35 - secular sacred
… you can choose to tell the truth or not…. And the difficulty is that sometimes it’s hard to tell the truth because you think that the truth is too personal, or too boring…. Or both. And sometimes it’s hard to tell the truth because the truth is hard to see, because it exists in a misty, gray non-space between two strongly charged falsehoods that sound true but aren’t.
—The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker
~~~
Sunday, late afternoon, we’re pretty much settled in.
We spent the time packing, organizing and boxing beforehand, and Priority Movers did the rest. They kicked the bootay! By 3 p.m. on Saturday they were gone and we were coming out of the boxes. We’ll take our time and make this tri-level ours. A hodgepodge of furniture. More purging, combining, and maybe another visit to Crate and Barrel.
She’s on the top floor, where the room is split; oddly it’s the largest room in the townhouse, and it has a small deck. We decided to put the bedroom in the smaller space, and she has her “study” in the larger space that faces the ocean. She's got a Bose stereo system and it’s set up. I can hear one of her favorites playing, The Minnow and the Trout from A Fine Frenzy.
I get to thinking it’s a Leonardo’s kind of day. I walk up the stairs part way and yell, “Hey you, am going to the store. You want anything?” She appears at the doorway and leans around. She’s smiling, looking supremely happy, at ease.
“I’m craving pinto bean soup. Sound good?”
“It does.”
“Back in a sec.”
~~~
First meal prepared in the tri-level. Morning marine-layer not burning off. Perfect for a late afternoon “peasant’s lunch.” Got the makins’ for corn bread too. I poured a glass of Avalon Cabernet Sauvignon, lifted it in the air, and thought to myself, “One day at time brother, one glorious day at a time.”
Leonardo’s Mexican Pinto Bean Soup
* 6 New Mexican green chilies, chopped fine
* 4 giant whole Jalapeños
* 2 quarts chicken stock, skimmed
* 4 bunches of green onions, finely chopped
* 1 pound of dried pintos
* 1 ham bone and rind
* 3 cloves of garlic
* cumin, a pinch or two or three
* 4 to 5 hours of simmer.
~~~
Nothing like it. Leonardo’s. A flavorful and brothy comfort food. What it does in the preparation, in the simmering, is to fill your home with a soothing sensation, a lulling into quiet and calm, a veneration, sensuous and sacred; call it secular sacred, a moment in your life worthy of ritual, a relishing of the simplest of pleasures. Heaven on earth! No guarantees, no room for gods and hereafters, no delaying the joy and ecstasy of being alive.
And you know, I just don’t get it, the lives of those who believe someone else is pulling the strings, someone above or below. So much is excused and transferred in such a construct, so much inattentiveness, so much irresponsibility, so much delayed. I’m convinced it’s up to us, to live, laugh and love—presto-pronto, right now! To never act inconsiderately, abusively or violently, to choose a new way, to create a different path, to pave the road for a life lived in reverence.
So, I’ve got my MacBook out at the kitchen table (we kept the Paloma), and I plug in my earbuds, and I click on a favorite playlist in iTunes. Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, L'adoration de la Terre begins to play, and I hunker down and begin reading Shields and Morrow’s The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death. A collection of provocative essays whose introduction ends with words from David Foster Wallace. This hit home:
“… the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me… I strongly suspect a big part of [a writer’s] job is… to move people to countenance it, since any possible human redemption requires us first to face what’s dreadful, what we want to deny.”
Am stirred and reminded of reading Ernest Becker’s Pulitzer Prize winning, The Denial of Death. I got hold of it just before I started the clinical trial, read it along with Broyard’s Intoxicated By My Illness. Two books that held sway, had an impact. And there are so many voices out in the land worth hearing, engaging, folks who are sharing what’s happening to them, finding out what a full life means, what vulnerability, strength and acceptance mean, what empathy and love mean, that courage and fearlessness are necessary, a constant refrain. I queued up the Brené Brown TED Talk given to me by a Facebook friend, and listened to it again. Oh so stirring.
~~~
I checked on the soup, lit some candles and decided to take a take a nap in my reading chair. I’m a napper, love the hour-longs, 40 minutes seems to be optimal. Camille comes downstairs, checks on the soup. I’m snoring, dead to the world, I expect it’s going on two hours since I nestled in, and she touches my hand, “Hey,” and I come awake and she asks, “Want me to get the corn bread going?” “Sure,” she kisses my forehead, and I rouse, do the cat stretch, and get up.
While she’s putting the corn bread together I pour her a glass of the Avalon and set it on the counter right next. I pour myself another glass and begin to set the table. And then she starts with, “Do you remember…” And a conversation begins, she muses on my perseverance in the beginning, chuckling to herself. And I admit, laughing, “I was clueless. Just couldn’t help it. And now look."
~~~
After dinner, we’re finishing off the wine, about a half glass left, and I get up and begin to organize the mess to clean up, and she stops me, grabs my hand and leads me out of the kitchen. Upstairs we go.
Freak-eunuch sex. Testosterone-free lovemaking. So different from the past, you’ve got to use your imagination, over and over you have to let go of all previous experience, you’re someone new, and you realize it really is about slowing down, about the touch, and you learn so much more about yourself, your bodies, who you are and what you want. And yes, the unforeseen, the absolutely humiliating and humbling always right there. She’s in the after-glow, a howling delight, and I’ve got goosebumps, and edge up gently, kissing her hips, her stomach, the underside of her breasts, and my androgen-suppressed, chemo-ravaged penis is as hard and extended as it’s going to get, and I slip it in and we’re face to face, eyes locked on each other, profound and unsettling, vulnerable, nothing fierce or raging here, no force or violence, my life now adagio, a slow dance, and then it happens, an orgasm like no other, dry and a full-body seizure, a cramping from head to toe, imagine the worst charley horse you’ve ever had (common occurrences post-chemo), and I’m stuck, frozen in pain, and I’m howling, it hurts, and I can’t move, and I start to giggle, and she starts too, “are you okay?”
“I can’t, I can’t move… Ahhhhhh, Jesus, wait, wait… ” and I’ve got my arms out, they’re even cramping, spread eagle I am. I’m stiff as a board, and she has to gently roll me over and out, and we’re laughing the whole way, and she makes a crack, “That’s one for the history books… you know how to make a girl feel special.”
She’s laughing, “What can I do?” laughing… laughing.
“Stop laughing!” as tears of laughter form in my eyes.
Yes, one for the history books… and I’m laying there, and the excruciating pain begins to subside, she’s massaging my legs, and it’s as if she’s tickling me, and I yell out, “Stop, stop!“
More laughter, uncontrollable laughter, the kind where you try to calm yourself, and you think you’ve stopped, and then a little giggle, and then you burst out, uproarious.
“You are one freaky freakish freak,” a final giggle,… then she runs her hand, ever so gently, over the scar on my chest where the SmartPort resides. Her hand is warm, and I’m watching her, and it’s as if she’s not seeing the damaged and aging body, but something else, don’t know, don’t know, and in a flash it’s as if no one, absolutely no one, has ever seen me so clearly, seen all of my imperfections, a lifetime’s worth of knocked off corners, the ignorance, the ugliness, the pain, the hurt, and in the seeing, a compassion without judgment, a loving look so unsettling and bold,… yes, bold, I think that’s it, so strong, so brave, and as she nestled in and we spooned into a cuddle, something happened, as if nothing else mattered, that the past was gone, insignificant, and the future, not important, only this, yes, simple human touch, in my arms, the woman I love.
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 7:43AM 
Reader Comments (2)
Wow! That's all - just wow.
Judy: That's what I was thinking the whole way. Still laughing...