My chest was to his back. My right leg was thrown over his right hip. At first he made a smacking noise with his lips, as if a cow was chewing his cud beside me. I thought I heard him ask for something. I might have just been falling to sleep myself. But this mouth thing caught my attention. My arms tightened around him. He started to shake. I thought, "Is he having another one?"

"I'm right here with you baby." I held him even tighter. He'd told me to hold him tight if this ever happened when we were together.

Then the lip smacking became a gurgling. Was he throwing up the Buffalo Chicken foot-long Subway we'd just consumed an hour earlier. "Don't worry, baby. You aren't alone. I'm here. Breathe." For me, holding him as this great force overtook him was like trying to keep a hot air balloon on the ground as invisible tethers evaporated.

I was scared. Yet, I was fascinated as well. It's kind of like slowing down to see why all the flashing lights are on the other side of the freeway at night. It's dark. You can't really see anything but you know something big just happened. Only in this case, it was happening. I was in the car on the other side of the road. I wasn't the driver but I was holding the driver. Only my boy wasn't driving this vehicle that was now thrashing and flailing in my arms.

It seemed that minutes had already passed. I felt him struggling to get away from me. He's made of muscles, lifts fifty pound weights at home a couple times a week, is in great shape. I knew he wasn't conscious of what he was doing. Could he hurt me? I didn't smell any chicken. Suddenly he was spurting again, trying to catch his breath. There was much moisture in the air as he gasped and chortled. My friend Angel told me she was always afraid she'd swallow her tongue, even though she intellectually knew it was impossible.

I felt his right arm. It was hard as a rock. Shaking like a concoction in a lab's test tube, held over an open flame. "I'm here baby." I reached in the dark to touch more of his body. His heart was pounding as if he was running a 200 meter dash. Maybe it was a marathon but this wasn't the heart beat of a slow and steady jog. Sweat was all over him.

Then he tried to come towards me. In the dark it felt like he was trying to get up. He'd told me this morning that he kept trying to get up but couldn't get up. It's as if he was trying to reach above me to grab hold of something. "You're ok. You're safe."

I decided to turn on the bed side light. He was on all fours. He looked at me as if he was a lion trying to protect his cubs. He looked angry, but I knew he wasn't. "Lay down. I've got you." He collapsed. Suddenly he was breathing as if he couldn't get enough air in. I put my hand on his heart. This went on for at least another ten minutes.

Finally I heard him grumble or murmur, I'm not really sure what it was. "Sorry." I kept stroking his forehead. He seemed to be calming a bit. Like the run was over and he was just pacing not to lock up. But he still wasn't back.

Another five or ten minutes later he said, "What?"

"You had another seizure." I said still holding him tight in one arm while massaging one of his temples with my other hand.

"No. Don't say." I wondered if he knew what he was saying. He still wasn't himself. He opened his eyes. He stared at me. Then he looked away and seemed like he was about to cry. But he didn't cry, he was still gasping to catch his breath. His body was still taut, sweaty, shaking.

Ten or fifteen minutes after that, we started to talk about it. He said he'd heard me talking to him. He said he couldn't control it. I said, "Maybe you're not supposed to control it. Maybe you're just supposed to relax."

"I can't relax or not relax."

We talked for awhile. I massaged both temples and got him some Ibuprofen because his head was throbbing and his body was sore.  I told him I was glad he'd released his bladder before he took his medicine and got in bed. I wasn't trying to be cute.

"Are you going to leave me?" he asked. "I'm sorry you had to see this."

We talked more about what he felt and how strong this one was compared to the one he experienced earlier this morning. Two epileptic seizures in one day after eight months without a single one. His dream of being able to drive again, to have his independence, to get his job back, and be "alive" again dashed like a boat against the shore with no lighthouse protecting him in the fog.

I put a cold pack over his forehead and massaged him till he fell asleep.

He's had epilepsy for over fifteen years. He lost his license and his job fifteen years ago. Medicare says he's not "disabled enough." He has no insurance because after rent he has three hundred dollars per month on which he keeps himself alive. He goes to the free clinic every three months to wait in line for four hours to see his doctor and get his meds.

