The Man-Boy

When I left the Man-Boy in the Toulouse

airport never to see him again, it was as if 

billions of tiny hands were ripping apart 

not only my heartbeat, but each and every 

organ of my body, including the skin 

envelope that was stopping it

from splitting apart.

I could not stop weeping.

Triggering type of weeping.

The weeping where your face becomes

a volcanic eruption and you shake

and the cavern of deep suffering

that you manage to keep sealed

is pierced and then flies apart

letting all of the sorrow seethe

through your single true being.

The Man-Boy was shoeless and he was 

holding his dog by a piece of old rope.

And he, too, could not stop weeping.

They had to hold the plane for me,

I just could not leave.

In some manner I made it to my seat

with all of the passengers eyeing

me in embarrassed or annoyed ways.

And as the city of Toulouse became

a maze of color and then disappeared

behind the clouds, my heart

pattered, pattered, and then just 

seemed to sigh and go cold.

At the end of the trip was my husband,

waiting to take me to my mother's

house where the preparations for 

my step-father's memorial were

moving slowly forward.

The minute I saw my husband I knew

I could not stay with him.  I knew

that, for both of us, I had to leave.

2 months later I was back in France.

***

I was at one of the village fetes

when I first saw the Man-Boy.

He was off to the side of the dance floor,

watching and most definitely apart from

the rest.  His hair was black and thick

and dry and looked as if it had been

in a wind tunnel.  He was my height,

(tall) and beautiful, but not in a way

that most people would find beautiful.

I was dancing, and then I wasn't.

I sat on a bench and thought about how

I had had crushes on two other people

since I had been married, and how

painful that had been for me, the person

who was so committed to fidelity in

body and mind.  I could feel the pull

to the Man-Boy, and I battled it, talking

to myself and trying to stop looking

at him.

When he came over and sat besides

me I was still and cool.  He began to

talk with me and I could see through

my bad french, and through his tender

still eyes, that this could be trouble.

I tried to get the upper hand by asking

him his age, knowing that he was younger

than I and that he thought I was younger

than I was.  However, when he told me

he was 19... I just could not stop laughing

from the shock.  And when I told him

I was 37, he could say nothing.

I was his mother's age.

In all of my vastly varied experiences,

nothing had prepared me for this situation.

My husband had gone back to the US

for a month.  I was alone in the house and,

as some of you know, my husband and I

had as sex life that consisted of my biting

my lip and sleeping with him every 8 or 9

days.  Also an unprecedented situation for me.

In almost all of my previous relationships I 

was accustomed to sex at least once a day.

Despite experiencing sexual abuse at

a young age, and surviving a rape, I really

liked sex, and had moved to a healthy

place with it.  I loved my husband, there

really was nothing not to love, but I had

never really wanted to have sex with him.

I had seen a therapist about this, thinking

that perhaps it was because I was finally

in a healthy relationship and was therefore

subconsciously allowing my pain over

my abuse to surface, cutting off the desire

for sex...but honestly, it just didn't feel

right...and, if I was frank, even the first

time we had kissed felt wrong.  I always

felt that my husband was acting out the

idea of what things should be.  That he

was so disconnected that he could not

be his real, true self, and that somehow,

that made my desire recoil.

The irony was that the sex with my

husband was actually quite good.  He was

the Only person who could give me an

orgasm without any help on my part.

I just did not want him.

So there I was, in the middle of horrible

party music, sitting on a bench dangerously

close to another man.  A Man-Boy. 

Seeing this, a local man, who also happened

to be a cop, approached and started to talk

with us.  I knew he was trying to intervene

in what he felt to be an inappropriate situation.

He stayed and he stayed.

The Man-Boy stayed.

It was now 3am.  The night air was still warm,

but a chill was starting to reach its fingers into

my light jacket. I got up to walk to my house,

which was 200 feet away.

The Man-Boy got up.

The cop person got up.

It was clear the cop was intent on seeing me 

home.  I looked at the Man-Boy.  He looked

straight back at me.  And then I turned to

walk home with the cop yapping on beside me.

What I thought was a moral concern on the cop's

part, suddenly morphed into something else

as the cop did what no French person ever

does and asked if he could come into my house.

For a beer.  

"I don't have any beers."

"Then how about tea?"  

"I don't have any tea. And, anyway, it's 3am. I'm going to bed."

He actually started to insist.

And I pushed him out the door.

I waited 10 minutes.

I opened the door.

I looked down the street.

The Man-Boy was waiting besides the corner.

He started to walk toward me.

When he reached me I walked with him

behind the house to the garden.

We sat side by side in separate chairs

and looked at the shock of stars emptied

across the black, black cheek of the sky.

We talked.

And then he touched my elbow.

My elbow.

Just my elbow.

And only by accident.

And I felt more desire for him,

for this 19 year old boy, in that

perfect and terrible moment,

than I could remember having

ever felt in my life.