mainly Protestant roots, I learned early on to deny and repress my lust: for life, for sex, for fame, for love, for food.
So much so that I lived a kind of double life from my teens into my twenties.
I hid many behaviors that all revolved around my various appetites. Somewhere in my somewhat stunted emotional development, I had learned that being seen as having a need (be it physical or otherwise) was weak, unattractive.
And so I learned to pretend I did not have them.
And yet, at the same time, I also had a very strong need to be seen as a sexual object. (See Sexual Healing, my previous post on this issue.) This presented quite a war within me. I desperately wanted to be seen and treated like a sexually desirable woman – that was sort of the ultimate need. At the same time, I had shame and embarrassment around this and had strong messaging that that was bad, and that I should be a good girl with no sexuality, appetites, strong opinions or feelings.
And so I pretended to be one one way while in secret I acted in other ways.
I invested a great deal of time into creating the illusion that I was chaste, a normal eater, and had a very neutral opinion on just about everything. I monitored my emotions and watched myself around people, carefully choosing mannerisms and tones to project a good girl.
Meanwhile, I was living quite another kind of life, a life I hid from my family, my friends. A life of appetite and lust and danger.
There were certainly angels watching over me. I was often in the wrong places at the wrong time. Somehow, I survived.
At a certain point in my twenties, the jig was up, as they say.
My psyche demanded that I heal the split, and I began the process of recovering wholeness again.
Of uncovering my own genuine appetites from a place of love, curiosity and acceptance. Of letting go of the urge to keep my appetites hidden.
I began a process of embracing of my true nature and wants and needs as beautiful reflections of my own humanity. I began the shedding of the shaming nature that I inherited.
An unlearning of the social pressure that happens in middle school to put a damper on enthusiasm, to keep a lid on want to look cool.
I learned to let myself eat as I really wanted to in front of others.
I learned to let myself be seen trying, excited, wanting, sexy, hungry, angry, hopeful, happy, disappointed, frightened, messy, unhappy, empty, full, vulnerable, awkward, lonely, blissful.
I learned to let myself be seen. As I really am.
Today I value the self-honesty that I live from. Truth is of huge importance to me.
Though I am still in awe of the capacity I had within my own psyche to maintain such a dichotomy the way I did – that I could compartmentalize two such distinct worlds at once – I am so grateful that that is just a chapter in my story.
Today, I have one world with many parts: parts that co-mingle and bring me great joy in their diversity.
I celebrate my appetites, I revel in my enthusiasms and passions.
I love my lust. It is what lets me know I am human. And alive.
So today, I try to wear my lust like a smile.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: lust
Growing up in the 70’s, my sexuality was shaped by what are now considered to be pretty tame resources.
Remember that this was before the internet brought free porn into our homes, and nudity and sex acts were the norm in film and television.
It’s true: “free love,” second-wave feminism, women’s liberation, and the sexual revolution were making major strides in the 1960’s and 70’s. The 70’s saw many influential innovations. Edible underwear was invented. (Still being sold today.) Video Home Systems (or VHS) and Beta Systems were made available to buy in the mid-late-70’s, which the porn industry apparently mavericked for their retail use.
Like many middle class Americans, my parents didn’t have a VHS machine until the 80’s, so videos were not available to me. (We were also the last family I knew to get cable. My parents were against paying for TV for some reason. Maybe there were late night cable porn resources around in the later 1970’s, but not in our house.)
Despite there being many women who were battling for my future and the future of many young girls like me against the woman-as-sex-symbol stereotype, I remained steeped in the cultural and mass media imagery, messages and attitudes that kept that stereotype alive and well. And boy, did it all do a number on me.
I grew up in Houston, Texas, in a mostly white, middle class neighborhood.
Other than my brothers and the time this one guy was driving around the neighborhood without pants on, fondling himself, asking kids for directions, who I had the misfortune of being “exposed to,” I was not exposed to male nudity as a child.
But female nudity abounded, and shaped not only how I thought about myself and my body, but how I thought everyone else thought about me and my body.
