MIDNIGHT CONFESSIONAL

So, it's Matt's birthday again. That got me thinking about the last birthday of his I celebrated with him, and what happened that night, something I wanted to write about because it affected me on some strange level, but I didn't feel comfortable talking about for a long time.
And it may be a radical departure from the previous entries, maybe it's just that "angel-devil dichotomy" I have going for me, but I think I'm ready to confess....
Matt is the husband of my best friend. He's funny, he's wild, and his personality is a lot like mine (which is why, we joke, J married him). He also happens to like strippers.
So, it's his birthday two years ago, and he wants to go to the strip club over on my side of town, DB Cooper's Mansion. There's a crowd of us - the two of them, the two of us, Pegs and her man, and some casual stripper friends of Matt's, who are flashing long legs and short skirts.
The night started out slow. We were drinking, chatting to pass the time. I was wearing the cleavage shirt, and unusually flirty with my husband, who was not the slightest bit interested. So, I went to the stage with Jennifer, and we slipped dollars in the thong of Matt's stripper friend, who had managed to get herself a moonlight appearance at the club, since we were there and all and she just happened to have her dance-wear with her....
As I flirted with her while watching her moves, she rolled her head, sending her soft brown hair cascading down my chest, and then she touched me, and it was somewhat titillating....
But then it was time to go. We had to go get the kids. I'd had too much to drink, and after a crazy moment in the bathroom, I wandered out with every intention of finding my husband and making him drive me home....
But, when I came out of the bathroom, and passed by the stripper's changing room, a girl was standing in front of me. She was a hispanic girl, dressed in a leather dress that didn't leave much to the imagination. She had her hips thrown out, and beckoned me over....
"Hey baby," she says, "I want to show you something", and she put her arm around my shoulder, and began leading me off.
"Where are we going?" I asked her.
"I wanna give you a lap dance, baby," she says.
I told her I wanted to find my husband. I didn't feel comfortable going off with her alone (maybe it was that whole gut instinct thing). She walked with me to our table, but he wasn't there, and she pressed on.
"Let's go, baby, I want to dance for you"
So we get in the VIP room, and then she is acting paranoid. She blocks the entrance to the door with a chair, and peeks out to make sure no one can see her. Then she comes to stand in front of me, but instead of dancing, she looks at me, and suddenly leans forward, pulling my shirt down so that my breasts swell out, and starts kissing me....
I have no idea what to do with this. Really, I had no concept of what was happening. All I could think about was, "is this what usually happens in VIP rooms?" She whispers some naughty things, and tries to undress me. She tells me what she wants to do to me.
Then she backs up, and says, "And I charge $200 for that."
What? I am trying to make sense of what is happening, but it looks more and more like I am getting came on to by a ...well, I don't want to make any illegal assumptions...but....yeah, I think she just propositioned me....
And I have no idea what to do with this. She comes back to me, working harder this time. She runs her mouth along my neck and down to my chest, and then...she bites me...in a very personal spot. It was time for me to leave.
I throw twenty dollars at her on my way out the door. She sits down, dejected. "What's this for, baby?"
"For the dance?" I have no idea. I felt like I owed her something. What's the appropriate gesture in this situation?
I walked past her and found my husband, growling and mad. "Where have you been?"
"Let's just go. Let's get out of here."
On the way home, we have a grand fight. He wants to know why I am acting so weird, and when I tell him, he asks me why I am lying to him. This goes round and round. All the while, I am wondering about him, about the times he goes to the strip clubs without me. Is this what happens in the VIP room? I keep wondering, and we keep fighting. He doesn't believe a word I am telling him.
The next morning, I show him the bruise that the bite left on my right breast.
"Wow, I guess you were telling the truth."
But I can't tell him the truth, not really, about how my interaction with her awoke something in me, a hunger, not for women, but for that feeling....that feeling of being wanted.....

OH GOD Not Again

Geez.
Just the other night, out with my friends, I was talking about how I had been able to make my sin go away just by naming it (see post entitled "Oh God")

Well, guess what? It's ba-ack.
And it's badder than ever.

Of course I am analyzing it. This little crush has to be more than just pure physical attraction. I know it's more. Why is it happening, I want to know. I am trying to find some cosmic significance to it. I am not sure if it is some kind of sign, or if it has some kind of ramifications for my marriage. For instance, what if this is God's way of opening a door? I pray a lot about God's will regarding my marriage, wanting him to make it very clear to me what I am supposed to do about it (e.i. forgive my husband for being...less than perfect...or leave him) and I am still not sure. It would pretty much take a beating over my head to convince me what I was seeing was in fact a sign and not something I imagined into being a sign. I am so confused.

