Alcock’s Autobiography 2.2
7 May 2011
Although L___’s third point would not germinate for decades, I took her other two points to heart.
It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I don’t think I saw post-pubescent and pre-menopausal woman as fully human until I was in my fifties. Women were like characters in novels then, roles in a film, or simply prey. As hunters I’ve known don’t dwell on the commonality they share with their prey, a desire to live, to preserve a seemingly independent self, for example, I did not dwell on the fact that women sought security and esteem just like I did. In short, I was unable to see them in the same light as I saw myself.
I would recognize their needs, of course, the better to trick them into a trap, to provide transient satiation for my sexual desires, to sweeten my hunter-like sense of accomplishment, or to bestow short-lived “honor” upon my warrior-like sense of power. Trophies on the wall or notches on the gun, dead in either case. Or perhaps the perversity better resembled taking prisoners. Instead of physical chains, locks, and cages, I bound them with desires, locked with fear, confined within the cage of ‘love’. Instead of torture’s pain and humiliation there was love’s pleasure and esteem, the flip side of the same coin, and promoted by the same ignorance. Just as the hunt for big game goes on best when you are not dwelling on how, in your urge toward self-preservation, you and the prey are the same, the search for sexual conquests proceeds best when you do not emphasize how you and the woman are already the same, but madly shout, if only to yourself, vive la différence!
And I found there was an intimate connection between my first mistake and my second fail, love-making itself.
[Dick: Here, too, my lack of talent and experience as a writer makes it extremely difficult if not impossible for me to convey what I mean. I apologize and ask your indulgence. Uncle M.]
Like fertilizer helps tomato plants grow fast, making an idolatry of la différence unquestionably promotes the cultivation of raw sexual desire. But, likewise, it is easy to overdo it. As my focus changed from growing the roots, stalk, and leaves of the plant to the fruit, which contains the seeds for more growth, I began to realize that in truly making love differences had to be merged into unity. Two had to become one. I found that to go beyond the split-second unity of coitus required a slower, more thorough approach, where the unity in each difference was the object of thought. If this seems to take the business of a good old-fashioned fuck out of the realm of wham-bam-thank-you-m’am, I would agree. If it moves it beyond prolonged exhibits of acrobatic prowess or the marathon race, I agree. In its focus on unity, if it moves toward a spiritual form, so much the better, and it it achieves the sustained identification of every sensual form with emptiness, ah, Blessed be Jesus!
It’s funny I didn’t want to marry L___. Of course I didn’t want to marry anybody then, the long drawn out collapse of my first marriage still fresh in my mind, and it’s unlikely that L___ would have wanted to marry me. Given her correct assessment of my two main failures, and my obvious disinclination to look squarely at the third, where was the incentive? She would be taking on responsibility for a life-long basket case. It was more of a teacher (her) student (me) relationship, I guess.
We ended our affair more or less by mutual consent on a snowy winter day at her place in Missoula and made an interesting pact. We would allow ourselves to have sex three more times, and if we didn’t use up our allotment then, we could keep what was left over for later, no matter what our future circumstances might be. In fact we used up two, and kept one. It would be a strange encounter now of course, given my debilitating physical condition. And she’s no spring chicken anymore either, approaching fifty, I imagine. If, by some fortuitous twist of karmic dispensation we do connect, the last one may perforce be spiritual or not at all. And if we did pull that off, perhaps it could form the basis for a new series situated in the heaven of pure form?
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