"I'm really fucking uncomfortable with Polecat," Paladin said.
Themes, subjects:
Polecat: The nextdoor neighbor
Smoke/fume sensitivities
Paladin's feelings of disempowerment
My last evening with Hibiscus before yet another trip
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"I'm getting acid reflux after everything I eat lately - even salad," Paladin said.
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Oh dear, I thought. Wasn't that familiar? I sighed. I could give him my advice, but hadn't he been telling me that he needed to feel in control of his life? Hadn't he repeatedly become indignant with my meddling in his decisions?
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"Do you want my advice? I feel like you don't. It seems that my suggestions make you feel conflicted just because they're my suggestions and not your own ideas that you've come up with of your own volition," I said.
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I was in the passenger seat of my car. He was driving us back from the grocery store.
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"I'm not sure. I feel helpless and trapped," Paladin said. "I feel like food is one place where I can and should take control of my life. It is a start. And yet I can't. And I can't eat all raw without it being too expensive."
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I wasn't going to advise you to eat all raw necessarily, I thought. I was thinking more along the lines of enemas, probiotics, processing, and mono-meals.
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"And I can't eat the cooked foods that I feel are best for me without making you sick," he went on, referring to the way cooking fumes gave me acid reflux and headaches. "And I can't eat too much milk and feel right without fermenting it. That's why I ordered more kefir grains."
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"Why can't you . . ." I trailed off.
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"What?" Paladin asked.
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"Oh, never mind. I was going to suggest something I've already suggested a half-dozen times before which you've been utterly rejecting of," I replied. I feel trapped too, I thought. I feel like you're hurting and there is no way for me to help you.
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"Well, what is it?"
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"Going next door to Otter's place to cook," I said.
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"No," Paladin said forcefully. "I can't do that. It doesn't feel right to take over somebody else's kitchen."
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"What is a community for if you can't ask a favor from a neighbor?"
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"Asking to take over somebody's kitchen is not a normal favor," Paladin said.
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"It isn't like it would be every meal, or even every day. What's a couple days a week for a couple hours when Otter would probably be at work and Polecat would probably be napping or something anyway?"
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"It feels wrong," Paladin said. "And more than that, I'm really fucking uncomfortable with Polecat."
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"Everyone seems to be," I said. Although, 'everyone' was an overstatement. Hibiscus and I had talked about Polecat and how distant and unreadable she was. That was about it. "She is just highly introverted. She has special needs of her own."
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"I don't think she likes me," Paladin said.
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"She comes off that way to me too, but at times when I've been friendly to her for a few minutes, she eventually warmed up and was friendly back," I said. "She probably doesn't realize she is coming off that way. I used to come off that way when I was a child and I only learned to change because of repeated feedback about my behavior."
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"That may be, but she is very cold," Paladin said turning off the road onto the gravel drive up to Silverstag Eco Hamlet.
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"Let me check the mail," I said.
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He stopped the car and let me out. I tramped a few steps across the snow and peered into the shelter where packages were delivered to. It was empty. "No mail," I called. I tramped back to the car and got back in. I tucked the seatbelt beneath the strap for my water canteen before buckling it back up.
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"Why do you say she is cold?" I asked.
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"She was at the meeting," Paladin said, referring to the meeting last Sunday - Valentine's Day. During that meeting I'd been having a personal transformation. "I said that a bonfire right in front of the houses would make you sick. Polecat was the only person who blew that off as not mattering. She said that it was not fair the community to consider a single person."
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I frowned, deeply troubled. It isn't fair to the community, I agreed silently. And that is why I don't feel like I belong here or anywhere. My needs hurt the majority of people to conform to. So much so that Hibiscus's parents won't house me or visit their son's home as long as I'm here.
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"She has her own special needs," I said again. "She probably feels self-conscious about those and unable to speak up in her own defense. I'm guessing she doesn't feel like exceptions can be made for her, so why should they be made for me?"
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"You're probably right," Paladin said.
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We pulled up in front of Hibiscus's house. We unloaded groceries. It was five o'clock on Wednesday, February 17th. Hibiscus came up from his office and noticed me making him salad.
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It was to be our last evening together for eleven days. I went with him nextdoor to a Silverstag meeting. Polecat was there, but not at the meeting herself. She smiled and waved back at me when I smiled and waved at her. Nobody commented on my hair, which could be attributed to me having my hood up most of the time to keep warm.
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After the meeting Hibiscus spent time reading aloud to me. We were almost finished with The Godspeaker Trilogy. I knew how it ended. Hibiscus didn't. It was hard for me not to say anything at this point, as the emotions of the story ran higher and higher. Carefully, I didn't comment.
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"You seem troubled," he said.
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I was. I was eating baby carrots with sunflowerseed butter than Paladin had made. It wasn't wonderful but I was fasting from fruit and carrots tasted sweeter than usual. It was something different to eat. It was something to eat. It was a distraction from my distress.
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I nodded. It was hard for me to broach any of it. I felt guilty for my thoughts being so preoccupied with worry about Paladin. I felt anxiety about spending yet another third of a month away from Hibiscus.