So much so that the “me” in the sentence above and “my body” became synonymous in my mind. I WAS my body. My body was me. As in, I based my entire self worth on my appearance and whether or not I felt men were attracted to me.
(I still struggle with this encoding. But I digress. More to come on that later.)
Though I was born into the “Golden Age of Porn,” the “porno chic” years of 1969-84, I was not exposed to any of the films that were made famous during those years, notably Warhol’s Blue Movie, Mona, later The Devil in Miss Jones and Deep Throat. (They probably didn’t make it to mainstream theatres in Houston at the time, but even if they had, I’d never have gotten to see one.)
But we had magazines. Playboy and Hustler. Others. It was the photographic depictions of women in men’s magazines that primarily influenced how I saw myself as a woman.
My first memory of seeing and being influenced by a photo of a naked woman was actually a record cover, and this woman was not exactly naked. It was the cover of Herb Albert & The Tijuana Brass album “Whipped Cream and Other Delights” (1965.)
This was one of my parents’ favorite albums to play. I heard it often from an early age, and I loved dancing to the music, making up dances to the songs, which were saucy, sexy jazz concoctions.
But more than that, I was obsessed with the woman on the cover. I was attracted to her. (Maybe it was the appeal of the whipped cream. I was already way too into food: my eating disorder was gesticulating already.)
But it was more than that. On some level, I knew she was considered exciting, attractive and desirable, and I wanted to grow up to be just like her.
Also, TV shows such as “Love, American Style” Rowan & Martin’s “Laugh-In” were popular during my early years. Both had racy sexual references and innuendo and young women dressed in sexy outfits. From these shows, I learned that if you were sexy and young, you got positive attention from men. Think young Goldie Hawn dancing in those strobe lights in that green bikini with her painted body. The young women on the show actually wore babydoll dresses and Mary Janes because those were in fashion. Talk about confusing messages!
True story: If little me was asked at the time (when I was 4 or so) what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said “a go-go dancer.” I even had little patent white go go boots at 3!
These were my role models. This was the kind of woman I wanted to be!
Later, I found my brother’s girlie mag stashes and would go in when they were out to pore over them. I was fascinated by the women’s bodies, so different than mine. I knew that I fell way short, but I remained hopeful that maybe someday, with enough hard work, I could create a body close enough to rate some man’s favor.
When I was old enough, I started to read the articles (yes, I really did) and the infamous “Letters to Playboy.” These were my education in what was interesting to men about women. Through them, I discovered what men really thought about women. What they really wanted of us. And it all had to do with our bodies.
I learned that I was here to be attractive to men. That what I looked like and how attractive men found me was my purpose on this earth. That there was little value to me other than my sex appeal, and that if I wanted any happiness on this planet, I better work hard to be and stay appealing to men.
And so I did. I became the perfect female consumer. I bought into it all hook, line and sinker. The beauty products, the clothes, the way of being in the world.
I transitioned from my brother’s hidden away men’s magazines to the magazines of my adolescence. Though they were women’s magazines – Teen, Cosmo, Glamour, to name a few – the messages of their content were actually perfectly aligned with the former’s messages about the female role in society. In these magazines I found my road map, the formulas for winning and keeping a man, 100 ways to keep him satisfied in bed, and how to stay looking young and sexy forever.
Every issue of these magazines had different versions of these same themes, over and over. (And if you buy these kinds of magazines today, they still do.) And I bought them and bought into them all, every time.
How I related to boys and then men was all shaped by that early imprinting. I look back and feel like I didn’t really get to have real relationships with men (and women — since they were always the competition for the men) until much later in life. Because through all my dating and early relationships, I was living from the outside in, trying to be the women I had seen in those magazines pages. Trying to find and live the life promised to me in the ads in the magazines and on TV if I succeeded in making myself into one of those women in the pictures.
It took several years after moving to NYC as a young woman for me to learn how to leave my apartment without make up on.
