ChadMay dot Com

Oh this is hard… Oliver and Nicholas and I went to the Wilson County Fair tonight as I had promised them I would take them. I was tired and cranky and not looking forward to it… 4 hours sleep the night before and not enough to eat. But I wouldn’t dare want to disapoint them. Ela stayed home and took a break.
Nicholas’s bad attitude turned to glee as we actually approached all the lights and sounds and food smells of the fair. I did not anticipate that both he and Oliver would be just so enthralled with it all… I guess we adults take it for granted. The first ride they chose was a spinning revolving swing of a marry-go-round… but the little kid version of the bigger one they also eventually rode. And then they found the miniature roller-coaster, and man that was a hit. And next the Pirate Ship… that simply rocked up and down as if on waves. And that’s when it hit me. I’m not sure if I’ll post this… but I can’t not write about it. They won’t be my little boys much longer. And I could have so easily missed this moment… so easily given in to some sense of obligation to be somewhere else. Their faces as they were in total enjoyment of this moment… a moment in a child’s life that they need not just for the moment, but for their future, so that they know what feelings to aim for in their adult lives. Watching them was a feeling that trumps all others I could ever hope to have. Their joy was so pure… they were totally unaware of the adult world that is so quickly descending upon them. They were not aware of the little girls sitting next to them experimenting already with makeup; they were not aware of the pock-marked and hagard, tired face of the ride operator and his probably hard life; nor the cost of the whole outing which is so beyond the means of so many, nor my own weariness as I try to give them this seed of an experience that can only come now. I tried not to cry, I tried not to stuff it either. And I glanced around to see if any of the other watching parents were experiencing the same thing too, but I couldn’t tell. I really don’t know who needs who more – me or them. I can imagine a World where every day could hold such a moment with them. In some tribal places, it probably exists as a given. I feel so lucky.

I often tell them, “Thank you Oliver/Nicholas for being my son. You could have been born to someone else, but I’m so glad you chose me to be your father.” I relate this in the event someone can apply this to their own life.

The core of a man…
Can be likened to a column of wax:
It is only as strong as it is unflexible,
Thump it with your finger and it feels so solid and heavy,
It is cool to the touch and readily absorbs heat,
If you try to move the column it sticks to the floor and won’t easily budge,
Never transparent, somtimes murky and translucent,
You can easily scratch its surface, but digging deeper takes great effort.
It’s energy is trapped and useless without a wick.
And as Shakti dances around the fire,
she draws her Beloved ever closer to her light and play,
and then it happens,
The column melts, and collapses.

All romantic love, no matter how strong it may seem, is still made of glass.

No relationship, no matter how magical and perfect, can prevent you from having those “Relationship Anxieties”. But, the right person will give you the maximum opportunity to know that your fears are nothing to be afraid of… but you have to *allow* them to do this.

If I could travel in time… forward or back, to anytime future or past, it would be easy for me to choose which time.

I would choose to relive one day in the summer when my boys were 3 and 4 years old. We would walk through the cemetary behind our house in Berry Hill… and I would get to listen to their sweet little voices. I can’t begin to express the bittersweet, fleeting precious time it was.
Writing about my boys is absolutely the hardest thing to write about. It is like walking naked and skinless down a busy city street.

I remember Hope having a similar sentiment about her 2 boys.

I wonder how many people have this feeling, too.

– Chad

Ok, I like over-generalizations and overly-definitive statements… so here goes another one:

“The only strength or power, that matters in the end, is
the STRENGTH
to BE

vulnerable .

I decided there are 2 kinds of compassion, and each sounds like this:
1.) “I see you are hurting, and I feel your pain, and I wish you would stop hurting me.”
2.) “I see you are hurting, and I feel your pain, and I wish you would no longer hurt.”

I thought this today, after having thought about it since last June, when a woman I only spoke with over the phone (from Match.com) said something like, “I feel your pain, and I don’t like it, because you are hurting me”. That started me thinking… I mean, how dare we rain upon someone else’s sunny day with our stuff, right? Especially in the land of “I’m addicted to Sunshine” – California.

Fate conquers Love, but Love conquers All Else.