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When I finished eating, Hibiscus began to touch me. He went for my nipples, making his intent clear. Take me, I thought. Show me that I'm yours.
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I analyzed my own feelings and thoughts as they came to me. I couldn't get lost in the moment. I couldn't stop filtering myself. I want him to dominate me and prove that he possesses me so that I can feel safe, so that I don't have to take responsibility for myself, I thought.
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I let myself feel my distress and used it to pretend I was particularly afraid of him and of his desire for me. It was something easy for me to summon. Some part of me truly did feel anxious about sex, time and time again. I'd learned to access that part of me at will.
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I closed my legs and squeezed them shut. I reveled in his strength as he pulled them open. It was tempting to try to escape while he put a condom on. I'd never fought him with my full effort and strength. I was too worried that I might hurt him, or worse, make him stop being aroused, make him stop wanting me.
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I struggled a little more, and he held me down. I orgasmed easily when he entered me. Six times by the end. He was unusually noisy when he orgasmed, love filling his eyes. I smiled at him. He usually orgasms from a place of fear and anger. I wonder why he is in a place of love tonight instead?
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After cuddling and cleaning up I admitted to him that I missed him being dangerous with me.
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"You gave in too easily," he said. "I was prepared to make you cry tonight."
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I sucked in a breath, aroused again immediately. A more rational part of me thought: Perhaps it is just as well. No need to stir up more desire for that right before he goes. Even if I have sex with Nelum in Sunnyland, it won't be that kind of sex.
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. . .
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The next day I wrote:
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In my own dreams of community, I've envisioned a place where the special needs of each individual were taken into account. Everyone has special needs, but rarely do we acknowledge them.
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Some people are sensitive to sound or light. Some people have health needs that require more or less sunlight, more or less herbs, more or less physical care. Some people need more emotional space or privacy than others.
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I used to want to found a community where an array of sensitivities to chemicals, sounds, lights, and foods could be accommodated. I had an array of motives for it, including wanting to feel powerful in what I could provide to others. Yet the main motive was wanting my own safe haven filled with allies who felt just as rescued and protected by me as I did by them.
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Having found Hibiscus, and feeling what it is like to have two allies in the world, I do dream of having more allies. But it is hard. Many people abandon me the moment they realize how complicated it is to accommodate me. From candles to sage to cigarettes to cooking beans - my sensitivity to air quality is continually impacting the choices of others.
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Desperately I want to believe it is all in my head, or that I'll overcome it, or that it'll mysteriously go away. Sometimes, when I resign myself to always being this way, I find myself dreaming of leaving everything behind - Paladin and Hibiscus included - to find a tribe of people like me. Surely they exist . . .
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Except, surely they don't exist. I've never heard of anyone having such reactions to fumes and smoke. And nobody I meet ever tells me, "Oh yes, I know someone with that." Nobody has read about it in a book. It seems to be a unique condition I developed from cross between living in an attic, smoking a lot of pot for a couple years in my mid teens, and the aftermath of having had a house-fire in my early teens.
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Perhaps I want to be famous, rich and powerful for the protection it would give me. I could build anything I wanted on any land I wanted if I had enough money. And then I could simply demand that visitors to my retreat wore absolutely no chemicals. I could make them leave their cellphones at the door. A safe haven from all kinds of contamination. A natural space.
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Hell, I could even have people change into organic cotton robes and have no pesticide-produced fibers in my temple either. I could start up a religion that forbids all pesticide-created products as well as inhalation of smoke.
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It seems poetic of me to start a paragraph with "hell" and then mid-paragraph talk about starting up a religion. Heh.
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Really, it didn't even seem like so great an issue anymore with Hibiscus's willingness to eat without cooking at all. He'll have hot-sauce with the raw chia crackers I've taught him how to make in the dehydrator. He'll have olives, shot glasses of vinegar, jungle peanuts, dulse, or an apple. He's happy with smoothies and salads. If he wanted Thai food so much that he'd be willing to face my displeasure, he'd go and eat out.
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Paladin, on the other hand, actually likes cooking. He wants to bake bread. His preferred cooking includes a lot of fried onions, one of the very worst things for me to be around. I don't know if bread fumes bother me physically, but it would be the worst for me emotionally.
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So what am I supposed to do about that? I've brought him here under Hibiscus's roof where he gets clothing, shelter, utilities, car access, organic food and more - at no personal expense. He is expected to do laundry, go to the goat milk farm to buy raw goat milk, clean up after himself, and make himself generally useful. Good deal, right? And yet he is miserable.
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He was so much happier when he was working full time and living in Sunnyland when I met him. Time and time again I wonder if he'd be happier without me. He believes he wouldn't be. He believes that so much that the idea of living without me makes him suicidal. Well, if I'm so damn important, why can't he ask me for help?
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If he needs a different diet, or a different living arrangement, or something, why can't he ask for anything from me? What use am I to him if he won't ask a single favor? What is the point of our partnership if we can't be there for one another? I don't get what I'm doing wrong. Neither giving him more space or trying to help him seems to be the answer.
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It's noon on February 18th 2016 as I write this. I just now begin to hear Paladin stirring. He sleeps so late and he is always so tired. It is snowing outside my windows.