Читать книгу Tantra Goddess - Caroline Muir - Страница 11

Chapter Four

Angel Sister Lover Friend

I was married again, and this time I wasn’t going to do everything my husband’s way. I wasn’t having the burgers and beer of our last round. I insisted that Rick eat salads, sprouts, fresh vegetable juices, and nuts and seeds. While Rick looked for work, I went to yoga classes, took long bike rides and hikes into the surrounding hills, visited the Theosophical Library to immerse myself in the metaphysical and mystical, and kept up my commitment to a healthy way of life. We got a second Golden Retriever and named him Jake, and both dogs stayed home with Rick while I drove into Los Angeles to give massages in clients’ homes, mostly people in the film industry. I hauled my table up many long staircases into grand mansions to help and heal the movers and shakers of LA. I don’t know how these people found me, but they did and they kept asking me back.

Back at home, Rick couldn’t seem to find a fit for himself. This time, I wasn’t feeling the struggle of going along with him—I was feeling the strain of supporting him. When Robin was a pre-teen visiting us in Ojai, the two of them would get along as I always had wanted to with her—talking, laughing, swimming in the pool, hanging out like friends. I would clean up after them, feed them, and be the parental adult, a role I did not like. Resentment grew as I once again assumed the role of caretaker, structure- and rule-maker, with what felt like a family of two children rather than two adults and one child.

We were growing more restless and irritated. One day Rick bounded into the living room, where I sat curled in a chair, reading. His eyes were bright, the way they looked when he had a good idea. “Kern, I was thinking,” he said, dropping into the chair next to mine. “Let’s drive to Carmel Valley and see Jet.” He kissed me. “It’ll be good for us. We haven’t seen him since he moved.”

I considered it for a minute. Why not? Jet managed a few galleries in Carmel that featured handmade arts and crafts. Maybe seeing him again would inspire Rick to get something more going on here at home. “Let’s go,” I said.

In love with spontaneity, we threw some things in a bag as the dogs jumped into the back of the pickup, sensing as they always did that we were going somewhere and it might be real fun for them. We drove the five hours north, arriving at Jet’s after dinner. We got acquainted with his new place and settled into our futon in the art studio. It was cold with the electric heater, but we made our own heat. The vacation was off to a good start.

In the morning Jet gave us a tour of his studio, showed us his recent paintings, and made us a pot of coffee to take out to the porch. “So there’s a party tonight,” Jet said, settling back in his chair, his big legs stretched out straight before him. “This woman named Gigi.”

Rick grinned. “Uh huh.”

“Her thirtieth birthday. Come with me. You’ll love her.”

Rick winked at me. “Why not?”

I agreed. A party in Carmel Valley sounded like fun.

That night we went to Gigi’s house. I was entranced by her the moment I saw her standing at the buffet table, her curves draped in apricot yoga pants and an apricot cashmere sweater. Her silky long hair swung about her face as she turned to greet us. “Jet!” she cried, opening her arms to greet him. Jet hugged her and then introduced us. “Meet my pals from down south.”

She took my hand in both of hers. “Good to meet you.”

“Happy birthday,” I said. Her face seemed familiar, but I couldn’t imagine why.

We followed Gigi through the crowded rooms, clearly not the only people wowed by this woman who sparked the air around her. Even her husband seemed shadowed by her radiance. Gigi led us into the back garden. “Take a look around,” she called out, turning to greet more friends. We were offered a joint by some people taking in the sunset on the patio. Jet joined them, leaving me and Rick to explore the winding paths of Gigi’s garden. It was wonderfully wild with climbing roses and blooming purple irises everywhere.

All I could think of was Gigi. What a smile! And hadn’t I heard her voice a thousand times before? I had become interested in past lives and I thought we might have known each other in an earlier incarnation. I was determined to get to the bottom of it.

At the end of the evening Gigi and I agreed that we wanted more time to get to know each other. She invited us to dinner the following night. I didn’t even check with Rick, who was beside me as I confirmed, with sparkling eyes, “We’ll be there, Gigi. Let me know what I can bring.”

For years I had fantasized about being intimate with a woman, and Gigi was exactly the kind of woman who attracted me. Levine had tantalized me with stories of women loving one another, and it was my favorite fantasy in my own sexual pleasuring. But I was too shy to pursue fulfillment of my fantasy, and no woman had ever approached me.

