Journey to the In-Between - Page 4

Zoe's Knees

A genuine breakthrough alters the rhythms and patterns of the sphere of life related to it; more subtly, in areas not as accessible to language, a genuine breakthrough alters the energies of one's life—the energies one radiates and attracts. It's no coincidence that, after this experiment in ritual (which I never had the need or desire to repeat), the women who've been
attractive to me and whom I've attracted have been centered sexually in what I've called in-betweenness. In general, my sexual life has become both more relaxed and more intense. More relaxed in that my in-betweenness has a solid center and I feel no insecurity about it, either physically or emotionally. How that's worked out concretely is that, contrary to what's continually broadcast by a culture neurotically transfixed on youth, sex in my fifties and now my sixties has been far, far more satisfying, intense, and entrancing than sex in my twenties and thirties. What a surprise!

For instance, I've been with a woman whom I'll call Zoe. She's a bisexual who usually prefers women and who's as often as not related to me sexually as though I were what she calls "a femme"—a designation that has nothing to do with my daily, walking-around, heterosexual persona, which I'd define as sort of tough-streetkid-growing-old-but-don't-mess-with-me. It's a persona I'm more than comfortable with, even sort of addicted to, yet being "femme" doesn't bother me. It interests me.

Zoe's explanation for calling me that goes something like this: "You're hetero, but you're not straight. I think of you as a lesbian in a man's body. Straight men—that I've been with, anyway—they're ignorant of the vastness of pleasure. It's all cocks with them. If the cock is up, they're happy. If it's down, they're crushed. Well, cocks go up and down! But we have lots of body, and any part of the body can come! A lover of mine, a butch lesbian, said, ÔSweetie, I promise I can make your knees come!'—and she could. You know what you are, Ventura? A heterosexual queer." I feel I've been given a significant compliment—a kind of flag that stakes out my territory in the vastness of pleasure that's in-betweenness.

What does Zoe mean when she says that knees can come, that any part of the body can come? She means that, given proper attention, any surface of skin can be driven to a pitch of intensity that sizzles all the wires and rings
all the bells—in different ways, with different sensations, from that of genital orgasms. The feelings are more like
the varieties of orgasm that women report—waves of sensation—and as a male, I've discovered these comings can go on much longer than, and be just as intense as, penile ejaculation. Which is not to denigrate penile orgasm: it's just not nearly all there is; not nearly all that's possible. Since I don't inhabit a woman's biological body, I wouldn't dare say what inhabiting in-betweenness means for women, except that it has something to do with a note left me by Zoe: "I'm so glad that my breasts have touched the back of your thighs and calves."

 

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