Realism is that phenomenon which takes your dreams out of the darkness of night and brings them into the light of day. This one rambling thought continuously resonates in my mind. There are events that take place in your life when you recognize that moments you've only imagined, perhaps visualized in a fantasy, might become certainty.
Suddenly, dreams have the probability of moving from the imaginary make believe dominion into the sensing, feeling, sighted realm of life's reality, the actual world you live in.
In my thoughts, my dreams, the deeper recesses of my mind, resides the perfect man who straightforwardly perceives who I am.
With his internal analytical understanding he can discern how I view life. This perfect man will recognize my needs, can not only touch my sense of what love is, he grasps my genuine belief that love exists.
Each of us makes a personal distinction of this emotion on so many levels. We long for the eyes that see our want, the conceptual ability to fulfill our needs, and the complexity of eventual and total surrender to an emotion that can often be both exhilarating, overwhelming. Although we seek and covet love it remains often elusive and is somewhat terrifying.
There isn't a day that passes without someone asking me ... "Layla, why do you have such an intense affinity for older men?"
I can assure you that I don't have an Oedipus complex. My childhood was as ordinary an experience as most would expect. I suffered no sexual intrigue or abuse at the hands of an older man. Alternatively, I experienced no unusual or perverse sexual pleasure in any sense.
My paternal role models were exactly what society would accept as quite appropriate. There are psychological terms attached to my attraction to older men, Androphila and Gynephilia. They sound so clinical and cold. A simple explanation of these intimidating terms is a sexual proclivity, a predilection for much older men, or women, in regards to a younger man.
We tend to make the conscious effort to live our lives by acceptable societal rules, or so it seems. There are set-in stone predetermined rubrics that were established by others for us, not by us.
I was a young heterosexual woman therefore I should be attracted to a male closer to my own age. He would and should be my ideal partner. I found boys and or men accordingly close to my age to be awkward, immature, sexually inept. Perhaps it was my own lack of sexual prowess that fueled my interest.
My limited interactions with older men soon became a desired and often imagined experience in my estimation only an older man could provide. My fantasies were predominantly centered around and with older males. I have no idea why and don't give it much thought. I accept it.
Frequently, in the back of my inexperienced mind, were the rules. These understood, yet often unspoken commandments that said I couldn't and shouldn't seek any kind of relationship with an older man. Knowingly and most definitely not a sexual connection. If I didn't bend them, ignore those rules they could break me. I went through my life with the one truth I could have confidence in. The only one who knew what I needed was me.
Mine was a life a world away from what I thought it would be. I saw my tomorrows in a different light. There were open doors that told me I could have so much more than ordinary. Funny how life can change overnight.
It was so clear that as I meandered through these now open doors my life was redefined. I finally felt that I didn't need to hide, that I could delight in the other side of me. My awakening was as unexpected as this amazing life eventually turned out to be.
I was incessantly contradictory to most of my peers in how I viewed people. I suppose you could say that I believed everyone was honest, that every lie was in fact truth. Since I didn't consider people could be liars, dishonest or con artists for lack of a better description, I saw only the good in those who I encountered.
You might think that as I grew older I would have soon realized honesty and truth aren't virtues all people hold sacred. Surely my innocence would become jaded as I actively experienced life. There is something to be said for seeing the world around you through rose colored glasses.
At a time in my adolescence when I was beginning to sense passion, became sexually aware of my body, the desire and intense pleasure I could feel, I met a man who was considerably older than I was. Over time he became my lover. In time, he showed me what love was, what it should be. A young girl at an impressionable age learns that sex is joyful and magical. Her body feels things in his hands she's never felt before. Long before she will understand that there are men, who can, and will, bring pain and heartache into her life she feels his adoration and thrives in his deep devotion. This man designed me. He created me in the image of his perfect mistress. His flawless lover. Perhaps it was my innocence, my naiveté where men were concerned that in my eyes he was everything a man should be, he was Godly.
