A PERFECTLY REFRESHING AFTERNOON

You wake up: you realise you’ve been asleep; but for how long? It’s hard to say - you’ve had such a life-affirming, present day that you haven’t once looked at the time since you rose with the sun this morning.

You can’t really say what you’ve done today, but it doesn’t much matter: you’re no longer measuring the value of your days on such terms; you’re just here and now, without any expectation or agenda. As the sheer potency of being alive washes over you, it strikes you as freshly absurd that you ever sought to construe your own life through the lenses of “success” or “failure” — as if life was something to won or lost; as if achieving mastery over one’s own existence was the point; as if there could ever even be a “point” to something as joyfully fluid and extemporaneous as the human condition

Thinking back on how you used to be, you laugh — loudly; heartily; passionately. But it’s not a judgmental or mocking kind of laughter: it’s a laughter rooted in the purest compassion; a laughter that your past self, if they could hear it, would bring them something of the supreme peace that you now enjoy. But of course they can’t hear it: the past is past. You gently reprimand yourself for imagining that you could have control over anything but the present moment; but then it’s over, and you’re back to the exquisite now-ness that has become your life. You laugh again, and though it’s quieter this time, the joy that you feel within reverberates throughout your whole being more extravagantly than ever before, and you can’t imagine ever having been any other way.

“Life! Life!! Life!!!” You suddenly feel compelled to exclaim: to yourself; to the world; to everyone in general and to no one in particular. In this state that you’re in, you don’t even care who hears or  doesn’t hear you: your whole being has been scrubbed of ego, shame, pride, judgement and self-censure. The irony in all this, of course, is that now that you no longer need the validation of others, you’re getting it constantly. Your self-love is magnetic, drawing nearly everyone you encounter tightly into your orbit. You don’t quite know what to do with all of these people, except to encourage and empower them to be more like you, which is to say, more like themselves. Not everyone’s as strong as you, but still: there are always ways for them to do and to be better.

You begin to spin around, in slow, tight circles at first, but soon enough, you’ve gained such momentum that you’re tumbling all over the room in big, gorgeous, erratic loops.  Your arms stretch out like propellers, and indeed, they do seem to propel you onward in more senses than one. In the past, you might have been worried about colliding with something, but not any more: not since you learned to let go; not since you renovated. 

You keep spinning and spinning and spinning with a perfect abandon, and suddenly you to come to the realisation that the only way to gain control is to relinquish it. There was a time in your life when you would have cynically dismissed something like that as runaway sophistry masquerading as insight, but now it just strikes you as the truism that it is. You make a mental note to write it down somewhere so you can share this wisdom with friends, family, acquaintances, perhaps even a passerby who, when your paths cross, you’ll just know needs to hear it. But even if you forget to write it down, you’re sure it will come up again, totally organically. These things always do. And if it doesn’t? Well, in that case, everything happens for a reason.

Gradually, you allow your spinning to slow, and as the world around you starts to come back into focus, you see your bedroom with fresh eyes: it’s familiar, but somehow also completely new — which is an experience you’re having a lot these days. “Wonderment at the mundane is a sure sign of progress” your life coach has assured you — and you’d have to agree with her. Even though everything in the room is rendered in neutral shades — variations on soft white, ecru, taupe, sand, and dove grey — to you at least, it bears the emotional wallop of a dazzling technicolor array, and you’re glad that you pushed back against your designer’s suggestion to add “pops” of colour “here and there.”

“I prefer a more subtle palette, Annalise” you finally had to say on the third occasion that she arrived t your house toting multiple boxes of throw pillows and vases and decorative objects of dubious provenance. You were quite certain that those ornamental wood carvings weren’t, as claimed, the dismantled cornice of a 14th-century Balinese temple, but it wasn’t worth getting into it with her. You politely declined, and you stood your ground: simple as that. Looking back on it now, that was the moment you truly learned to assert yourself.

