Sexuality is fluid. It’s a theory I’ve held for some time now and here, right outside these sliding glass doors, is a metaphor—my favorite. More than a simple (yet delicious) metaphor though, or as an extension of one, it’s nature reflecting nature. This place is surrounded by water. When I first arrived last Sunday night, we walked out on the deck and watched the dark inky surface lap up over the lip of the floor. Nearly level with the deck, I wondered if it would soon flood with all the rain. “The tide’s in now,” she said. I thought she meant now as in, this season, this part of the year. But the next morning when I went out the water was gone. Down below, too far it seemed, was a cake of mud interspersed with puddles, rivulets snaking through and out as far as it went making strangely even patterns like the way the world looks from a plane—congruent shapes in earth tones.
I’m staying in this apartment in Tiburon. I’ve been sleeping on the couch of a writer I once read in my early twenties. One whose famous book revolutionized my young mind back then (along with many others) when I saw myself as an object moving in space—a wildlife perpetually caught in headlights. Then this book boldly suggested that I can and do (unconsciously or consciously) create my own experience. Coincidence doesn’t exist. Nothing ever happens to me. Rather, I happen to it. It responds to me, collaborates, conspires. When we talked about it that first night, she shared with me that she used to go into libraries and visualize a whole shelf of books written by her. “I never thought they would be about spiritualism or self improvement, but here we are,” she said.
As for the tide, I went running the other day along the coast while it was out again. I marveled at the absence of all that water, how it moves in and out with such volume multiple times each day. There were long-legged birds stepping stick-like atop the mud, splashing through the rivulets, pecking puddles. There was a squat boat, more like a ship but half a ship, weathered and askew ashore the rocks. I imagined it would be swept up with each surge of the tide, moved farther down the coast, maybe carried out. This rhythm of the water made me think of sexual fluidity. Many people have written of it and it’s not my opinion alone. It’s what happens when women in their 30s and 40s with husbands and children suddenly and unexpectedly fall in love with another woman and have to change their whole lives. It’s what happens when boys want to practice kissing with each other. When men find a terrifying intimacy latent in their friendship, and how it happens out of nowhere like on the golf course or in the hot tub while their wives are playing tennis.
It happened to me, too. Before this occurrence, I was convinced that I was only ever really attracted to women. In fact, I was deep into a relationship with my ex at the time with no thoughts of anyone else. I worked with this man and we traveled together. He was pretty, with soft brown hair and sweet eyes like chocolate drops. A nice mouth, too. Oh, and lovely hands. I remember because that day when we were doing a conference in Atlanta, I reached to pick up a camera just as he did and he grabbed my hand playfully. Something leapt a little in my stomach when I looked at his hand clenched around mine. Slender fingers, the soft underside of one palm exposed over my knuckles.
He ended up staying an extra night and we took a long walk around the city after I already checked out. When we got back, I wanted to take a shower before I left for the airport, so he offered his room. There was something to that offer, I felt it even then. Still, I accepted. When I came out of the shower and started dressing, I sensed him just on the other side of the door. I knew that if I swung that door open he would be there. I knew what would happen if I did. And I was so tempted that it scared and confused me. The only thing that stopped me was my relationship. I pictured her face and I got dressed, shaking my head over the insanity of it all.
What I’ve believed ever since is that it’s less about gender than it is about energy. What attracts, repels, stays neutral is the interplay of energies, which is affected by but has little to do with the sexes. Chemicals and hormones and whims and moods are more the makeup of that energy than whether a person is male or female. But more than those even is the mystery and magnetism. The invisible hand pulling a rope between two people until only its taut pull can be felt, until its force can not be ignored. And even when two energies synch and an exquisite harmony is found, this connection has a tide of its own. The rhythm may be quick or slow, there may be no pattern to it at all, but it will have a rhythm. It will flow out and surge in at intervals of its own making. And although I’ve spent much of my adult life in relationships yearning for the surge and the near flood-like conditions to stay permanently, what I realized during my run along the coast is that there is beauty to the barrenness. There is a peace about it, a stillness. It’s comforting in that way. And too, it reveals things. Like the half ship, askew. Like the long legs of the birds. And the way they behave without floating. And the patterns in the mud, how they piece out little ruts to channel the remaining water and make shapes that fit together like words. A story. A poem, even. A song.
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