The spirits are ever closer to the surface

Sometimes little snippets of life stick out to us, a bit like a nail in a floorboard, insignicant, yet noteworthy.  Perilous if disregarded.

I’ve been doing spiritual work of late.  It has been deep in part because it is still rattling around inside of me, and appears to have had a profound impact, one that I will feel, she tells me, for time to come.

I will share about this in another post.  In this one, I will share about that little nail sticking out.  The colour green.  A teal green.

She said I would be vulnerable after the work, and that I needed to protect myself.  To avoid public transport, crowds.  Easier said than done.  New York City.  Pride. 

Protections included stones with certain properties, but also a kind of ritual bathing after exposure.  Running, something which has re-entered my life with determination (not that it ever really left, it was just hard in the winter and in the rainy spring I had—plus I live on a really steep hill and so any run is a serious commitment one way or the other), she said was also really important, a very powerful cleanser.  Good to know.

She suggested I wear green.  I cast about my wardrobe, the things I had brought in my suitcases, thinking “oh no, I have no green, none at all.”  And then I looked at the bedsheets I have been sleeping in, and they were the perfect green, and perhaps explain why I have been sleeping so well.  And then I looked at the couch right in front of me, and saw a shirt I had just bought, the same teal green colour.  Right in front of me. And noticed my green bra draped over the chair…all the same green. How our blind spots can be so front and centre.

Then I proceeded to not wear it for a few days…but it found its way into an overnight bag.  I had two very long runs back-to-back on two days, punctuated by some time under the needle, all of which left me exhausted.  Spent. 

Short and tight black cotton skirt with bulging pockets and buckles, my teal green linen shirt, my favourite silk bra, a kind of lavender which matched my matching nails, and 3” green suede wedge heels, strappy and impossible.  I thought, ‘today, I don’t feel very glamorous,’ but was thinking what I was wearing was really quite comfortable.

At the supermarket, a lady came up to me and said, “I love your shoes.  Where did you get them?”  We talked about fashion and heels for a while.  At the DMV a short while later, don’t ask, I was stopped by a lady walking in, “love the look,” she said.

“Thank you,” I replied.

“What’s your name?”  I told her.

“My name is X,” she replied, “you look so beautiful.”

“That’s so sweet,” I said.

Later that day I was sitting in a restaurant with my editor for a book I am working on.  A lady at the table next to us had no restraint.  “I love your tattoo, it looks like smoke.”

“It is smoke,” I replied, and then lifted my skirt to show her more of it.

“Wow,” she said, “that’s amazing.”

“Thank you.”

“You have beautiful legs.”

“That’s so sweet.”

A few minutes later she knew where I went to school, the languages I speak, where I live…and I of her, and we established many common things: we don’t eat sugar, we exercise every day, we both speak French and Italian, we’re both single…”. My editor watched, amused.

The woman left.

Our waitress, a beautiful woman, so I said so, “you’re so beautiful,” I said.  She blushed all the way to her toes, “thank you,” she said, and then doted on us through the meal.

A boy waiter came and asked if he could clear some of the plates (mine).  I said “no, please wait until she has finished before taking anything,” I said indicating my dining companions unfinished meal.  I can’t stand being reminded of how uncouth I am for not eating at the same pace as my editor.  I am a rube at heart!  He still stood there.  I said, “we’ll let you know when it’s okay to take the plates.”  He seemed traumatised, dazed, but then never came back.

The waitress came back and said, “that woman.  She just called.  She wants you to have her phone number,” and then handed it to me on a slip of paper, name, a few words to remind me of her, a number.

Later, the waitress didn’t charge us for our coffee because she “liked us.”  As we stood up to go, she came up to me and said, “I just got my first professional tattoo.”

“Really?  What’s it of?”

“I have to take my clothes off,” she said, looking around the room, “where’s my boss?”  No sign of him.  “Come over here,” she said and went to a blind hallway and took off her apron and then her shirt and turned to show the tattoo on her back.  It was beautiful and moved magnificently on her skin.

“That’s beautiful,” I said.

“Yes,” she agreed, “I love the face,” she said, tracing it with a finger.  Her skin was perfect, her limbs delicate and thin.  She said how old she was, and I thought how young she looked, nothing close to the age she gave.

Back in the city, I dropped a book off with a friend, one that I had promised to give her, as I think it will land well.  She said, “you look amazing, where are you going?”

“Home,” I said, “I’ve been out.”

“You should go out.”

“I’m tired, I’ve been on the run since I saw you. I need to go home, sleep, pack.”  

“I appreciate you,” she said.  We hugged and then I ran back outside because I had left my car in the middle of the road with the hazard lights flashing. 

