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| Subject: Disconnection | |
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Author: Mikal |
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Date Posted: 22:14:46 04/29/05 Fri Thursday night IN Group -- my first in three weeks. I've been fighting the worst cold I've had in years, and am only now feeling well enough to do anything besides work and sleep. So I'm darkening One Taste's doors for the first time since the inaugural Naked Yoga class. Maybe it's the lingering cold. Or maybe it's the sheer isolation I've experienced recently as a homebound, self-employed single who's been too ill to socialize. But I feel disconnected, somehow. As if all the intimacy and clear communications that I'd established with the individuals and the group over the last two months had melted away since my last visit. The first question is about what we want out of tonight (one or two words, please). I answer, "Re-connection." And it's true. I feel as if my absence has thrown up an invisible wall between myself and the group, and I need to find some way to bring it down. To have it collapse as dramatically as it did during the Taboo course, or at least to knock a few good holes in it so that communication and intimacy can have a chance to recover. But that just isn't happening tonight. My answers to the speed-round questions are...odd. Dark. When asked what my ultimate sensual pleasure would be, I say, "Death -- without actually dying." I complete the sentence, "I am most turned on..." with the words, "when fast asleep." (There's some truth to this -- years of antidepressant use have driven my libido so far beneath my consciousness that my most lubricious thoughts erupt in dreams, sometimes waking me up in the middle of the night with a raging erection.) Then it's time for *Mikal the Attention Whore* to go on the Hot Seat. Nobody seems to hit my really sensitive areas, my truly vulnerable points. Perhaps they can tell that I'm not *really* playing along with the game, deflecting questions with glib, pat answers, so they're not bothering to try to REALLY get me. But the last questioner -- someone who I'd had an embarassing miscommunication with before the In group, and who I suspect is still sore because of it -- lobs a direct hit right at my libidinous and emotional center: "What person here would you most like to [do something erotic with], and what would that be?" Ouch. For a split-second, I consider answering truthfully. Then I realize that doing so might jeopardize my chances of actually accomplishing said act with this nameless individual, who's sitting just a few feet away. I pass on the question, the first time I've done so for several Hot Seat sessions. "Truth is the ultimate turn-on"? Not this time it ain't -- I have personal interests and feelings to protect. A little while later, the person who asked this question gets one of my "withholds" in the Intimacy round. I try to talk about the misunderstanding we had earlier, but I can't quite articulate my point, and end up babbling. Of course, I get a "Thank you." There's ALWAYS a "Thank you," whether you really connected or not. That's how the game works. The other "withhold" is for a young (seemingly platonic) couple who are seated right in front of me. I envy them -- their youth, their freshness, and most of all, their presence in the IN Group. At their age, I would have given my left nut to find a place as accepting and life-giving as One Taste...and my RIGHT one to have the courage to walk through its doors. A healthier perspective would be to be glad I'd found One Taste *at all*, but I'm not one for healthy perspectives tonight. I'd rather just pointlessly compare myself to others here, always in a way that shows me wanting. As I did towards one of the other Hot Seat occupants. His blunt confessions of his desires and past adventures, which I'd usually find amusing and refreshing, now just seemed to highlight my own confusion about my needs, and my celibacy of the last few months. Twenty-four hours after coldly, quietly and quickly leaving One Taste post-IN Group, I'm still wondering what happened to the *New Me* that was emerging in the IN Group, in the day-long workshops, in Naked Yoga, and in just hanging around the center and talking to the staff and regulars there. Did my absence from the place break some sort of progress I was making towards greater social, emotional, spiritual and sexual health? Am I back where I started when I first walked in many weeks ago? Or am I just still in recovery from physical sickness and social isolation, and not quite ready to pick up where I left off? Maybe I'm over-dramatizing. Maybe I just had a bad, "off" night, and I'm reading too much into what went on, externally and internally. But One Taste has come, in a frighteningly short time, to occupy such a central place in my life, that I feel disconnected after last night -- from the place, the people, the process, and myself. The "reconnection" I desired at the beginning of the night hasn't happened; if anything, I feel more alienated. Is this a temporary setback, or a sign of things to come? [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
| Just keep coming around... | Judy | 07:00:32 04/30/05 Sat |
| From this point of view... | Robert | 12:26:07 04/30/05 Sat |
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| Ride the Spiral | dave | 19:03:07 04/30/05 Sat |
| Not to be insensitive to where you are at or anything... | Nicole | 21:40:41 04/30/05 Sat |
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| death without actually dying | Caitlin | 07:34:19 05/01/05 Sun |
| I want to connect with you | allyson | 16:02:27 05/01/05 Sun |
| Thank you | John | 19:49:37 05/01/05 Sun |
