California Reaming - A Woman's Adventures In Polyamory

My head was full of different affections for different people when I was growing up. For some reason I never really doubted my abilities to make sense of it all. It must have felt natural in a way for me to feel attracted to boys and girls. The attraction felt different at times. With boys I admired them usually from afar, but it seemed to me more of an identification thing I had going on with men; I wanted to be like them rather than that I wanted to be loved by them. With boys, I knew I could be a reasonable human being.

With girls, I could see already I was going to be anything but a reasonable human being. My heart went pitter-patter at an alarming rate when a fetching female wandered into my vicinity. Like K.D., who was a dark-haired beauty in my water polo class in high school gym. I knew I was attracted to her, and she even picked up on that at one point.

Mostly though I had crushes. Elizabeth Taylor was one of my first big ones. See, already I had narrowed it down to brunettes. No blondes for me. Something about that gorgeous face and those violet eyes. I was there for the ride, along with Nicky, Michael, Michael #2, Eddie, Richard, John, Richard again...I know there was a construction worker in there somewhere, but by the time he wandered down the pike I had moved on from Liz.

Closer to home was when I started viewing the films of Ingemar Bergman. I fell absolutely in love with his tall blonde leading lady at the time, Ingrid Thulin. She was one of the ladies who enjoyed quite an international career in films like Visconti's The Damned. She was very cerebral, and even though she was blonde I realized we had something intellectual in common. So not all blondes were evil and wicked for me. I tend to like Swedish women a lot. This goes back to days in film school, when I worked closely and very well with a Swedish director, a female, who had actually been raised in Paris. They are very down to earth and I love their good-natured, capable sensibility. I feel and look like I am one of the clan.

Much as I would like to meet a jock woman, someone like a Navratilova, or a Mauresmo, a lot of jock women types just don't do it for me. My friend N in Los Angeles is right about this: we may love our sports, but we may often not love the women who are performing them. There has to be something more cerebral for me. There needs to be that balance.

So now my perfect woman would be someone like social critic Camille Paglia, who's definitely got the brain power, the sarcasm, the writing ability - and - and - she feels studying pro football should be part of every literate woman's education.

Besides, I love her stories about going into lesbian bars and being ignored. Except by the gay boys of course, who are the only people who speak to intelligent women in dyke bars, it seems.

Quel domage!

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