The fragrance of bread baking and a fire blazing in the woodstove welcomed us the following evening as we entered Gigi’s home and were swept into the arms of the divine mother within her. She served us a delicious meal and then we took seats by the wood-burning stove while the men visited at the other end of the room. Gigi’s son, Mitch, was twelve, a gorgeous young male image of her. I told Gigi she reminded me of my mother. “I know this sounds strange, but you smell like my mother, Gigi,” I laughed. I told her about a cream my mother wore, from a cosmetics company that an old friend of hers had founded.

Gigi sat up straight. “My aunt founded a cosmetics company!”

“This was a long time ago. I think my mother started wearing that cream when my dad was in the army and they lived in Carlisle.”

“My mother lived in Carlisle! My dad was stationed there.”

Chills ran up my spine.

“What’s your mother’s name?” Gigi asked.

“Mary Graham Cusack.”

“I can’t believe this! I know that name.”

It was too late to call Gigi’s mother and tell her she had met her old friend’s daughter, but she would call her first thing the next morning and then call me. “She always wondered what happened to your mom after the war. She is going to be so excited.”

As Rick and I drove in silence to Jet’s house that night, I could feel something shifting in me. A missing part of me was falling into place. No one had a context for what was occurring between Gigi and me. I was about to see my own beauty reflected back through the recognition of it in Gigi’s eyes. I was about to discover that my sexuality was mine, to be shared as I wished with whomever I wished. I was about to be reborn into a more faceted version of who I thought I was.

The next morning, Gigi called. “Wait ’til you hear this, Kern. Our moms were best friends in that apartment complex during the war. My mother babysat you when your parents went out or your mom had to run to the store. She gave your mom her first jar of that cream around the time you were born. Mom wants us to come over immediately.”

Gigi picked me up at Jet’s house and Rick stayed behind while we drove to her mother’s house in Carmel for this remarkable reunion. Her mother beamed as she opened the door and swept me into her arms. She plucked a cotton ball from deep inside her abundant cleavage: there it was, my mother’s smell. She said, “You loved to pull these from my bra when I held you in my arms. You always knew where to look for that good smell, sweet Carolyn.”

I inhaled the familiar, soulful scent of my mother.

We sat together talking and Gigi and I learned that we are the third generation in both of our families to become friends through accidental meetings. Our grandparents had met each other while traveling with a group to Greece, and back home in Kansas and Ohio they had continued their friendship. Our fathers ended up in the same platoon in the army, their wives had become close friends, and now Gigi and I had met. It was destiny.

A week after our return to Ojai, I turned around and drove back to Carmel Valley to fall into Gigi’s arms. Her husband was out of town, and Mitch was staying with his grandparents. Through the day we walked hand in hand along the streets of Carmel, stopping into boutiques to browse and buy trinkets that pleased us. We tried on cute hats that framed our faces and delighted in each other as we left the store wearing them. We bought flannel nighties to warm us as we talked late into the night. We played with our passion, exploring each other sexually. We lacked the expertise to express our passion, but we met each other full of desire, certain that there was room in both of our marriages for the truth of this aliveness to express itself.

Who would start the lovemaking? What would we do? I wished I had paid attention to exactly what those men did when they placed their soft lips upon my goddess button of passion. Should I lick softly or with more pressure, faster or slower, up and down or sideways with circles? How would I get a breath of air or keep my neck from cramping? Did she like it? Should I be looking at her? How could I ask her for directions with my mouth buried in her yoni? And if she did come, should I keep on going? We were total novices with 100-horsepower passion fueling us as we curled up close, content to be together this way. When we picked up Mitch on Sunday we both wore big Cheshire-cat grins.

After a few perfect days with Gigi and Mitch, I went home. I felt lost, alone, and confused in Ojai. We called each other every day. We admitted that we felt constricted with our men and expansive with one another. We felt completely seen by each other, something we did not feel in our marriages. What did this mean? What trouble had we started? Our identities were heterosexual, yet we loved each other in a way I had never known with anyone.

Gigi and I were the sisters we both had always wanted. We also were each the child our parents couldn’t figure out, the one who caused the big stir in the family. Gigi had gotten pregnant with Mitch when she was in high school. I had married at eighteen. We had disappointed our parents, never going to college and fitting into their picture of the perfect daughter, the only daughter. But here, with each other, we found the unconditional love we needed.

