Nature vs. Nurture.

March 23, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Being raised by a psychoanalyst, I grew up believing pretty
strongly in Nurture vs. Nature. I believed adamantly in Tabula Rasa, and that
every aspect of my personality was developed in reaction to my environment.

Eventually, even through a Psychology Major (that switched
to Minor), I began to admit that perhaps there were a few inborn traits that one
has out of the womb, but the majority of a human’s personality was forged out
of their experiences before the age of 3.

But, I have to admit that the aggregate of my own lifetime
experiences, up to and including a Leukemia diagnosis, has begun to make me
admit that perhaps there is something more to the Gattaca within us. Perhaps
something like perseverance, courage, and visceral insistence on life has more
to do with my wiring as “human” and as “Molly,” in particular.

I would never peg myself as someone brave or bold. I don’t
charge into the fray, or head corporations, or tie myself to a tree before a bulldozer. I have few
of the outward markings I would associate with leader or change-maker.

But I am compelled to admit that my undertakings as an adult
do, in sum, mark me as someone willing to rage, to rail, to fight, to excavate all in the
service of healing.

Though perhaps if my formative years hadn’t been what they
were, I wouldn’t find the need to heal from much. Perhaps.

I had a therapist a few years ago who said something novel
to me: Your dad is not a courageous man. This struck me as apocryphal. My father, the one so quick to temper and anger and
rule of iron fist was not brave? Isn’t that what violence is—bravery? Isn’t
that what power is—anger?

Yet, her words rang so unbelievably true. Like seeing the Wizard behind
the curtain in Oz. I know now that that kind of anger does usually hide and
house one who is critically afraid. I mean, I usually wear my black leather
jacket when I’m feeling more insecure, as if its made of chainmail instead of
leather.

But, I was on the phone with a friend yesterday, answering
her question about why I was in Victoria’s Secret the other day. I told her
about my upcoming trip to meet my consummate penpal—and she squealed. She
thought it was so bold and brave, and adventurous, and ALIVE. She rattled on
that this experience is going to help so many other people down the line, help
women to see that life is meant to be
lived.

It sounded so epic when she mirrored it back like that! And
maybe it is. And maybe it’s not.

But, I do know that with every meditation, every alternative
healer, every inventory, every striving, every goddamn picking myself up, that
I am taking something back. That I am reclaiming something. And if that impulse
to charge onward, in light of all that is, is called courage, then I guess the
Wizard granted me a heart on the day that I was born.

addiction · love · pain · painting · sex · travel

Him, or His Tragedy?

March 22, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Two of my formative love experiences centered around the
tragic hero.

The first suffered unintentional tragedy by external forces;
the second, those forces were internal.

I was 19 when I met Joe in the basement dwelling of a mutual
friend, basements being common gathering spaces for teens in suburbia. Scotty
J. even had a puke hole in the back behind the water heater should the need arise, and it often did.

In the morning, Joe didn’t remember driving his Camaro over
to my house the night before, and thanked me for getting his car there safely.
… I don’t drive stick; it really wasn’t me.

It was red. Muscley. His pride, his baby, his staff and his
project. Both he and Scott would spend hours in the driveway with the hood up,
tinkering, fixing, unearthing, lubing, loving, and suping their cars. Scott was
working on a Firebird, the shell of the Trans-Am on blocks in the garage having
donated its engine to the Firebird.

I loved this. I loved watching how attentive they were to
their cars, how dirty their hands were, how much they knew. How sweaty and
excited and jargon-speaking they became when bent over the greasy machine. I
loved how the cars sounded when they started up. I loved the primal growl, the
testosterone surge. I loved that the cars and their owners turned me on.

Maybe a month, maybe less into this Summer of Love, Joe’s
Camaro was t-boned by a woman blowing a stop sign through an intersection.
Suddenly, the man-boy I had “fallen in love with” deflated. Defeated, broken,
grieving for his totaled “baby,” Joe crawled inside a bottle of Johnnie Walker
Red.

I couldn’t follow him there, into his mourning. Nor could I
really understand or have the perhaps appropriate amount of compassion for his
loss, feeling like he was turning his back on what he did have: me.

After my own very misguided attempts to grab his attention
back from the stoned, middle-distance stare he’d acquired, he finally did see
me; but this time in outrage and betrayal, and our relationship ended in
high-octane tears, screams, and pleading.

Tragic.

The second figure I loved so much I fell into that burning
ring of fire, was an artist.

