Each week at the beginning of group at the Lilac Center, I relax in my chair as the therapist knocks together the Tingshas. But instead of practicing mindfulness, my mind wanders. It's hitched many blocks at various group sessions, but its most likely hangout is back in the folds of my brain where the memories of my Ethics class and Ethics instructor are stored. Dialectical Behavior Therapy is the type of treatment I'm receiving at the recommendation of the counselor I visited through my employer's mental health benefit program when I realized Murray's terminal illness was something I was going to need to ask for help to get through.
The counselor paid by my employer didn't have any more advice for me. I needed Advanced Therapy. He praised my insightfulness, but he wanted to find other ideas for me to stop hurting. My counselor described it as an egregious situation: I had been sexually abused by my ten year older brother and his older looking friend and had been parentified more and more with each sibling's break from the nucleus of the family. My family continued to splinter further, but then through email and social media, we began getting to know each other again. But just as we're enjoying being part of this family again, Murray, who in many other ways had always been a wonderful human being and brother, was drinking himself to death and I was caring for him in his terminal state.
So the counselor referred me to The Lilac Center for specialized treatment for trauma survivors, suggesting I test for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. I felt strangely like a pacifistic soldier. So I sit in the comfortable chair in a circle with other trauma survivors and we practice mindfulness or listen to a passage from a book that gives encouragement. Everyone but me. I sit there and remember how tight my ethics' instructor's butt was when he was writing a quote from Plato on the chalk board. Dialectics - Plato - Ethics Instructor's Ass.
I loved that ethics class, and not just because of the view of his ass or the dynamic nature of his arguments and passionate personality. He was married and I was similarly monogamous. No ethical dilemma. Uh, hum. Really. I knew we were just interested in each other's minds. And regardless of what our inner primal beings wanted to do, we never touched a finger, even when I tried as he returned my final paper. He gave me a 100% on my essay about my own made-up morality: The Ethic on Introspectionism. It was pompous of course - I was in my twenties - but he asked if he could use it in his future classes as a sample ethics paper. I was honored. I let him have a copy, turned, and never saw his ass again but never regretted knowing him.
The subject of Ethics is mind blowing. I loved rationalizing morality. It felt like something I had wanted to do all my life but didn't realize it. Just as using rationalizing to calm my emotions now intrigues me with DBT. As I think of it now, my Ethics instructor was one of the first men I had a strong but asexual relationship with, and it was wonderful. Growing up, I had a strong relationship with Murray, but it had been sexual. I did not have a sexual relationship with my dad, thank GOD, but we also had a tenuous relationship. Walt and I also didn't have a sexual relationship, but we weren't close at the time either.
So I had no strong relationships with men growing up. My maternal grandfather kinda, but more from stories I heard other people tell of him. He died when I was only eleven and we mostly didn't live in the same city. Then I dated men. Got my heart broken. Decided me and sex and men do not work well. Decided I was attracted to androgynous women. Mmm, k.d. lang. But it never worked out. I was too fucked up to have a relationship at that time. I needed to focus on myself.
I invested in a Hitachi Magic Wand at the suggestion of my favorite sexpert Susie Bright. I was twenty six. I thought I had had two orgasms prior to using my magic wand. I was wrong. Those were pre-orgasms. Needless to say I spent the next five years more or less celibate, at least with other people. I read Harriet Lerner books and took baths. I hiked in wooded areas to feel my body move. I kind of fell in love with myself.
It helped that I had my best friend Andrew. This was long before he had met Ian and I had met Hank. We traveled together - San Francisco and New York - we ate at fancy restaurants for brunch together, we saw art house films together, we went to gay nightclubs together and sipped gin and tonics. We did basically everything I now do with my husband except for, uh, well, all of those things, and we did not have sex. For the record, though, I did get Hank to go see "Brokeback Mountain" at the theater with me. Sex with Gay Guy, no. Gay Art Film Viewing with Straight Guy, yes. What Andrew did do for me during my celibate years as my husband does for me now was love me. He appreciated being around me and what I had to say, without looking at my tits.
Those five years of asexual love between Andrew and me were exceptionally therapeutic. It was good for me to love and be loved by a man who did not want my body. I felt safe and I felt empowered to figure out how to physically please myself and respond to my own urges. And eventually it helped me learn that when wonderful straight men wanted to occasionally look at my tits it didn't mean they weren't also interested in what's inside my brain.
It was a good time for me. Until my body's urges started saying they wanted babies.
1 comment:
Great one!
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