An Uncommon Bond

by jeff brown

  Out of respect for her parents, I left her room early in the morning to sleep on the couch in the living room. But I couldn’t sleep at all, choosing instead to perch myself on the kitchen windowsill, waiting for the sun to emerge through the darkness. I nestled into my confusion for hours, scouring my inner world for a reference point that would help me traverse this complicated terrain. None were to be found. Clues everywhere, yes, but nothing that felt like a clear path to walk.

  As the sky slowly brightened, two birds began flying past the window. One was a black raven, thick and ominous. Glaringly obvious against the brightness of the full moon, it kept swooping down erratically from above before rising above the tree-line. The other was a sparkling red and yellow Western Tanager, gliding peacefully back and forth between two pine trees right in front of the window. The symbology was painfully obvious. We had two paths before us: dark and foreboding, or sparkly and smooth. Pick your flight.

  We spent the next two days fighting about everything and nothing. It’s astonishing how much energy young lovers have for needless conflict. I went down on my knees countless times and asked God, “Why? Why bring this ecstatic nightmare into my life? Why open my heart so wide to another, then make it so painfully difficult to sustain? Why?”

  We had been gifted with something so wondrous, but we couldn’t hold it safe alone. In uncharted territory, in a culture more concerned with ego than essence, we were adrift alone on this raucous river. Our ship was riddled with holes from our past, everyone’s past, and we had no idea how to patch them. And even worse, we mistook each other for the pirate ship itself. How to stay afloat and ride this hol(e)y ship?

  11

  Scar-crossed Lovers

  Sarah returned to our home in Toronto the following week. Before she arrived, we agreed to a period of celibacy. No kissing. No fondling. No lovemaking. Just presence.

  This agreement seemed to defuse the tensions between us. We moved through our days softly, quietly lying in each other’s arms whenever we could, enjoying the simplest moments without complication. Like it was in the beginning, we made love without making love. And there was chocolate, lots of it.

  Each morning, I would wake up to prose written on the sunroom wall. It was like Sarah was channeling Anais nin, her writing was that beautiful. I was blessed to be the recipient of her outpourings:

  I woke before the dawning morning to sit

  and watch the stars for a while.

  I thought about how some of them out there are binary,

  two that share a common motion.

  Then I remembered,

  you are the poem in my soul singing softly to me.

  You were in my heart

  the very moment my soul was conceived.

  Enhancing the softening was a natural shift toward silence. We said little in our time together, choosing, instead, to speak with our presence. We intuitively knew that ceasing talking was the way we could hear each other again. And it was there in the silence that the love portal again opened widest. Of course, the bond had never been the words. It was always the breath in between them.

  I was finally at peace after weeks of conflict and confusion. It seemed we had passed our tests. We had surmounted some seemingly unsur-mountable challenges. Our love was the healing balm for my lost soul, its home away from no-home, the all-encompassing heart embrace that every soul longs for. Even a moment here was enough to ignite optimism in the most wayward of hearts. It was like I had traveled this planet homeless for 2,000 lifetimes, and now it was time to come home.

  In the heart of the peace, Sarah’s writing flowed and flowered, and often right on my body. I would wake up to “IU” written on my penis, “Home is where the Lowen is” written on my belly, “Home” fingered in red paint on my forehead. Such delicious madness.

  The walls of the apartment—inside, and on the stucco around the front door—were also recipients of her graffiti-fest. One night, I came back from buying her churros in the market to find a short Rumi poem written in fluorescent green chalk on the front door:

  Lovers of God,

  sometimes a door opens,

  and a human being becomes

  a way for grace to come through.

  When grace walked through that door with churros in hand, grace met him on the other side with the sweetest hug ever. Not sure if it was the churros or the man she wanted more, but I wasn’t complaining either way.

  Later that night, Sarah woke me up with sweet kisses. She had said so little all week, but words were now effusively bubbling to the surface. “Love just ain’t enough word for us, Ogdo,” she said with the adorable country twang that made me crazy happy.

  Rolling over to face her, I quickly replied, “No, it’s much too limiting,” in the hope that I could now go back to sleep.

  She wasn’t finished yet: “How do we live in this world with this much ecstasy? Where do we put it, Ogdo?”

  “Isn’t it enough just to feel it?”

  Sarah nodded her head, then digressed, “I kind of want some coconut ice cream.” Then she smiled, “Wait, I already had too much pleasure this week.” And then she got serious again, “Yah, well, no, it feels too big, like it needs to be channeled into something else?”

  I knew not to mention babies. “Maybe we need to help the love-starved, convert the energy of our connection into optimism for those who have given up on love?”

  She went quiet for some time. “Not sure, but it feels like it’s not just about us. We are supposed to do something with this gift.”

  The conversation ended our week of perfect celibacy. Our call to bond was again too strong to contain, as our love sought its favorite forum for expression. This began a deepening exploration of our love in sensual form.

  We made love for hours each evening without fail. As we grew more intimate, my body continually changed its way of relating to her. My hands, in particular, became even more subtly attuned, as though the love between us had transformed them from the rough hands of a miner to the (he)artful hands of a sculptor. It’s amazing how opening the heart renders the entire body an instrument of the divine.

