Thursday, April 06, 2006
On Being Bisexual (Pt.4)
My friends E and D have separated, D left her young son with E in France and returned to the States to take up with another woman. Under French law, she lost all rights vis a vis her son. She knew that. She was ready. She gave me her return ticket. I flew to Paris in the fall of 1972, then caught another flight down to Nice. E was there to pick me up at the airport, and we drove westward along the coast to St. Tropez.
In winter St. Tropez is barely recognizable as the chi-chi place it becomes during summer. E's rented villa was up in the hills, about half an hour out of town. They even had their own pool, a rather large rectangular one. In this wintry time, it was filled with leaves. They sunk into the depths and cast weird patterns across the pool sides, reminding me of the French classic film, "Diabolique." I half-expected a body to waft up sometime during my stay.
I seemed to spend the first several days getting in sync with local time. On the first evening, E had some of his friends over, a couple consisting of husband and wife who ran a restaurant locally, and E's new friend M, a tall, good-looking young Frenchman who was into renovating old houses for rich Americans to snatch up.
We ate local food that first night. Real local, in fact. I was not yet a foodie, so it was lost on me. Wild dandelion salad, home-made camembert, little birds roasted and eaten whole, captured with cute little nooses that the birds stepped into, unsuspecting, so well concealed were they. I was so jet-lagged the evening quickly went into blur mode. But I was still alive enough for later, when E and I finally had sex together.
He was surprisingly small, but like several other small guys, they make up for it somehow, someway. He was a good lover for me. He showed me something I did not know before, that my body was ready to come again sooner than my mind thought it was.
But I soon discovered there was another presence in the villa, in the form of a woman living in England whom E had met, and was falling in love with. Her husband had died, she had her own family money. In milk cows. It was oddly appropriate, I felt, and soon took to referring to her as, The Milkmaid. But E was uncertain how real she was with him. He would discuss her with me, he valued my judgment. I tried to stay neutral, and what else could I do really, I had never met the woman, she sounded like quite a different person from me. I probably offered my standard line, "You never know what sort of person you really have until you start to share space under one roof."
It certainly applied to my situation. E and I probably both realized early on that we were different people in the two years since we had been together last. Gone was the more carefree spirit of San Francisco in the late 60s, with the carefree sexual identity too. Although E made a joke or two about M, our handsome new acquaintance, I could see that there was no room in his life now for bisexual space.
And he seemed more cautious as a person. D's leaving him was probably done at the right time, for both of them, but it must have stung a bit. It left him uncertain.
His fears were getting passed on quickly to his son, B, who was then three years old. He too had changed since I had played with him as a toddler in Marin County. E seemed to remind him a lot that his mother had left them. It was all done very subtly, of course, but you could feel the damage being done. E and I never degenerated into outright bickering, but we could feel the tension there. I had brought some of my art things along, I was copying a Van Gogh painting, of the Old Man in the Hat, with my box of oil pastels. I learned a lot at the time from copying the masters. Somehow being in that villa led me along a new view of the drawing, it got progressively darker now, the old man's brows acquired deeper furrows. He was not only gazing out as if over years of a life lived, but he seemed to be standing on the edge of an abyss, and what he saw below looked very dark.
It seemed an appropriate reflection of my situation. When the painting was done, I was ready to leave E and his villa, and his angry young child who now seemed fated to grow up feeling resentment toward
all women.
There was nothing to stay for here. Somehow I felt a huge chunk of my life had shifted, and I was now seeing it in the rear-view mirror.
TO BE CONTINUED
In winter St. Tropez is barely recognizable as the chi-chi place it becomes during summer. E's rented villa was up in the hills, about half an hour out of town. They even had their own pool, a rather large rectangular one. In this wintry time, it was filled with leaves. They sunk into the depths and cast weird patterns across the pool sides, reminding me of the French classic film, "Diabolique." I half-expected a body to waft up sometime during my stay.
I seemed to spend the first several days getting in sync with local time. On the first evening, E had some of his friends over, a couple consisting of husband and wife who ran a restaurant locally, and E's new friend M, a tall, good-looking young Frenchman who was into renovating old houses for rich Americans to snatch up.
We ate local food that first night. Real local, in fact. I was not yet a foodie, so it was lost on me. Wild dandelion salad, home-made camembert, little birds roasted and eaten whole, captured with cute little nooses that the birds stepped into, unsuspecting, so well concealed were they. I was so jet-lagged the evening quickly went into blur mode. But I was still alive enough for later, when E and I finally had sex together.
He was surprisingly small, but like several other small guys, they make up for it somehow, someway. He was a good lover for me. He showed me something I did not know before, that my body was ready to come again sooner than my mind thought it was.
But I soon discovered there was another presence in the villa, in the form of a woman living in England whom E had met, and was falling in love with. Her husband had died, she had her own family money. In milk cows. It was oddly appropriate, I felt, and soon took to referring to her as, The Milkmaid. But E was uncertain how real she was with him. He would discuss her with me, he valued my judgment. I tried to stay neutral, and what else could I do really, I had never met the woman, she sounded like quite a different person from me. I probably offered my standard line, "You never know what sort of person you really have until you start to share space under one roof."
It certainly applied to my situation. E and I probably both realized early on that we were different people in the two years since we had been together last. Gone was the more carefree spirit of San Francisco in the late 60s, with the carefree sexual identity too. Although E made a joke or two about M, our handsome new acquaintance, I could see that there was no room in his life now for bisexual space.
And he seemed more cautious as a person. D's leaving him was probably done at the right time, for both of them, but it must have stung a bit. It left him uncertain.
His fears were getting passed on quickly to his son, B, who was then three years old. He too had changed since I had played with him as a toddler in Marin County. E seemed to remind him a lot that his mother had left them. It was all done very subtly, of course, but you could feel the damage being done. E and I never degenerated into outright bickering, but we could feel the tension there. I had brought some of my art things along, I was copying a Van Gogh painting, of the Old Man in the Hat, with my box of oil pastels. I learned a lot at the time from copying the masters. Somehow being in that villa led me along a new view of the drawing, it got progressively darker now, the old man's brows acquired deeper furrows. He was not only gazing out as if over years of a life lived, but he seemed to be standing on the edge of an abyss, and what he saw below looked very dark.
It seemed an appropriate reflection of my situation. When the painting was done, I was ready to leave E and his villa, and his angry young child who now seemed fated to grow up feeling resentment toward
all women.
There was nothing to stay for here. Somehow I felt a huge chunk of my life had shifted, and I was now seeing it in the rear-view mirror.
TO BE CONTINUED
