INTIMATE LETTER TO MY EX-UNGIRLFRIEND
There is more to this episode which
caused me to quit you, more than
meets
the eye. You deny very human
sentiments,
the very ones you seek--but
which don't
quite fit your ideal, your
preconceived
notions as to what a
relationship is and what
it is not. All neatly defined
and packaged
for instant use.
I guess it's not so much me. You
would have
done the same thing to another
man. Perhaps
you've done this before, or
something similar:
Entice a man then pretend you did not want him
in the first place and pretend
the innocent victim
You are not to be believed. And
to think: I loved you.
Maybe you don't like men the way
men like
and love you, "so get thee
to a nunnery."
If you don't want to be a nun,
be something
which will withdraw your womanness from the world:
how you walk and talk and how
you hold yourself
up with dignity--destroy all of
that and you
might not be bothered by a man
again.
The more I think about what happened, the
less hurt I feel and the more I
feel sorry
for you, the more I pity you,
that when pre-
sented
with goodness, the laughter of my heart,
poetry, warmth and affection and
caring, which
you did everything to cultivate
and encourage, you,
at the selfsame time, rejected
and suspected my love,
taking it almost as an attack.
Your cultivated indifference I tolerated because I loved you more than your
snub.
And I kept on believing that you
would change. At one point I thought you had
changed--or so you lead me to believe; but you had one more personality up your
sleeve, which you used to try to trample on my dignity and my manhood.
I've had to run away from you lest you poison my
life beyond cure. Somehow it caught in your craw
that you might be mistaken for
my girlfriend. What
a disaster for you. You told me:
"It's not true. I'm
not your girlfriend," said
emphatically so. You are a foolish woman. My love is not a bitter elixir to
swallow, or something to be ashamed off.
At any rate, you do not wish to be wanted. You told
me that yourself. You have lots
of cheek saying that.
For if you do not want to be wanted, wear sackcloth and
wear ugly shoes and dresses.
Stop wearing scent and ear-
rings, and don't do anything to
your hair and become an
old hag and let poets alone, for
they, too, are sensitive
beings. You and your yogis have
no monopoly on that.
Do not let a man take your arm as you walk close beside
him; and do not reach across the table and take a man's hands, holding them for
a long time and looking deeply into his eyes and smiling at him--the way you
did with me. Don't do that, and no man will ever fall
in love with you again. And you shall be rid of your
enemy: Men who love and desire you.
You certainly pulled me into your web, and I was fool and
innocent enough to believe there
was something growing between us, that there was more to us than just Saturday
excursions, something more than walks and talks over coffee.
I'm a man. I want the passionate
woman of you, too. Lips that I can kiss and kiss again.
Breasts I can caress and celebrate with poems and delight and enter
rediscovered caverns where unknown treasures lay buried. I want that too. You
want me that way, too, but you deny even that. I never pressured you for
anything. I was ready to wait the rest of the year for you for a change in your
heart, because I was looking beyond a fleeting summer romance to the future of
us. So unless you change, there is nothing left of us
except a few empty coffee cups and the residue of our shadows left on the
beach.
You told me you wanted to change, and I was willing to
stand by you, I wanted to help you escape from you protective tower, which you
wanted to topple to be free from a flat past and profession. I was there to
encourage and defend you if need be. But you did not
want to change anything; you liked to be in your tower, where feelings are
tightly controlled and you are safe from unknown roads of love, intimacy and
lovers' joys and laughter.
This journey of our lives is for the exploration of our
selves and for the expression of
love, not denial of love.
Don't reject love and its
mystery. Love is love.
I want to live! I don't want to
be locked up in your isolated tower. I want to be presented to the world as the
man who loves you. I don't want you to pretend you are
not with me when we are together. I am very real and very much a part of your
life, whether you realize that or not.
This letter was written by the man who still loves you.
But perhaps you don't understand
that, either.
I'll end here.
Robert
On the Feast of the Prophet Elias
7 July 1999
San Francisco