  My genitals became more devotional as well, moving my Godrod in and out of her like a salty prayer for love. It takes more than just a loving connection between two people to create a sacred sexuality. We must also see the genitals at their highest—as reflections of the God-self, as devotees to our purest imaginings. The lustful self sees flesh, but the sacred self sees God.

  Then something beautiful happened. Feeling safe with each other opened us to a new level of vulnerability and self-revealing. Whenever I moved inside of her, we looked deep into each other’s eyes, holding the gaze all the way to climax, merging our essence above and below. At the same time, we surrendered to whatever emotions came up, inviting and allowing each other to feel it all.

  It was all about allowing. Sometimes we simply smiled all the way to orgasm—but more often than not, it was tears that emerged—tears of joy, tears of sorrow, tears of no fears. It was a deep and thorough cleansing, the kind of healing that can only happen when you are truly seen by your beloved. There was no judgment, no resistance, no effort at distraction. We would cry and cum until sleep overtook us.

  Attached at the Waste

  We may have leaped in too far. As we continued to deepen our intimacy, more than healing emerged from our vulnerability. Soon enough, darker shades of feeling again arose from the embers. As we connected more meaningfully, our intimacy became like a depth charge, digging deeper and deeper into our fear-body, like a shovel determined to excavate untold sufferings from their internal burial grounds. Goodness, there is so much pain. Is there ever an end? Yes, the higher the mountain, the deeper the valley. Oh, Dude, here we go again!

  And it wasn’t only our pain. To be sure, we both had negative associations with vulnerability, but it felt like it went much deeper than that. Every time Sarah and I opened our unfiltered hearts to the next level of vulnerability, we touched the pain of the worl
d a little bit more. When you travel along the heart-genital highway at this level of intensity, you can’t help but bring the collective code of all humanity along for the ride. And that necessarily includes much of the unresolved anger and toxicity humanity carries. It’s all there, awaiting its moment of liberation.

  Nightmares soon ruled our sleep. Many of them felt like symbolic replications of tumultuous past lives. One of the core, oft-repeated themes was gender and control, as though we were still working through unresolved issues with each other. Is that why we were brought together in this lifetime? To soften those edges and finally meet on equal footing? Was her inner tigress a carry-forward from our history, to finally bring our union into balance? Was my unwillingness to be subdued a perpetuation of my controlling karmic legacy? Can relationship challenges actually be understood this way?

  As the reactivity between us became increasingly ugly, we made a conscious decision to slow down the physical intimacy, again. But it was too late. The tsunami of toxicity was already in motion and gaining momentum. We jumped in right where we last ended our conflicts, as Sarah began attacking my relationship history, looking for signs of betrayal. She stormed out of the house three times in one evening because I refused to name all the partners I had been with. Why did she need names? How was that going to resolve the fucking jealousy wound?

  Then it was my turn. Overcome with feelings of insecurity, I began to cross-examine her.

  And then there was more, the deep dark more. Finally, after her persistent probing, I snapped. One Saturday evening, I went on the offensive and sought out ways to hurt her back. Instead of refusing to answer her questions, I told her everything she wanted to know. Every sexual detail, every experience of love, every heart I broke. All of it. She asked for it, so I delivered.

  I ruthlessly rehashed and exaggerated my objectifying years. All the women I won over with my charms, seeing them as prized objects to be claimed. After a childhood with no control, I loved the control I had over a woman in bed. Their moans were badges of egoic glory, spurring me on to greater acts of supremacy. I told her how I dated as many women as I could, quantifying my bounty like a hunter counts skins. And the revealing that triggered her the most: the ridiculously cocky pride I took in the earrings that they left behind, gathering them like prizes on top of my bookcase.

  Then I took her on a full-blown excursion into my law school years, when I was still carrying a motherload of childhood anger. I told her about Suri’s gorgeous breasts, Bobbi’s hungry mouth and Elsa’s love of anal. I even told her about Beth, a hot yogini who showed me the wonders of a perfect blow job while I drove us through the streets of Buffalo, new York.

  As I was rehashing, I heard my deeper knowing telling me to shut the fuck up. But the boxing gloves were off and I couldn’t stop. I was driven past the point of return. I actually wanted to hurt her.

  And then she returned the favor by sharing everything I didn’t want to hear. I heard about Reggie’s massive penis, Marco’s bluer-than-blue eyes, and Phillip’s love songs. I even got to hear about the wonders of oral with Pamela, her doppelganger lesbian lover. You’d think we’d have the good sense to take some space, but we couldn’t. We were attached at the waste, determined to wound what we most loved in the world. From beloved to be-hated in one breath.

  After we were done, we retreated to separate rooms to suffer in silence. As I lay there, I recognized a startling dichotomy alive within me. I didn’t know how to understand it, but there was a wide chasm between my karmic age and my emotional maturity. Simply put, I was an old soul with a baby psyche. This was also true for Sarah. She had such a great depth of being, coexisting within a vast array of primal triggers. How very strange to be so remarkably mature and so deeply regressed at the same time. How do we understand this? How do these two opposite spectrums of consciousness reside within the same being? And can someone build a stable relationship with another before they have brought these discordant aspects into alignment?

