PEERING ROUND UNCERTAIN CORNERS – LOVE AND MASCULINITY. (2015)
I peer round the corner of the corridor and I catch sight of myself in the mirror at its darkened end and I wince; check myself to make sure that the person in the mirror really is me; really is the person walking in this tall narrow house.
I have become used to being strong and something or other; maybe decisive or masterful or something, something I never dreamed I might be; something admirable?
And yet when I am walking around being admirable and sexy and masterful, I feel I really need to be more confident and self- assured. I need the anxiety and the uncertainty to be slightly less obvious. I need, for the sake of the role I am performing; that commitment to my given vision.
I need to believe it; to delight in the words of my lover that I am handsome and funny; that I am wise and sensitive; that I am a good lover and a good conversationalist. That I am calm in crisis and capable of creating safety and security and above all that well of excitement and joy which cause lashes to bat and hands to reach out and clothes to magically disappear.
And so when it is getting late in the night, and I am sitting in bed and the Madness CD I bought turned out just to be a CD case and the plumber, who is meant to have fixed my heating, is somehow steadfastly refusing to return my calls and I am thinking, maybe somehow I have done something that would cause me to be blacklisted by all the local tradesmen and I am sure the avocado has gone off and there are piles of papers in the sitting room and the floor needs hoovered and the toilet needs cleaned. With all this, I am about to call my love and I feel I have nothing to say tonight and yet really want to speak to her, and, to be honest, in the back of my mind, I am wondering why on earth she would love me, why she could believe I am what she says I am.
In fact, at this point I wonder very much; I think ‘When will she see through me? I think I really loved being this charming, wonderful, manly, sensitive, manly, gentle, manly man. I think I loved being this lovely vision. I really loved it and, as the minutes go by, I think she must have seen through me, she must have woken up and looked around her, all horrified and thought
“What on earth have I been doing the last two years? What on earth am I doing planning my life round him?”
It really is yucky isn’t it?
I wonder if you think this? I wonder if you are sitting in your living room, thinking ‘I am annoying’, or thinking ‘I am ugly’, or ‘I am weak and frightened’ or a bad mother or a bad partner, perhaps you think “I feel too little or too much” or something, maybe many somethings that cause you to doubt and worry and become confused and uncertain.
I guess we all do that. That we become lost in the corridor; looking in the mirrors and thinking ‘That is not me.’ or maybe thinking; ‘That is all too like me.’
And I see you while I worry.
I see you; my darling; my joy and I cannot tell you properly what you do to me.
I cannot tell you properly. I want to describe your body: your lips are so kissable; so soft, I lose myself with them. Your eyes; I want to stare into your blue eyes and I want to run my hands through and through your long, long, hair.
I did not know I could have someone want me or that I could feel such joy in such desire.
And yet I want more, to wipe a gap in the mist on the mirror and see through it to where you are sat on the couch, playing with the phone. I want to let you know that I am lost with the amazement with which I see your curiosity and interest in life while I just watch it; the way you think a thought and find an answer or go tripping down a path of interest and exploration or just lose yourself in knowledge and information and news and comments.
I want to babble, I want to say;
“How on earth are you full of things to say?”
“How can you witter for so long and still be interesting and interested?”
And;
“How can you talk when I am being silent, being a big lump on the couch, saying and thinking nothing?”
How can you do that? I am clapping my hands with delight saying;
“I want to join in, I want to join in with this dance of words.”
I want to join in and somehow, when I wipe the mirror, I see me in the background waving and waving. In a normal book I would be waving frantically in the drowning way but now I look more closely, I can see I am dancing. Well dancing is wrong I am jittering all over the place, waving and saying to me;
“Come in and join me”
And you are watching me dancing. You are laughing and blowing me kisses saying;
“This is how it is and isn’t it fun!”
(Photo Graham and Dash, Ardmore, 10 2020)
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