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Red Sofa

Dione Sofa

8am.  I didn’t go get the biopsy.  Something is stopping me.  I don’t want to know the truth.  Just like I didn’t want to know the truth about him.  Some truths are just too hard to face.

I am aware of the dull thump in my ball sack and in my lower back.  Like somebody is gripping my left testicle.

One of Jake’s friends wrote to me saying, and even though inaccurate, I really liked the quote, “We have all had diamonds thrown in our face.”   It was lyrical and charming.  He could have added darling to the phrase.  It would have worked perfectly.

Anyway, interesting day yesterday after I published the Irene blog.  She, of course, is threatening the IRS and an internet fraud investigation.   The problem is..I do my taxes, really thoroughly.  It’s not worth doing them any other way.   I am not feeling so feisty today.

I remain teachable.

Last night something rather remarkable happened.  I met a man a year and a half ago who is perhaps a dream of a guy.  That dream of that perfect man.  Beautiful in every way.  When we first met he explained that he was anxious about his sexuality, we had talked it through but nothing happened.  I had wondered about him occasionally, mentioned him to Jake even,  but had not contacted him.

Yesterday I received a blunt email from him asking if I wanted to explore his curiosity about men.

I thought about it for a nano second and invited him over.

So, last night we had a very steamy session with each other but I wasn’t engaged.  I felt distant, absent..and not really ready to have sex with anyone else.  I didn’t even want to kiss him. It is odd this morning to wake up with the smell of some other man on your fingers.   I knew that it had to happen sooner or later..somebody else but it’s still too early.   I tell you, I don’t envy men like Jake who can sport fuck but the healthy alternative is such a lengthy process.  We all agree that if I had been a sport fucker I would have been dead a very long time ago.

Why was his coming to see me last night so remarkable?  Because I was always warned in AA to be careful what I prayed for.  Getting what you want when God wants you to have it rather than when you want it can be very ungratifying.

Peter Doig painting in my bedroom 1982 Boom Boom Boom (The Sublime)

Is getting to know a man before you sleep with them so bizarre?   So when the moment happens, one is present and authentic?  After all,  Jake and I talked for months before we finally fell into each others arms.

Perhaps he can do that with anyone?  Perhaps a period of total abstinence is what I need?

I could have let things just stay the way they were, letting him tell me about his conquests but by the time we returned from Europe I just knew that merely having him in my life would be too disruptive.

I did not want that young man to stick around last night.  He left and I lay on the red Victorian sofa I have owned for twenty-six years.  I began to doze.  There was something very comforting about laying there.  The over stuffed arms, the familiarity.   The constant presence of that sofa in my life.  Dione bought it for me in Edinburgh in 1984.  It was on the street outside a junk shop and it was desperate to be loved.  I covered it in white ticking, the first of 4 times it has been reupholstered.  Jake was three when I bought that sofa.  Unexpectedly Dione’s daughter wrote to me yesterday.  She’s a sweet heart.

Things have given me more pleasure than the men I have loved.

So, the young man left the house at 2am.  I don’t think I’ll be seeing him again.

The picture at the top of the page was taken in my Whitstable house, the house that belonged to Peter Cushing.  The red sofa wearing it’s blue slip cover.

8 replies on “Red Sofa”

I read your blog and I watch you on TV. You are a fascinating, brilliant, funny talented man. I want to be able to say those words to you five years from now. Please go for the biopsy. Please.

hi Duncan please go for your biopsy I no you are scared and you rather live in denial but you will hate yourself if you are to late trust me I now so take a deep breath and go!! I wish you a lot of strength and much of love

Duncan Roy!

If I lived closer, I would take you to the Doctor’s myself!
Call your Doctor’s today, and re-schedule a.s.a.p.
Call your best friend, have them go with you so you are not alone!
Then go have the greatest yummiest most delicious lunch ever. Make it a saving your life party!
Do it!