This elderly man, his pure spirit, found me at an age when I was crossing the oceans of life's storms. I found myself sensing, recognizing my emerging longing. I was drifting and trying to get back to shore, wanting to feel solid ground under my feet yet still aching to feel the power of a thunderous downpour of desire and passion. Out of the night's darkness and into the dawn, I found a place to embrace desire, let go of my innocence and feel love. Acknowledged, that's how I felt in his arms. I was strong, at ease with myself, wanted and desired. Within time my emotions overcame me and all my many questions were answered. I was lifted when I was around him. Being surrounded by his life-force, I was lifted like someone who had experienced life in a haze and suddenly I was sailing into an ocean of clear calm blue water with a magnificent heavenly sky above. In his embrace, I was solid. My unexpected lover showed me that there is beauty in life's mystery. I was feeling something inside, an awakening. I felt the blood in my veins racing yet couldn't explain how I knew everything was as it should be and my life was happily changing.
One day he appeared like an apparition. This ghostly figure calmed my fears and showed me how I could dance through life. There is just so much a man can tell you, so much he can say. He became my power, my pleasure, my pain. To me he was like a growing addiction I couldn't deny. Was that healthy? The more he gave me the more I wanted. His love was the music I heard. I played his song over and over never tiring of his melody and thriving in our harmony.
Sadly, every song comes to an end. If only we could hear the music we love in a never-ending symphony drawing us in and allowing life to play each note to the next without the flamboyant crescendo that proclaims the piece is coming to the closing moments, an inevitable finish.
We long to hear the constant echo of that music hoping that there is another who has that insight, that talent, that secular sense of creating something so beautiful that it could be said you could truly hear angels singing his song.
I've shared more than a few stories depicting occasions in my life that have offered to you who Layla is. What drives her? What ignites her? What calms her fire and permits her to listen to the music she loves? Her music, the songs that older men sing to her. Each melody has its own intonation, its own timbre, its own composition written by each unique composer. There have been magical harmonies and sad refrains. Music embraces all emotions.
Perhaps the saddest music of all is the haunting song of a man who finds himself sexually deafened by the woman who shares his life. Shares his bed.
Imagine spending your life providing for, caring for and taking responsibility for a wife and family? You're willingly to wait for your time simply looking forward to the days when the tired used up joys of life once again are within your reach. All this life waiting only to realize that your touch is no longer desired.
There isn't a day that ends without my receiving a genuine note of gratitude from an older man. Some are retired still sexually alive. He finds himself in a relationship that exists purely for economic and social purpose. Devoid of sexual pleasure.
A man and woman are lying in bed together and he reaches over and begins to cuddle. His attention is met with coldness. In his exasperation, he asks, "How about some nooky?" She rebuffs him and instead suggests he roll over and go to sleep. Unbeknownst to them, their young son overheard the brief conversation.
The next morning, sitting at the breakfast table, the young boy asks, "Daddy, what's Nooky?" The mother is horror-struck. She immediately glares apparent blame for this blasphemy at her husband and rapidly sets about getting the youngster out the door without entertaining the idea that he deserves an honest answer to a quizzical question. "Listen, from now on if you want to fool around ask me if you can use the washing machine?" His wife had adequately quashed the situation with a clear and concise notification system.
Although he clearly doesn't get the compulsion to evade normal inquisitiveness, in hopes of enjoying the rapture of splendor in the grass, he agrees.
The next night he dutifully requests laundry services and is still refused. This goes on for several days. Subsequently, during a morning coffee klatch, one of the ladies' shares that a couple, well known to all, is divorcing. When she is pressed for details it is revealed that there was a lack of sexual pleasure for, and attentiveness to, the husband, on the part of the wife. Hearing this sad news, the woman begins to acknowledge her own negligible behavior and is determined to rectify the situation.
Lying next to her husband that very evening she waits for his attention. Where is his nightly request? He's ignoring her. With the mornings conversation looming like a potential disaster about to befall her she cuddles up to him and mews sweetly "Sweetheart, wouldn't you like to use the washing machine?" "No, I had a small load ... I did it by hand."
Is this how it begins?
That little antidote is playing out daily throughout the universe in every language in every economic class, on every educational level ethnicity and age group. Sexless. What a disheartening concept.