It has taken many more years for me to unravel all of that social and cultural conditioning to find within my own idea of being a woman, of my own sexuality, of what I feel is my intrinsic value and purpose on this planet. It turns out, none of it depends on what men or society think of how I look.
It has been a tough going, this “unlearning.” I was thoroughly brainwashed. I drank the Koolaid. Despite years of hard work to reprogram myself, I still find little pockets within me that harbor beliefs like that Victoria Secret models are better people and deserve more than women like me. Or that if only I looked like this model or that model, my life would be perfect. Little pockets of self-hate that dismiss my worthiness as a human because I do not have large boobs and perfect thighs.
There’s still a part of me that is scared writing this blog post. That I will be labelled as “ugly” just thinking these thoughts/going against the grain.
I take those parts by the hand when they reveal themselves to me and I whisper the truth in a loving tone and tell them I am so sorry they have ever felt anything less than beautiful just as they are, inside and out.
Today, I try my very best to love my real body. I pour my resources into that. (I no longer buy those magazines nor do I need they ideas they sell.)
I love being in my body, and I love my awakening true sexuality. I love feeling desirable. (Who doesn’t?) But I no longer seek to feel this feeling from outside of me.
Today, feeling attractive and desirable is on my terms, made from an internal collage made out of my true essence – what I like and feels good to me. This inner imagery replaces the old template.
There is no longer a buxom babe at the centerfold of my spirit, beckoning to me with promises of happiness and fulfillment if I am able to become her.
There is me, and the unique beauty that I bring to the world this time I am here.
Like many women my now-age, I look back at the loss of all that time trying to be a sex symbol as a tragic loss of my life’s precious energy.
I waste no more such precious time today.
I developed a disordered relationship with food practically from birth.
Food and eating have long since been very complicated for me.
Food was never just food. Sustenance. A source of energy.
The act of eating was never just a means to satisfy physical hunger, fuel the machine, fill the tank.
It was security. A best friend. My lover. My mother. My father.
Relief. Comfort. Excitement. Joy. A distraction.
A way to protect my self. A weapon. A protest sign. A lockable door. A “Fuck you, world.”
It gave me a sense of well-being. It gave me something that felt essential to my very ability to exist on this planet.
But above all else, and most importantly, it have me an illusion of control.
And this, above all, was crucial to me.
As a child, my world was out-of-control. Everyone in it seemed out-of-control. Every thing happening seemed out of my control.
Inside of me, good gravy, things certainly felt out of control. Feelings, thoughts. Wants. Needs. All felt huge and to a small person who felt they had no voice and no power, they were simply more than I could comprehend or cope with.
Enter food.
The one area I felt I had any say in was with food. What I ate and how much.
Especially how much. Any hint of the slightest suggestion that I might begin to think about considering becoming open to the idea of portion control still brings up a deep revolution within me. A protest begins without my having to even rally the troops. Big signs flashes in my head: “Fuck you!” “Over my dead body!” “Not while there is still breath in my body!”
You’ve got to be kidding. I’m supposed to let someone else tell me how much I am allowed to eat? What?!
Seriously, I get so defiantly enraged at the concept I literally feel nauseaus.
To a non-disordered person, it may be very hard to comprehend. It may seem or sound absurd.
But trust me when I say that my being able to eat or not eat what, when, and how much of something I wanted was (and sometimes still is) of incredible importance to me.
Almost feels life and death to me to be able to choose and act as I want in this one area of my life. It looks very much like addiction and obsessive-compulsive behavior because it is very much both of those things.
As you can imagine, such a relationship is doomed from the start. It is not healthy. It is instincts gone awry. It is a coping mechanism that brings an initial and momentary satisfaction followed by an ever-deeper, never-to-be-satisfied longing.
Such a relationship with food and eating skews all other relationships. It is a poor substitute for a real solution to the problem. And the problem, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with the food or eating. They are merely the symptom.
So the solution, for me, has not and never will be portion control. I do not weigh and measure my food. (That still sends waves of dread through my body.) I do not label foods good or bad, or blame dieting or fad diets for my problem. Fad diets and the “diet” industry are only potential triggers or tools for my own kinked relationship to food and eating.