  As things spiraled out of control, I suggested that we go into therapy to see if it would help. Sarah was reluctant but willing to try one session. I booked a two-hour session with a well-regarded Jungian psychologist who specialized in couples work. I had two friends who had worked with him successfully, and one of his books was a key healing tool on my own journey.

  Initially hesitant, we got rolling fairly quickly and shared everything with him—the ecstatic, the reactive, the downright nasty. Without trying to control or define our experience, the Doctor asked brilliant questions. Near the end of the session, he offered the most intelligent diagnosis I have ever heard a therapist utter: “I’m not sure I can help you. To be sure, psycho-emotional issues are all over your relationship, but I agree, you have entered a terrain that transcends conventional therapeutic models and techniques. I call it ‘the outer reaches.’ Spiritual maturation is your only hope. If you use this connection to grow you, you have a chance. But if you don’t, it will fall apart.”

  And so it was. This love was either a call to wholeness, or a call to fragmentation. There was no middle ground. We either went all the way to God, or crashed in pieces down below. What we most needed was to let this love grow us strong enough to handle it. But where to get the strength to remain in the fire in the meantime?

  One thing had become clear among the confusion—great love takes no prisoners. Die to its expansive ferocity, or die within your resistance. Let love’s embrace burn you whole, or become karmic ash in love’s cosmic kiln. Sometimes there really are only two choices. When the heart door opens, jump on In.

  River of Wounds

  After two days of silence, Sarah took it all to the next level. As I was waking up, I heard her in the sunroom talking and laughing on her phone, a conversation that continued for some time. Then she came out of the room and walked into the bedroom where I was doing some sun salutations on my yoga mat. Her ring was off her finger.

  “Do you know who I was talking to, Ogdo?” she asked with a slightly mischievous expression on her face.

  “How would I know?” I responded nervously.

  “My ex. He wants to go on a camping trip to see if we can find some closure.”

  Her ex—Chang—was a Tae Kwan Do Master she dated a few years earlier—she had left him because he was too cold and aggressive. He wasn’t someone she had ever expressed a need to find closure with.

  Then she took it one step further.

  “He is going to be in Collingwood for a few weeks. Says he knows a nice resort area in the Blue Mountain region. Have you been there, hun? It’s not too far from here, is it?”

  Now, I am not a violent man, but this little game held the potential to change that. I felt my frustration building. The brat in me wanted to kick the brat in her right back across the US border.

  Everyone has their favorite weapon. Betrayal was Sarah’s. Aside from the question of whether betrayal was intrinsic to our shared soul history, she had betrayed and been betrayed many times in this lifetime. It was a core theme in her life. Plus, she knew my issues from the inside out. She understood there was no better way to push me away than to plant the seed of betrayal.

  I responded, as she knew I would respond—by acting out. I yelled, I cried, I turned into a blithering idiot. I even threw a stapler against the newly painted bedroom wall, knocking over a lamp in the process.

  “You aren’t stable enough for me, Lowen,” she said calmly. “You scare me.”

  Rage building. OMG! The perfect set-up! I was the unstable one? Eegods! She had insidiously woven the path of excuse she unconsciously needed to retreat from this terrifyingly profound connection. Suddenly I saw a young teenage girl standing in front of me playing silly love games. Who was this woman?

  My worst nightmare was upon me.

  And then all of the triggers flooded in at one time. It was like a great cosmic sewage dam had been broken through, spilling its refuse everywhere. The conflicts intensified. I fused. She refused. She was on the run, and I couldn’t
stop chasing. Our rushing river of wounds was alive and there seemed no way to contain it.

  In the heart of the madness, our sexual relationship stopped altogether. This time it wasn’t a conscious choice. The river was both dammed—and damned—and I could no longer open to her in that way. A line had been crossed. Our perfectly aligned stars had fallen from the sky—we were now scar-crossed lovers. Souls in anguish, we created the monsters we most feared, one projection at a time.

  One afternoon, I found myself crying at the back of the courtroom while we were on recess. A tidal wave of torment overcame me as I tried to make sense of this relationship. If this love was revealing anything, it was that finding your beloved doesn’t mean finding perpetual bliss. If it does, then it’s probably love sailing at half-mast. If a love is that deep, it is a portal to the everything, shredding through the masks and disguises that separate us from reality, excavating shadow and light from their hiding places. The glory and the gory rise in unison, calling us to the sky and the earth in one instant. Real soulmates are actually wholemates, penetrating the everything on the wings of their love. What a magic, tragic carpet ride.

  Overcome with frustration, I was riddled with hopelessness. The connection was like a portal into all that is real and connected, and yet we could not protect it. We were simply not conscious or healthy enough, or not individuated enough, or we have landed on a pathway that humanity itself was not ready to embrace. How to be wholemates if you can’t even live in the same fucking house?