TEN EARLY ENCOUNTERS
3.
By 17, I was beginning to handle my sexuality with greater confidence and assurance. I found myself increasingly drawn to the male gender and even ventured into a serious relationship with a senior at junior college. I was convinced then that a girl was a social misfit if she couldn’t nab herself a man. I thought then that all the initial oddities of my sexual orientation were part of a passing phase in early puberty. However, these confirmations did seem rather unsatisfying as I found that in moments of soul-searching honesty, I actually did not comprehend the intricacies of love and the sexual politics of heterosexual relationships. I was, at the risk of sounding cliche, in love with the idea of being in love. This explanation sums up all future encounters with men in the years which followed, especially in the face of pressures of dating in order to avert the stigma of being misconstrued a social pariah.
At 18, having gone through a couple of disenchanting associations with boys, I began to unleash the constraints of my inherent inclinations which I had kept in denial for a few years. For a good while I reviled these irregularities of $my inner psyche whenever I found a female attractive, but then another person would cross my path and re-awaken these repressed emotions.
This time it was a young teacher, not particularly attractive by commercial standards but she had an aura of serenity and self-possessed poise which drew my admiration, I fancied then that every nuance of a glance, smile or even a pat on the shoulder as a hopeful reciprocation of my affinity towards her. She seemed to me then to prolong our encounters at the corridor, or project meetings which we were mutually involved in. In my own egocentric reasoning, she seemed to treat me with special interest which I found gratifying, sometimes to the point of thrilling distraction. It did bother me that only once did a male affect me the same way when I was 14, but since then the same emotion has never re-surface. I found myself writing poetry and music more easily and needless to say, I was inspired to write a couple of songs about her. And the songs which I wrote before about men were often about the futility of love or the breakdown of relationships, which in comparison only served to ascertain that the female nature drew stronger emotional responses from me.
straight-loving teen, 18
4.
The brief period prior to my university education was a giant leap in terms of my sexual enlightenment. During the six months which I spent temping in a 9 to 5 job, away from the sheltered realms of academic pursuits and naive friendships, I grew in my disposition as a young adult. I met and worked with adults of motley personalities and a few of whom introduced me to a completely different world from which I emerged. It was my coming-of-age phase of my life. Some of these characters were of the male variety and who, apologies to all men, typified the boorish primal mentality of what is innately male. A couple of them repulsed me with their authoritarian, patriarchal bearings while another displayed the groveling sniveling manner and yet another the presumptuous capacity to infringe and even encroach on one’s personal space by virtue of his gender. Although one of them did show me how to appreciate the bestial pleasures of sexual intercourse, albeit for a brief three minutes, I quickly realised that all these pleasures were after all, transient and hence lacking in substance.
In the midst of all the confusing flux of sexual revelations, I met this wonderful divorced single mother of an 8 year-old daughter who was a panacea to an often bruised ego as a result of my frequent disenchanting male relationships. I sought her wisdom of experience and she would dispense valuable advice, assuring me of my ‘marketable’ status and how promising a future I had. She was a positive force in the otherwise dreary existence of ugly office politics filled with pretentious conversations and contrived social activities. But I never perceived that the attraction I felt for her was so profound until the day I left the job to start on my university course. Her remarks will be eternally etched in my mind because of it’s ambivalently pleasant and disturbing nature. She said in parting that she would never forget our ’special understanding’ and if we weren’t in the conspicuous setting of the office, she would have kissed me. I accepted her gift then and left in awkward abruptness. And the whole of that day I found myself laden with a heaviness of heart. I didn’t know why I was so attached to a person I had only known for half a year — had she awaken in me the co-dependency only shared between lovers? I was too afraid then to acknowledge the possible truth of that inkling for I knew that I could be exploring realities in a Pandora’s Box.
19, with my emotional mentor at work
Coming up…Part 3