I had this thought the other day, but like most things I think and wish to write, I forgot it before I could even begin to consider writing.

It reminds me of “Scissors, Paper, Rock”.

I was trying to express something to Jakota in email, and it came back to me… a person can easily guess why. 🙁

Thank you to DeAnna (talking about her optimistic former husband) for the conversation which inspired this one:

Ladies, never say to a man “I would never have sex with you, ever, no matter what”. Because men just don’t believe you when you say that… they think you are either lying or that you are fooling yourself, and that in actuality you have some other feelings for them that you *must* be suppressing.

A woman can say “I would never have sex with that man, even if he were the last man left on Earth”. But a man, saying something similar, would be aware that he was either angry or just joking, or not particularly horny/drunk in that moment. This is when women think “Why doesn’t he get it??? I just have no interest in him?”

You see, men don’t go around thinking “I would never have sex with that woman”. Maybe in a fit of anger they might think that… but deep-down they know it isn’t true, and they apply the same logic to you. When you say “I’ll never have sex with you” we hear, “She’s confused about just when and where she really wants to have sex with me… she doesn’t quite know where I fit in, but obviously, given the fact she raised the issue, it must be something she’s thinking about, so therefore there’s still a chance!”

Men think not in terms of yes/no with having sex with women, they think in terms of “when” or in which priority. There are some women we’d only do if they were the last of maybe 1000 women left on Earth; but there is no woman, even if she were the last woman on Earth, into whom we wouldn’t gladly insert our penis. Conversely, there might be a woman with whom we would clearly rather have sex, even if we could have sex with any other woman anywhere besides her.

“Have sex have sex have sex” I really get tired of typing this phrase and hearing it in my head. But, on the other hand, there are too many euphamisms lacking beauty or clarity.

“Global Warming”, on the other hand, sounds better the more I say it. Isn’t that ironic?

– Chad

“Any interpretation of the U.S. Constitution would be better than the violations of it we are currently experiencing”

This came into my head after attending an informal gathering, “Nashville Drinking Liberally”, at The Flying Saucer on Thursday nights (6pm). It was great fun… and yes, some politics too, but nothing in bad taste to any party or political leanings.

Interestingly, I have a hard time encountering anyone capable/willing to ask me questions. From all my dates via online personals ads, I can only remember a few where someone asked me anything about myself; it usually happens that the woman will talk so much about herself, and that I will usually be genuinely interested, that they never learn anything about me. I do try, however, to interject myself into the conversations, but if someone isn’t curious about you, you can’t compensate for that. Or if they are curious, but somehow timid, the same result.

The whole reason I’m saying this at this point is to say that I had more genuine curiosity about things I said in 5 minutes than I had in hours and hours of interraction with women from the personals ads. I think Dawn Kirk would laugh if she read this… She’s told me all along that I’m wasting my time with personals ads, and I don’t exactly agree, but I can see why she would think that, since she has had so many clients “try it”. I’m going to leave my ad up there, just to give fate a helping hand, but I’m not as interested in it anymore. I just need to get out, and see what happens. See what happens, yes. The worst that could happen is that I might actually experience the phenomena of “good conversation”.

– Chad

How to undertand someone:

Step 1: Think of what you think you know of that person… take inventory of your understanding of them.

Step 2: Keeping in mind what you think you understand about them… now assume that your understanding is seriously innaccurate.

Step 3: Ask questions of them that attempts to find what it is about your understanding of them that is innaccurate. Be slow. Don’t assume you understand their answers. Check to see that you do.

Step 4: Enjoy feeling less lonely

Additionally, I like to say that you don’t really understand someone until you could explain them to their own children, should that ever be necessary.

CELIBACY
is like chemotherapy. It isn’t something you would ever wish upon anyone. And it is kinda a last resort, in how you relate to your fellow humans. Funny, my therapist keeps extolling its healing qualities. Does that mean I have cancer?

Celibacy is like chemotherapy because although it can make you feel very, very ill, it can also be the only thing within reach to heal you. It makes you feel like your dieing, but you hope to be reborn. I’ve never had chemotherapy, but I’ve had lots of celibacy. And I hope I haven’t offended anyone who has had chemotherapy?