This is how a man who was Varsity all three years, MVP'd often, who then drove heavy machinery fifteen years for a city he loved, fell through the cracks. He's not disabled enough to receive any help from our government. This is the land of the free and the brave? I don't think so.

If u think age & wisdom doesn’t shift perception & priorities, think again.

I remember first hearing the following phrase when I was in my early twenties:  "Women give sex to get love. Men give love to get sex." Back then I didn’t agree or disagree with this concept. I think it registered more as a curiosity. Is this true? At that time when I gave sex or love I felt confused about too many other pending and prominent issues in my budding identity, to fully acknowledge or analyze the bargaining power inherent in that statement.

In my thirties, I thought women gave sex to get orgasms. I did. I was on a quest. Most of my friends were already married by that time, but I was NOT in a hurry to walk that path. What religion and society set up as the proper lifestyle, obedient commitment to one man, seemed unnatural and I was not willing to blindly sign on the dotted line and trust the “system” that was set up for me to follow. By that time I'd had enough sex that was stupid, enough sex that was unsatisfying, and enough sex that was superficial. I'd had one all-night glimpse of Tantric bliss when I was twenty-six and it ignited in me a fever for continued satiation as well as a fear of forever falling short of achieving that fantasy.

I'd hear womenfolk commenting that they just wanted to snuggle... they just wanted the connection, the closeness, the cooing and coiled effect when wrapped up in "his" arms. I'd hear some say they could take it or leave it. If they never had it again, that would be just fine with them. Huh? Seriously? How could they feel that shopping, children and lunching with other ladies would suffice, when after three weeks without a poke my body felt so on edge that my lower extremities were actually clawing up the wall, inch by inch behind me?

During most of my forties, I'd found a man who could deliver three hours of orgasm three or four times a month. He could even surrender into the afterglow and intermittently give me permission to luxuriously rest there as well. But the more he sexually pleased me, the more I wanted him emotionally and that, I found, was impossible. I had attained my decade long search for sexual satiation, but my heart was forever hurt, hungry, and unhappy regardless however my mind rationalized the reasons why it was okay for me to live this way.

For years imbibing a little nature and sipping a little nectar only enhanced those orgasms... Then I realized I was getting to the Promised Land but not remembering what I did when I got there. This disturbed me. I wanted to bring down to earth the gifts of heaven. I wanted to remember the directions on how I was getting there. I wanted to leave more than bread crumbs along the path that seemed to always blow away when intense winds swirled around our exalted bodies.

I was certain that what I felt at the top of the mountain, surveying the panorama of all I'd just climbed, was something that must be shared. What if Ansel Adams hadn't felt this way about nature? Would those of us afraid of big insects ever see that which took four days of camping to get to? This beauty, this powerful majestic feeling of health when unionizing my body mind and spirit had to be patented. Didn’t it? Couldn’t it? Wasn’t this the proverbial hunt, to capture that which couldn’t be captured and market it in a pretty package for the masses wishing and hoping to forever one day attain the impossible? (The pet rock of pleasure?)

How could I feel sex was this fabulous when other women could care less about it? Obviously they weren't seeing the vista my eyes saw, or feeling what I was allowing myself to feel.

In 2009, Oprah and Dr. Laura Berman handed out vibrators to teenage girls, instructing them that they own their pleasure. They weren’t dependent on a boy/man to take them there, or because he could take her there, that he owned her or that feeling in her she liked so much. Nearing half a century myself, I marveled at the brilliance of this lesson, and the power it placed back into the hands of females that they own their own bodies. At a time when girls give blow jobs to win popularity contests in junior high school, it doesn't matter that their female ancestors had hard won the vote ninety years prior. When a girl/woman gives herself away unconsciously, she pays a price.

I am only now beginning to realize I own my body in every moment; with every break I take and every decision I make. Even if I don’t personally have the focus necessary to have as many orgasms as I could with a certain individual, those orgasms are available in every minute, not only when with that certain individual. I can tell a doctor I won't endure a particularly painful, time and dollar wasting procedure. He MIGHT have med school on his side, but I have experience living within my own skin that a fifteen-minute office visit with this professional will never translate.  I can decide whether an environment is supportive to my needs. If a restaurant is too loud, or a movie theater is too cold, I can walk out. It is up to me to take care of my needs, not acquiesce because it’s socially acceptable or because that’s what we women are taught to do.