Oh, this one. Andy. A Canadian I met in South Korea at age 23, another
teacher in the pre-school where we taught English. From moment one, I could smell
the pheromones of a tortured soul, and it rang straight into my bones.

There is something very particular about a tortured artist
soul. It reads like a familiar, I acknowledge you as one of my own; I see where
it is black inside you, where it is a vitriolic, white-hot, tumulting blackness, a yawning
cavern of desperate need and distopian pain. God, it’s electric.

The gaping hole, the violent, untenable ache for
validation and self-flagellation… god, you just want to walk into the center
of it, and be fueled by it. Let me stand in the eye of your self-destruction, in
the blaze of your unrest, and be transformed, be elevated by it.

It’s sick. I know. And because you know it’s sick, you
delight in it all the more. The delicious evil of it. The knowledge that you
are, together, charring a path through hell, is invigorating.

Andy was, and probably is, a painter. There was a crooked,
dotted path of yellow paint down the back alley toward his building where one
of his cans had leaked through the bag, and bread-crumbed his trail home.

His fingers were often covered in paint (like Joe’s in
grease), and his apartment had more than twenty completed canvases leaning on
the floor, against the wall. The typified artist whose greatest work lies stale
and unrealized behind walls, in drawers, in storage.

I loved the
unrealized potential of him. How he slammed his head against his self-made
cage. I hated how he “did nothing with it,” and as if I had the power to free
him from that bondage, I would look up galleries and places he could show his work. I
would read the poems he wrote to accompany his pieces, and create books in my
head for this next great artist.

The fantasy of his life, what it could have been, drew me
like a moth. A sick, misguided, gaping hole of my own, moth.

Andy had a girlfriend. He had another tragic girl he was
sleeping with. I would sit on the heated Korean floor with him and drink and
play cards and fuck and drink and intone and fuck some more.

He was never in love with me. This I knew, but tried not to
know. I wondered if I could crawl inside him and patch his broken places if he
would love me then. But he was also in love with his tragedy, and you can’t
take a toy from a child.

The men I’ve loved past these two have been thousands of
shades lighter in tragedy. And I have learned enough that you cannot date
potential, or rent love from infatuation, or demand love from one who doesn’t
love themselves. I have also learned enough that I don’t really want to be
ignited by tragedy anymore, but rather by joy, and I pass up the visibly broken
ones for hope of something different.

But in the sense-memory playground of my love life, I do
know that my heartpace quickens recalling tragedy’s twisted pleasures.

authenticity · community · confidence · courage · encouragement · intimacy · laughter · vulnerability · writing

But We’ve Got The Biggest Balls of Them All!

March 21, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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When I was living and teaching ESL in South Korea, I earned
a nickname: Ballsy Mollsy.

It was not uncommon for me to approach a stranger in a bar
and ask inappropriate questions. Or, maybe I was with a group of friends, and
wanted to steer the conversation in a more exciting direction, and would pose a candid question to a group that would earn laughs, but few answers. Maybe I would just stumble out to the next bar in search of new conversation without
telling anyone, but that was more stupid than ballsy, fyi.

As chance would have it, one day last month, I attended a
play my friend was performing in, and I ended up sitting next to the 25 y.o.’s
mother. “How did it even come up?,” he answered via text. When I told him, he
replied, “That’s right, I forgot you talk to strangers.” (Indeed, how we met.)

I do. I talk to strangers. I mean, how are we ever to meet
anyone new if we don’t talk to them? Like the other day, waiting for my
burrito, I ended up waiting on the bench next to this guy I see
around my neighborhood a lot, who I’ve seen working at the café on the corner. We
struck up a conversation, turns out he’s a nice guy, we had a pleasant chat about movies,
and he went off with his burritos for himself and his girlfriend.

It’s not always about “meeting dudes;” in fact, it’s more
than often not about that. I just like to find out about people, not walk around like
the Ants that they talk about in A Waking Life who, unseeing, run into one another and then walk around and continue
on their way, antennae down. I mean, that’s what New York is for. 😉

I suppose I learned this from my mom. My mother is
notoriously gregarious. To the point, growing up where it was embarrassing, and
not a little evidence of her manic tendencies. But, still. We’d be in a store,
she’d exchange more than a cursory Thank You with the cashier or salesperson. We’d be on a
bus, and she’d ask the woman next to her about the museum she’d just
visited, based on that metal entry pin tacked to her lapel.

