Rosebud 6/22/90

    

6/22/90

Dear Rosebud,

    I was intrigued with the letter you wrote about getting older, and thought maybe you would be interested in what it is like for me.  I'm older than you are, but I'm still "going through it;"  my perspective is just a little further down the road.   Take what's valuable, and realize I still have questions, too.  The most irritating thing about all this is that I had to slog so far along before there was any hint that others, too, are experiencing the same thing.  I refer to the perception of beauty, and the effect it has on desire.

    Now excuse me while I expostulate.  America is wonderful in many respects, but in the area of sexual appeal and artificial expectations, it is awful.  Must you look like a cover girl to be perceived as beautiful?  Must you have the physique of a Goddess and the responses of a nympho to be normal?   Is it an unspoken archetypal conspiracy that schools women endlessly into believing that when a woman hits thirty five, her sex drive is supposed to shift into overdrive?  Mine did no such thing.  Mine sucked in and plain disappeared, leaving my husband in a state of animated frustration and me confounded.   Desire and beauty.  I had not yet begun to consciously consider the fading of outer beauty, but already it had affected desire.

    I spent two years doing everything  I was supposed to do in order to rekindle passion.   I had absolutely no luck.  So next, frustrated and depressed,  I did nothing. That didn't work either.  I counseled.  I complained to my GYN, who suggested I counsel.  I prayed.  I gritted my teeth.  I bought new undies.  We abstained.  We tried new locations.  Reluctantly, I accepted this development as a Phase of uncertain duration.  And finally, I gave up.   This was  having to live with something like:  a major visible scar;  a missing ear--a radical mastectomy.  It wasn't just going to change because I was annoyed.   My libido was loboto.  Phase One. 

    Phase Two was a real twilight zone.  It was un-sexual.  I realized I couldn't keep trying to be something I was no longer, and I was no longer sexy.  I was distinctly un-sexual.  A female eunuch.  I became even more aware of how sex and innuendo is used in this society.   Sex is like the center pole of America's Revolving Door.   So if you aren't talking business, and when you do not relate sexually, you simply cease to exist in the eyes of a major portion of society.  You are merely a Drone.  The ever present women who use sex and sexual appeal to get what they want begin to seem like female studs.  Not that much different than the men they manipulate.  Not only that, but that Goddess had sauntered into my house and settled her steel buns in MY chair, where she sat, mocking me with arched eyebrows and french panties.

    This phase had a good side and a bad side.  The bad side was that I became very cynical about men and sex, which wasn't fair.  My poor husband!  My desire for sexual contact was about zip.  Adequate sex was about all I could manage.  Good sex was a thing for guys.  The good side was that I became aware of a huge quiet side of life that had to do with caring and communicating that was not constantly being overtoned by sex.   This of course is with little people and some (not all) old people.  So I realized again how victimized we are by sex, and how peaceful it is not being constrained by an orientation that is always so sexual.  We are, after all, so much more than sexual.

    But I was not more than sexual, I was UN sexual, so I spent a lot of time redefining myself as an un-sexual person.  So much of my young adulthood was spent in discovering myself as sexual and then developing that concept incorrectly that I now felt very alien.   One is still human, of course, even if one is not horny.  (It’s true). Going further, I realized, and not just intellectually, that an attitude of chastity or celibacy which is assured by an absence of desire causes one to see others more clearly.  The "virginity" of the other person becomes more apparent, and more easily understood as something which should be honored, guarded, and protected; cherished.  Sexuality, in its highest sense, is sacred, and should not be violated or profaned.   It is not, contrary to the common cultural mindset, for anyone else's mind's eye.  Of course, this did not help my husband.  He was having none of my problems, and although sympathetic,  feeling like a eunuch totally escaped him.
    I slogged on through the months, feeling un-sexy, and un-pretty, and un-female, resigning myself to blue jeans with pleats and a rather shaky sense of self, glad for the insights but uncertain about the repercussions on my marriage.  Obviously I could not just quit having sex.  Obviously, I could not fake sex.  Obviously, I wanted, in whatever capacity, to have a healthy sexual relationship with the man who adores me, body, mind, and soul.

