Where is the intimacy in the Akward Trap of Skewed Expectations?

It is not men in general that I take objection with.  On the contrary, I enjoy the intimacy of the connection of a man and a woman.  I do, however, object to the roles that our society is so adept at corralling us into.  “You are a man, you go over there with the other men.  And you, a woman, okay, you’re over there in that other direction.  Oh, and you’re an attractive woman, so you move on over there.”  So then we are expected to make a connection, reach intimacy with another, a man and a woman as we predominantly choose.  Yet how can I make a connection with him, when he is way over on the other side of the farm fenced up with all of the bulls?  And what if I do not want a bull?  Or if I do not want to commiserate with a cage full of cows?  How do I reach that other individual soul, which in an instant affected me, stripped of all superficial trappings? 

So I try hard, he and I try hard, but everything else is still there, all around us, also trying to shape us--chop us up into so many pieces that we no longer recognize our own self.  And then they want to mix these pieces of us up with others that they deem “our kind” until we are all one, lost in this grand mixture of broken pieces.

I still demand that we fight it, but I am only one against the many, fighting this battle alongside my partner in arms who is inclined to agree with me, but doesn’t quite fully understand.  But what are we to do when we must go out and interact in this other demanding world that never stops chattering, endlessly chatters, and chatters, and chatters this very same message?

So we tire, and we watch the very last threads of our connection disintegrate, and we secretly long to be severed while we play heartbroken.  And then it ends, and so foolish are we that in time we go right back and try to break out of the corral again, as if we have not learned that upon every attempt we shall eventually feel the sting of that whip upon our hides.
          The night he returned, the kiss was of the obligatory type—a sort of pressing of the lips together—a man and a woman engaged in a ritual that guided them as puppets through the motions already acted out by so many others long before them.  She always felt this way about those first few kisses, the first few touches.  It was almost painful the awkwardness of it all, for they were expected to reconnect in an instant to achieve intimacy with a stranger.  But how could she consider him a stranger?  Surely after seven years of living together, sharing the same bed, the same meals, the same friends, they could never again be strangers.  But in those few initial moments, they were.  Hadn’t they been living two very different, very separate lives the past month?  And their obligatory phone calls were strained, searching for something, wanting a connection of spirit in lieu of the presence of body.  There were exceptions, of course, when she feared for his life after hearing of the escalation of violence in the far away place to which he traveled.  There were even occasions when the brief phone calls brought heated yearnings for the physical connection of the two lovers.  But now, at this moment, he was a stranger.

          It would have been fine, but they could not break free of the expectations.  She would have liked to enjoy his strangeness, and approach him as the stranger for whom one has so much curiosity.  But he would never have that.  In the past it was fine that she had met him at the airport in her long coat which betrayed the lace and silk beneath when her stockinged leg remained uninterrupted by the line of a skirt.  But now, she should be too “mature” for such games, and besides, she was too tired anyway.  And so they remained, caught in this sort of awkward trap of skewed expectations.

-a work in progress by Lisa