Recovering My Voice:

He was not a bad man, this husband of mind. Clearly, he was caring and progressive in thought. He didn’t have a mean bone in his being. But he talked and nattered and tried to prove his point, over and over again. He got louder over these two-and-a-half years since we were married. He got louder, as I got quieter. He got more frenetic as my body became more immobile. He got busier as I got more depressed, looking to my high school students for connection, looking to marijuana for meaning. Together Paul and I saw many movies and much theater, listened to the Moody Blues, smoked a lot pot usually before, during and after such events, and generated many wise and meaningful thoughts. We were together in these endeavors, yet so alone. Bergman’s films were my favorites; the Doors and the Moody Blues my psychedelic love, Ram Das my hero. Although we shared activities, there existed no connection between us in heart, in belly, in arm, in hand, in leg. His body was a beached whale, strangely landed next to me in bed. I was occasionally puzzled about how he landed there, and often just simply numbed to his presence. The touch of his sweaty hand at my elbow, moving me through the crowded and colorful walkways of Washington Square Park was not unlike his handling of the car—determined and gruff. I didn’t want him to touch me, didn’t want to feel his moist palm cup my elbow, his stubby fingers squeeze my arm. The awareness of this physical rejection was instantly wrung out of me—there was no available spot inside of me for such displeasure to abide. I just continued shuffling next to him, asleep to my own disconnect. The crowd swarmed around us, rich with colors and sounds and the joys of a summer afternoon. There was a long-haired rocker, his rats’ nest hair contained by an American flag headband, screeching his rebellious rhythms, his guitar case opened beside him for donations. There was a white-faced mime, swamped by a multitude of eager tourists, escaping from that invisible room that only he could see, movements seamlessly and strangely realistic. Somehow this man’s act made me uncomfortable, the gag about sightlessness not funny to me. There was a man and a blond, happy dog playing a wild and joyous game of Frisbee, cute happy dog with smiling eyes and a goofy dog-smile flinging itself into space with such trustful abandon to catch the red rubber Frisbee. That dog was the best part of the park for me that afternoon, his eagerness, his grace, his connection with his partner-person. There were tables of men of all shapes, sizes, ages, and colors playing chess, eagerly and excitedly tapping the tops of their time clocks. Paul understood chess, or so he said, and hovered over one table’s game. I looked around feeling so bored and disengaged that I felt I could drop to my knees, and sink to the pavement in exhaustion. Nothing in this park touched me, nothing could enter my heart. I craned my neck to find the fuzzy blond dog, the only heart that touched mine. The dog appeared to be gone now from the scrubby grass, dissolved into the filmy heat of the day. I missed him. We walked away from the Park, following its side streets aimlessly, the Park’s noise and tumult fading a bit. Shops advertising all kinds of wares beckoned us in. Intimidating art galleries, a huge used book shop whose mustiness lofted out into the street, a store announcing itself as The Pink Pussycat, Sex Toys for All—no need to go there, I thought with bitter relief—All You Need is Love, a vast and hip looking used clothing store, dramatic churches, impressive brown stones where cool people must have lived. We wandered. Externally I imagined we looked like any suburban couple in the City for a few vicarious hours. Yet internally I knew that I did not belong—not with Paul, our passionless marriage empty, not with myself, not with anybody. I was unhinged, disconnected, and utterly and despairingly alone. I was so alone that, in some real sense, I really didn’t even know it. I was sleepwalking, going through the motions of a life that I did not really inhabit. Like a near-death experience that hovered and lingered, this lack of self awareness seemed never-ending. Yet there was a moment of insight. Months ago, Paul off at his film course, blessedly home alone in that cute yet unsatisfying apartment with the black parsons table and the red vinyl chairs, I found myself making the bed, our marriage bed. As I fluffed up the pillows and arranged the sheets, like a bolt of lightening, it struck me: this bed was a farce! There was no passion here, no sex here, no man and wife here. There was nothing here but the denial, the hiding, the pretending, to him, to myself. My eyes found the round pink container of birth control pills that I took daily, no matter what, an essential brick in the façade of denial. In that moment of openness to truth, I saw the absurdity, the pathetic masquerade of this marriage. And then I chose to forget again. Then I chose to submerge myself back down into the land of sightlessness, like the mime, working to escape a room I could not even see. So sightless was I that even the room, the prison, faded from sight. I couldn’t know the pain I was in. Not yet. We entered the café that hot Sunday afternoon, its hand-painted, flowery sign an intriguing invitation: The Macdougal Street Café. Wood floors with sawdust on them, posters covering the walls, this cool and dark environment, a relief from the heat, was everything I wanted the legendary West Village to be—counter cultured, hippied, ripe with the smells of incense, strong coffee, and stale beer. We sat in rickety chairs around a rounded table with a slightly stained red and white checked table cloth on it, with a glassed candle in its center. I sunk into shame, I sat into numbness. Paul talked on, as I floated away some more, nothing to hold onto, nothing real to embrace as mine. The coffee house was quiet and sparsely inhabited. Our waiter was a thin and graceful young man. A few customers sat at the counter mugs in hand, mouths moving silently. My mug was filled with iced coffee. I took a tentative sip, and looked around me. And then I saw them. It was another lightening bolt cutting through the clouds of my own unconsciousness. There were two women, sitting to my left who I hadn’t yet noticed, sitting at a rounded table, heads close, whispering, sharing some conspiratorial moment. I saw them and I felt them and I knew, for the first time in my life, that they were lovers. It was the tilt of their heads, the closeness of their bodies, the air around them that announced their affection. They were women, and they were lovers, and they shared this coffee house, this afternoon, with the rest of the planet. And this was possible. Women can be with women. My mouth literally dropped opened in response to this extraordinary realization. Women can love woman, and go to coffee houses, and have coffee together. Somehow in my twenty-four years of life, even in my loving and holding Honey in the Philippines, somehow this realization had eluded me. Women can be with women. Women can touch and hold each other, can laugh and cry and walk down the street. Not all streets. Only these streets. But there was somewhere, somewhere to be a woman who loved women. This moment was the harbinger of magic, as it sliced though the deadness of my life, and whispered quietly to me of possibilities to come. Paul nattered on. My moment faded. As we drove home that drizzly evening, the New Jersey turnpike was thick with cars headed everywhere. The wheels of the VW made their haunting hum, like a plea beneath me. As I headed back to that wall-less prison of my suburban life, a tiny door had opened and then abruptly closed, deep inside my heart.