Sometimes, she’d flirt with the cashier or waiter or
whomever. There was a base note to her conversation that wasn’t just cordial or conversational. Pre-divorce, this was a little unnerving.

But. A few years ago, she recounted a story to me that she
held as an exemplar of growth and self-aware change.

She was in Zabar’s (Manhattanites will know), and was in an
aisle next to a couple. She could overhear them debating which of the cream
cheeses they should get. If the tofu spread really tasted like cream cheese, if
the chive was better than the dill?

My mom. Had an opinion. She always does.

The success came when she didn’t offer it. She reported to me that she realized they were not
asking for her help, they didn’t need her help, and she picked up the chive tofu cream cheese she loves, and
went on her way.

Trust me. This is a big success. To “mind your own business,
and have business to mind” is a very important boundary to learn. I was amused
at how proud she was of herself, too, like she knew that she was learning
something, that she was changing something.

I mean, it’s part of the reason our relationship has been
able to grow where the one with my dad has faltered: she really is trying to
change. And it shows.

Like all of us, change and growth takes time, isn’t simple,
and sometimes means taking contrary actions.

But sometimes, how we behave in the world influences others,
too. How she interacted in the world helped to inform how I do. Now, sure, I’m
not Holly Go Lightly everywhere I go. Sometimes I wish I had a burka. But
sometimes, the purchase of a burrito is transformed by the simple act of
connecting with another human being.

I leave you with this: I received a card in the mail this
week from a friend. In it, she thanks me for what I write here and on my
Facebook; that reading “me” helps to buttress her flagging spirits.

I told her how much that meant to me. How much it means to
me that my interactions with the world are making a difference; that I’m not
telegraphing into deep space for purely selfish and masturbatory reasons. I
never really know if how I’m choosing to express myself here is “too much” or “too honest,” and
I have to trust that those of you who choose to click on the link to read me
do so because you find something here, even if it be self-congratulations for
not being as bipolar 😉

To hear that how I behave in the world influences and
affects people for the better is one of the greatest gifts of having big balls.

adulthood · authenticity · fun · intimacy · joy · relationships · sex · sexuality

Not Vanilla

March 20, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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So you might as well know now, since it’ll come up
eventually: In April, I’m going to Boston for a booty call.

It’s probably one of the most forethought and conscious ones
I’ve ever had, since it requires, you know, plane tickets.

But, my dear friend is a flight attendant based in
Seattle, and invited me to see her for a few days. I have a few days off around
Passover next month, have never yet seen the Pacific Northwest, and said, yes,
oh please, travel yes.

In the meantime, my long-time flirtation with a former SF
resident began to pick up speed—well, as speedy as text or messaging or
emailing can be. There were more “like”s, a few more texts, and not undesired
flirtation.

God. We can flirt!
Holy shit. It’s pretty much what we did together for the half-dozen years or so
we knew one another in SF before he moved to Boston. We went on one date once,
but it didn’t really take off, and we remained a flirtation.

So when the Seattle trip came up, and I saw that it was only
a few bucks more to fly through to Boston, I asked him if he wanted to pull
this flirtation from out of the clouds and onto the ground—or at least, into
bed.

We both had reasons and justifications why this was a bad
idea. For those of you playing along at home, this was my Cupcake Conundrum. It
could be a disaster. Awkward, too much pressure, a lot of time spent with
someone you don’t really know that well, all texting and emailing aside.

And then my friend told me, Life is meant to be lived. And I
believed her.

So, ticket bought, the flirtation has taken on a new edge of
anticipation and intrigue. And holy shit, is it F U N.

One of the wonderful things about this one in particular, is
that we do have a basis for being pretty open and honest and vulnerable with
one another about other stuff. I wouldn’t exactly say we were friends before,
we never called one another up to bitch about stuff or hang as platonic pals,
but we’ve developed a foundation of communication over the years that enables
me, at least, to feel a little more bold in our new iteration.

I get to be sexy. I get to be saucy, and not a
little eye-brow raising in my replies.

And something interesting is happening for me. In the same
way that yesterday’s blog was about music reminding me of a greater part of
myself, and opening me up to something greater, this whole level of sexuality
and sensuality I’m getting to explore in relation to him is doing the same. I
feel radiant, is what I wrote in my morning pages today.

Because the flirtation remains in the realm of words and not
bodies, I get to be and write things I might not otherwise say. I get to push
envelopes, and in doing so, I’m pushing a door open within myself. I love to feel this part of myself in a way that is safe,
connected, supported, and reciprocated.

