Hiking and the Blues

As we walked the Wildwood Trail at the Hoyt Arboretum today, Chris squeezed my hand and quoted Proust to me: "I might caress her, pass my hand over her, but, just as if I had been handling a stone which encloses the salt of immemorial oceans or the light of a star, I felt that I was touching so much more than the sealed envelope of a person who inwardly reached to infinity."

I told him it was beautiful, and asked him what had brought those words to mind. When he said me, I blushed and tried to pull my hand away. I felt sad, all of a sudden. He kept hold of my hand and pulled me to a stop, then bent down (he is so tall!) and took my other hand. "How is it you are the only woman I know who does not like compliments?" What could I say but, "I'm not like other women." Which made him laugh, and his laughter confused me. When I asked why he laughed, he said he loved the way I speak, firing off major understatements as if they were simple observations about the weather, like "Its going to rain."

I smiled and shrugged and tugged on my hands, trying to free them from his, which are so much larger than mine. "Why are you always pulling away from me?" he asked. "Why are you always pushing?" I asked in return. He released one of my hands and touched my cheek. "Ok," he said, "I'll answer your question, and you can answer mine. I'm always pushing because you interest me and I want to get to know you better, but you're so elusive. One moment you are here and the next you're gone somewhere."

With one of my hands free. I started up the train again, towing Chris. Robin and Josh were no longer in view. I looked over my shoulder at him, and that ever-present wariness arose in me, and I began assessing the situation. I'm a woman alone in the woods with a 6'5" man. There is no one in sight. If I have just one opportunity to take him down, to hurt him enough to get free, what will it be, and what will I do once I am free? He's too tall for me to go for the face, but I could probably manage a punch in the throat. Solar plexus is good bet, but the groin is better. I visualized myself acting out the various options. He tugged on my hand, interrupting my thoughts. "You're gone again," he said.

That sadness rose in me, and I suddenly felt inadequate to the task of being a normal person in a normal 'courtship'. I had hoped... I had hoped that I could enjoy a relationship with him that didn't entail him knowing all the dark shit. I'm in therapy, making progress, and hoping it will all be absorbed shortly... But that is foolish of me. I rarely deal in hopes and maybes. I'm a pragmatist. I knew that if I told him, he would change toward me. But I was tired of filtering everything I said to him.

And so I answered his question "Why are you always pulling away from me?" in brief. I used the same, light, conversational tone I always use when talking about the shit that happened, that shaped me, and about being in therapy. I had to keep moving, even though a couple of times he tried to slow down or stop walking. I brushed my hand against the ferns, I observed the moss hanging from the tree limbs, I observed that the cloud cover was almost gone, and all the while I spoke about my past in a tone of voice that exhibited the same disinterest as someone talking about the weather.

Chris listened quietly through most of it. At some point I said something like "of course it was my fault, for being young and stupid" and he stopped. He stopped and yanked me around and said "I never expected to hear anything stupid come from your mouth, but that has to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard." And then he hugged me.

Chris gives good hugs. It was wonderful to be held, to feel his fingers on the back of my neck, pressing my face against his chest. I felt comforted without realizing I had wanted comforting. And I realized, suddenly, that after a month of anti-social feelings, a loneliness has crept in. He hugged me for a but and then we continued walking in silence. I could smell the flowers in Rose Garden, their scent was carried on the wind. The sky was almost cleared of clouds and Mount Hood could be seen clearly in the distance.

We caught up with Robin and Josh and decided to go over to Vancouver to the MicroBlues Festival. I drove the truck to the Pearl and then rode with Chris in his car. I tried to talk about unimportant things, tried to make conversation flow, but finally Chris interruped me. He told me that he understood better why I wanted to take things slowly, and why I disliked feeling pushed. He admitted that the night we first met he didn't think much of me, that I wasn't his 'type'. But that over the course of the evening he'd overheard me talking to a variety of people on a wide variety of topics, and he liked my voice, he liked the way my mind worked, the way I managed to call people on their bullshit and not offend them. He liked what he called my 'candor and openness', and when I touched his hand when we were talking, he liked that, too. And over the past four months he'd gotten to know me better and he had this feeling if he didn't move on me someone else would snap me up...which was why I felt he was being pushy.

The music festival was nice. Good blues. My mood seemed to match the Blues music I was hearing, in fact. I especially liked Doug McCloud. It was a clear afternoon, but it got cooler after 6 and I started feeling chilled. Chris sat behind me on the grass and for nearly two hours he sheltered me with his body, his hands resting comfortably on my thighs. It was cozy, but also lonely somehow, probably because I was thinking thoughts I couldn't share with him. I don't want to be alone anymore. But am I ready for a relationship? Will it interfere with therapy? Who with? Chris? He's sweet and gentle, but he's so big and that scares me. Ah well, leave it to me to make things complicated.