Arcadia

17

I'll tell you about a man I sometimes meet on my way to college.

This man. You know how it feels when it's raining like the sky wants to crash down on the earth outside, and you want are in your room with all your doors and windows closed, you remember how safe it feels? That's how he makes me feel.
I have never talked to him. He doesn't talk much as it is. But there's something about him that just marks him off as a man of power, even if it's power over a smaller kingdom within the city that isn't of much consequence to us. You know, our sociology teacher was telling us that women tend to find authority and power more attractive than actual physical beauty, not because of a inner masochism or submissiveness, but rather because, somewhere, subconsciously, she wants to procure that authority/power as her own, even in an indirect sense. There's something about him that makes me feel safe, protected. It also makes me wonder  whether I 'bleat for a man's protection' as a great poet had once described an ideal woman to be.

When I sit too close to him and we touch, I don't find electricity. I don't find anything that I've looked for in the all the men I've worshipped in my life. I can tell he is a lover, and somehow that makes him a 'man' and I wonder at the set misogyny in my own words. Somehow I feel he validates my femininity, he substantiates my womanhood. Does that make me less of a quack-feminist and more like my mother? I don't know.

I imagine him making passionate love to his wife. I imagine him worshipping, loving every inch of her body, planting hot, wet kisses, the sweat mingled with their love. I imagine them united in a dance, the vivid man and the vague shadow of the woman. It's the oldest dance in the world, and I see them both transported to a different land, far far away from their rickety bed and the wicker entrapment of their slum. I don't find this image erotic in any way, but it is the most romantic thing I could think of.

She was also talking about how we as women tend to see love and attraction differently, how we insist on setting a clear boundary between the erotic and romantic. Is it because we tend to see our bodies and minds as different entities? Because bodies are after all tangible and all it is capable of is looking good. But the mind has no limits.