That's why it became necessary to truly live within my own skin.

To stop giving away my power

To stop giving sex to get love or giving love to get sex.

I've done both now.

When I met my latest lover, I thought he was the most handsome man I'd ever dated. Both of us were physically starving and our animal magnetism had us groping each other within moments upon impact. We literally and figuratively couldn't keep our hands off each other once we got the go ahead from others we trusted that the other was a “good person.” Yet, from the very beginning I realized that even though we had the physical and emotional elements intertwined and growing in our connection, the intellectual and spiritual bond between us was missing. Incessant rationalizing began immediately… how can I live without what isn’t present?

My engine of arousal wasn’t easy to maintain without all cylinders present and functioning. Soon, I was pushing my body and ignoring my brain. Within four months, I had two bladder infections in a row after years of never having one.  It was a dynamic lesson in the nuance of subtle self-abuse and ignorant soul neglect while wandering along the holistic and enlightened path to finding self and merging with The Other. 

Just as a Geiger counter or metal detector has a specific purpose but might be used for other reasons, our body does more than carry our brains hither and yonder. It is a thermometer, which doesn't lie. Yet we must listen carefully to it, not poison it. We can't say yes when we want to say no. Repressing our needs, any of our needs, without conscious reckoning of such a behavior will also induce nasty side effects.  I learned I must become evermore diligent and super conscious, which is not an easy task, but it can lessen one’s health care costs.

We lose ourselves when we don't pay attention to ourselves. We do this to ourselves. We can blame another, but we created the situation either consciously or unconsciously, and acquiesced with permission or denial. We put ourselves in each position we find ourselves in. If we pay attention our intuition protects us. If we don't listen within, we can walk into traps on a daily basis.

The question becomes not if we give one thing to get another, but if we give enough to ourselves, to then have enough self, to give to another.

Next month I’ll enter my 5th decade. I can’t single-handed create “Camelot” if my daily scene is more “My Fair Lady.”  I am not uncomplicated woman, but in my core I am really quite simple. My desire might be for one relationship that has all cylinders functioning and flowing together: physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual. My needs are much more simple. To honestly present myself as I am, and to honor a person as they present themselves to be…

I've heard it is now documented that ladies far into their 70s, 80s and possibly even their 90s can have juicy thriving sex/love lives. I intend to be one of those women. However, it’s a safe bet, I’m going to make sure my intuition gets a daily tune-up.

made my day!

http://www.myspace.com/daven777

Not bloody because I got beat up... but because the Goddess graced me at 10 this morning... This after I had a dream two nights ago (was it a dream? I think it was a nightmare...) during which I wasn't lucid enough to realize I was dreaming. I was supposedly with child and thinking which one of five men I'd have to notify. See what I mean about a nightmare... at almost 50 years of age... What a joke. When I woke up I laughed, but it wasn't funny while I was asleep. Isn't that what life is? Until we wake up?

So I had a few days off... hanging with the lovely parental units at their fabulous timeshare in the desert. Even got in almost 24 hours with my nephew J and his beloved C... fun hanging together and taking the boat to Mikado land for some yummy sushi. My folks and I worked out everyday. We made food together in the unit, saw Amelia, Capitalism: A Love Story, and Michael Jackson's THIS IS IT. My last night there we ate at the fancy Tuscany restaurant... but my favorite memories of the week were sharing with them the notes on my book... and talking back and forth over a Chateau Ste Michelle bottle of Pinot Grigio... Then I insisted they go and nibble on each other and let me clean up... They obliged and I was very happy about that. I took my massage chair and my hands attended to stiff backs and necks, even this morning when I woke at 5ish and found my dad awake and reading the latest Dan Brown book with a stuffy nose keeping him awake. I stood behind his tension and rubbed his forehead enough he could go back to my mother and sleep a few more winks...