Last time I wrote about my crush, I was writing about the tenderness in his smile and the compassion he shows for his animals, and how that turned me on. This time, it is still those things, but it is more. It is the way he slows down when I address him, and walks shoulder in shoulder with me, turning his head to look me in the eye. It makes me feel like we are partners in caring, like what I am saying is valuable and important, like we are working together on it. It is the way he works close to me when we are in the same room, standing almost more than comfortably close while talking to me while we work on a joint project. We are together. We are working in unison. We are of one mind. We are partners. This is what his body language communicates to me. That is very appealing to me. I am at that age, or maybe I have changed in such a way, that allows me to see that is truly what I am looking for.

He stops what he is doing and asks me questions, tells me his ambitions, and I share mine. We both have some of the same background and desires in our work life, both ambitious and compassionate people. I imagine him and I running off together to start our own animal sanctuary, one that focuses on rehabilitation and humane education. We would fill water buckets and clean cages together, while discussing our behavior management plan and our global presence. It is a nice fantasy, but then I think about his two little girls and my two little boys, and all the people we would hurt on the way out and that pretty much kills the fantasy.

I wonder why I met this man now, this man who seems to share so much of what makes me fundamentally who I am. I wonder if there is a reason that he stops his work and stands there, watching me cross the parking lot and smiling. I wonder why that makes my heart beat faster and I smile back before turning my head.

It is kind of funny to me that in the book I just got finished reading, Night Swimming, the main character goes through something kinda like I went through recently when I put this man out of my head for a while. When I dropped the fantasy of being with him, I was able to just be myself and get to know him. I was more relaxed because I wasn't obsessing, and we reached a place in conversation I had never been with him, one that allowed us to become more friendly. I had forgotten about him (although yeah, I was still watching that ass), but I had put it aside and was working on myself, my projects. By doing so, though, it made our friendship grow.

I wonder what the purpose is of this crush that seems to have nowhere to go, of the meaning of the feelings bubbling up inside me, yearning to escape. It is some kind of fire, maybe my own burning bush.

Get your mind out of the gutter! I didn't mean it like that! Out of the burning bush, there came a message. What is the message this situation is trying to tell me?

I wish I knew.