When I got home, I thought I don’t feel like staying home, but I changed out of a skirt and heels and put on flats and jeans.  Still the green shirt. And then I went for a walk to find a slice of New York pizza, a love that was far from satisfied from a highly rated, yet crappy slice I had on Pride.

A group of women looked up from their drinks as I rushed past on my way to a non-alcoholic liquor store and one said, “gosh, you’re gorgeous.”

And I’m thinking, what is happening?  Oestrogen is pretty wonderful stuff.  Everyone still calls me sir, but I think it is beginning to ring false.  I’ll tell you one thing for sure…I’m going to be wearing a lot more green over the coming days.

The next day, I was out for lunch wearing a very short dress, perfect for the summer weather.  Not one compliment.  Okay, the hostess at the restaurant I went to said I looked amazing, but I figured it is part of the job.  Of course I was gracious, and it is a pity that I couldn’t just let it land and feel good about it. Bad boy/girl!

At the same restaurant, I asked the hostess where the restroom was and she indicated the way, but there is an older man—I say about 65-70 in the hall before me, clearly looking for the same thing.  He asks where the bathroom is pushing through the door into the one bathroom of the restaurant.  We enter into an atrium of sorts, and there are about 6 doors heading to individual washrooms.  It is a large room.  He goes in one direction and I go in another, head in, and lock the door.  Or so I thought.

The washroom is small-ish, a toilet and a sink.

Just as I was hitching up my dress to sit down, he barges in.

“Oh my God, what are you doing?” I ask.

“I just need to wash my hands.”

“I beg your pardon, I’m in here.”

“It’ll just be a second,” he says going to the sink and turning on the water, “all the other doors were locked.”

“You walk in knowing I’m in here?”

“I’ll be done in a sec.”

“What if I was taking a shit?”

“I’d have left.”  And then he did. After, I made double sure that the locking mechanism produced the desired effect and noted that it was somewhat broken.

Now that I write about it, I think that he was gross.  His actions were not normal or acceptable. In the restaurant he sat smug and serene a few tables away. He sat flanked by two women who were perhaps 25 years younger than him. Do you know how some people look already dead? He is one of them. A death pallor.  I sat with my lunch date, an absolute Queen of a woman.  After his table had gotten up and left, I shared my experience with her.

“Oh gosh,” she said.  What else can you say.  It was intentional.

Would he have walked in were I dressed as a man?  Would he have walked in if I were a natural woman?  Would he have walked in if I were wearing something more conservative?  It is my first noted encounter with male privilege.  The owners intent.  No apology, more than entitlement, a kind of gaslighting mindset that is intended to reset normal to the world of a pervert.

I had a lovely lunch by the way, with an incredible, dynamic woman.  There are weird parallels between her and ex-Mistress that are uncanny.  They speak the same languages for the same reason, they have the same first name and same initials, and both share two core interests (which is how I met her).  She is, however, not a domme.  She knows I am a slave though.  She does now and understands on a practical level where submission has taken me.

I also told her about my spiritual experiences, at least in part. She told me what she observed in me. Mainly in the domain of being a witch.

“I think you are very sensitive, in that you feel things that others might not, or might not even see.”

“Yes. I can often see things before they happen. I can read a room, read people’s thoughts. I am a healer, but I’m not ready to practice. I need to learn to contain my slave feelings. So I can heal with purity of heart.”

And the rest.  Yummy.  It isn’t every day a gorgeous, successful woman takes you to a two-star Michelin restaurant.

We spoke of bridge, her favourite hobby. It sounds a terribly complicated game. I suggested that the next time she hosts a tournament, that I might serve sandwiches and generally tend to her.

“We eat a lot,” she said with a smile.

“Good. More for me to do.”

Later that evening an SW friend reached out and asked me to meet her after a client session. She sent me the hotel and time, and I confirmed.

I changed what I wore to reflect the energy that I felt she needed from me, and that meant switching to something less out there, from skirt to trousers. She has been struggling with SW as a way to make a living, with her sexuality (“I am attracted to men but I don’t find men attractive”), wondering about finding her way into the lesbian scene, coping with her feelings about how sex work interferes with her sense of bodily autonomy, balancing her needs for financial health and personal connection.

I listened to her make arrangements with the woman who organises appointments for her, and said woman was trashed, crying, had just been served an eviction notice. I could feel my friend’s hand on me, finding steadiness and strength in my ever-thinner arms.

As I let go of more and more, I find that my place in the Universe is increasingly comfortable and closer to my own desire.

Jack Welch remarked, “control your destiny or somebody else will.” That is a credo I used to adhere to. But there is a part of that which is to rage against the machine rather than to find the flow and go with it. How does finding the flow, submitting to the universe, actually give us greater control over our destiny?

A question for Star Child, my Buddhist teacher, and for you. For my lunch date it represented the unification of the seemingly contradictory. For you?