Elizabeth Hart, Jaded Soul (http://www.myspace.com/276753456), asked me to write a little something something for one of her lovely photographs... I said I wouldn't have time to do it till Sunday, then put this together an hour or two later.  And, having written it, I sorted out my own decision about which road to take. More on that after I come back from the blood hut.

Check out her page...   (http://www.myspace.com/276753456)

Anyone can say anything. Anyone can come up with a line. With a gift bag gab of wisdom, knowledge and confidence, someone can really cover the world and be quite deceptive. There are those that do it. They make it bad for the rest.

I woke up this morning, full of doubt. There's the excitement on the one hand of feeling that I have met someone who has that intelligence, who has that drive, who has that discipline, strength, and ability to work hard. Then, the doubt creeps back in and says, "But I don't really know. I don't really know who he is. I hear what he says, but anybody can say anything."

The doubt, the fear, that the woman's neediness can surrender and oblige the man's desire. Yet, once attained, the man can disappear like an alligator does, after his strike. Back into the murky waters with prey in his mouth. Which won't be in his mouth for long because it will be digested once its chopped into smaller gulps that quickly go down into the reptile's belly. This is what I wake up with and I hear my father's words from long ago and repeated throughout this life, "Just make sure you get yours."

This man's intelligence and ability commands others to pay him for his wisdom in a certain compartment of life, allowing him the freedom to be a master of his own domain. His personal and social skills have created an able service that paying client's use to make their own lives better and easier. 

"Just make sure you get yours." This fear that we had six delightful hours on the phone, then five hours on a date of which half of them were uncomfortable when pushed out and beyond my comfort zone. Then another two hours on the phone... that's thirteen hours... and another three hours the next night on the phone, sixteen hours of conversing with someone who gave me tons of grist for the mill, food for thought, and other proverbial descriptions of life's experiences.

If that man comes over and if he can do what he says he can do and if he can't, I can always say, "Not enough, I'm not feeling it." The fear of a Ted Bundy, a man so slick, casual, handsome and beautiful who can go under the radar until its too late. How many Ted Bundys exist? Not many, because evil when it appears in a human being usually eats the person up. In many ways, there are warning signs if one is sensitive.

When I wake up with doubt, is it my intuition about the truth of this man's character, that he is not to be trusted, or is it just the fear that I have been raised with and has been stuffed into me from all that I have read and watched and heard about throughout my 49 years about the ways that man can deceive woman to get what he wants.

I dunno.

But I have to find out as I take baby steps into the future, moment by moment, from this day forward.

(Then on Tuesday 10/20/09 Oprah's topic is about a man who infected over 9 women with HIV and is now in jail for 45 years because the woman who'd been in relationship with him the longest and while he was going out and about infecting others, organized the bunch to take this man to justice... Sunday morning's unconscious fears poignantly and clearly illuminate that such fears are warranted with men that are good communicators and act endearing to get what they want...) What's a woman to do? What's a good communicating man who really cares about a woman to do?

Who doesn't want hugs and love, affection and appreciation, kisses and connecting with another? There are some that are infinitely uncomfortable with touch. That is not what I'm talking about. I'm bringing up a pattern I've noticed in a certain relationship, in fact, in my last two relationships.

A beautiful man wants me, misses me, perhaps at some level needs me. With him I can experience great physical satisfaction, inspiration and union. The compliments come in during the depth of intimacy. When I place boundaries in order to compartmentalize my life (most men are excellent at doing and women not so much and I'm just learning), this particular man riles and chafes, usually sending verbal and emotional daggers in my direction. Either he starts a fight outright about something I'm not doing right whether it be remaining in the afterglow long enough, or being cuddly enough (I know, I know... I thought only women complained about these things). In fact, the previous lover (a devout compartmentalist) would create distance whenever he felt we were getting too close. So if we had a particularly amorous session, he'd have to throw up his walls fast. I remember the first real weekend we spent together over twelve years ago. He needed the closeness, then seemed to whack me for providing it by saying, "I don't want to get that close."

