Cigars and Brandy

Fast –anchor’d eternal O love! O woman I love!

O bride! O wife! More resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!

Then separate, as disembodied or another born,

Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,

I ascend, I float in the regions of your love O man,

O sharer of my roving life.

Fast Anchor’d Eternal O Love! By Walt Whitman

I'm in Ohio as I write this.  While scanning chanels in my hotel room, I happened upon a program relating to one of my favourite topics, sex and sexuality.  My attention peaked when I saw the title, The History of Sex, flanked with high flames flickering and crackling, it reminded me of hell.  Did the producers intend to connect sex and sexuality with heat, passion and fire, or did they intend to insinuate sinful human nature, connecting it instead to the dark side of our personalities?  Why should anyone agree that pleasure is bad?  Is it because one feels weak in the grasp of it?  No one wants to feel loss of power.  Is it because one feels strong in its ecstasy?  With strength comes empowerment; only the church and the government are allowed this side of pleasure.  Love and sex are free.  Anything free is difficult to catch and control.

Catching the tail-end of the previous program about sex and the civil war, the show included a brief mention of the famous American poet, Walt Whitman.  Walt Whitman was unafraid to be who he was, homosexual or bisexual.  He recorded many sexual experiences in his personal journals, many of them with men, usually a trade-worker.  I don’t believe he felt any shame for his love one way or the other and he obviously didn’t think twice about sharing his experiences in poetry or the written word.  He simply was who he was and that’s all there was to it.  He was a brave example of someone living his honest self.  It’s a tough thing to do.

If any of my long-time personal friends, people I call family, were to read my blog from beginning to present, they’d likely learn some things about me, especially concerning my sexuality.  None of them have come to me and questioned me.  If my parents saw me kissing a woman on her lips, they’d be confused but then they’d tip their heads and shrug their shoulders. I don’t think they’d be too surprised.

My mother wasn’t told by her doctor that she was carrying twins, but having experienced pregnancy once before she knew this one was different.  She had watched my father completely detach himself from my brother at birth simply because he was a boy (he had wanted a girl).  My mother repeatedly prayed that if she was indeed pregnant with two, that they both be girls.  Observing her two daughters mature, a question remained at the back of my mother’s mind - could she have changed the sex of one of her babies from a boy to a girl simply with prayer and intent?  It seemed that way to her, what with all my traits;  love of sports, cars, pants, running, climbing and hanging out with the boys - indeed, I was one of them. 

Like the boys, I didn’t wear a shirt when I played outside during the summer months.  That changed when I was seven.  One of the boys I roamed with commented that girls are supposed to wear shirts; that only boys can take off their shirts in public.  I felt humiliated.  I got angry, yelled back at him that I didn't have to wear a shirt if I didn't want to, that being a girl had nothing to do with it.  I ran inside and told my mother.  She restrained a laugh and said, ‘I guess we should start putting a shirt on you.’  I had been completely unaware of this social nuance.  On top of it, I had to hear if from some stupid boy and now I felt he had the upper hand.  I cried, felt cheated; robbed of an inborn equality. Society had agreed with him, he had gotten away with shaming me.

I don’t distinguish my sexuality from who I am.  It seems natural to me that at eighteen I wore my mother’s pant suit with my father’s tie to church, sitting next to him through the entire service.  Visually, I was dressed like a man.  My father found this amusing.  He should have seen it for what it really was - a bid for Power, I was his equal.

I may have lost energy that day when I was seven but I gained it back years later. 

If anyone has any questions about me or who I fuck, they can just ask, it’s not something I hide because there’s no shame in who I am.  If someone disagrees with me, that’s fine.  I’ll gladly put on my suit, fix my tie, and we can discuss it over cigars and brandy.

Continued on Tuesday August 2^nd, 2011

Until then, I remain yours,

Lesley

Hallelujah Heartist