Self Therapy and such

This last weekend was VERY busy, packed with wonderful experiences and nessecary evils.

On Friday evening, Joshua, Dryden and I went to see a pagan folk singer perform at one of our local Spiritual Centers. Normally, I need a little time to warm up to a new singer or band,  many times I just don;t really get into it until I’ve heard them a few times. But S J Tucker ( http://www.skinnywhitechick.com/ ) was wonderful, so vibrant and alive and personable. A pagan folk singer/songwriter, she writes about everything but I am partial to her pagan songs of course. What made things even better was the fire dancing she and her boyfreind did after the show. I have only seldom seen actual fire dancing, mostly on TV (think Hawiian men dancing around with fire) Mainly my experience was in watching people swing glow sticks around at the ends of ropes. But this was very moving to me. Here’s a short clip with SJ Tuckers song “Firebird” in the background.

On Saturday, we drove up to Denver and here is the very positive difference… I didn’t tear up, I didn’t ache deep in my stomach as we drove by the exit to the airport, I breathed in and my lungs worked just fine. I was human and settled, calm and collected.

We saw my neice, (the one who’s grandmother is crazy, see previous post) she just turned one year old and is well loved by all around her. After a nice lunch and a long walk, it was time for her nap and time for us to meet some other family also in the Denver area. And here is where the self therapy continues… We met my cousin and his fiance at the 16th Street Mall, where Mrcel and I spent a whole evening walking around. And again… I didn’t cry or ache inside.. instead I laughed and joked with my family, we talked and caught up on all the years that seem to wedge their way inbetween our visits. Even though I was comfortable being at the mall again, I was aware at every turn, it just didn’t send knifes through me as it has before, those feelings have started to ease. But my devious little mind decided that I should push myself, test myself, make myself relive one more scenario in order to more fully “over-write” my memories.

We had all previously decided to have dinner together, my cousin, his fiance, myself, Joshua, Dryden and Sydney. And so when the question came up of where… I raved about the restaurant that Marcel and I had gone to… the one that my husband had built all those years before. Everyone said that sounded great so I called and had us placed on the waiting list. When we got there, the same jazz band was playing, the same atmosphere, and the memories popped up but I shoved them away… At the door where Marcel and I had stood, me leaning back into his chest, instead I turned to Joshua and put my arms around him and kissed him. With my other hand I waved the kids inside and just stood there with my husband, trying to fill my mind with him and only him. We stayed like that for a minute or two, him making a face at me and me smiling up at him anyways. Then we went inside and ordered drinks while we waited.

The dinner was so much fun, it was alive and “right”. The kids made it their mission to entertain us all with silly jokes and stories. We spent more time talking about the past and the future and all the time inbetween and when it was time to leave, it was with a different feeling of being “filled up with love” than before. It was with a feeling of love and friendship with my family… not a scared, sick feeling that someone might have seen me, not a feeling of being crushed under the weight of something that wouldn’t allow me to breathe. Was it as “massive” in it’s invasion of my senses?

Not even close, but it was soft and sweet and I could move with grace and surety through it.

 

Taming the beasts; inside and out

Taos… the terrain is so strange yet familiar to my senses, like Colorado but different, a pair of siblings, close in feature but with subtle variances. A tilt of the land, it’s angle slightly askew from that which I register at home. The color of it’s face less ruddy, more scarred with black rock and skree. The people… are just people, no different than anywhere else.

I recognized the plants, what to eat and use for illness… and what to secretly gather  if I wanted to harm someone quietly. I tasted the same smells in my mouth as those at home. This place was a friendly neighbors home, just down the street and when you leave, you have only a small stroll to get to your own home, comfortable and familiar with the surroundings.

And for all it’s sameness, I was reminded at nearly ever turn of the last time I spent a stretch away from work and home, hidden in plain sight from the world.

We ate and drank and watched people, a certain walk of a man scratching the surface of my brain, a small twinge that said I still remember him. I drank white wine, a Reisling here or Zinvandel there, sinking further into the sleep walk of memories… He urged me to enjoy the wine, not just drink it. As the sips slide down my throat and reach my stomach, the sensation of warmth spreading along my limbs reminds me of his touch and I see us walking arm and arm, looking for a nice bottle to share in our lovemaking and our bed that evening. I remember laying on our stomachs, nude and cooling our bodies, our heads facing the bottom of the bed, my reading from a dutch translation book, searching for ways to turn ordinary words into naughty phrases, and him… laughing and smiling and teaching me the right way to ask for all the things I wanted him to do to me. There are no glasses and so I slip a skirt and light tank top on. On bare feet decorated in beads and a toe ring, I walk unashamed in my obvious wanton seductiveness, swaying my hips, bragging with each step that I am making the man that waits for me very happy indeed. Securing the two glasses, I float back to the room… I stop the memory, it is painful and I am here with my Husband now.

