We Haven't Even Snogged

"Soul meets soul on lovers' lips." ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

     One evening Dear Sir said thoughtfully, "I cannot believe we have never snogged! I feel so close to you, and I love you so much Jaq. It doesn't seem possible to know someone so well when we haven't even kissed."

     I am so GLAD I know what snogging is; because if I didn’t I’m not sure I’d want to do it! What a word for kissing. It sounds like something to do with kilts, clogs, and holiday grogs. It also tickles me no end to have someone use it in reference to me!

From: les biggs

To: Jaqueline Almdale
Sent: Saturday, November 27, 2010 6:04 PM (10 AM in Pullman)
Subject: Love

Hi there light of my life,

     Just gonna ramble on because i'm trying to get my head around the way l feel. I've been Googling the words Love, What is Love and also love poems and came up with these: 

"Love me without fear / Trust me without questioning / Need me without demanding / Want me without restrictions / Accept me without change / Desire me without inhibitions." 

- Dick Sutphen

If I could have just one wish,
I would wish to wake up everyday
to the sound of your breath on my neck,
the warmth of your lips on my cheek,
the touch of your fingers on my skin,
and the feel of your heart beating with mine...
Knowing that I could never find that feeling
with anyone other than you.

- Courtney Kuchta

     Also been searching through the WSU site putting your name in the site search box --nominated by student for advisor of the year and came out on top, checked out the MySpace site along with FaceBook, reading your profile and posts; read through a few more of the past e mails you sent...can't seem to sort my photos on the laptop, a job i've been meaning to do for weeks. I sit down to do it but you distract me........why?........simple really....i know the answer so why do i ask the question. Yep i sure am in love with you Jaq.
      I just want to absorb you but it's hard to when you're not next to me telling me what i keep reading, as all this won't sink in fully. Google helps find things: Wiccan/Gerson Diet/Priestess of the Goddess/Green Witch. I've read so much but still know so little of you, but none of that matters a jot. 

     Well i do know a lot but not of these things and all the other bits can just come along for the ride--they are just an arm of you--the things i know....strange that i want to see your name all the time....i can't think what i need to say, not need to say but am trying to say................................................not going to read this back as i'm just hitting the keys fast saying how i feel...rambling on but what the hell....Jaq i love you so much this is daft but if you stop to think we haven't even kissed and yet we are so in love not that i doubt my love...i know i love you but just cant get what makes people function this way...do you know i feel like getting on a plane now, coming back to you and talking our way into the Guinness book of World Records for the longest talk.

   OH MY GOD. I'm back in normal mode Peach and have just read this back and have decided to send it as it came out of my head. I think you get the idea and can translate the ramble into some kind of sense and understand this comes from a guy that absolutely worships you and wants you for the rest of his life. 

It's 2am here so i am off to bed. I will phone you Sunday.

LES

From: Jaqueline Almdale

To: Les Biggs
Sent: Sat 11/27/2010 9:09 PM (Sun, 5 AM in England)
Subject: Love Returned

         

         XXV

Wild nights! Wild nights!

Were I with thee,

Wild nights should be

Our luxury!

Futile the winds

To a heart in port, --

Done with the compass.

Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden!

Ah! The Sea!

Might I but moor 

Tonight in thee!

--Emily Dickinson

The Whole that is Made of Wanting

Naked dancing among cacti and brambles

Barefoot over hot razor blades on skittish feet,

How often I threw myself to love 

Like a piece of meat dropped in a shark tank.

Trust is a flowering, fragrant, fragile. 

Andante: the bud unclenches and the satin 

of the peony opens with a languid rustle 

till the trembling pollen is bared.

The doors of the spine swing on their squeaky 

Hinges. The belly opens its single eye to blink. 

The hands loosen, water lilies on their pads. 

The feet present themselves like hungry puppies. 

Eat, drink I am your daily bread 

And you are mine made every morning fresh. 

In the oven of the bed we rise and bake 

Yeasty, dark, full of raisins and seeds. 

Rock on, my bed of trust feathered 

With our hopes, a quilt worked of care 

A patch at a time of all our old half-lives 

Velvet and burlap, denim and fur. 

In a daily sunrise miracle we join our 

dreams. When two hands come together 

They grasp, they hold on, and at last 

They close on what they are meant to find. 

--Marge Piercy

     Oh Les I feel the same way. I am wandering in some lost place, some purgatory of waiting to be with you again, and I am filled with wonder that it is possible to feel this way at all after only one week spent with you. It’s true, we've never kissed, or touched intimately or made love to one another, or even slept in the same bed.

     But those things I believe are best reserved only for those who deserve them of one anther in the name of love. We spent that week together doing the important things for two strangers: finding out if we liked each other, if we are truly friends, comfortable in each other’s presence.

     Too often in these jaundiced and jaded days of the twenty first century we are urged to skip ahead of the dance and fling ourselves into intimacy’s embrace before we even know the color of one another’s eyes, or whether or not one could truly give all of one’s self--heart and soul--to the person in our bed or our body. 