You’ve stopped spinning now, and are standing completely still, simply taking in the moment and feeling whatever it is you’re led to feel. Suddenly, you look down and notice that you’re completely naked. You can’t remember when or how that happened, but neither does it seem like something that matters. So instead of trying to reconstruct some plausible chain of events that led you to this moment, you just allow you mind to traipse idly from one equally delightful possibility to the next.

Perhaps the centripetal force of your spinning dislodged your impeccably draped sheath dress that you purchased in triplicate while boating on the Costa Smeralda last summer? It was actually a yacht, not a boat, but “yachting” versus “boating” is the sort of silly distinction that your ego used to care about, but that you scarcely even think about any more. 

Or perhaps you flung off your cashmere sweater — so light and so soft that it feels less like clothing and more like a fleeting caress — so that your bare skin could be more fully in communion with the sun, and with the Santa Ana winds: so perfectly gentle on this still-summer-like early autumn day.

Or perhaps you never even got dressed at all today, because in this state of exaggerated grace that has become your everyday, you’ve found your own personal Eden: radically free of shame; radically free in all ways. 

As you gaze down upon yourself, the foreshortening effect of this angle makes you look even more toned than usual. You wander over to a nearby mirror and receive confirmation that indeed, you are more toned than usual. How did that happen? Apart from the gentle, loving breathwork of your daily mindfulness practice, you haven’t taken strenuous exercise in months — not since you committed fully to your new Wellness Journey.

Of course, you used to work out everyday: agonising over calories in, calories out; working this muscle group, then that one; tracking the minute fluctuations in your figure; allowing your entire sense of self-worth to be undone by a small but curiously stubborn fat deposit on your lower back….How truly misguided you were back then to imagine that erasing those tiny so-called imperfections would be the way to find lasting happiness and inner peace! When all along the key to loving the way you look was simply looking the way you love. 

You’re not really sure what that means, but your acquaintance, Jonathan, has set up an entire Instagram cottage industry around the phrase, and it’s not your agenda to invalidate someone else’s life’s work over petty semantic issues. Jonathan seems like a nice young man, and you hope that he finds his way before all of his latent promise curdles into a toxic stew of squandered opportunities, misplaced faith, and totalizing regret.

Eventually, you turn from the mirror and amble gently in the direction of your bed. Without any particular intention or expectation, you let your body guide you, and soon enough you find yourself back beneath the sheets. As you allow the last scant traces of stress and tension to evacuate your body, a redoubled sense of calm settles over you, gently, like a sheet of soft, washed linen. Not, in fact, dissimilar to the actual sheet you’re now lying beneath. You close your eyes, and though you remain fully conscious, the effect of these few seconds of perfect repose is as restorative as the roughly nine hours of deep, dreamless, utterly untroubled sleep that you now enjoy every single night. 

AND THEN! The thundering crash of the Pacific surf rings out: your eyes blink open and the supreme majesty of the ocean beyond overwhelms your hazy faculties. Outside, a single gull swoops in and out of your field of vision, riding atop a great column of air. You feel a powerful communion with that bird, and your spirit soars to meet it in a state of unfathomable freedom. You imagine what it must be like to glide so freely up there; all the petty, earthly interests of man below rendered more properly as the indistinct specs that they truly are. You would envy that bird were you still capable of feeling such things, but you’re not, so instead you just give thanks for the gift of that bird’s experience, and for the opportunity to share in it, however fleetingly, and at whatever degree of remove. In that moment of near-perfect selflessness, you’re overcome with the sensation of having everything you could ever need, and it feels like a just reward. 

Suddenly, you become aware of a quiet warmth that has begun to creep up and through your body - a gorgeous, tingling sensation emanating from your core. Gradually, the origin of this perfect pleasure becomes clear. You peer beneath the sheets and are greeted by the sight of your husband: his arms, outstretched, support his powerful torso; his head, lodged between your legs moves gently and methodically as he pleasures you. He’s rock hard. But he’s won’t enter you; not today. Today, it’s all about you. 

“Justin…” You say, and it’s neither an exhortation to stop or an invitation to continue, it’s just an acknowledgement of him, here and now, and the connection the two of you are sharing. 