    Things began to crystallize in the Spring.  Of course, you think,
"Ah, Spring. "   Well.   I went to a horse show in baggy jeans and no makeup, and in the ladies room, there came out of one of the stalls a woman who makes men salivate.  She was not trampy or tacky.  She had long straight black hair down to her seat, pulled back in a simple barrette.  She wore eye makeup.  Her jeans fit.  She wore boots that melted around her ankles and she had on very little jewelry.   Our eyes did not meet.  I imagine that women like her are as uncomfortable with women like me, in this stage, as vice versa, especially as we maneuver past each other in the mirrored ladies room.  So I just kind of took in her unfashioned beauty from my pleated jean perspective, and thought to myself,  "You're just as pretty in your own way when you wear a little makeup and jeans that fit and your sleeves rolled up and your neck bare.  What gives?"  She smelled nice.  I smelled like two in one Flea and Tick shampoo, which is all I had in the shower stall.  It had gotten to this.

    Well, honestly, I got tired of feeling frumpy.  Then, I had a couple of dreams, and finally God intervened.  In the dream I was aroused.  (!!!)  I was in a great huge house, trying to find MY room, so I could be aroused in private.  This is crucial.  Arousal is NOT for the public, in spite of TV, and R-movies.  Every time I would find an empty room, some (!@#$) person would come wandering in blathering on about something, and I would have to go find another room.  I wanted my husband.  Every time I found HIM, HE was sitting down, surrounded by six or seven people all demanding his attention and talking to him about CARS.  (*&%$##?!). I could never get him away from those people.  This was bad.  Finally, I got a needle and thread and started to sew myself shut!   It hurt, and I only got one stitch in.      Then I woke up.  Holy Revelations! This dream was about Repression!  So.  Finally the obvious breaks through.  I am not sexless.  I am repressed.  I don't have enough PRIVACY.  I cannot get my husband's ATTENTION away from his WORK.   These are My Major Issues.   Can you identify?

My Major Issues: 
    A)Privacy 
    B)Attention

Also,  I am not eighteen.   And my sex drive is NOT defined by what I was told. My sex drive is defined by attitude, fatigue, stress, quality of attention, atmosphere, and hormones.  Personally, the first five can very effectively obliterate the sixth, which may be gasping at this stage anyway.

    And then, the God part.  My husband and I had a horrible (really bad) day revolving around what he thought I had done with his car keys.  They were lost, and it was My Fault.  Boy, was I in the dog house.  (This is an old conflict).  It turned out that he had left them at the video store, and it was Really His Fault.  Boy did he feel bad.  He expected me to beat him up.  He deserved it, but God had a better way, and changed my attitude.  I had the upper hand. I kissed my husband.  All of a sudden it got very private.  (You know, what my husband does, doesn't change that much.  It's how I respond.  He is predictable.  I am not.)  Then I went out and bought a new bra and some sunglasses.  Like that.

    Then I squared off with the Bitch and ordered her to get her steel buns out of MY chair. 


    I am perceiving myself as beautiful again, aging notwithstanding.  After all, aging is really prevented only by early death.  Get it?

    These things I realize:  Working out what's best for us may take a long time.  It is a very individual thing.  But:  Attitude sets a stage.  Fatigue never works.  Stress is a bucket of cold water.  Quality of attention works both ways.   Am I getting quality attention?  Am I giving quality??  Atmosphere is the canopy.  Hormones....my husband has lots of hormones.   But, neither of us is eighteen, thank you God.

    And Life, which is so much more---recognizing and chaperoning the virgin, holding the virgin as precious; which has to do with value, and security, and guarding; and beauty, which has to do with the inner person, and sharing;  cherishing the enduring ties that bind us together as we bump up against all life has.

    Are you out there?  It's okay.