I began traveling often between Ojai and Carmel. Rick saw me dizzy with excitement whenever I spoke with Gigi on the phone or packed a suitcase to go and see her, and he never said a word. He must have felt threatened and sad, but I think he didn’t want to interfere with my happiness. And I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t know where my relationship with Gigi was going any more than I knew what to do with this man I loved and had married but wasn’t sure was right for me.

In Carmel Gigi and I spent endless hours curled up with cups of tea talking about our marriages, our fantasies, our sexual histories, our longings, and our passions until we finally had to admit we would rather be free to be with each other—or anyone else, for that matter—than living the lives we were living. We encouraged each other to make whatever changes were needed to claim our sovereignty as autonomous women.

Within months after our meeting, Gigi told her husband she wanted a separation and eventually they divorced. I remained unresolved about what to do with Rick. Our primary challenges were how to bridge our extreme differences and his financial frustrations. Meanwhile, Gigi and Mitch kept the home fires burning and counted the days until my next visit. I loved seeing her come in from the garden on a sunny morning carrying baskets overflowing with vegetables and herbs. She fed us meals Mitch and I agreed were the best anywhere. Gigi took book-binding orders at her shop in town, and in her art studio at home she created sculptures, paintings, weavings, beadwork, everything beautiful, creative, and inspiring.

At the end of the year, after a year and a half of marriage, Rick and I decided to separate. He would move to Los Angeles to study acting, and we could visit each other. Jeremiah would go with him, as he had become Rick’s dog, and I would keep Jake. There was no urgency about divorce. Gigi and I considered living together, but decided not to. I didn’t want to leave Ojai and I didn’t want to put any more distance between Rick and me or to move farther away from Robin. I felt empowered now that I claimed my love for this woman and opened to love and friendship on new levels. I stood taller and walked with more grace. I was melting sweet butter in every cell of my being at even the thought of my angel sister lover friend.

I had never been so happy and so much in love, and neither had Gigi. We relaxed into self-acceptance, understanding that love is all that’s accurate, not labels for our sexuality. Gigi was very visible in her small community, yet she wasn’t afraid to flaunt her sexy love for me in public. We were as much in love with life as with each other, and our passion seemed to enhance our appeal to men, who flocked to her door after her husband left, to see her or to see us both if I was visiting. We had lovers, and every so often, feeling tentative and daring, continued our own sexual explorations together. We were ripe with life as we tasted the forbidden-yet-so-available nectar of our juicy, loving friendship and we drank from the strength of that friendship during the waves of uncertainty that come with divorce and readjustment to autonomy.

In Ojai, the four-bedroom house with the pool felt too big sometimes without Rick, but I had to stay open to possibility. Gigi’s life was full. We saw each other less as the months went on, talking by phone about life and our dreams and who we were dating, if there was someone that especially interested us. She would eventually settle on her next husband and move away from Carmel, and I would fall in love again and again and again. I would learn many years later that Gigi had saved all of the cards and letters we wrote to one another in that first, passion-filled year we knew each other. On her dressing table she would keep a porcelain figurine of a woman set into a padded burgundy velvet box, a gift I gave her soon after we met. That figurine is a symbol that says my heart is always at home on your hearth. That feeling goes with us wherever we are.

Carmel Valley, it turned out, had more delicious surprises in store for me. One evening, during a visit to Gigi, a friend named Mackie and I attended a yoga class that Charles Muir taught at the Carmel Women’s Club. I had taken yoga classes before, and I knew every teacher had a different style. Charles’ style interested me because of his focus on our chakras (energy centers), on deep slow breathing, and on a quiet mind. His instruction was clear, and his hypnotic voice was positive and empowering. “As you exhale, send your love to your stiff or aching back,” he would say. “Remember to bring your busy mind back to following your breath as you inhale, expanding your lungs and filling them with the prana in the air, sometimes seen as an angel in the air.” In my inner vision I saw angels flying up my nostrils along with my breath and felt love in my heart before exhaling the breath into my aching back. By the end of the two-hour class I was light-hearted, grounded, and eager to pay my ten dollars.

Charles said good night to each of us as we left, finding our way to our cars in the chilly night air. I thanked him, smiling into his startlingly blue eyes. As Mackie and I walked to the car, she said with a knowing twinkle in her eye, “I thought you’d like Charles.” She told me he was offering a weeklong yoga retreat in February at a spa in Mexico and she was planning to go. “Come and room with me,” she said. What an idea! Why not go? It was a dream of mine to spend a week at a yoga retreat. I wanted more of what I had just experienced. I needed this kind of soul expansion. “Count me in,” I said.