It hasn’t always been that way. My ex was decidedly vanilla.
I mean, pretty much everything about him was vanilla!, but so to in the bedroom
department. Which is fine. But it’s not
going to change anything, open anything, explore anything. I mentioned some
things to my ex that I wanted to try, and he wasn’t into them. I mean, god bless
him, he tried a few times, but it was obvious he so wasn’t into it, or was so
out of his element that he was more just doing it instead of enjoying it.

Despite my public comportment (which shall remain), I am decidedly NOT vanilla. (Nor am I triple swirl chunky monkey supreme, but.) It’s something I know about
myself, and until this recent flirtation, have not really gotten the chance to
share in a way that feels esteemable before. Sure, I’ve had dalliances where
some of my wantonness was explored, and boy
were those fun. But those were nothing sustainable, and one-offs, unfortunately
(or fortunately).

So getting to express and open and reveal a side of myself
that is rarely unveiled is thrilling. It feels so good to say something out of the box, then follow it up
with, “I feel insecure that I said something out of the box,” and have him
respond in a receptive and reassuring way. It’s novel, man.

I mean, I am a Libra.
(I just felt all your eyes roll!) My sign is ruled by Venus. The planet and
force of sex, sensuality, desire, beauty, luxury, charm. In all my chasteness
and celibacy, there has been something missing. Like all of the parts I’m
struggling and striving to claim and reclaim, all the passions I’m diligently
unearthing and revealing to you, sexuality is a critical piece of that
excavation.

It’s sort of a sex-positive thing, I guess! Which, it is
important (to me) to note, does not mean that I’m going to throw it around or
be “easy” with it – that’s the only reason why I think this is happening in
this organic and esteemable way: because it’s safe. Because I feel heard and held
and reciprocated and appreciated. Because this person knows much of me that
rounds out the view. This isn’t Molly as Sex Kitten (but hey, Yum). This is
Molly as multi-faceted, self-possessed woman. And isn’t that sexy.

abundance · beauty · fun · joy · life · self-care

Thirsty

March 19, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Home sick again today, I began to clean up my apartment
which has become a bit of a wreck lately. Weeknights spent in rehearsals,
weekends spent at auditions, mornings a cluster of Morning Pages, meditation
and blogging. I’m up at 6:15 every morning, and am still late to work.

So, I began with the bedsheets, the laundry that was washed
last week but still remained in the hamper, the clothes strewn on the closet
floor, the dross of everyday living.

Back and forth across my apartment, each time, I passed the
black silhouette case by the entry way. The case the singer of the band bought
for me so I wouldn’t have to carry my bass my its neck anymore.

My bass has sat in that visible corner, tucked in its sheath,
for nearly two months, since I quit the band to focus on acting. My acoustic
guitar collects dust. My keyboard, shoved in a closet to avoid visual clutter
when the 25 y.o. was over.

I went to a music show last Friday night. It’s this fun band
my friend introduced me to, and we bought tickets for their SF show nearly the
day after I heard them. I hadn’t been to a music show I wasn’t ushering….
well, since I was in the band, I guess. That was one of the fun things about being in the band, was that I got to hear a lot more
music. “Lack of music shows” is on my list of “Serenity Moths” I have tacked to
my fridge. The list was written at least 2 years ago, and though many are now
crossed off, some remain. (Serenity Moths, to me, being things that just eat
tiny holes in my well-being; e.g. lack of music shows, no light over my desk,
chipped nailpolish.)

It was REFUELING to go to a music show where I could enjoy and focus on the
music. I smiled and watched the bassist voraciously, was flattened by the vocalist and shimmied my little tush
in my little section. I admitted to my friends who were with me that I missed music. So much. I think I actually had a dream about
it last night, come to think of it. But where do you find time for it?

I am still such a newbie at bass, I have so much to learn,
dexterity to gain, simple basslines to master. I just miss the endeavor, the
trying.

So, you can guess what happened this morning as I cleaned up
my apartment between sips of turmeric tea: I slowly unzipped the black case, and said
aloud, Hello again.

I tuned it, it was still pretty in tune, actually. And I
know how long it’s been since I’ve played, since my nails are all so long
again. I pulled out the keyboard from the closet, and laid it on my bed—where
Stella climbed up to watch as I tuned the acoustic too, the one that was my
high school graduation present that still has the strap from O. Dibella Music
in New Jersey.