“Jussstinn…” you say again, more emphatically this time, because you want him to feel seen in this moment. And though he doesn’t respond, you know that he’s heard you. You can feel it in his touch: a perfect communion of two ego-less individuals.

“Jussssstinnnnn…” you say once more, except your whole body is now so given over to pure sensation that you can no longer form words, only intention, with your hot, heaving breath. 

“Jennnn…” he seems to say in response. But of course you can’t be sure of what he said, his words necessarily muffled by the mechanics of his current position. Not that it matters; not that any words matter; not that a hundred thousand million words could even begin to capture the enormity of this moment. The sheer inadequacy of language suddenly strikes you as impossibly absurd, and so you laugh: and the gentle convulsions that accompany your laughter crash into the waves of pleasure already rolling throughout your body.

Finally, you feel release approaching: you surrender to it, and the richest, most complete pleasure of your life overtakes your whole being. Every cell, every molecule, every atom in you is alive, pulsing with pure energy. You’re kinetic. As you ascend to this higher plane, you become love. 

As this sensation gradually subsides, you exhale deeply and turn your head to the side. In time, inasmuch as time is still a construct that binds and bears upon you, you blink open your eyes. You look up and you see Justin, now standing beside you. His body is taut, toned, and strong. Your gaze traces long, lazy loops in and around each one of the perfectly defined muscles of his abdomen, either six in total or eight: you can’t quite decide whether the uppermost segments count as discrete muscles or if that’s just an effect created by the sharply defined crease of his powerful pectoral muscles above. His small, delicate pink nipples are pert, and you’re overcome with the desire to reach up and grab one, and gently roll it between your thumb and forefinger — but you can’t quite reach, and you accept your limitations with perfect grace and love. Your gaze begins to travel back across his chest, back over his abdomen until you reach his sharp, jutting pelvic bones, the downward curve of which guides your eye to the soft tufts of appropriately-groomed hair that perfectly frame his, well…

“Ample, but approachable” is how you’ve always characterized it to your coterie of bawdy, tittering gay friends who demand to know such things. Some of your more priggish girlfriends blanche at this sort of candor, but that doesn’t stop you from laying out for them in considerable detail the finer points of your lovemaking. “It’s healthy! It’s natural!” you protest, as they cringe and wince and confront the sheer lovelessness of their own marriages for perhaps the first time. One friend who doesn’t shy away from such talk is Chelsea: she’s a great lover of men, I suppose you’d say. A great lover of men, that is, so long as the man in question is willing to participate in serial reenactments of the core dysfunction of her parents’ marriage well into middle age. You should talk to her about that one of these days.

Justin gently clears his throat in an effort to get your attention, and it works: you’re fully back to present moment. If someone else were to do that, you might interpret it as passive aggressive, but not with him. He knows you so well — better than you know yourself, you used to say. But you don’t say that anymore: these days, you know yourself best of all. And as a result, some of the people closest to you — people like Justin — have had to cede a little space to allow you to more fully celebrate you. And that’s not easy thing for anyone to do; that’s not an easy thing for a man to do. 

Oh, you HATE making generalizations like that! But you’ve lived enough life to be able to say that however different they might appear at first blush, most men are the same way, and that way is selfish, preening, and vain. But not your Justin. He’s one’s those rare creatures who feels more like a man — most like a man — when he’s helping the women in his life shine. There’s nothing remotely jealous or possessive in his love of you: it’s a perfectly unselfish celebration of everything that makes you who you are. And here’s the thing: his ability to love you like that is what you love most about him. “That’s a virtuous cycle!” someone recently pointed out to you. You can’t remember who said it, but what a breakthrough it was.

You wish that every woman could have a partner like this, but you know that they can’t, and so you resolve to love yourself a little harder as a kind of cosmic recompense for all the poor souls out there who will never know even a shadow of the love you feel bursting forth from within, and showering down upon you from without. 

That thing showering down upon you is actually just water, you eventually realize: when you look up, you see Justin, holding an overfull glass of room-temperature water — just the way you like it. But his hand has started to tremble, sending small droplets careening in every direction. You attribute this tremor to the sheer potency of the erotic charge between the two of you, rather than to his documented family history of neurological conditions — it’s so ghoulish to fixate on the worst-case scenario, you feel.