I've not been physically clobbered. I guess I need to say that. But I seem to attract men who use distance or temper tantrums to get what they want, which is compliance from me to acquiesce to their needs first and foremost. I wonder if this is an issue for many of the 21st century's independent ladies in their connections with men? My previous lover had an 80-hour a week career obligation as a partner in a firm. He's the one who wanted distance. The most recent one doesn't have a job, lives on disability and his actions seem to belie his words. He says he doesn't want a mother. Yet seems to me, he'd be quite happy to have me be both caretaker and source of entertainment at all times except when he's fishing with friends or visiting with his 80-year old ailing mother.

In her book Peace Between the Sheets: Healing with Sexual Relationships, Marnia Robinson states that programmed biological responses might be effective at getting us to mate but there are hidden perils of sex. Her book jacket says, "The primitive part of our brain pierces us with Cupid's arrow and we fall in love. It then rips the arrow out." She says the conventional orgasm causes a hangover effect. Apparently, when we just snuggle and cuddle while building our ecstatic energy together we release oxycontin. Dopamine, which she calls the craving neurochemical, is the driving force behind sex. When we orgasm dopamine begins to shut down and prolactin rises acting as a "sexual satiation mechanism." Robinson says, "Too much dopamine transforms healthy anticipation into an aching craving with the power to subvert our wills, make us anxious, give us a false sense of invincibility, or turn us into addicts - all with no lasting satisfaction or genuine contribution to our well-being."

Her program says it is the orgasm that is the culprit in this push pull of relationships which causes intense desire and then immediate repulsion which requires separation. Since this has now happened to me I have to wonder if my strong attraction to orgasm is what has caused this phenomena. Or if it is something else within me that attracts a man who either can't be truly connected with another or a man who can't relate except with anger when his constant needs are not met.

Robinson says have ecstatic exchanges, just don't come. Maybe someone else would say, "Find a man with a 40-hour job." All I can say is I want the caresses, without the clobber. Is that too much to ask for?

Recently I spoke with a geologist/conservation consultant who took all his money out of the stock market in 2005 and believes that the stocks will start sliding again in October and go another 60% down. This seriously frightened me. Almost haunted me with a daily bite since I heard it, that I shouldn't believe the news that things are getting better.

Today I was a guest at a Fisher Investments Client Seminar. The audience was assured that while the future might not be bright, growth will continue as it has since the 9th of March. The bear market during the 1929 crash went down 86% in 33 months. The bull market that followed showed 120% growth in just the first 12 months that followed after it started in June 1932.

The market went down 56% since October of 2007.  Between March 9th through August 25th of 2009 we've gone up 52%. I walked out of the lecture feeling more trust in the financial process than I've had in a long time. Not only that... I started to really look at how I view all of life.

Make no mistake. I am not an economist. I'm not an investor. I've been a "fatalist" and I'm beginning to see the error in my ways and how this dark overview has robbed my life of much joy and possible adventure. I never thought of myself as a fatalist... someone who accepts that "every event is inevitable." A conspiracy theorist? Yes. A person who has been fearful of the future, that the sky would fall, that the government would fail us, that the greed, hateful and selfish sides of man would win out over the compassionate, understanding and forgiving sides. Yes, I have to admit this is true.

Where did it start? Was someone else in my family a 'fatalist'?  No. My family put their nose to the grindstone, worked hard, and made a life that the American Dream offered all people. So why did I choose of my own volition to stay as far out of the rat race as I could possibly get?  Why did I study political psychology and then muffle my voice the minute it wanted to be heard?

When I look at what the world must have seemed to my soul during my formative years, I start to get a unique picture. Three months before I was conceived, our President Eisenhower left office with these words, "...we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." I know you are thinking, three months prior? If our soul is ever present and my soul was wanting to come in, maybe it knew what was happening here... Maybe?

During the first two years of my life our country was going through the Cuban Missile Crisis. Surely there were subconscious fears that something so dangerous in our backyard could come and disintegrate us all in a heartbeat. These were fears that were aroused at that time in the national and personal psyche. I wasn't in school yet, but before I went to school and certainly during the years I was in school, I remember air raid drills and hiding "under my desk". When I was three years old Kennedy was shot and our family, as did much of our country, stopped moving that one weekend and stayed glued to the television to mourn the 'loss of hope.' I believe it was Walter Cronkite who described JFK's passing in that way.

