Bounce

I write like someone who never lived a happy day; oh, the good girls wouldn't know: all our happy days went in the coal trap with recovery. I used to drink too much alone. It lasted for about three years and three months, a discernible pattern. When I drank too much in public, people were glad to have me do it, then women looked askance at it, then modified their boyfriends' behavior, then their own, but the drinking itself didn't bother me or ruin my schedule. Later I entered the religion of AA. AA behaved normally culturally, and normal for me is tantamount to cruel. Mostly they were specialists in recovery -- whatever that is -- not artists. I remember in writing "professionally," wh. was more truly "academically-creatively," that I had to fight against a dark corner -- this metaphor came up more than once. Writing was a dark room w/o doors or windows. Writing was a dark room with a dark door in a dark corner.

What is it I mean by "given up sex"? I mean, that. That it is past. The Texas women I knew valued sex more than any other human being, endeavor, hope, or project. They did not want children. They wanted sex. They were tough and pretty and thin, and men were attracted to them. All put in a pretense of having meaningful relationships, but they were really invested in their own sexual prowess. It didn't bother me then, but if we were all in a room today, I'd bout w/ them. Those values hurt our thens and nexts. Rebuilding is likely, possible, and even necessary -- that beautiful, dirty word. Without sex, life has meaning; w/ sex, life's only meaning is sex. With sex, life has meaning; without sex, life's only meaning is sex.

Of course, I intend to have sex again, when I am married, which is pencilled in for about ten days from now. I planned a winter wedding in a scenic park, but the groom wants to marry spur-of-the-moment in a faraway city. Women I knew had ceremonies of their choosing then divorced. I waited. I'm marrying the kind of man who proposes marriage in magic marker on the phone, who has -- orated proposals -- for five years, but he pencils the date in his thought process. I love him.

It's up to Providence and Virginia.