My nails still so long the chords were hard to make, I
played. I played until the skin on my strumming finger got raw. I made up
some new words and played my old songs. And felt the vibration of the wood against
my coughing, constricted chest.

Sometimes I live without music so long, I forget its
blessing. Honestly, I horrifically have sometimes gone months without turning
on my iPod, and when I finally do, it’s like an oasis. Like lavishing in a
Caribbean waterfall. It opens something, releases something, allows something
to enter. I hate that I forget that it does this—and in some kind of
masochistic pattern, I deprive myself of its joy.

When will I play? I don’t know. What will come of it again?
I don’t know. But for a few minutes, I opened back up to the
aching light of it, and I’m sure something was healed.

action · adulthood · beauty · courage · fear · self-esteem

Isn’t It Ironic, Don’tcha Think?

March 18, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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The curvature of our lives is funny, isn’t it?

Like most people, I was an acne-riddled, ugly-glasses
wearing teen with unruly hair and a limited rotation of ill-fitting clothing. I
remember when I was 16, I was at a retreat for Jewish teens, and we were sitting
around in a circle on some Saturday night, singing the service that ends
Shabbat. All us nervous, hormone-addled teens in one place! And there started a
“kissing chain” around the circle–on the cheek, modest-style. The boy sitting
next to me had to kiss me two times as the chain came around twice, and I remember hearing him “whisper” to his
friend that he tried to kiss a spot that didn’t have a zit on it, but he
couldn’t find one.

Kids are mean, sure. But, there is a thick stripe of “Ugly
Duckling” syndrome down the center of my story.

Once, in middle school, in a stroke of self-esteem beyond
that of usual, I answered a modeling casting call at Nordstrom. My mom
supported me and came with me, and I just filed behind some other girls in a
line in front of some auditors, hoping, Kate Moss-like, that someone would
pluck me out of my angsty teen life and whisk me away to something fabulous and
without blemish. (You can assume that didn’t happen.)

What happened instead is I got to live the angsty life I was
handed, and nearly 20 years after that cattle-call, be asked to do it again.

I still haven’t sent in those photos to the real-people
modeling agents. But, (maybe) I’m closer. The only time I was ever approached to
be a model was when I’d shaved my head when I was 21 and was wandering around
Manhattan looking for a savior. A man approached and said he was an agent for
bald models, and his business card did actually have a bald model on it.
(Instead I went to the asylum, but I digress.)

This Christmas, while busking in Union square, I was
approached by another modeling agent, and I followed up with a call, and was
told to submit my photos. To send them by print. There’s so much resistance to
this! Is it the Ugly Duckling saying they’re only conning you? The girl with
the acne no one will look past? Or just the ennui and hopelessness of a woman
engaged in a professional life that saps her energy and enthusiasm?

In whatever case, and whatever resistance, it’s not up to
me, is it?

I had a mentor once tell me, G-d will either fulfill your
desires, or take them away. I sort of believe that. The urges and wishes and
ideals and fantasies that we have; either they’ll morph into something else;
they’ll fade; or they’ll be met. How many of us desperately wanted that X Y or
Z, and having not gotten it, later exclaim, jeez, I can’t believe I really wanted
that!

What I’ve really been thinking about though, is the irony of
having become someone people consider beautiful, which has necessitated the
desire to be seen for more than my
beauty. I find it a cosmic raspberry that after so many years of being the
awkward, painfully shy, unseen thing, I now want people to stop seeing me for my exterior
alone.

I think your soul is sexy, he wrote me.

Followed surely by a nice bought of sexting. But, Still.

What a curvature of life, eh? To become the beauty you
always wanted to be, but then want people to look past it? It’s odd; I dunno, I
don’t have a more well-thought out way to put it.

But, I also know that part of what makes my soul sexy is that
I do things that scare me, like submit photos to agencies. I do things that I
don’t feel worthy of, and hope the self-worth follows by the esteem of doing
them. Right actions lead to right thinking, and all that.

I would like to list this check-box on my list of life
participations; just for the fact of trying. Like the acting; just for the act
of trying. I hear the screaming teen inside me saying This is WEIRD, but that’s okay. I can drag my feet and do it
anyway.

community · inspiration · love · persistence · service · spirituality · willingness · writing

Did you live happy? Did you live well?