Dear Duncan,

Please, please, please… reschedule the biopsy as soon as possible and go this time. We may not know you but you are a voice that we enjoy listening to and in our way dialoging with. And if you were to be gone, it would lessen the choir of beautiful voices in the world. The ones who are trying not to be entertaining and charming — fine, too, in small doses — but the ones who are trying to live out loud and authentically, and to share their hard won truths along the way, to make it easier and more understandable for the rest of us stumbling along on the path. So.. PLEASE GO. You said that you had to be pushed. FEEL THE PUSH! Take a friend as Katherine said. Even as adults we’re allowed those little kid moments when you need someone to hold your hand because the big world just got scary. Even if you’re the bravest big/little kid out there. And you are.

I might add my own quote in counter to Jake’s friend, “Pearls before swine” or I might say lamb. There is a reason the Lucifer was described as the most beautiful of the angels. And I’m not saying that he’s the devil, it’s just that all of us at one time or another can be bamboozled by a pretty face. Would you have put up with the shit coming out of his mouth and his mistreatment of you from almost the beginning if he had been just charming but somewhat average? I think not. You were dazzled. You thought that you’d gotten the answer to your prayer and you had a moment of snow blindness. Where everything is brilliant and confusing to the senses and you can’t orient yourself in space. But you’re back here now on the planet, feet touching our lovely Gaia, who supports all her children, even the wayward ones like us. We are loved and supported. You are loved and supported. Please feel it.

There’s a country song entitled “Thank God For Unanswered Prayers”. I think that it’s recommended in any 12-Step program or in therapy that you not make any major decisions if unavoidable and not start up relationships because it’s a way of avoidance and of substituting a person for a drug. You can try to push the river but… isn’t it better to let the universe deliver on your soulmate than to have second/third bests? A place holder until the one who belongs in your arms comes along? I get loneliness. I really do. As an only child with 2 alcoholic parents, I was really, really alone. And lonely. Now I’ve gotten like my own company — maybe too much, LOL — with only occasional bouts of loneliness, usually brought on by self-pity. Can’t you learn to like your own company? Think of it as the time just before Christmas when you KNOW that you’re going to get that great present. You’ve seen the package hidden away. Maybe you do need a break. Did you really take one after “Sex Rehab”? What is it they say… give up the search and what you’ve been looking for comes to you. Wait for it, Duncan. It’s so worth the wait. Don’t accept second best again.

As for things giving you more pleasure than the men that you’ve loved… things have been more reliable perhaps. But you have had joy and love and laughter. And a remarkable journey that has brought you your sobriety and a clean new lens of the soul through which to observe life. Don’t sweat the small stuff (i.e., Irene). There’s a quote that says that hating is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. She’s a sad, vindictive person. Let her marinate in her own juices. Get on with your life. Treasure it. Protect it. You’ve been given a gift. Believe that the best is yet to come.

GO GET THAT BIOPSY!

Blessings,

Amanda

P.S. Been reading George Carlin’s autobiography, “Last Words” taken from 15 years of conversations, some taped with the author, Tony Hendra. I wrote autobiography because it’s Carlin’s words. Brilliant. Wickedly funny. It will make you laugh in places but most of all, really, really think. He was a maverick and a loner. He evolved into more than a comedian. He was a performance artist. An observer and commentator of life — his and ours. I think that you might have liked him. I think that you’ll like the book. 🙂

…Duncan fabulous painting and I know it is gone….when we were together in NYC (how many months ago…at least 6) you had the back pain AND the testicle problem…there will be no more SHNYC…..teapots…..dinners…..Jane Hotel….Cafe Gitane….the list goes on and on….GO GET GET THE BIOPSY>>>>>>
xxoo

good lord man go get it done! ostrich syndrome yanno, if a mere woman like me can have a lump pulled out of my ovaries, you can certainly do the same for your bits.

Get it sorted you Dumbo,bite the bullet , Man up.
Stop dredging up the past, you have learned to cut what’s bad out of your life, i.e Alcohol, drugs. Now do the same for the bad reltionships. Take care of number 1.

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