If
you’re going to suffer you should suffer magnificently.
Not sure where or when I first heard that but that phrase resonated with me and
has been with me, for as long as I can or care to remember. Spoke to my
slightly untamed and indulgent nature. Was louder and more enticing than the
sullen voices and gray shaded memories of hollow women that would scold me for
laughing too hard or too loud, falling in love to often, kissing too hard,
twirling my hair betwixt my fingers or giving myself over to any real pleasure.
Somewhere around fifteen I found myself sitting
stiff and awkward at my grandmother’s table. Not “our” table mind you, hers as
she was the one that afforded and could promise my mother the
too-sweet-to-ignore possibility of spending her days breezing about some palatial
rancho home in the high desert, millions of miles away from the screeching of a
close to being cut off phone and the boom of demanding bill collectors. The air
thick with cigarette smoke, older than I was, a gracelessly slung fur coat
propped, as in behaving like a prop, propped behind our frosted hair matriarch
as she and my mother whispered, scowled
and passed judgment on a group of people three tables over.
The group was opulent for sure; many empty bottles
and more on the way, food remaining on their plates while they ordered dessert,
lots of laughing, cuddling, touching, kissing that made my heart flutter and
other parts of me wonder. I sat there watching this six top of shameful
behavior wishing I could slip out from under my chair, ditch the “civility” of
whispering women, the clinking of the ice in their frigid glasses of sugar-less
tea. The slow, guilt laden, stabbing of food….the glances around the room to
see if anyone was watching them pleasure themselves with the sweetness of a
boiled potato. The shoulders back, the head high, the nose even higher. Trojan
horses of regality that were filled with envy, resentment and the kind of jealousy that wrote volumes
without them having to do more than splay their nostrils and raise their brows.
I ached to slip away and let myself plunk bits of food…food that I picked at
with my fingers between my lips. Longed to pick up one of those glasses and let
the warm with alcohol liquid slip down my throat and loosen the behavioral
corset that bound me so tight that I was incapable of feeling much of anything
at all.
I sat there, them shaking their heads, looking over their shoulders, bitter
words of “trashy” and “no class” feeling slightly fragmented. My years of
trying to please these women urging me to agree, to denounce these people
for…and that was when it hit me, denounce them for what? Having fun? Living too
much? Laughing too hard, enjoying their food too much, touching, kissing,
wanting? Oh I felt shame for sure but it was at the boorish, uncivil and very
clearly jealous snapping of the people at my own table. If this was what you
got from living your life by the rules, restraining yourself from feeling too
good too often, this holier than thou attitude full of judgment and ugly words
sputtered from a tight lipped frown, well then I was ready to go stomping
around in puddles, naked, Slim Jim between my teeth as I swung my hips to Let’s
Get It On.
Now I know there are wicked smart and driven
teenagers but sadly I was not one of them. I went about this new, “Gonna get my feel on”
thing all wrong. Took a lover at 16, as if the fumbling of some 16 year old boy
was somehow going to please, placate or teach me anything. Fail. That was my
first of many failures when it came to discovering what made me feel
good…although I did find that I derived tremendous pleasure from seducing him,
so much as it was. The way he would risk just about anything to be with me
simply by me giving him a certain look or brushing the back of his neck with
the tips of my fingers. The way he would stutter, stammer, tear at my clothes
like an animal and the way I could get him to follow me behind the building
where he worked because I “Simply had to be with him”. Wish I could say that
was the greatest 3 minutes of my life, wasn’t but I did start to figure out
that I was getting the real pleasure by making him feel, crave and need.
The relationship was bound to end, fuck I mean we were only 16 but it was
doomed more by my pretending it was just for fun when I actually cared very
deeply for him. I needed him and the way he made me unrealistically feel like I
was in charge. I never was. I knew it although I suspect he never did. That thing of ours went on into our twenties,
both of us in and out of relationships but always lovers. He wanted the body I
was freely giving him and I wanted all of him. To this day he holds the record
for breaking my heart, hurt me the worst and to this day….I don’t blame him and
I would do it all over again. To learn as much as I did, to hide the way my own
heart was pounding away when he would kiss me, the pain I felt when he would
talk to me about his newest love, the way I cried every time he left.
If you’re going to suffer….
I find myself now, at nearly 43 and here I am at
that “touching bottle filled table” using my fingers to eat whenever I wish,
pouring plenty of warm alcohol rich liquid down my throat and still playing around
with whatever bit of crave I might be able to instigate. I will flirt, bend my
body, wet my lips and growl saucy things to make people stutter but I’ve found
my true pleasure comes from using my words to inspire want. Wine or otherwise.
Being able to
describe something in a way that drives people to seek out that moment that bottle,
that taste. Truly drives me wild. I’m
lucky enough to work in an industry that kind of requires that, unbelievably
lucky to have a boss that allows me, often encourages me to do it in my way and
now, now there are others. I’m still reeling from this trip to France that has not
only brought me new friendships I know will live on long after the wines we discovered
have sold. It has me swimming in the headspace that makes me feel punch drunk
and like I’m glowing from the inside out. I’m fatigued as fuck and while I claw
and shimmy back into the spots that need and want me, I find that my voice is gurgling
right at the base of my throat, my fingers are twisting my hair again and as
the soft tuffs of blonde slither through the deep v’s of my fingers I find
myself once again noticing. I’ve got that pull in my tummy. Like a moth to a
flame fluttering around the less populated but dripping with dewy high desert
sweat and the desire to learn more.
A shy woman traveled to France, drank deeply from
the cupped hands of artisans, chewed judiciously at the body of work in my
path, felt the callouses of the people, the leaky open ended bottles as they
whispered their stories and seeped their history so deeply into my flesh it acts
like pressurized tattoo. I’m stained with the color, scent and voices that
filled my ears and haunted by the wines that I have to share..
If
you’re going to suffer…
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