     I have had my one night stands and tissue phase (where I went through men like a box of tissues) in my tender youth. Those events are equivalent to eating night after night at McDonalds and wondering why we are still starving and malnourished. 

     I don’t regret those assignations because they taught me about myself. I chose to be celibate—to save the core of my most intimate being all these years because I know my woman’s heart: I cannot be truly intimate with someone I do not love, and for me anything less is not worth the risk or the effort.

     Men and women differ in that respect, so we are told, but I think not. A man can have sex with a woman he doesn’t love, true enough, but he will always withhold some vital part of himself from her. Even at the moment of climax there will be a subtle wall between them. 

     Some women don’t know this, some don’t want to, and some are willing to settle for whatever a man is willing to offer—even if it is not the tenderest and most vulnerable part of him. For some women, something is better than nothing at all. A woman who denies the knowledge of these things is someone who chooses not to---or does not know how to be--in touch with her own reality.

     I knew all I needed to know about you at the end of that week: You are patient and the soul of calmness. You notice EVERYTHING—nothing escapes your keen perceptions and you take the time to truly consider that which you notice. You are very intelligent and can keep up with me intellectually; you have an extremely curious nature, which feeds your intellect. You don’t just ask why something is or isn’t—you follow on to seek answers. You are a thinker, like me. You know how to think on your feet, which makes you good in a crisis.

     You are the soul of gentleness which tells me you are also a soul of great strength. Cruel people are weak; it takes great strength to be gentle. I also know that you don’t suffer fools gladly. You might ignore them in general but if someone were to seriously threaten you and yours your temper would offer itself up and you would defend yourself, your position, and those you love. You have a long, slow fuse on your temper, but you know when a situation is worth the effort of true anger. This tells me you had a good relationship with your father. You loved him and he loved you, and showed you he loved you; he taught you how to be a good man.

     You laugh from your belly; you laugh with your whole being, and you can give yourself over to laughter. You aren’t afraid to be silly. This tells me you are a person who knows the value of wit. You have a great sense of humor and impeccable comic timing. You see humor as I do—in small things and large—and you laugh at life’s absurdities. You know how to make me laugh which is a tremendous turn on for me. 

     You find joy in the little things, and life’s greatest gifts do not pass unnoticed by you. You know how to love and be loved and you understand what joy is. You know how to be happy, and you know what makes you happy. You are comfortable in silence. Most importantly, you know who you are, and you are comfortable in your own skin.

     You are a gentleman in an age that has forgotten what a gentleman is, and the importance of conducting one’s self with responsibility to self and others. You have impeccable manners. You placed your concern for me before your own desires. That more than anything speaks volumes: it tells me you are not a selfish bastard.

     You know your heart and you know how to listen to it and heed your heart’s desires. You don’t deny your emotions. Love doesn’t scare you. 

     You genuinely like women as people. You appreciate us and what we as people have to offer and not just in relation to what might selfishly feed your ego. This tells me you had a good relationship with your mother. You loved her, she loved you and she raised you well, and taught you how to genuinely love women.

     While you love women, you are not a cad. You could have fed your ego seven fold on the attention of the women you met the week you were here. You didn’t need to. You have a healthy enough ego to recognize your own self worth realistically. But your ego doesn’t run your life, your dick, or enter the room ahead of you.

     The only way I could know all this about you at the end of seven days is because you let me know it. You were your authentic self—no pretenses, no bullshit. This tells me you are an honorable person. You say what you mean, and mean what you say. You walk your talk. 

     You are the man I didn’t believe existed. You found me, you “get” me, and you love me. For all of these things and the man you are, I am on my knees weeping in gratitude and thanksgiving.

This aching, this wanting you: your voice, your touch, 

all the idiosyncratic things that make you up. 

Your name echoes through my head all day 

and sings me through every night’s restless slumber, 

until something in me cries out at your absence 

and I wake up and reach for you, sinking back 

into the pillows with longing for you 

so intense my skin burns with it. My mind is 

dumb to all other considerations.

In this absence one from another, I am 

discovering spaces and vacancies previously 

unknown. The spaces between my fingers where 

yours fit perfectly. The vacancy in the house 

where the faintest trail of your scent still 

lingers. The vacancy in my bed, though you have 

yet to lie there; I feel your strong arms around me 

and your warm belly and thigh outlined against my back, 

my thighs. The only places in my whole damn world 

that are not vacant of your presence are my head and my heart. 

--JM Almdale

November 27, 2011 

P.S. When we are together in February you can ask me anything—anything you want to know about me and I will gladly tell you. In the meantime, think back through the week we spent together and see if you can recall what my behavior and actions told you about me. Perhaps it will help, if only for a little while. Thank you for the beautiful poetry—strong, clean words that point straight to the heart of things—like you.