The problem was not and never will be my willpower.
The problem is how the funky-ass relationship to food and eating developed the first place. What was missing that led to the kink in my connection to regular eating?
There were circumstances. Maybe something ancestral, genetic, sure. But truly, there were circumstances and my response to them. My best solution for coping happened to be really distorted and led to many years of suffering.
Around all of that, I have done a great deal of work. But in terms of healing, it has come down to this: addressing the part of me that developed such a relationship in the first place.
What did that part really need? How can I help that part trust other ways of meeting those needs? (The second question is almost more important and takes a great deal of patience to answer and to implement.)
I began asking these questions, and learned to really listen for and then to the answers.
The needs and wants came first.
The answer I heard most is that part of me wanting something for herself, just for her, that no one and nothing can interfere with. In unlimited amounts.
This seemed key to the whole thing, this need.
This longing for something just for me, that no one else can have, that only I can have, that no one can take away, mess with or hurt.
Woah. Logically, it is clear when I really lay it out like that that food and eating never had a chance at solving that problem. They do not contain the ability to solve it.
But that part of me was working from a different logic that makes total sense to the information it had at the time. Given the limited resources and the level of maturity of that part of me at that time, I can see how the dots were connected to the one thing that was available and that seemed to work.
Problem is, that part is hungry for something that food and eating can never satiate.
But that is where the real work lies. But as in all things, hard work does pay off. Yes, it does suck to have to do anything at all about a problem that I wish had never started in the first place. But that is just reality and once I accepted that, things began to get better.
That is my job now. To give myself that indefinable…something…and to give it in unlimited amounts.
Sometimes it is my own attention. Support. Kindness. Comfort. Bolstering. Appreciation. Soothing. Excitement. Stimulation. Fulfillment. Fullness. Rest. Recovery. Quiet. Peace. Stillness. A sense of being ok. Safe. Whole just as I am.
These I can give myself whenever, however I want in whatever quantities that part demands, cries for, deserves. I get to pour unlimited amounts of these things into myself, and no one and nothing can interfere or mess with that.
But what about the act of eating? What about that part of it all? That part of me wants to consume, wants to be filled, wants to take in and become one with something.
No, I cannot actually physically have the experience of filling myself with something, taking a substance into my body and becoming one with it.
That is the physical aspect of the whole, and there is another series of solutions to address that part. That I can satisfy in other ways. That is a different blog for another day, perhaps.
But the rest of it, I got in spades to give. Unlimited amounts.
It took some experimentation to help that part of me trust that letting go of the old mechanism for the chance that something new would ultimately be better and actually, really work, for real. That is where patience and gentleness and compassion pay off.
But it is all worth it. The meeting of those needs of my self by myself — that, my friends, I am in control of.
At long last, I have the power that I have so craved.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: portion
For JC and anyone else who hates the idea of fucking “portions.”
His signature drink: a love-infused cocktail, equal parts animal magnestism and emotional intelligence. That’s one hangover I’d happily suffer again.
Yes, you made an impression on me.
Didn’t you see the way I stopped and waited for you to pass by me once again?
What did you think I was doing? You silly thing.
Nobody is that interested in an ad for a car service in this app-driven age.
And besides, I was pretending to take down the number and it was all 7’s!
Not much to me if I couldn’t remember that, now would there be?
Is that why you didn’t turn around? Didn’t come back to “find” me again?
Surely you couldn’t be that shallow. Not you. Never you.
I was ready to say hello. Ready to start a conversation. Ready to…
But no, you just walked on and out of the station. Not even a quick glance back.
You left me with the ghost of the you and the us that might have been.
The arm that you brushed as you passed me by still tingles from your touch.
You silly thing. I’m very cross with you. I’ll never talk to you again. Until the next time.
I’ll be there tomorrow around the same time…by the car service ad? (Our spot?))
You can make it up to me then…I seldom hold a grudge. Life’s much too short.
But a first impression…lasts forever.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: impression
Beyond the Skinny Branches 