This particular Friday night I was in a jubilant mood. I’d spent the morning and early afternoon with four clients, all of whom were making great progress. By that I mean they were making authentic, assertive choices in their lives and liking the results. I settled into my swivel chair with a bottle of Gatorade by the phone and took the first caller.
“This is Rex, what’s keeping you up?”
“Well, Rex, I’ve got a few questions for you.’
“OK, shoot.”
“Do you like it when a woman initiates things, makes the first move?”
“Uh, yeah, I don’t mind.” Where was this going?
“So it doesn’t frighten you, doesn’t shrink you up?” She sounded sort of familiar, fairly young, relaxed.
“No. Well, I guess that would depend on her attitude or her energy, you know, was she being really aggressive or just, you know, initiating.” I realized I was nervous.
“So, if I sat down next to you on the couch and we were just talking, maybe having a glass of wine, and I put my hand on your thigh and started lightly moving it up and down, you’d be OK with that?”
“Uh, in general, yes.” Who was this? Did Dorothy put someone up to this? Nah. “I guess it would depend on whether I felt the same way about you. And can I know your name?”
“Just call me Mary . . . and the wind cried . . . Mary.”
“OK, Mary.” Had she been drinking? “You sound very relaxed.”
“Yeah, I’m just enjoying myself and enjoying putting the questions to you, finding out something about you. You know you ask your guests to reveal themselves, but we don’t know much about Rex.”
I glanced in at Stan. He had a small smile on his face and gave me nothing. I think he was enjoying this. “Fair enough. So the topic is women initiating physical contact.”
“Maybe. Maybe the subject is Rex and whether or not he’s comfortable with some hot babe putting moves on him.”
“OK.” I readjusted myself in my chair. “Maybe we’d have to agree on who is a hot babe?”
“Rex, loosen up, will you? Why does everything have to be defined, why do we always have to agree on words, why can’t you just say yes, for God’s sake?”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, I like it when a woman initiates sex. I like it a lot. I feel the pressure is off me and I feel wanted. But I have to say that there has to be chemistry there that we both feel. I don’t know what it’s like for you as a woman, but it sounds really awkward to me if she’s coming on strong and I don’t feel the slightest bit of attraction to her.”
“Agreed. But she would probably sense that, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And what’s this about taking the pressure off, what kind of pressure?”
“To be honest, I’m feeling some of that now.”
“Aha.”
“But it’s a little different. Right now I feel backed up a little by your questions. In the situation we’re talking about, I think I would like the fact that a woman was being assertive, taking a risk, saying she wanted something from me. It would take off the pressure of being the one who usually initiates. I think we’ve talked about this on the show before. The message always seems to be that the woman has something that the man wants and not vice versa.”
“Yeah, I hear you, as you like to say. I personally think that women have a different way of moving into a sexual encounter.”
Who was this?
“Oh? I’d like to hear that,” I said.
“I think it’s different for a woman. Big surprise, huh?” I nodded but didn’t say anything. “I think a woman makes herself available. It’s nonverbal. She puts herself in the picture, if you will, in a way that says I’m available. She makes eye contact. She smiles, just a little. She moves closer. She says, with her body, I’m here, what are you going to do about it?”
“Yeah, Mary, I see that. I can see that in my past.”
“Really? You’ve noticed that?”
“Well, you’re calling this to my attention in a really clear way and it makes me more aware of it. Let’s just say that.”
“OK, let’s just say that.” Was there a smirk in her voice? “So what are you aware of now?”
“Well, I’m aware that you’ve completely turned the show around on me, that you’re asking the questions and—yeah—taking charge in a way.”
“And do you like it?”
“I’d have to say ‘yes.’”
“Well, you wouldn’t have to say anything, would you? Thanks Rex. I’ll see you later.”
“Wait a minute Mary.” The light on the phone went out.
***
It was a dream. A fantasy? A dream. It was one of those dreams that happens in the early morning when you have awakened once, you roll over and go back to sleep, fully knowing that you will wake again soon, and the dream enters, as if it floated in from across the water, in your bedroom window, into your left ear, or up through the base of your skull, lodging in your brain. Then the picture fully rolls out like a movie trailer with no apparent reason, no logic, and no indication of why you’re “hosting” it. What the hell. We can put a man on the moon and we can’t fully figure out where dreams come from or why we have them. We say we “have dreams”—“I had a dream last night.” Really? The dream had you, friend, the dream had you.
I am in a large bed, not my own. The sheets are dark satin, purple maybe, something I would never choose in a million years. Next to me is a large woman, really large. She has long dark hair that partially covers her shoulders. She is nude and uncovered, the sheets being gathered at the foot of the bed. Her breasts are very large, so big that they are somewhat intimidating. I don’t know what the hell they would do to me, but they are vaguely intimidating. You’ll have to take my word for it.
She is still, lying next to me with her eyes half closed, as if she were barely awake or on drugs. I am groggy too but aware of what I’m doing and what I’m doing is pawing at her body and her breasts, trying to fit a nipple into my mouth. I feel like a baby pig, a piglet, rooting around for the nipple. Her breasts are so soft that they nearly float, swaying back and forth like very soft gelatin, and while her nipples are large, they are hard to pin down and get my mouth around. So here I am, pawing and trying to get a nipple into my mouth, pursing my lips, and sucking even before I have anything in my mouth, and she is completely passive. She does nothing. Says nothing. I don’t register to her at all. She is the animal mother, lying still, willing to provide mother’s milk and completely uninvolved in the process. She is bored.
As this process goes on, I become more and more frustrated, then angry. It’s not the failure to get milk from the nipple, it’s the passivity. She is completely unresponsive, and whether I paw or suck or roll onto her it doesn’t matter. She is tolerant. She is tolerant in such a lazy, uninvolved way that it doesn’t matter to her at all. Her message is “Here I am, take me if you want, I don’t care.”
My anger grows now and that doesn’t matter either. Finally, my anger wakes me up.
I roll out of bed, grateful that it’s my bed, still pissed off, and head to the bathroom. It feels good to pee. I practically stride into the shower and take a long, hot shower, as hot as I can stand it. I feel better.
What have I learned?
I’ve got an issue with passivity. I try to put it on women but it’s my own passivity that eats away at me.