I believe that sex, with another human, is truly a need. But so is water, except when you have internal injuries (or so it seems in the movies). I recently heard that a study was done that shows men have elevated testosterone after having sex with a woman, but not after masturbating. I knew it! Hah!

So not having sex is bad for you. And having sex with someone, under certain circumstances, is bad for you. Somehow, I think there are indigenous tribes where they just don’t have these problems. What went wrong?

Maybe there is much more wisdom to this question in the works of Wilhelm Reich. Since I’m not likely to read his books anytime soon, I’ll have to absorb his ideas by proxy when I meet someone who read and understood him.
Kate Bush dedicated an album to Wilhelm Reich – “Cloudbusting”.

Can’t we all just get along? Naked? 🙂

– Chad

What is it with the mixing of sexual passion and violence?

I posit the following:
I think that men have an instinct to hurt their lover, physically, during sex, because it is a hold-over from our animal instincts.
By copulating forcefully enough, a male can assure that the female will be too hurt to copulate with another male. This makes his sperm the last ones in, and the more likely to actually fertilize the egg.

Monkeys use the technique of trying to be the last to ejaculate. They cue in line, and as soon as they ejaculate, they get back in line. The last to ejaculate is most likely to be the father! So the quicker he ejaculates, the quicker he can get back in line! Poor little female monkeys, right??? I can hear some woman thinking to herself, “So it wasn’t a man I was sleeping with, it was really a monkey!” Now now!

Ok, why am I even thinking about this? Well, I hate to be the one to tell everyone, but I have come to the conclusion that men have an instinct that is violent in sex. Some are more in touch with it than others… and of course it is more a symbolic expression than real, unless some mental illness prevails. But still, I can’t help but be aware that sex has this element to it… the “Fuck Me Baby Effect”. But why? What purpose, in terms of animal evolution, could it serve? I think I denied it when I was younger. The older I get, and the more honest I am about my sexuality, the more I realize this. And in talking to other Men, I think I spot it in them too. If you are a “nice guy” and you are fairly self-observant, you can’t help but feel this passionate, wild, driving force when you are with a woman. Yes, while you are consumating the most intimate and tender and spiritual aspects of your Union… maybe with someone you would rather die for than see harmed… it is such dichotomy. And no one talks about it, except maybe the BDSM folks; and they are probably adding another dimension to it.
So is a woman, when she submits to a man’s vigorous thrusting, essentialling saying, “You are the One” ; “I want to bear your children” ; “Take me, I am yours” Reminds me of the finality of mutual suicide, when 2 people ensure that they will be each other’s last mortal experience. I hope I’m not creeping you out with this? It is curiosity here, not some fetish of mine.
To prove that sex is intertwined with violence, consider this:
Both men and women are capable of climaxing without anything rigorous or even that physically strenuous. How does that sound to you? Kinda boring, huh? See my point?
I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while, and couldn’t find the right time. I’m not at my “writing best” at the moment, so I might revise this sometime when I’m feeling more articulate. I invite your comments and ideas.

Those horrible codependent feelings. You know, the ones you have with someone. Or at least had.

Let me validate you a little bit.
The fact that we, as humans, can love broken people… and keep on loving them… and love them more, even when we almost kill ourselves in the process…
HOW TOTALLY BEAUTIFUL!!!!!
I think we are admired thoughout the Universe for this. Can you imagine what we would be like if everyone was somehow “too smart” to try to love a broken person? So, then, who’s to say how much – or how far you should go – to love a broken person? Is there something so much more valuable and lasting for us to do as humans with our time and energy?
Of course, eventually, you get enough of it, and you make the decision to cut that person off. And there is no right or wrong time to do it. You must be happy with how hard you tried, because you will wonder if you tried hard enough. The chances are low… very low… that your love will help the person heal. But it does happen. Rarely. But it does.
Perhaps seeing your love for someone be the rare case of helping such a person, actually makes you think your success might somehow be repeatable. Oops! Kinda like playing the lottery, isn’t it?

