the love that should dare speak its name
Okay, it’s two days past Valentine’s Day. Estrogen and testosterone levels
should be back near their baselines by now. The surge of erotic love is
receding. It won’t spike again until spring break or the release of the next
“Twilight”.
Since love is still in the troposphere, this is a prime time to mention a type
of bond that is rarely discussed, male-female friendship. This connection
between a man and a woman may not feature the lofty goals of platonic
love or the physical intimacy of a romantic friendship, but it’s mutually
nurturing. “Benefits” likely aren’t in the perks, at least not as a defining
feature. The two simply enjoy each other’s company. They get a fresh
perspective on life that they might not be able to glean from same-sex
friends.
Jude and I are friends. Our friendship, in fact, is the woof and warp of
our life together. One reason for this is that we courted by phone. The
day of our coffee date in California, my mother broke her hip in Kansas.
We talked every day, sometimes for hours, the six weeks I was back to
help Ma with her physical rehab. By the time I got home and we could
touch for the first time, we knew each other well.
Jude’s not threatened by my female friends. I’m not intimidated by her
male friends. We introduced each other to many of those folks while
still in the Bay Area. In essence, we doubled our number of friends.
I consider the women here my friends. They offer a wealth of wisdom,
skills and life experiences. Mutual respect between genders is essential
to our community of 50 or so. We rely on each other a lot, partly because
we’re so isolated.
I met my oldest lady friend 40 years ago. Let’s call her “Ducks” since I do
anyway. We met while working at an adolescent group home in Kansas.
It was a tough though rewarding job. Ducks, a natural nurturer, excelled
at it. I moved away two years later, she and her husband moved to Arizona
a year after that. We stayed in touch.
When we saw each other again, we had both divorced. This changed our
dynamics. Sexual tension started simmering; but only from my heat, it
turned out. We left it behind us and have had clear sailing as friends since.
Other aspects of our lives were not so smooth. I was working in the L.A.
area during the King riots of ’92. It tripped off some nasty aspects of my
PTSD from my Marine days in Vietnam. I’m still sorting them out.
Ducks got the calling. She’s now a shaman and draws from the Toltec
tradition, among others. It’s a rather solitary and sometimes challenging
path. I haven’t seen her since ’02. She got to meet Jude for a few hours
then as we were returning home from my mother’s funeral. Our phone
calls are sporadic but we are always in contact on some level. Jude’s got
my back in the day-to-day. Ducks watches out for me in the firmaments.
