Her most recent poem answered some questions, but raised
many more, especially in regard to the man she professes love for.
Back in January or so, she made clear the intensity of her
romance, extremely physical, and sometimes, extremely tender, a lovemaking to
die for (her words, not mine).
But when they seemed on the brink of creating something more
long lasting, something happened.
Part of this was her need to preserve the “I” in the relationship,
rather than getting swallowed up by the “We.”
Her latest poems, however, make it clear that a violent act
(most likely more than one over time) also contributed to their separation –
despite the fact that later, she tried to walk back her refusal, and found him
less willing perhaps to make the commitment.
Violence against women is all too common.
What the reason for the initial act is, I can’t say.
Dr. Virginia Mollenkott – perhaps my favorite professor back
at William Paterson College – talked about this, and how violence doesn’t stop
once it is started except with extreme intervention.
Mollenkott, a prominent feminist and gay during the 1970s
(after Stonewall), gave a number of such lectures on violence when I took one
of her feminist classes. But I had already seen it with some of the women
associated with the band I worked for during those same years, including the
significant other of the band’s sound man. He beat her regularly, either
because she cheated on him, or perhaps his beatings caused her to cheat.
Intense jealousy often plays a role in such vicious
exchanges. And she has a history of having jealous men in her life, this guy,
her ex-husband, even me.
It is difficult for some of us to be in love with a woman as
beautiful as she is, and who exudes such intense sexuality that she can have
any man in the world she wants.
We all react differently to this. Her husband, mistakenly
believing she cheated with other men, used his belief to cheat on her.
My jealousy took another turn since I thought I knew who
else she was involved in and stupidly tried to derail those – little realizing
that such sabotage would not make me seem any more attractive to her, would
never get her back and ultimately would lead to her coming to hate me (I don’t
hate men, she said in one of her final meetings in our office last years, It’s
only some men I hate.”
But this last relationship comes with a parade of complex
feelings, rage over his use of violence against her (whatever his excuse was)
while at the same time, her intense desire for him, physically and emotionally.
She honestly loves him and so seems caught up in a web of conflicting emotions,
ultimately desiring to be with him, despite these acts, and only recently
coming to the conclusion that she can’t have him back and perhaps is better off.
There is no way to know anything about his thinking, whether
he was prompted by real or imagined jealousy, or some other reason.
Often, when we fall in love with women as sexually liberated
as she is, we find ourselves conflicted, very intrigued by the sex, but only if
we can control it, have exclusive rights to it, spoiling the whole point of why
we are attracted in the first place.
We like very sexual women like her, but want to own them,
control them, and often in this attempt to exert our power over them, violence
occurs.
Instead of taking her sexuality as a gift she might share
with us, we tend to try to corral it, and keep it caged – when sexual women
like her, should never be caged, and we should learn to accept whatever she has
to offer and to appreciate the fact that she is and must remain an independent
woman.
Again, I’m writing this bit in almost a complete vacuum,
making assumptions from one line of her poetry that alludes to that act of
violence (and hints of additional possible episodes.)
All these years later, however, Professor Mollenkott’s advice
to her class of mostly women (Me and this other would be comedian were the only
men) in which she said, “Once the violence starts, get away from him, make him
get therapy.”
And finally, if her latest poem can be believed, she is
doing at least part of that.
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