Never love a broken person in hopes of having them in your life… not because it isn’t possible for them to become whole. But, because when they do become whole, they will be a different person than the one you fell in love with. Broken – they are someone from their past life, and maybe that is why you feel so strongly for them. Whole – and they become the person they shoud have been all-along, and usually not someone matched to you.

You know, there is a paradox of sorts: Broken people will never heal until they both want to, and someone helps them. But, broken people will never want to heal until they have hurt some number of people who love them. So, we love broken people, and hope that we will be the one in whose time they choose to heal. And of course, some never heal. I can say that the only *real* reason why people heal, is not to be happier or more serene, but to be able to benefit others. Broken people are so amused and entertained by their own drama, that they won’t remove themselves from their drama unless somewhere, deep down inside themselves, they get a bigger kick out of helping other people. That’s my take on the subject.

– Chad

I posted this to “Jules” on Myspace.com . A thread in her blog kinda got me going on this.

Ok, just thought I might add my 2 cents to this convo.

Alot of this is straight from Robert Bly/Iron John, and some of it is a Chadism:
Most American men are just too nice… or is it really nice that they are? No, we are scared to anger or disapoint women. And women will seek men whom they think are more accurate “sounding boards” for their own feelings. A very feminine women doesn’t need any more femininity. And certainly not from her mate. If she lets herself get too close to a man who doesn’t show an ability to act out of (the oppsosite of) pure emotion… she fears not surviving, on some instinctive level. She seeks a man who will let her emote, and be pure emotion, and she will let herself totally go… trusting that he will prevent her from going too far… but we “nice guys” were taught to “be nice” to women, instead of respectfully being their opposites. Sometimes, being a man means being an unpopular person with women. Yes, they will hate you for telling them that you aren’t willing to enable their co-dependent relationship… but will thank you soon for your strength.
I was a nice guy, too, once upon a time. And a good woman friend told me that no matter how much it hurts a woman, always tell her the truth. She needs the truth as you see it, from your male-species point of view. In America especially, you find men apologizing for being male, and they do this out of genuine shame, and the Mommy attention it gives them from other women.
I find that the more intensely a man allows himself to *HATE* women, then the more intensely he will also love and be kind to women. Wow, I can feel the heat. I mean hate in a symbolic way… not in the uneducated, slovenly way. OK, maybe hate is a bad choice of terms. But it shakes the reader up into thinking differently. Put differently, if men suppress their animal anxiety for women, and their emotional and intellectual fear of them, they will only manifest it in being distant and/or passive aggressive. Women are more articulate than men, and it is something we fear. Don’t take advantage of that, ladies. Women are very flexible in their gender roles, and we aren’t, and this causes us anxiety. Men who are willing to try and bend with the woman only dissatisfy her need to feel like their is a boundary somewhere. If this is sounding chauvinistic, please keep in mind that I’m talking about role play here, not religious duty. Gender anything, no matter how we divide it, is just role play.

There is something about Capitalism and the West that makes men wusses. And America is the land of the Wusses. Sorry, I include myself in that, to some degree. We are raised by women, and our fathers are weak figures. We are still trying to please Mommy when we should be tangoing, emotionally, with our lovers. We are well intentioned, but still afraid of the lonely dark.

There is no such thing as a nice man. There are only men who are behaving nicely. But all men sit atop a wild, hairy beast, that comes out at certain times. And for every man it is a different timing.

All men are cheaters, some just don’t get around to it as often as others. And some have thoughts contrary to cheating.

All men are afraid of losing their masculinity to a woman, some are amused by it, and some are beaters and homophobes.
It helps to keep in mind that we are spirits experiencing the feedback of an animal body.
And, then there is the Alpha Male stuff…
Please pardon my blanket statements and outright over-generalizations… hey, gotta make a point somehow.