March 17, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I don’t really believe in heaven and hell. I suppose if I
believe in anything, I believe in some kind of version of reincarnation. Not
that my soul gets inserted into some new being on the planet, but that the
anima that makes my heart pump disseminates into other things – surely, the
worms, and dirt, and grass that’ll be fed by me, but also, I feel like there’s
some way our spirit gets to try again.

Maybe not. Maybe we’re all worm food. But I think about the
concept I’ve heard that we choose the life that we’re born into. That
we somehow float cosmically one step outside of this reality, and when it’s
time, we are born into the lock that our life provides the key for – and the
lessons and situations we walk into in life are what turns the key. Toward
what? Who knows. Enlightenment sounds like such a heavy word. I don’t know that
there’s ever any “fixed” or “done” for us. I think that’s part of what our
souls, for lack of a better word, enjoy about the whole thing.

It’s sort of like an infinite book of Choose Your Own
Adventure. We’ve all heard me talk about how the lessons we’re here to learn
aren’t always the ones we want; it’s not like I would have chosen some of the circumstances that have surrounded my life
or the situations that occurred in it. But, on some level, perhaps I have and
did. And perhaps for some benevolence greater than my own. – Or not.

Sometimes I ask my cat what she did in former lives to be a
cat this time. What she was before? And who she bribed to get to be as pretty as
she is?

Sometimes I think about the Indigo Girls’ song Galilleo, and how maybe the being we’re born into next time will
have so much baggage from our fucking things up, or not “evolving” enough, to be
the next great writer and artist, or inventor fixing the world.

Sometimes I sit home sick and watch Saving Grace on Netflix and write a blog about theology. Like
today.

I have heard about the whole Pearly Gates thing, and we (or
Christians, at least) get asked questions. And I wonder if I were asked the
questions in the title of this post, what my reply would be? And if it will
continue to change, as it’s surely changed before.

A friend of mine has a mission statement for herself and her
life, and squares the actions and activities she engages in against it. If it
doesn’t jive, then she finds a way to align her wants with its message: To be
of maximum service to myself and others, for the good of all involved.

The other day, as I was sitting in my car, waiting for
the call with my potential new somatic therapist, I was struck with a phrase for
me and for my life that feels pretty appropriate. It was less a mission
statement at the moment, and more a simple observation of the sum total of my actions & endeavors, at least in
adulthood: To voraciously expand my consciousness of love.

It’s sort of what I have been doing lately, I think. It’s
sort of what I think I want to continue to do. It’s a tall freaking order, for
sure. And it’s uncomfortable and vulnerable and occasionally plain biting, but
at its base, at my base, I think it’s a pretty good mission for my soul to have chosen.

Once, in meditation, I got this edict for my life: To love,
as much as you can. What comes to me from that is that it’s also really as much
as you can on any given day. Do your best on any given day, and that level will
change, and sometimes will be really freaking low. But if I believe, which I
do, that I am here for a purpose, and if I believe today that that purpose is
to voraciously expand my consciousness of love, then it’s sort of like when
they put those bumpers in the gutters of the bowling lane: I’ll never be too far off center.

adulthood · authenticity · change · intimacy · sex · sexuality · writing

Eat, Pray, Sex

March 16, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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“If I understand you correctly,
this whole year is about your search for balance between devotion and pleasure.
I can see where you’ve been doing a lot of devotional practices, but I’m not
sure where the pleasure has come in so far.”

“I ate a lot of pasta in Italy,
Felipe.”

“Pasta, Liz? Pasta?”

“Good point.”

Eat
Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

Unless you choose to live a life of asceticism, you are
bound to come to a point when you have to attend to your body’s needs. There
are so many ways to go about this, and we all probably have our own patterns
for doing so.

There’s serial monogamy, adultery, the hands-on approach.
There’s serial hooking up, prostitution, polyamory, and even the somewhat “normal”
approach of having an intentional monogamous relationship.

In this age when sex outside of marriage is often par for
the course, we really do have a buffet of options. And chances are that we’ll eat
from one tray or another at various times and emotional states in our lives.

There is no handbook for this. There really are no rules. As
the saying goes, “You can do anything you want—as long as you’re willing to
accept the consequences.” Sometimes, consequences of actions are marvelous; not
all consequences are negative.

I remember the first time I had sex in adulthood sober. I
honestly hadn’t had sober sex since I was in my teens, if then. God, it was awkward. I
was so aware of everything: the way the
room looked, the sound of our breathing, the exact touches. And also, very
aware of the intimacy of the act.

