I shaved my legs yesterday for the first time since November.
(That’s not the confession.)
I was meeting a friend, and I knew this friend had a certain image of me in his mind; that image included “pants.” I didn’t want my first pantsless exchange with him to include…. whatever statement I’d been trying to make, so I just conformed to the cultural standards of being female.
(I don’t mean “pantsless” as in we would have sex. I wear shorts instead of pants in the summer.)
We took a long walk down Roosevelt Ave in Queens, which is … an interesting place.
Some highlights:
People selling things on the street, music, incense, furniture, meat, salsa, prostitutes, noise, trains.
We’d have to pause our conversation any time a 7 going in either direction would pass above us, which during rush hour was about every four minutes. It was a lovely walk.
He has read some of my writing, and we had a conversation about my last piece and the woman who said to me in a well-meaning way that she hopes I find romantic love, as if THAT love is the thing that will complete “me.”
My friend had a moment of awakening years ago when he experienced the godly love that I know, along with the oneness. It happened for him on a very long walk which I think spanned an entire day. Early in our knowing one another, he shared this with me almost shyly, like as if maybe I would judge the story. Instead, I leaned in and encouraged him to say more about it. I knew we held a similar truth.
He said to me yesterday, “Most of society is like that woman. MOST PEOPLE believe that that’s where it is. You have this deep love inside independent of anything else and they’re looking at you like “poor you.“
We shared a lot on that walk, but as we traveled under the train and saw the “culture” change every five to ten blocks (you feel like you switch countries almost) I told him that as I revisit my old writings from 2007 to put together my new book “Love,” I am having the experience of re-reading what life was like for me before I left Pennsylvania.
Leaving Pennsylvania was one of the hardest things I ever did, not because it’s hard to go to a new place (although it is) but because I’m a firstborn, nobody in my family ever left Pennsylvania, none of my friends left Pennsylvania, my parents said things to me like “you need to live in the real world,” which included “Pennsylvania,” and the possibility of going to a major city was … discouraged. People talked about it like it was some elusive thing, and I was a child who needed it to not be.
Now, I’m almost 40, I’ve tasted and touched and smelled everything I could ever want, and I’d happily surrender to a simple life in Pennsylvania. I often covet it. BUT AT THE TIME, in 2008, my soul needed out.
I just had to do it, balls to the wall.