about a boy, part one

Yesterday was boyful, to coin a term. I went to yoga, from which I had been absent for over a week because of a persistent cough that plagues me yet -- I've convinced myself it is a symptom of a mold allergy because of the leaks I've endured in my house. My handsome yoga teacher came over to the front door of his apartment where he holds class and hugged me and welcomed me back. It was a slightly awkward hug, on both our parts, but made me feel special, as usual, in his company.

I had originally been personally invited to join this group of yoga fanatics because I represented some much needed male energy, or so I was told. There was one other on-again off-again male practitioner, but he was barely a "man," having just graduated from high school. (He's E; I'll get back to him.)

Yesterday, there were three other men in the room besides me, one the recent graduate, the second another shaved-headed man I've seen for a couple of weeks, and then a twenty-something man I'd never seen before, but who's obviously been doing this practice of Mysore Ashtanga yoga for awhile, judging from the fact that he can get his feet around the back of his neck and lift himself by his hands. Not me, not yet.

I feel a bit foolish in front of E, not because he is a better yoga practitioner than I (in fact, he seems a lot less flexible, which gives me a bit of perhaps unreasonable confidence about my own practice), but because he isn't yet twenty years old. A boy. And therefore beautiful. In my opinion, everyone in their late teens, male or female (though I'm more attracted to the male species), is beautiful. To make matters more complicated, when I first starting going to this yoga class and encountered E, he smiled at me with puppy-dog eyes and even bowed slightly in my direction when the opening prayer was being recited en masse and our eyes met. A crush. I have lots of crushes. I'm convinced they're harmless, though they do incite occasional bouts of embarrassment.

For example, I got a notion to pluck a purple flower from a plant in the parking lot on the way to my car and put it in the handle of his car after practice one day. Because I'm new to this practice, I usually am the first to finish (since we all go at our own pace under the teacher's, capable, calm and sometimes humorous guidance). A couple of days later, I noticed that the offering I'd made was on E's car dash, which made me feel nice. A day or so later, I plucked two purple flowers and put them on the car, and another day, a white flower, which didn't sit in the handle so well and had fallen to the street by the time I got to my own car. My intention was to make E feel special, an anonymous gesture, though after the three offerings, over a weekend, I decided I should stop such antics before things got "out of control," whatever that might mean.

But when I arrived at class the next Monday, I noticed a piece of white paper flapping in the wind, taped to E's black car door. It was a note, to me:

Dear Flower-Giver,
I'd like to give my thanks, but I do not know who you are. I apologize for not responding sooner. There are several reasons, but are too long to go into detail in this message. I want to tell you but, again, I do not know who you are. Your generosity is appreciated and should you choose to disclose your name and phone number, please write on the opposite side of this message.
Thankfully,
E.

That freaked me out a little bit. It felt like I suddenly knew what "out of control" meant. I ran to S, who is in Indiana visiting his family. He has always had a calm way of looking at things, particularly this type of neurotic thing that I go through now and again. (I like to think that I am able to help him with his struggles as well.)

I wrote to S: I get the feeling he knows I'm the "Flower-Giver," but I don't know about disclosing my identity. I've considered writing a note that says some convoluted thing about feeling a little anxious (or shy) about saying who I am, or trying to explain something about me and telling him I will let him know who I am if he leaves another note, or just ignoring it and leaving more flowers...or not. Or just leaving my name and number on his car with a flower. Even though I have the feeling that he knows it's me, what if he doesn't and it freaks him out in some way, and he ends up quitting yoga because of that, or says something to somebody and I end up having to quit yoga?! Or what if he knows it's me and he's interested in me in some deeper way ("I want to tell you..."); do I really want to go down that path??? Is there some way to go there without it eventually becoming uncomfortable? Or is there some way to get closer without going there? I wish obvious Right and Wrong made themselves apparent to me, but they have not. I feel a lot of societal angst about what if, what if, what if... Even if it's just getting together to talk. That would be very nice, I think. I think it's possible to be friends with someone so much younger; I think it would be okay -- good even. But I fear what people would think or say...

And there's the rub. Fear of what others might think; that old suitcase. More a fear of having to defend myself, or not defending myself and having to live with it in some way. (etc.)