When I was between five and eight the anti-war movement got lots of coverage and caused perhaps the first loud resistance to our government's handling of the Vietnam War, and in fact, how we handled war in general. When I was nine men landed on the moon, soon followed by boys and girls the age of my baby sitter wearing psychedelic t-shirts (while chewing psychedelic inebriants, what did they call that? Dropping Out?) and dancing in the mud at Woodstock.

As a child I didn't know any of this consciously. But when I was a tween at camp I remember hearing the impeachment process over the loudspeaker and seeing a picture of tricky Dick waving his arms as if in victory as he was whisked away on a helicopter.

One president warned us. Another president was murdered. Martin Luther King was killed the same day my great grandmother Rosie died. Then JFK's brother was murdered. Then a President was caught in the biggest lie of all and the cover up and brought down any trust that remained in the government at that time.

Could any of this have had an influence on why I got involved with politics early, and then removed myself less than ten years later?

When I was fifteen I watched Three Days of the Condor and it changed my life. For three days I could barely speak. From that day forward the conspiracy theorist in me was born.

When I interned on the hill and Congressman Clarence D. Long responded to my question of what I could do to save the planet he said, "I'm just glad it's you and not me, because we screwed it up so much there won't be any fixing of it."

After a weekend of watching the country learn about all the secretive and not so secretive miracles Senator Edward Kennedy provided for his constituents and people in our country, it makes me wonder why I ever doubted that public service could be a noble choice. Here was a man with flaws who constantly worked to redeem himself and do wonderful things for the common man. What a concept that a human being can grow and change and become the person they can be.

I dropped out. I was one of the young determined to make things better. When I became fully conscious I became fully afraid. I don't believe being unconscious is the answer. I'm not exactly sure what is, but I'll keep you posted.

Dad was right. He called back within the week. In fact, he called back within 18 hours. Quietly apologizing. Not effusive or explaining much. Just that he was wrong. He shouldn't have said it. He doesn't want it to end. He isn't angry at me. He always gets what he doesn't want... that I'll walk away. Dad says, "Dump him. He has no class." Dad wanted me to dump T too... and had his hand in that all those years ago by giving T a book about Judaism and telling him, "You'll never get my daughter."

I was a girl back then. I had tons of opportunities, many boys vying for my attention, affection, eyeballs on them, caring. I was a teenager caught up the hype and drama of being a student leader. Older folks impressed by me. The youth in awe of me. My peers jealous and respectful... those were my days then.

Now I'm a woman. I chose to not marry. I chose to not reproduce. I chose not to get tied down.

I'm a woman who explored her options, who walked down paths others never would have ventured onto. I danced with men international and unique as well as local and common. So this one is local and common. But he is universal in his having been disappointed by life. He is just like so many others around the world who had life deal them a handful of cards that don't work. Rare and unique is the person who can make lemonade out of lemons and be happy about it when they really wanted wine.

I'm a woman who has been more interested in core questions than in building community domes. I've been more alive when alone than most people are when they are intoxicated. Most people do what they must and only live for Time Off...  They don't live for the moment, only for the few moments when they can call the shots. Others who can call the shots for many others, need others to abuse them, dominate them, make them feel what they can't feel when in positions of solitude atop the structure society told them was theirs to build.

This man has no class. This man is part neanderthal, part impatient dolphin, untrained, just wanting to bump up against something that will bump him back and help him to feel alive again. Alive again when legal and necessary drugs for years have dampened his ambition, intentions, and any abilities he ever had to accomplish in this world. He took his licking and kept on ticking, but slower, sadder; angry at an enemy he can't see, can't fight, and a condition he can't change.

I understand that energy, that emotion. I've dealt with a similar situation for five years and felt my life force slowly ebbing away. Suddenly I was alive again, with arms wrapped around me, with a sharp rib poking me, and a mouth that could be with my toes without tickling them.

I don't regret that I left the local classless one back then. I was able to go out and be in the world, meet men with class who carved their lives into compartments so they could fit it all in.

I'm still not ready to dump this one... I will set stronger boundaries so he can't hurt me as easily. I will still love. But Dad, I'll do it more carefully.