to have seen too much

To quote Roy Batty, "I have seen things..."

Some things should not be seen.

To watch a party that starts out with drink end with the oddest scenes of simulated sex behavior is one such example. When these are your friends, your close allies, the people with whom you share your deepest, oddest, strangest feelings the juxtaposition is too much. I can't stand seeing a woman, a woman I achingly and awkwardly fell for, dance with a friend who likes to press my buttons.

Marital aids.

I witnessed marital aids in action. I am disqualified from being one. I truly am. I cannot be a marital aid. I can't get nude for the sake of some oddly simulated performance. I can't bracket the experience. It's all too real to me. I can't shake the simulation. It passes for my reality. I have no frame from which to gain perspective. I'm swimming in it. This happened before, and it never happened again. It was my birthday. I had turned 32. I danced with this same woman, the woman dancing with the button-pusher. It was, at that point, the most erotic experience I've had in some time. It was real to me, all too real. I extracted myself like a fussy baby. I lost the nerve. I was disqualified then. The same players were involved then as now, but this time I was benched, on the sidelines a spectator upon this sexual sport.

I've seen things, things, which make sense now, but needed time to settle in. I am a friend. I am part of a network of friends, most of whom can play these odd sexual games with little to no side-effect. I'm a walking, prancing, waltzing, lancing boil of a side-effect. I'm a product of these relations upon which I have little to no effect, other than negative. As I said, I was disqualified from being any more a marital aid. She said she loved me once. Squeezed me, she did. Pulled me into her arms, she did. Told me she loved me, she did. Said it was an inevitability, she did. I was thrown headlong into a dream, a dream come true. Immediately aroused, squeezing her close, I did. Share my feelings, I did. Lost oh so lost in a dream I was. Scared and clawing at her I was. Trying so hard to get close I was. Trying in a fractured, distorted, terrified, attempt at sharing I was, my feelings. Scared her away I did. Disqualified I was. Left in the dark again I am. Forever in the dark, unable to make sense of it all objectively, rationally, to put it away, this ocean of feeling opened up. She opened it. She grew scared of the consequences, that lack of cartoonish simulation, that lack of performance, the unmitigated love, fear, hate, sorrow, longing with which I rushed at her. She shut me out. I've been out. I've been so terribly, terribly shunned, shuttered, discarded, disqualified, feared, made into some kind of monster.

I am a monster merely for sharing my heart, my moody, possessive, absolute, desiring heart. She wanted none of it.

There, with my heart laid bare, sitting in a chair, watching her getting her ass fingered by the button-pusher. I spoke plainly in a sudden epiphany, "I got it," meaning it made sense now. The button pusher, and my other friends at this evening gathering were marital aids. She got her fill. She got her titillation. She put on her show. She had her fun. I could only watch, uncomfortably, as she was groped as she danced. And she never looked at me once. I wasn't there. I shouldn't be there. I've seen too much.