Here we stand...

Hmmmm…

Men are not faring well lately around here.

There is an amazing, attractive, powerful woman with a very broken heart trying to sleep in Westwood. She thought she had found this incredible man, who seemed so genuine, so true, so honest. Their relationship has been incredibly communicative and open and impossibly good for over a year. Suddenly, he’s unreachable. She’s changing her whole life for him and he no longer can communicate with her. But he hasn’t bothered to tell her he’s done. He just has buried his head and won’t come out. Meanwhile, she’s moving ahead with her own plans, trying not to count on him, yet I know her heart is still holding out hope that it will all be a misunderstanding, something they can overcome. Who can blame her?

There is another amazing, attractive, powerful woman who has been spending time with another friend, who suddenly has started treating her like a dog toy – being disrespectful, rude and downright obnoxious to her. I know he has the capacity to not be a “fucknut,” as he was so eloquently referred to last night, but lately that’s the face he’s showing. She was going to give him the what-for tonight, which I hope she did. She tries to brush this off as a casual thing and that it doesn’t mean that much to her, yet I know a part of her heart is wounded and hurt by this. And he has joined the above-mentioned man with his head in the sand, ignoring the signs that he has gone drastically in the wrong direction.

Another amazing, attractive, powerful woman is going through the same thing as I am – someone who she has grown to love a great deal and who means a lot to her, who has seemingly returned her affection to a point, but yet not a definable point, will not give her a clue as to how he really feels. That frustrating position of being more than a friend but not enough to be a lover. That casual intimacy that feels so incredibly good yet so deeply aggravating. His head has, too, gone into the sand, hiding out, pretending nothing has changed. Rod McKuen said something about holding one another close at arm’s length. That’s how it feels.

And my usual OOMA, on the exact trajectory I anticipated after certain recent events. At least I’m beginning to see and understand the elasticity of his fear – get close, run away, get closer, run away, get very close, run away. Join the others with their heads in the sand, denying, hiding, fearing, pretending.

Meanwhile, four outstanding women who only want to share their hearts with four outstanding men find themselves just standing, looking down at the bodies with the sand-covered heads, unable to reach them, unable to dig them out. The four of us wonder what we did to cause this (come on, I know we do) because they couldn’t have done this all by themselves. Yet, maybe they did, all on their own, with no help from us. Their baggage buries them in the sand the way ours weighs us down in other ways. Their fear of us wanting to tie them down, of us wanting to change them, of us somehow impinging on their lives is what drives their heads into the sand, while we stand by, wanting to say simply to them, “I just want to be with you. It doesn’t mean marriage, it doesn’t mean changing your or your life. It means sharing something with you. In whatever shape you want it to be. Dig your head out, talk to me. Let’s figure this out together, instead of hiding from each other.”

And yet, here we stand. Four heads buried, four hearts wounded. Neither side knowing how to reach the other. You can’t hear us through the sand and we’re getting tired of trying to be heard. When you dig out, maybe you’ll realize what was standing there but all that will be left will be our footprints, heading off into another direction. Maybe you’ll see our shadows as we disappear over the dune, figuring you’re in the sand for life. And maybe you’ll wonder where we went – and maybe you won’t. I know that I currently feel that I could easily walk away from you and you wouldn’t even notice that I was gone. There would be a faint impression left on your heart (which you would immediately bury in the sand) but you wouldn’t even try to figure out where I went. You’d just accept that I wasn’t there anymore. And maybe somewhere in the dark of night (or the light of day), you would bravely take a moment to ponder what happened. But that would require pulling your head out of the sand. And I don’t know that any of the four of you are capable of that.

So leave your heads there. We’ll take our hearts and see if we can’t find the place where there is a hole in the sand and a whole man standing beside it, his head recently unstuck, his heart recently opened and searching for one of four such astounding women. But you won’t see it. And that’s a shame.