I can spew a mighty sentence or two about this, but just as soon as I do, I begin to shoot it all full of holes, with no help from anyone else. But hey, you’ve got to start somewhere.
I hope my little rant is appreciated in some small way. I would write more, but one of my gal-pals has a crisis, and I need to go help her ’cause her ex didn’t pay child support…. 🙂 (Just kidding)

– Chad May (nice guy Version 2.1)

Jealousy is the most frivolous emotion. Most emotions have a purpose, or they are part of some responsibility to act and learn; they are connected to consequence. Jealousy, on the other hand, is purely for fun, if you don’t panic from its powerful grip. Jealousy needs no action, no knowledge gained. You can experience it – its power, and know that nothing bad will happen if you do nothing but try to experience it. You can feel it so intensely that your body seems to burst, but be assured that it doesn’t mean that anything is wrong. In fact, everything could be very right, despite its uncomfortable presence.
If you can learn to stop panicing at its grip, at its rush in your blood, then you will have triumphed over the most powerful of all our animalistic emotions.

When I was a (sick) vegetarian, I was very sensitive to Kundalini energy. But, being a pasty, sickly, frail fliver of a man as I was, rare would be the woman wanting to have a piece of that. So to say. So, what to do with that energy? I mean, besides the obvious?
Great horny-toads Batman, write about it! And in the summer of 1993, I often went to a dance club where I would really get wound-up. I could feel this intoxicating energy flow like a reverse waterfall up my spine, and spiral out my head and limbs.
And then there was kissing Amy. We were both stoned, and I think that was the most inspiration for what follows:

Caduceus kissing,
Reptilian twisting,
Tongues upon themselves turning round.
Heavy breathing, kundalini seathing,
Up your spine spiralling down.
Self control lost,
Individuality the cost,
Lovers synchronistically found.

Chaos in kissing,
Tongues barely missing,
Circling and stopping, I lick your lips,
Teasing… taunting… in random dips.
If this keeps going,
By darkness’s end,
Will we have merged,
Or simply sinned?

– Chad May

“The Death of Nurturing”

By Chad May

In the time when Mother Earth was being neglected by her children,
and yet the Earth has yet to kill her own… the time when
nurturing became analyzed like so many natural resource
commodities traded among Man. Nurturing became equated with a
weak inability to stand on ones’ own two feet. More analyzed than
appreciated; more rare than any precious metal. So widely
desired, yet unattainable, despite its potential presence.
Profoundly human, profoundly animal, but divinity in essence.
Nurturing. It can’t be metered, can’t be weighed, nor assessed.
Only felt, and in no sense of quantity, valued only in its
fulfilment.

Nurturing. You might not ever get it. You might die trying to
have it. You might give all of it you ever wish to have had given to
you. Without doubt, though, it is worth dieing for, as life
without it is not truly living. Fuck modern psychology. To hell
with therapy. Did an African bush woman ever become concerned
about giving too much, in the time before Coke came to her
village? Capitalism is all about profiting, ownership, and
ecology of resources, tit-for-tat-plus-10%interest – all of which is the antithesis of
nurturing. Nurturing is about giving, and yet more giving.
Giving with out thought to why, how much, or how long, or how much
more is left. I would rather die due to complications of nurturing, than to stick
around and die of the results of capitalism.

Nurturing is unconditional love in action, with just a hint of the
sparkle of Creations Eye. It takes two for one to feel it. When
it flows from you, it feels just as good as the one to whom it
flows.

Perhaps as the Earth slowly dies, so too will the spirit of
nurturing in her star-seeds; the only animals capable of leaving
the planet on Her behalf.

A tadpole turned into a frog one day, and nearly drowned trying to
reach dry land… only to learn that his destiny was to live in
the water, from which he had just escaped. Similarly, a
dysfunctional human learned how not to kill himself, in an attempt
to feel loved, only to learn that he could not do more than simply
exist without flirting with the self-destruction he had just
barely escaped. Spoken like a true Fuser.

To the therapist who wanted me to see my lack of boundaries, I
bet she is successfully wrapped-up with someone as I type this,
but wishing he would reach out and break her boundaries.

——————
It is more a statement of
our times. And, yes, it will be
hard to remain nurturing in the face of the smart love-ecology of our modern
times.

———————————————

I originally wrote this in 2003, as a result of my frustration to express myself to Jakota. It wasn’t written about her, but we had a conversation on “smart love”.