That is something that drunken sex does not allow for. You
might get off, but you are so far from present; this is not an intimate act.
SURE, it can be and was fun; as Dr. Seuss puts it,

It is fun to have fun

But you have to know how.

And I’m not sure I ever really knew how. I mean, I lost my
virginity while I was drunk. Which isn’t uncommon in many of the women I
know.

So, to exist, sit, breathe, be in the intimacy of sex with
another person – well, it really is no wonder I was celibate for so long! Though,
I can admit, too, that distanced/detached sex is also very possible sober.
Which is usually how it’s been for me. Like I told you earlier this week about
the two-way mirror: I may offer you entrance, but I’m not giving you anything
in return. Here’s part of another poem I wrote during that celibacy time:

every inch closer you come toward
me is

every inch farther from myself
that I am.

so by the time your cock is pressing
against

the putty of my cervix,

i have found a home inside your
wall.

(And that was with a boyfriend!)

I suppose part of my reason for sharing these poems with you
recently is to normalize the experience for me, as I think I’m bringing these poems
to my Writer’s Group today – my all male
Writer’s Group. Though there’s absolutely a titillation factor to my work, the
reality is, this is my writing, this is what I’m working on, was working on
when I wrote them, and I guess, if there is feedback on how to improve my
craft, I want it. But, I also know it may be hard (forgive me) for people to look
past the word “cock” and get toward the structure and craft.

We’ll see. I haven’t decided yet if I’m bringing these poems
there. It feels exposing, but then again, sharing any of my writing feels exposing.

And I guess that’s what I’m getting at – showing up without
retreating. To know that I am safe and thereby be able to show up with vulnerable work, to show up physically and
emotionally during sex. To let myself be present with the cacophonous
heartbeat of it all.

I have little experience being present in flagrante delicto; but, by
escaping it, I do think I’m missing out on some of the fun.

adulthood · change · intimacy · sex · sexuality

Sex Ed.

March 15, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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There is more right with you than wrong.

I had a therapist once who used to tell me, “As long as you
can take a full, deep breath into your lungs, there is more right with you than
wrong.”

Today, on the most gorgeous day we’ve seen in the Bay, I finally succumbed to the pseudo-strep throat thing
that’s been passing around work, and this afternoon, I’m performing a preview scene of
the play I’m in that opens at the end of the month.

So, I take homeopathics, vitamin Cs, a heavy dose of
over-the-counter Western, and The Show Must Go On.

And I’ve been thinking about sex. Because, who hasn’t?

I’ve been thinking about the unintentional self-imposed
celibacy I was in from August of 2011 through October of 2013. You can do math,
and understand that’s more than two years
without sex.

And, it’s not like there were some clandestine, but
ultimately PG-13 moments in there, either. It was pretty much a white-out
period.

Granted, about 8 of those months I was bald and a sallow
shade of green, but, the year prior to cancer was not a wanton, robust one.

It was sort of intentional. I’d broken up with my ex in the
early months of 2011, had two rounds of rebound sex that left me feeling more
empty than fulfilled, and a few months later, found myself back in bed with my
ex in a misguided attempt to see if we could pump (pun intended) life back into
our relationship.

We couldn’t. And I finally realized that giving the milk for
free was wearing me down.

And so began the Great Celibacy of my 30th Year. The year
women are purported to have the greatest libido. Probably because our bodies
are sending Morse Code messages through our hormones, stating, Get on with the
baby-making thing, lady, Time’s a marching.

I began sending texts to two girl friends as each month
passed: Two months, no sex. Six months, no sex. A YEAR, no sex. It was
appalling but also, I wasn’t about to jump into the sack with anyone just to
get my rocks off – because, honestly, you can’t ever be sure that your rocks
will get off with someone you don’t know that way. It’s a crap shoot, and is it
worth it to have lackluster sex with someone who you know you’re not that into?
Hm.

It’s not as if I denied myself the pleasures of carnality; I took
matters amply in hand. But it wasn’t the same. It’s never the same—as good sex, at least. Sure, you’re pretty sure you’re gonna
get your happy ending, and don’t have to think about what you do afterward, how
long you wait for him to leave, or if you cuddle or not. But, part of a poem I
wrote during the celibacy goes:

i only ever imagine the weight of
you

when i’m alone with myself at
night

i can find folds that you can’t

and pace myself as you won’t

but alone, i can never press
myself into the

evaporating softness

or grip the muscles of your back

as if you were my life preserver

I once read a story that included the line, “At night, she
masturbated herself to an unsmiling orgasm.” What a waste.