OH GOD


Yesterday, one of my coworkers showed me this bill he had. At first look, it looked like it was a million dollar bill. When you looked at it closely, it had a religious message inscribed all along the margins. The message spoke of repentance. It denounced sin, and called for those who love God to reject all sin in their lives. After I read it, my coworker and I had an interesting conversation. I told him that I was suprised to see no mention of redemption in there, no mention that Jesus died on the cross so that our sins would be forgiven. I also mentioned that this seemed more like "the God of the Old Testament", the wrathful God. We talked about sin and forgiveness for a couple of minutes, and I told him my friend Michelle's perpective, which is that God is understanding, like in her case of her reading Harry Potter books, which to some fundamentalists would be considered sinful. However, I also reminded him that Jesus says in the Bible that the way to Heaven is to "love God with all your heart, and all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself", and if we did that truly, there would be no sin in our hearts. He was laughing about the part on the bill that mentioned that any man who has lusted in his heart has committed adultery, and he was telling me how hard that was for men, basically that they lusted for women so much, that he frequently committed that sin.
I told him how I spend more time each week sinning than I do worshipping God, which was a wakeup call for me. And I confessed I had been sinning on the way to work that morning.
Oh God, I am in trouble.
Of course, I did not mention the part about what sin I was committing in my heart, and who it was directed at. I don't want it to become office gossip. However, this conversation coincided with another completely different topic of conversation that has been going on all week between another friend of mine and I. Maybe someday I will finish the blog piece about this subject, something I am writing about the "sin" that is in my heart. But I just can't help it.
Lord, that boy is fine.
Yep, that's what I said. This man, this sexy man I work with, I cannot help but admire. I have to watch him walk. Like that song abou the honkeydonkbedonkeydonk or whatever, I hate to see him go, but I love to watch him leave. When he walks past, there is the slowing of my stride, and the turning of the head, and the watching of the ass. Oh man.
So he has become the frequent visitor to my midnight fantasies. I wonder if Michelle's forgiving God understands that, I wonder how much closer to Hell I am getting when I get out my favorite toy, close my eyes, and pretend, imagine that I am dancing the lambada with him, rubbing up against his hard body, kissing his soft mouth, inviting him to my private places. The next day, I have a smile on my face when I see him, the smile holding the secret of the night before, and sometimes it has me feeling an intimacy with him that I don't really possess, and I am afraid I might betray my secret by leaning too close, smiling too much, lingering too much by his side as he works.
So all week I have been telling my friend Pegs about it, because man, I got it bad. I walk past him and get all weak in the knees. I touch my lips and wish my fingers were his mouth. I find excuses to hang out in his area and talk to him.
Only I don't, not really. I think I am going to talk to him, and I think of things to say, but in the end, I can't. I am a married woman. I am not looking to have an affair, am I? What is it that I really want from this?
At the same time, Pegs and I have been discussing the issues in my marriage, and I have been coming to terms with some of them, or making new decisions about how to handle them. I can see that my attraction for this man is really just a factor of my disillusionment with my husband. My longing for him is really a longing for the tenderness and compassion he exhibits with the animals in his care, and a wish to have someone treat me that well.
Then I walk by him again, and the thought comes. "God, he is so hot." And the fever goes straight to my brain and I forget that I am a kept woman, that I am a woman who is not as cute as she used to be, a woman fifty pounds heavier than she was in the days when she could get any man she wanted. The fact that I have a college degree and he can barely write english doesn't stop me from feeling inadequate near him. Nor does it stop me from imagining him and I locked in a naughty lovers' embrace.
And I wonder. What does God think about all of this? I think about how frequently he must hear his name, when in fact people are not addressing him at all. I suppose it is a function of the use of the word "God" in the American slang to mean a sort of a priori "so much". As in "OMG" and "God, look at that". Do you think God gave a pause at the conversation at the beginning of "Baby Got Back" - "Oh My God, Jenny, look at her butt." We use his name in vain so often, and you have to wonder how that affects his listening to prayers. When we pray, especially alone, it usually begins with us addressing him: "God, ....." So how does he differiate between when we are talking to him, or when we are just talking? How does "God, I want him bad" get transmitted differently than "God, I am so sorry I keep sinning. Please help me remain strong against this temptation, and know that I love you above all."? Because I am thinking them both with regularity this week, and it makes me feel...torn...and confused.
As confused as I am about what to do with this lust. In the olden days, myself would walk right up to that man, would flirt, would invite him out. Oh yeah, I was that brand of hussy, the one that asked men out if she wanted them, who made it clear she wanted them, who was bold enough to go after what she wanted. And what is it that I want, exactly? Oh yeah, I want to do him, and I think he is hot.
Really, though, he is not, not in the way society determines hot. There is another man who works here that I am sure most women would term "fine". That man has more of the classic qualities that the majority of women find attractive. I have been talking all week about taking my crush's picture so I can show him to Pegs, but then I thought about what makes him attractive and it is really more of what is on the inside. If you just looked at him, the first thing you might notice is a deep scar or burn running along one side of his face and disappearing into his shirt. Sometimes I wonder how long that scar runs, but oh that just makes me think of him with his shirt off and damn, here comes the lust again. He does wear his clothes well, neatly pressed and tucked in against a strong but fit body. There are these attractive qualities about the way he looks, but it is really the way he acts that makes him so gosh darn sexy. Like the way he kind of tilts his head and smiles when I walk by, a smile that starts on the lips but spreads to the eyes. His eyes shine with a brightness, a tenderness, and I know eyes like that would have to belong to a man who would not hurt me. Those eyes make you feel safe and loved and like everything is right with the world.
Oh God. That is one sexy man. And I am in big trouble.

I've Got You In...My Sights

This morning, they were playing "Hungry Eyes" on the radio when I walked by you. The words seemed to be exactly what I was feeling when I looked at you. I was imagining you and I intertwined in some dirty lamba. I stand by you in your crisp Chinos and pressed shirt and I feel so inadequate. Even though I have a college degree and I don't even know if you can spell my name, I feel like a fish out of water near you, like there is so much you could teach me. Your voice is like a river coursing through my heart. When I hear it, I am floating home. Your smile comes out through your eyes and it makes me warm inside.
Sometimes I feel so familiar with you because you are in my thoughts at night, and I think I might betray my fantasies by acting too casual with you. Yet I want to know you better. I want to take you to the zoo to the see the monkeys. I want to invite you over so you can meet my dogs as they press their cold noses into your palm. I want to ask if you want a drink and wonder if I am going to kiss you.