Let me touch you for a while
I’m finishing up my Richard Ford novel, Lay of the Land, and his protagonist, Frank’s Permanent Period is as right on as the dreamy period Frank first spoke of earlier in the trilogy – both pronouncements mirroring my life at each juncture.
It’s strange that I, a wordsmith myself, don’t have words to articulate how I feel about my ex-husband right now, about how my affair with N was otherworldly, and how now all of those events swim in the past as if trapped in jars of ether in my new house, my new self.
My close encounters with men since have been guarded and odd as if I am not who I used to be and not fully formed into someone I am becoming. E says, this too shall pass, that old pendulum thing – I’m stuck to one side of a polarity of who I might be when I let go.
Yesterday, I got a call from my work husband saying he had gossip I might want to hear. A man – B – who I met almost two years ago in NY after a long day of meetings and had a cocktail with – we had something something going on, it was apparent to everyone around us, but I was married, and he was married – is getting a divorce. Hmmm, I told my work husband, very interesting news. I said, B needs a year to digest his divorce, then give him my number.
I’m tired of clowning around with phantom men, I want a real one that I can touch for a while. Not a needy man, but a manly man, who is Tarzan, so I can be Jane.