Dear Johan,
Oh wow, the twists keep coming. I wanted to tell you about the strangest encounter.
I was hired to basically be myself and go on a medicine journey with a bunch of dear friends of mine. The format is we Flow all day on a Friday and then we do a series of heart openers and psychedelics over about 14 hours. So much to say about the whole experience but I wanted to start with what’s alive right now.
And it starts now with me feeling a huge “hubba hubba” at the end of the day Friday when two of the five other facilitators showed up to interview participants they hadn’t met yet. “He” came in and I felt it immediately.
Handsome and a feeling of safety were clear and distinct. My first guess was that he was straight. The slow motion play by play in my experience went like: hot, spark of turn-on in my nethers, and then, like a dirt bike jumping high in the sky, my turn on bypassed most of my body and landed in my heart…like it was hiding.
I took it to mean that I was trying to keep myself safe from some shame at being attracted, again, to a straight man.
That was simple and I saw it and it was hiding in my mid-consciousness. It was in a zone in me that can be forgotten about if safety isn’t high and accessed if safety is high. Fast forward to Saturday and we’ve all been hanging out for a few hours. The medicine is coming on and we’re all wandering around. It’s a cool ceremony because there’s so many facilitators that nobody looks like they’re doing anything but what they would enjoy doing.
I find myself in a bedroom relating with the oldest participant who I have formed a deep bond of friendship with…he feels like a friend across time. “He”, my hubba hubba comes in the room and joins us. “He” is very modality focused and leans in with my friend and starts “working” on him, basically doing various things to help him feel truth, love, and safety in his body. I admired his moves. I’m not really a modality guy but my way of being is filled with past training. It was so different than my style and I loved it. He was so penetrative and gentle at the same time. I kept hearing myself applaud him in my mind. My own safety with him went way way up watching him work.
We stayed there a while and then went out into the larger room. He came up to me and sat down. It was interesting being a facilitator and having another facilitator come up and work with me. He asked me a lead-in question like, “So what’s going on with you?”
Me: Well I noticed this yesterday when I was sober so I feel ok bringing it now. My being and body has been on a journey to come into alignment and yesterday I felt attraction to you, which I take to mean that I’m supposed to move toward you. I know I can honor boundaries so I’ve been letting myself really lean into this part of me that seems to know…who it wants me to love. But I’m guessing you’re straight. What’s dawning on me now is, “what if the amplitude of my love is so high that I’ve been misinterpreting love love for romantic love?”
It was here that I had a huge opening experience, like, “Wow, a lot of this confusion is about to go away and I’m going to get to participate in a new kind of relationship with straight men…this is amazing.”
And then his response was:
Him: Well…I’m stepping through some shame to say this but…I’ve been very interested in exploring sexuality with men.
(Internally/Quickly I’m like, “Are you fucking kidding me?” and it was both a “fuck my life” and a “holy shit this is the hottest moment I could imagine”.)
He continued, “I feel like I can open to you and feel safe sharing about it now.”
My bearing immediately shifted to a beautiful deep intimacy. We’re sitting inches apart, my hand gently on his shoulder and his hand gently on my knee.
Him: “I need to talk to my primary partner but I think it would be great to explore with you.”
I was in awe. Vulnerability met with vulnerabiltiy. Watching him cross party lines, an intuition came to me in a flash and I said, “That’s so amazing. I feel completely satisfied already and open to so much more.”
He spotted something in me and told me I looked slightly sad when I said that. I looked inside, because I hadn’t noticed it, and told him that, “Yeah, I can see why that would show up. In order to be with the energy I like to be with I have to stay away from expectations of progressing on intense levels. I always have to stay ready for nothing to happen and it to still be beautiful.”
“I have to stay ready to be alone.”
He went to work on me with his modalities. He was asking me questions and having me feel my experience. Each question would be like a pressure point of my psyche and then, invariably, there would be a little release and an increase in comfort.
It felt like he was fucking me with his craft. We’re smiling and giggling every time it happens and I love how excited he was getting every time I seamlessly let him into my nervous system. Wow.
And then I saw another leap of faith I could take and said,
“You know…I’m ‘gay’ because it works for me. But you’re the kind of guy that I think could teach me how to love a woman. I’m kinda autistic to women’s turn-on.”
Him: Yeah, you seem really focused on consent.
There was something there. A deep knowing that there is shame and a deep fear in me of violating a woman’s space unknowingly.
He noted a desire to kiss me which we didn’t act on…we are working right now.
Then he said, “I need to introduce you to my partner.”
Hubba hubba.
I’m at the airport right now headed to Palm Springs Pride and I was letting my imagination run wild.
I’m stepping through a lot of shame and releasing a ton of turn-on. My fantasy is us going down on his girlfriend together, touching each other as we lick her. My fantasy is him inserting my penis slowly and playfully into her. I get harder imagining him sticking it in instead of me.
I’m somehow not supposed to be turned on by that. Not because I’m “gay” but because it’s not manly to need another man’s permission to love a woman. I’m supposed to be able to do that by myself (the turn-on in my body plummeted when I typed that).
But what’s consistently broken is often a feature and I know that. Maybe I can only have sex with a woman if another man is there. Maybe my highest turn-on with women is to share them with other men, not as an object but as a kind of temple where we two men share our goodwill. Competitiveness from other men about women is a deep source of pain from my childhood.
I feel both pathetic and incredibly turned on imagining this “sub” energy. I feel blessed and forgiven that my acceptance is this creative.
I imagined you during the interaction. There was this huge hope that I could tell you that I figured something big out, “Johan, I was misinterpreting my love for romantic love because it’s actually more intense than I could ever imagine.” That could still be true. It felt true before he shared his turn-on back to me. Somehow it would’ve been so much easier if he had just said, “Yeah, I feel a connection but it isn’t sexual but it is intense.”
These moments I’ve been thinking, “Love is constantly teaching me something by not letting me figure something out.”
I’m rolling a descriptor around on the tongue of my mind:
“My heterosexual energies are dependent on a homosexual enablement.”
Some old mind in me cries out, “Pathetic!” But some hot fire moving all throughout my body moans, “Oh fucking hot.”
The charge of turn-on through my body is nourishing so many crevices in my nervous system.
For now I’m down to understand,
“There is a huge love in me and it can express in ways co-created in moving toward.”
Not very interesting of a label but if this is my adventure…I ain’t complaining.(big smile here)
Tomorrow is 3 months since we spoke last and I’ll be texting you to see if you’re open to a facetime call.
Deep joyful sigh,
Mike
