(Note: Nothing lewd or graphic here)
Part 1. Like A Runner
Like a former long distance runner,
I can’t.
I can only dream of long hard runs
of pounding work outs
any day
every day
exhausting
physically and too often,
Emotionally.
Like some runners the end came slowly
the long runs shorter
shorter,
then the runner yelled at his legs
come on
get up
go on
RISE DAMN YOU RISE!
Like a fallen fighter,
the body lies
the spirit rises
but the body lays there
laughed at
derided at times
by those that once rode him.
Like a former long distance runner
I smile with age
I envy
admire those that can still go the distance
painfully with all that still DOES move
I look at my legs
I smile with memories of long runs
I cry inside,
knowing that no matter how many pills I take
no matter how many therapies,
the runner will never run again.
But the runner dreams
looks at the paths
the roads he’d like to traverse
and dreams
of gentle poundings
caresses
and final gasps as he crosses that finish line
again,
like a long distance runner.
Part 2.
It’s something men ridicule each other about so much of their youth and middle age then laugh about admitting defeat, later in life.
Face it: You can’t “get it up” anymore. So many euphemisms for it but I will try to keep it simpler with less. No erections. The penis will not fill with and harden with blood becoming hard enough to perform the sexual act with anyone. Not even your own hand.
At first it is damning.
Horrifying.
Infuriating.
HUMILIATING.
For years and years.
Then I learned to accept it. Accept that it was not worth trying to push back time by going to a doctor and begging for pills or something some therapies to make my youthful hardness come back. That staff of Virility. That which is so much a part of so many mens identities and EGOS.
When something changes in our bodies and changes us inside, we need to accept it and find the good in it.
Let me give you an example: I have a coworker that has always seen women as things to fuck. As he has aged and had difficulties, he has gone for pills to keep him going. To continue to USE women that way. Pill for a hard cock and EGO attached to that.
I have come to sadly at first and now SAGELY accept it that this is how life is going to be. No more hard pounding sex.
Then again, no more slow last a long time gentle sex. No more … OBJECTIFYING women for sex.
Yes, I admit that like some sexualized robot I look at many women and judge and assess them. I look at clothed bodies. I assess and judge how they are to me. In good shape or bad? Nicely shaped breasts, butts and a curiosity about pubic hair?
Yes.
I admit it.
There is almost a robotic whirring of software in my head and a long distant whisper that enters my loins then fades with a slight smile inside my face.
I look past the breasts, butts and pubic areas. The build of a woman. A face that may interest or pique my interest.
I feel NOW like a diver might, swimming deeper and deeper into deeper layers of an ocean discovering deep greater treasures real or imagined.
Thoughts: Hey wow look at her…
SLAP!
Dammit man you are old enough to be her grandfather!
Yeah I know but that young man inside me thought and felt…
Yeah well you are an old limp dick bastard now that would make a young woman puke looking at her the way you were just thinking!
But she …
Yeah a very nice person. Look into her face before she thinks you are leering. Anxiety. Pain. Discomfort. Ah she had a good day. Something wonderful! Good for her! Her body so ALIVE so animated! SO FULL OF LIFE !
We hope… so much more life TO live.
See kid?
That’s how we need to appreciate women now. Oh hey there is that word that rises above the impotence: APPRECIATION!
A POTENT APPRECIATION OF WOMEN!
As PEOPLE.
Not just someone you may have a chance to FUCK or get to last place just imagining it.
You look at porn and still try to FEEL something and chuckle to yourself because all those marvelous bodies and you find yourself touching yourself and … wondering what that naked woman in the movie was like as she … grocery shopped. What is her diet like and does she have a work out? What will her body be like in a few years?
Thoughts wander… do porn stars carry the pain similar to me of working in a factory for so many years? All that pounding and tearing every week? Do they think of what their work will do to them in a few years?
The potent appreciation of impotency becomes a GIFT to me in how I see women. I APPRECIATE but no longer have ILLUSIONS of entrance to imagined places. Or entanglements beyond … what?
Intimacy.
That “cuddling” stuff I once thought so funny.
TOUCHING.
A medicine for emotional even spiritual pain that massages the heart muscle as once sex muscles were massaged then let go to put clothes on.
Intimacy sticks around, embracing. We don’t have to bother with the Egotism of sexual performance and fighting over anything more than…?
Why fight about anything any longer. The Ego takes a journey into the abyss with the arrogance of sexual conquest and erections.
I see women now as a diver
going deeper
layer by layer.
I see the face
her body
your eyes
I reach out with mind
to touch beyond a woman’s face
into the muscles beneath
into the neurons
the MIND AND EMOTION beneath.
I try to reach through her time and space
imagining a present NOW
imagining her past back into
who was this PERSON
old woman
middle aged
Young
Imagining deeper and farther back…
Then back to the present
slowly moving forward
aging the person I first noticed with that young man’s eyes,
That ages old superficiality of Desire,
Now only a GHOST Desire
flaming into that POTENT APPRECIATION
curiosity
of most women I see.
At first it was a curse.
A damnation.
We can all be Magicians
and take curses
and turn them into … blessings.
For men,
To see beyond the ghosts of erections we wish we COULD have,
And SEE the beauty of women we can never HAVE nor why WANT to “have” them, ever?
To see the beauty of a person in the NOW. Layer by layer savoring A PERSON beyond the ghosts and fogs of Desire.