He steadies himself as best he can and extends his hand in your direction, wordlessly offering you the glass of water, and you accept. You raise the glass to your lips and empty it in a single, grateful mouthful.

As you taste the water, suddenly you’re transported to some distant mountaintop, and you stand before a small but persistent alpine spring: the source of this water; the source of this joy; the source of this life. You’re not sure where you are, but you know you’ve been here before. Is it Aspen? You used to love Colorado, but you haven’t been in years. Not since the Incident with Courtney. 

And what a shame that whole thing was. Really, it was all just one big misunderstanding: you see that now. And she does too…or at least she says she does. She was certainly at fault as well; maybe even more so; maybe even entirely. But that pointless apportioning of blame is precisely the sort of thing you don’t have time for anymore. You’ve made your peace with it, and to the extent that a flush of unreconciled rage will occasionally reassert itself, poisoning your hard-fought, hard-won inner peace, mostly you’re just amused by it: you observe it neutrally and think back to how much more things like that used to bother you, and how little they bother you now. It’s almost unfathomable that you used to live like that: held hostage to your own stubborn pride and in bondage to the expectations of others. And yet you did! And yet you were! And there are still so many others who live that way; so many others who can’t even comprehend that there’s a different way to be. 

That’s really the crux of Courtney’s problem: somewhere along the line, she stopped believing in her own capacity for change; maybe she even stopped believing in anyone’s capacity for change. She’s still a dear friend, of course, but you’ve had to take some space in recent years. 

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, you end up spending the night in police custody waiting for the concierge from the St. Regis to arrive with your bail. There isn’t a proper jail in Aspen, just a small refurbished outbuilding on Robert Redford’s property that the local PD managed to seize through some arcane interpretation of eminent domain. It’s about as nice as you’d expect, if you know Bob.

Of course the real issue that night was your alleged tampering of that ATM. You shouldn’t have done what you did, there’s no two ways about it, but there were extenuating circumstances, which thankfully the arresting officer was willing to consider, given your stature. But that’s all very much beside the point now. The most important thing is that you’re honest, that you conduct yourself with integrity, and that you hold yourself accountable. You’ve done far too much work on yourself to shirk responsibility now. So you won’t. But why would the machine ask you for your preferred denominations if it didn’t have enough $100 bills to dispense the full amount? It’s just an open question.

Look at you getting off on a tangent again! That’s so you; that’s so Jen, you imagine all your friends would say if they were here right now. They know you so well, but that’s mostly because you’re such an open book — it’s impossible not to get to know you, really. It’s one of the things everyone loves most about you; it’s one of the things you love most about yourself. 

But now, you take a deep breath and you let it all go: Aspen, Courtney, the arraignment…just all of it. You raise the glass to your mouth again and drain it of the last few drops, allowing yourself to return to the present moment. You let out a deep exhale and you push yourself upright into a comfortable seated position, crossing your legs, then drawing them up close to your chest. The tidy little V-shaped space between your knees frames your face — quite adorably, you imagine. Actually, you don’t need to imagine it at all: the mirror at the foot of the bed is reflecting this whole scene back to you. And it is, and you are, quite adorable.

Justin, still standing next to you, steadfastly as ever, places one hand on your shoulder, and gives you an affirming squeeze that offers you everything but demands nothing in return. You turn slightly to rest your face on his hand. And here, in this hazy, golden hour, and at this uncommonly close range, you realize for the first time that he’s exactly the same size soft as he is hard. This strikes you as neither good nor bad - it just is.

You could stay like this forever; or at least for a while. Well, actually, that big glass of water seems to be running right through you. And you did drink all of that green tea earlier; you had forgotten all about that.

But for now, you’re here, and you have everything you need. 

In this instant, you know perfection —

Perfect Calm. Perfect Peace. Perfect Refreshment.

***

“I’ll have what she’s having…

…I’ll have a Smartwater.” ⧫