Joshua and I walk around, his presence clinging to my side and I feel sticky and uncomfortable, maybe it is the weather… or maybe not. His hand squeezing mine, too tight, his sense of fear shoots through my fingers with each step, like he is hanging on for dear life, knowing that to let go means I might make for a not so clean escape. 

In another place, it’s cool inside and so we stop to rest, the sun at high altitude brow beats everyone in it’s path.  It is a strong master, herding us small beings into shadows and dark crevices… just exactly the places I avoid most times. They hold too many memories that I would rather keep hidden.

The lounge is full and soon the heat is no better inside than outside, and I drink, wanting to smile and laugh, needing the lubrication to ease any lingering friction between Joshua and I…. but I am sucked in again at the sight of a broad chested man, bald… his eyes intense. FUCK! Stop invading my every moment! I find myself looking again and again, and the man notices, each glance of mine countered by one of his own. And the months fly away again, so easy now that my mind is loose. The button up shirt, the rolled up sleeves, untucked, daring me the reach under and touch his stomach and chest. The jeans… a casual faded blue, seeming so relaxed but caging the passion held tight against his zipper, just below the belt line. The type of pants just right for leaning my ass up against.

I fight it and I tell Joshua, “Let’s go check out some other places”. He swallows the last of his beer and nods in the direction of the door, indicating that he will follow me. Passing under the adobe archway leading to the courtyard, my heart drops a little into my stomach but I push on and finally break into the now cooler night air. Great big gulps of air and the breeze on my skin settles my nerves. 

Another bar, and we see a band setting up to play live music soon. AND MOTHER FUCK!!! still my mind is restless and will give me no peace… I watch the play of muscle as the speakers are lifted onto each other, the microphones, and the guitars…. Ah, the guitars are the worse. He played music to me, by webcam, I watched and listened to him play while I filed paperwork or typed out contracts. Why each movement of his fingers facinated me is still a mystery, pressing just enough in one spot to make the string sing and then moving on to another position… ( I’ve always yearned for the musician, my older brothers friends fueled the adolesent fire of this young girl.) 

I fake fatigue and beg to be taken back to our room, I can’t handle anymore reminders tonight.

The trip was not all drinking and mind games… we rafted down the Rio Grande Rapids as well and a spark of hope kindled inside me when Joshua was knocked out of the raft over the second set of rapids. LAUGH, no! Not that I wanted him hurt! …  But that he might be hurt and my only concern was to get to him, make sure he was safe, the tremors of fear a welcome sign that I still cared. Appreciation for the fact that my immeadiate reaction was to paddle as hard as I could to catch up to him, to reach out and hook the back of his life jacket with the T-handle of my paddle and drag his river soaked ass back into the raft. The hope still lives deep inside somewhere.

And we trekked through the forest the following day, and I reveled in the fact that the guide, Joshua and I were the only ones capable, out of 14 adults, of pitching a tarp cover when the rain started to threaten our lunch in the trees. We worked in perfect tandem, little needing to be said as one or another of us stretched the tarp, attached a rope, secured the plastic roof without disturbing the local flora. And even though I have never handled a Llama before… being quite comfortable with the lead roll as trainer for an as yet untried young beast. By the end of the trip, he needed no direction, he watched me and did as I wanted. He was a beautiful animal, and no, he didn;t spit on me or any one else for that matter. 

In the end, it was a nice trip, fun and enjoyable, I am sore in the body today and satisfied with my first attempts to explore New Mexico. Maybe someday the memories from this trip will be potent as those from September of last year.

 

 

Gray matter’s

I haven’t written much about Joshua. He is my constant now and seems ever unchanged because he is always there. Like a child, each day they grow but you don’t notice, they are with you every moment until you turn around and they are towering over you, their voice raspy and low, a teenage musk in your nose.

This has changed him. The affair… He is guarded, cautious, even more subdued… which is not hard to imagine in him. Even before, no one would have ever decribed him as social. And I am no butterfly by any means, but he is… socially akward shall we say… maybe not so far as to say socially inempt but akward certainly.