I broke the celibacy last Fall with a very pointed and mutually
understood bootie call with someone I’d been on a internet date with twice, but
who wanted to just hook up, and though there was certainly physical chemistry,
I didn’t want that and we parted amicably. A year and a half after that date, my hair grown back to something I could pass as feminine, I
asked him if he was still interested in something “casual,” and he was, and I
was, and we were, and it was…Awesome.

But, that poem of mine concludes:

how does this alchemy work?

lead returns to lead as

i bolt the door behind you

the moment gimped

by an awkward exchange of

‘see you’s

what tangle the sheets are in,

still warm,

i climb back into them as if

i could coax them into being

you

and you were something else

So sometimes, celibacy is the better answer, isn’t it?

“Life is meant to be lived,” has been going through my head, though. And my body is still one of a woman in her early thirties receiving and
extending messages that say, Virile and Viable. And sometimes, it’s worth the
awkward exchange, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you eat the cupcake, and
sometimes you don’t. And sometimes you take a full, deep breath and remember
that there is more right with you than wrong. And perfection is an illusion,
“really.”

anger · fear · growth · recovery · sex · sexuality · the middle way · vulnerability

Discovering The Third Thing

March 14, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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A or B, Molly? Your life depends on it. Is it black or
white, Molly? Your life depends on it. Is Dad coming home right now, your life
depends on it. Is he in a temper-FIGURE IT OUT-your life depends on it. Is Mom
crying? Is she still alive-LISTEN HARD-your life
depends on it. Is it black or is it white, Molly, YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.

A woman I met once and have never seen or sought out again asked me, What if there’s a “third thing?”

Much of what I hear is about how we break things into black
and white, but that life is not that way. There is an indoctrination, as above
italicized, that makes us learn and perceive that life is and must be black and
white as a way of survival. And in adulthood, that must be unlearned.

What folks have suggested as remedy to this, however, is
“life is gray,” shades of grey (no allusion intended). That it’s somewhere in
the middle.

Years ago, I decided that “grey” didn’t work for me in this
metaphor, too bland; that instead, “not black and white” could be interpreted as “in
color.” Life isn’t “black and white;” it’s in color.

But, this woman told me something else entirely. That it’s
something I haven’t even conceived of before.

We were not talking about life. We were talking about sex.

I was telling her how I’ve vacillated in my life between the
icons I have named Betty Crocker and The Vixen. How I swing the pendulum of
myself from one to the other; bored by the first, burned by the second.

I was emailing with a friend yesterday about how some of situations I find myself in at the moment are reminiscent of something that happened in my early twenties,
a situation I got myself in as a result of swinging from Betty Crocker to the
Vixen, to disastrous results. She pointed out a few places where things are different now, that I’m
sober, older, and it was just plain different.

But there is a rubber band that pulls this circumstance
back to then, a sense memory that lashes out, OH! UH-UH we’ve done this, lady!
Remember!! Remember the outcome, the consequences, the disaster! Warning,
warning!

She tells me it’s not the same. I remind myself of the year;
I look around myself at who and where I am. And it’s very freaking hard to
separate the past from the present.

Which brings us back to the trust I’ve been working on. To
trust that I am different, that I am safe, that I can allow myself to
experience life in a different way today. That I am able to be the third thing.

It only occurred to me today that perhaps the person I’m
becoming as I sort all this out is the
third thing, neither the puritanical Betty Crocker (who avoids all human
contact in search of the unicorn idea of a risk-less relationship), nor The
Vixen (who overrides all hesitance toward prurient wantonness).

I had my first initial phone call yesterday with a woman who
works somatically with trauma. We’re scheduled to meet next Wednesday, the one
day I have off rehearsal during “tech week.” As helpful and warm and not really “getting into anything” as our
conversation went, my body closed up tighter than an asshole over a flame. And, this is why I want to see her! (duh.)

I used the words “ingress” and “egress” a lot in my morning
pages today, the allowance of things to enter and to exit. Currently, I allow some of
myself out, but I refuse anything entry. Or, if I allow entry of someone or some
emotion, then I refuse them anything in return.

The two-way mirror of my skin. One side can look in, the
other cannot look out.

The third thing, here, would be a window, instead. (Don’t
even suggest something without a pane; I might deck you.)