I Dreamt My Body

Or: Reflections of an Mres (cultural & gender studies) Student 

I dreamt my body in a warehouse

Hanging from the ceiling.

We planned to leave me there long enough for the lie to be read as truth.

I looked down on my feet, swaying, high above the floor and I feared, the deception being seen through, my body being shot, just to be sure.

I woke, my toes cold, and uncovered,

My quilt tossed aside.

Rub-a-dub dub, three masters students in a pub,

In a corner, dark and damp,

By the low light of a lamp,

One lass proclaims:

I kind of always hoped I’d grow up a lesbian.  Except the thought of going down on a girl is kind of unappealing.

and I respond, sure, but the thought of doing those things to a man isn’t much more exciting.

I stare at the wall. At an actual, literal wall. But maybe a metaphorical one too.  So many years of romance novels, of love songs, of wishing for a happily ever after, of being a morally good evangelical, of running from Cixous and De Beauvoir, of feeling offended by the liberals, coming home to the socialists, squirming at the radicals, but never ever pausing to consider what was beyond the veil of compulsory heterosexuality, because cloaked in the veil I had been unable to see it. And perhaps I will crawl back to them and utter, excusez moi, je vais ecrire maintenant. And I will write, this is all well and good, but what if, after years and years of being this person I rejected her, and, constituted a sexuality that is not one?

We see our bodies as a landscape

Of borders and unknowable terrains.

I planned to leave myself unknown until such time as…

… But now it’s been over a year since the first time the last man held my body against his, and maybe there will be another, and maybe there won’t.

In his kitchen, blues music, softly sweetly, and my cheek, my chest against his, and then suddenly but not surprisingly my lips against his.

Another day, I would drive away from his house and feel some sense of obligation to record the first time he crossed the borders of my body, but I left that page blank.  

On a Saturday night, a tired broken girl lies in the arms of a broken boy, and she wonders what it would be like if those arms were somebody else’s arms. He rolls over and goes to sleep and she lies awake and in her mind summons a vision of the face, the eyes of another. Tries to imagine their smile, wonders whether she would delight in undressing, in being undressed, in their company.  Would she delight in removing the veil, in uncovering herself? And if she takes out her phone, and sends a message in the middle of the night, will she be glad in the morning, will she want to stand somewhere proud and say, this is who I am, or softly, slowly, silently sink back under the sheets, the blanket, the quilt, wrapped in the warmth of the covers.

An intelligent woman, a beautiful woman, a research student, a teacher, starts dating someone. She says, it is so wonderful to be with someone who makes me breakfast in the morning. Someone who wants to shout out from the rooftops how great I am. Another woman says how nice it is to be with someone who listens when she cries. Elsewhere a woman steps out of the shower and cries for no reason in particular. Another crying woman imagines a new life taking form in her body, but immediately replaces the dream with one of loss, and tries to comprehend losing a life that never was. Across town another woman will sleep alone, afraid of the man she has left, because given a chance he would squeeze the life out of her. And we say don’t kiss frogs, but sometimes we only see the prince. Because despite everything, life teaches us that happily ever after is there for the taking. And maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. But the ending, which is not an ending, is that we are here, the quilts tossed aside, our toes, our bodies, ourselves uncovered. It is that we are living and that we lived. 

Could it Be?

Could it be time to come back to my blog? And if so why? Why now and not tomorrow? or not next week or last week? Or last month or even 5 months ago. Alas, I do not know.

I had these grand plans of writing a London update once a week - things I'd seen, done or eaten. Maybe things I'd learnt. Yet, I've never been very good at following through with my grand plans, even one as, um, not-that-grand of writing a blog regularly.

There was a day, back in August, when I thought, yes, today is the day to write on that blog of yours. I think I even logged in. But I had recently found out that a friend of a friend had been found dead, and though I didn't know him, I felt that all the energy, the vivacity, the self-importance and arrogance of writing a blog as though I had something useful to say was pushed out of me, like the life that so sadly and prematurely was taken from one with youth, beauty, intelligence, friends - all those things we think make a life enviable, and yet in this case they weren't enough.

So I don't know why today, a day when people all over the world must be asking could it be? Is Gadafi really dead?, I do not know why its the right afternoon to return to my blog.

But I have returned to it, and I've rambled away, because I don't have a plan for what to say or what my next project will be that will keep me, and hopefully you, returning.

Its odd, because sometimes I do love a plan. I love to plan a holiday months in advance. I plan where I'll eat, I'll book train and plane tickets, I think about what clothing to pack (I have, for instance already planned in my head a complete list of what clothing to take when I go to Ireland and then Copenhagen over Christmas/New Year which is about 10 weeks away). I do this, and then I often don't want to do what I planned, or I don't want to go on holiday at all, or I get outrageously upset that somehow the 10.20 bus to Newcastle from Newry just didn't seem to appear meaning my plan is thrown by 2 hours because for some reason the bus comes at 20 past every hour except for 11, and there is no bus scheduled between 10:20 and 12.20. Truly, I'm over it now.

Sometimes I think about my inability to calmly wait two hours for a bus (I mean, it wasn't that bad, we walked home had a cup of tea and went back to the bus stop later), my inability to always see a plan through, my inability to not be annoyed when the washing machine my landlord installed yesterday hasn't been connected properly meaning I have to wait a few more days for a functional washing machine, and I realise I'm not as patient as I like to think I am. I realise I'm not as in control as I'd like to be. I think about how there are things that I want or thought I needed in life; recognised intelligence, appreciated beauty, fame, a family, spare cash, a functional washing machine, and I realise I don't actually need these things, even though they'd certainly make life easier or perhaps just more colourful.

This afternoon I think about a woman who lived such a long time ago, and who was told of a plan for a family, a home of her own, a good life and who waited and waited. Who sometimes tried to ease the wait by being in control, but invariably made a mess of things, thinking that instead of waiting to be pregnant herself, she'd get her family by telling her husband to sleep with someone else. What was she thinking? And I see that as she got older, and probably got bitter, the plan wasn't forgotten and the one who made the plan, God, the God of her husband, the son she would have and the grandson she couldn't even imagine, came good on the plan. And he gave what he promised. And he did it at the time of his choosing, not hers.

So although I don't know why today seemed like the right day to return to my blog, or why sometimes I make a plan and stick to it, and other times I make a plan and it goes horribly wrong, I'm comforted to know that like Sarah, that woman who lived so long ago, I'm not forgotten by the God of her husband Abraham, their son, Isaac, and their grandson Jacob. And although I do love being in control and trying to make a foolproof plan, I was reminded as I sat and read Genesis 18-19 this morning, and again as I sit writing this now, that I have to patiently, faithfully trust in the timing of the God who is in control and who, because he doesn't need one, has no plan B.