Impenetrable

I mentioned somewhere, sometime that there was a boy.... A boy in my long distant past... A boy I grabbed and dragged home and undressed and spent a day with, rolling around skin to skin in my parent's bed... Oh yes I did. I tried to seduce a boy. We tried to have real grown up sex. He was willing and able. I was eager and more than willing. My recollection is that we tried almost all day. And it was I who dragged him home with me. But despite my wanting and trying, I was not able. We were young and inexperienced in the other ways one might have sex without the actual penetration. I didn't understand anything about sex. Oh yeah, there were the years of Daddy rolling around in bed with me, with his erection and my child's body, but despite all those years of trying, even Daddy was unable to penetrate me in the vaginal way. I was impenetrable. I was a fortress. And anything Daddy did, I did not want to do with this boy. I wanted it to be new and mine, I wanted it to be ours alone.

Now I live as if I were a prisoner in my own well-constructed cell. I call it "The Bunker" or "The Cottage" depending on the season and my mood. It is guarded by locked gates and scary dogs. And I invite so few in. My cell is large for a prison, but small for a home. Yesterday my friends from New York were here. She is tiny, but he is very tall. I notice most how small my space is when a man stands in my small cell.

When I moved into the little house two years ago I planned to die here. I wanted to finish the book, Maggy, and then.... I saw my life as leading nowhere. I saw myself choosing to leave life in my own time, in my own way. I had no room in my small life for men. Even the husbands of women I know have little importance in my real life. They are, to be honest, little more than minor annoyances to me. He says he needs her today, so she can't come over. He is either her excuse or an impediment to some fun we want to have. Oh yes, he is a real man, who is probably interesting in his own way, but for me he is only an impediment. I think of men as needy. In my past with men they have been that. They have wanted me for one reason or another but in the end I have become little more than the cleaning woman and a captive audience. I don't like to clean house for just me. Why would I want to be anyone else's cleaning lady? Now I have no time to be the audience of one for a man who wants my undivided time and attention. I'd rather read. And yet...

The boy is now an old man. He has lived almost all his life near to me in one way or another. We have lived in far flung places now and then yet near to one another, not knowing. During the years my photograph graced the pages of the Newspaper and ads and catalogues, he lived a few blocks from me. He married twice and raised two sons he had with his first wife, and then the two daughters his second wife brought with her into their marriage. He loves his children and keeps in touch with them. Isn't life mysterious?

He read my letter to the editor in the early days of the Presidential Primary. He googled me and found my blog. He read for almost a year and then he emailed me. We now talk on the phone. He started a blog so he can comment. He joined twitter. He read the novel. I think I'm being courted. So what do I want now? Am I willing to even explore the possibilities? The question for me is, am I still impenetrable?