S didn't respond to the email, but soon after that we were having an online Chat, and I brought it up. Me: Did you read my email? He: About flower boy? Me: I guess you did! He: !

His response was exactly what I needed: I think because it's become so complicated in your mind, what you might do is just let the flower gesture be was it was. Just drop it and let it exist as the original gesture, which was to do something sweet and anonymous. So don't respond to his note...but don't be afraid of your affection for him in real life, let that be what it is apart from the flower thing.

So I did. Though perhaps I could have dropped "the flower thing" a little more completely than I did. A couple of days later, E was parked behind me, and I drew a smiley face in the dirt on his car door, wishing right away that I hadn't, but to erase it would have made a big mess on the door, which probably would have been creepy, so I let it be and backed off.

Early last week, I got an email from someone in the class (to me and E) about Wednesday being a "Moon Day." Mysore (and perhaps all Ashtanga) practitioners don't do yoga on days with a full moon or a new moon. I hadn't been to yoga at all in the week before that, and planned on going on Thursday, but didn't, again because of the cough. But I hijacked E's email address from the one sent to the two of us to ask E if he was going to yoga on Sunday (a morning class I've wanted to go to since I first heard about it but had not yet attended), and if he was, if he would like to go to Casa de Luz -- a macrobiotic restaurant I love -- with me after class for brunch. He responded to say that Casa de Luz was his favorite restaurant.

So we went. I awoke very early Sunday morning, had to make myself go back to sleep a couple of times to get enough rest! I guess I was excited about my "date." But I didn't want to give it too much energy. Truly, my intention for having lunch with E was to get to know him better, to take away a bit of the power of this "crush" I had on him. (I almost wrote "inappropriate crush," but that's something I choose to strike from my vocabulary.)

We had a nice conversation, very informational and mutually interesting. Then he said:

I'll let you in on something. I have a secret admirer. It goes like this: One day I went out to my car where we all park our cars in front of M's, and there was a flower in my door handle. And I thought, 'Oh, how sweet,' and that was that. And then some time later, there were two flowers. I didn't know what to do. I've never had anything like this happen to me before. I told M about it, and he had some good advice. I put a note on my car door with four pieces of tape, and when I came out of yoga, the note was gone, but no response. And then, after that, somebody drew a smiley face in the dirt on my car. I don't know if it's somebody from my high school who lives in the neighborhood, or somebody from practice...

It felt very open-ended, like he was waiting for some revelatory response from me. I felt queasy as I tiptoed through a response, not wanting to implicate myself, but also not wanting to lie to him. (Fortunately, he didn't ask me outright if it was me.)

During brunch, E got a call from his sister, with whom he said he has a very close relationship. He left the table for the bulk of the conversation, was hanging up when he returned, saying, "I'll call you back... His name is JDJB... No!" Then he laughed, which in my mind was his response to his sister asking if I was the secret admirer he surely had told her about...

I mentioned a boyfriend in our conversation (about writing, inspirations, my one-act play "august," which I'd written for my first NYC boyfriend, and which was the seed for the novel I'm now writing), so I felt like I was being as open as possible with him. But it still felt a bit dishonest, or at least creepy. I felt a little creepy.

It wasn't wholly a bad thing. I realized that my attraction to young men isn't so much about me being a pervert as it is about me having a wounded soul, about things that happened to me in my younger days. I was thinking yesterday morning about writing a novel that I've thought about before in various ways, about a boy who is molested and then becomes a man who is a molester... but with a happy ending. I've decided that my attraction to people like E -- who seem more often than not to be very spiritually grounded men -- is an attempt on my part to heal.

My dear sweet friend M called yesterday afternoon from Virginia. She's on a four month long performing tour. I called her a week ago or so because I was missing her, and she was returning my call. Eventually, the conversation came around to everything I've just been writing about. She said, "You keep saying that you feel creepy, or you think what you're doing is creepy, and you don't have to do that. There isn't anything creepy about what you're doing. There isn't anything creepy about love." I told her about my sexual relations with a couple of uncles as a kid, and her response was pretty much along the same lines as S's -- support, non-blame -- which gave me a lot of confidence in M. She wondered aloud how difficult it would be for either of us had I told him I was his secret admirer. She said, "He's old enough to receive and process that kind of information."

But still, I'm scared. It's okay. Writing about it makes it better. Makes it okay.