I wonder why it is so hard to see the memories I have of him… Is it because he stands before me? I see them from all other regions of my life, everything from first memories through all manners of pleasure or horror, each tinted with sight and smell, some even with taste, all with a sense of touch, fewer with sounds. But they are gray where he is involved, I wonder at this. Like a mother forgets the pain of birth, it simply fades away and she can not remember no matter her focus.

We met, I remember that, we sat on the back porch and I shared my paintings, that I remember too. I know the first time we kissed, and the first time we fucked (it wasn’t love making, it was hardly even fucking for that matter). I remember playing at the park with the kids, and watching an ER espisode that made me cry. I remember laying across his bed and studying for a class. Mixed in , there is some dancing at clubs, a concert or two, and sex interspersed throughout it all. But what I remember the most is that we worked… alot, hard, remodeling his house and then remodeling mine. Weeks and months and YEARS of work. We would joke that we were off to go on a date again at our favorite place, the Home Depot. It’s not very funny now….

I remember he proposed in much the same way as he first made love to me. It was a matter of course, an action to be taken, another thing to check off the list. Not a desire or yearning.

Five years into our relationship and he is sitting up in bed, a book in his hands. He lays it on his lap and looks at me with a question in his eyes. “What kind of ring do you want when I ask you to marry me?” I tease him… “Why, are you asking me to marry you???” He sticks his bottom lip out slightly, tilts his head a bit, and gives a small shrug to his shoulders, “Hmph… Sure.” I just look at him, annoyed perhaps with the nonchalant attitude, but I answer his first question anyways. “You know me; no diamonds, they make me think of suffering. No gold, too soft for the dirt, it would get scratched… maybe something simple, a Platinum ban with an inscription?”  He nods his head and goes back to reading…. I was not about to let him get away that easy. I tugged the book from his hands and sat down. “Are you serious?” I ask him, he nods that he is serious and reaches for the book. I pull it away “No! Damn it, if you are going to ask me, ASK ME!” He smiles a lopsided smile and nearly rolls his eyes. “Kimberley, will you marry me?” I smack him in the shoulder and say “Geesh, finally! Yes.” We spend a little while talking about it and then nod off to sleep.

Thinking about it now, I recognize it as another blank canvas moment that our life has always been made of. My friend Schona once told me that I get bored and that is the only reason I do what I do, to stir things up, to create energy and a little chaos, that I am not manic at all.  Simply bored. Maybe in a way she is right.  I’ve wanted to write about Joshua, to provide him with some honor on my blog, to lift him ever so slightly from the muck in which we both float. But only bland flavorless memories come to the surface, the parts that you want to skim off and toss aside with no value. 

 

A secret confession

Today is just one of the days I miss him, terribly. One of the days when I think I should have kept my mouth shut and my mind clear enough to keep it a sweet secret. Then I could still talk to him, hear his voice… but now I am forced to scour the search engines for any clue to how he is. I can only look at the pictures he has left on the few sites I know of. Sometimes, I wish I wouldn’t have confessed to Joshua.

He had been suspicious before… dumb ass me… I had left a picture of Marcel’s dick in the recycle bin of my computer. (mmmm… such a delicious thing for me to think of) I had taken a picture of myself as well; clean shaven and wet. I had played with myself before the pictures, wanting to give him a visual taste of what existed on the other end of the world. I don’t have these pictures now, but I remember the slippery shine showed well on the photos.

I had never done that before… sent photos to someone on the internet… or by regular mail. Oh sure, I had posed for boyfriends and I’d almost bet there is a naughty spread eagle of me somewhere out there but to do this, on purpose, of my own choice… the thought had not ever crossed my mind before. 

By this time, Marcel and I had started to “cyber” in Second Life. What I initially thought would be silly and smack of “romance novel” was so damn erotic, I could hardly get enough. We would describe; sentence by sentence, in IM; just what we would do to each other, if we could only really touch each other. I would say something like “I would slide down the front of you, and get on my knees. Looking up at you… I’d reach up and unzip the front of your pants, rubbing your cock with the palm of my hand. I reach inside and feel your skin… it’s hot. mmmm”. He would then type somethkng like “Ja, my cock is getting harder as you touch it and I reach under your chin to force your eyes up to mine. With my other hand, I pull out my cock and rub it on your lips…”.

Makes me wet just thinking about it now!

I sent the pictures so he could have a visual of me when we talked dirty to each other, so it would be more real, so he could better imagine the things he was “doing” with me. BUT why did I not empty the computers recycle bin??? Well… I sure know alot more about “hiding” things now than I did then….

But now, this is the only thing I hide…  my memories and lost hopes.