Commentary
November 5, 198-
Two women in love,
three I suppose if we include ever-present Ruth, is this not most unusual? It
seems so judging by Christine’s response. But if it is love, is not love always
good? This is a difficult matter for me to decide for my lack of embodiment gives
me insufficient guidance. If I were a man or a woman, then making a
determination would be easier. Being neither I am drawn equally to both. I am
unable to judge persons according to their sexual desire. Personally and
disembodied, I don’t see much advantage in using sexual longing as a standard
for judging true love because there is so much more to true love, without which
sexual desire does not qualify as love but only as a desire for physical
pleasure.
If the love between
persons having the same sexual embodiment is true love, that is, love based on
respect, devotion, care, and commitment, should it be denounced as evil? Or
should it be judged according to the same principles used to judge between
persons having different sexual embodiment? If each partner seeks above all the
complete happiness of the other, then I don’t see how this cannot not be love.
Besides, sexual desire alone is selfishly motivated—be it homosexual or
heterosexual. The highest form of love seems to be unselfish. Is that love of
Mr. Rieneau’s historical Jesus? So it seems to me. However, I do think Jesus
ignored the central role the body plays in all forms of love experienced by
most people. Why did he do so? Because as the old philosopher explains, Jesus
aspired to a spiritual rather than a carnal existence. And he taught how humans
can achieve spiritual transcendence, as he did. Even before Jesus, Plato explained
that a relationship based solely on sensual desire is the least fulfilling. For
Jesus the highest form of love is altruistic, totally unselfish. Carnal desire
is degrading thus sinful. Why? I believe it is sinful because it wrongfully
treats a person, most likely a woman, as a material object, a sex object, thus
dehumanizing her as a spiritual being. As Mr. Rieneau explains, to treat people
as objects is morally wrong because it negates their humanity.
It seems to me that
love is inherently drawn to beauty and goodness, the beauty and goodness of the
other’s physical being, the beauty of the body but also the beauty of something
else expressed through the body—the gentle voice, the loving touch, the concerned
countenance. And the beauty and goodness of the other’s actions—especially
those selfless, generous actions that seek with enduring commitment the benefit
and welfare of the other. If such beauty and goodness might be found in
another, what matters the sexual form? Is not the genuine love of the soul expressed
though the body? In fact, isn’t it the soul which is sought by the lover,
sought through the body itself? Isn’t the body nothing more than the house of
the soul? If this is true, I would think true love sees in the body the
manifestation of the soul—which is nothing more than the true person. And if
the soul is good and beautiful, then it is a proper object for love, regardless
of the body and its sexual embodiment.
And if the soul is
evil and, consequently, ugly, then it is a proper object for hatred, regardless
of its bodily form. And when love or hate fixes upon externals such as the body
and fails to see the soul within, then it is said that love or hate is blind.
Christine is able to
love both those who wear the female body and those who wear the male body for
she is able to see the qualities of goodness and beauty beyond the bodily form.
Perhaps this is why she eventually disassociates herself from her body—because
she believes that in some deeper way she is neither a man nor a woman but a
soul in search of other souls like her own. To her, the dwelling place is less
important than the soul of the person, be that place male or female, young or
old, black or white or brown. She will love those souls that are good and
beautiful and hate, as much as she is capable, those that are evil thus ugly.
Is that because she sees the world as an artist? Perhaps.
I speak as if such
matters were so very easy to decide, but they are not. Christine herself, as we
know, is filled with guilt over her love for Ruth, and her thoughts on this
matter of loving are in a state of turmoil. But such turmoil seems to be a natural
part of being human, which is, if nothing else, an endless process of searching
for what it means to be human, the Universe’s greatest and most mysterious
creation.
You are probably
thinking that all this philosophizing about love, the body, and the soul is
fine but something more must be going on in Christine that would explain her
powerful attraction to women. And what if I remind the reader that Christine
has also given herself completely to Robert? I know. It was a gift. She was not
drawn to Robert as she is drawn to Ruth and Candice. She gave herself to Robert
because of his soul, because he is a wonderful human being. It was never a
romance, and if Robert had not become ill and lonely and in need of love,
Christine would not have given herself to him. They would have remained friends
but never lovers. In fact, I would go so far as to say Christine was never his
lover. Her giving of herself was a gift of friendship. One of those greatest
gift of all that are motivated by selfless love. So does this simply mean that
Christine is a lover of women, a lesbian, to use that awful sounding word? That
would be a convenient explanation, but is life ever so simple that labels can
serve as explanations? No. Never. You know that as well as I, and perhaps that
is why you remain unconvinced that I have provided a satisfactory explanation
for Christine’s behavior. Certainly, my views are only my own and you are free
to develop your own theories about such matters.
Still, there is
something more, something I thought would not have to come to light in this
story, which has problems enough. It’s Christine I’m concerned about, that her
image might be sullied. You know how people are, how they so unfairly judge.
Nonetheless, I understand I cannot allow the truth to be compromised because I
fear the truth will diminish Christine’s stature in the mind of an
unsympathetic reader. And really, any reader who has chosen to read about
Christine’s journey and has gotten this far, having even put up with my
idiosyncratic and obviously biased commentary, could be neither so
unsympathetic or narrow-minded. Nevertheless, it seems I must provide that
“something more” in order to provide the reader with information that might
further explain Christine’s reluctance to become intimately involved with the
opposite sex, information that I had knowingly concealed earlier.
You may recall
Christine surprisingly angry comments about having to bow down to a divine HIM.
I do not know if her willingness to speak openly of her dislike of the
masculine god of Christianity is the result of her conversations with the old
fisherman, whose dislike of that anthropomorphic deity is by now evident, but I
suspect those plainspoken conversations have enable Christine to think
critically about divine matters without the pangs of guilt that she might have
felt in the past. We know society strongly condemns freethinking when it comes
to the questions of religious belief, often heaping ridicule upon the
questioner. Even today in many parts of the world the utterance of any
criticism or doubt concerning religion can result in death.
Yet, whereas Mr.
Rieneau’s criticisms of the anthropomorphic deity are rooted in what he sees as
the destructive and deceptive influence of the God of Judaism, Christine’s
criticism seems much more personal, as I believe it is. I know you’re wondering
what all this has to do with her budding romance with Candice, but there is, I
think, a connection, and this connection takes us back to that unforgettable
hellish event that would forever change Christine’s life by inserting into it
an evil that shadows her like a demon, a demon inextricably associated with
masculinity. You may recall the story of the small, smiling Mexican man who had
come to Christine’s door and asked her if he might use her phone because his
car had broken down. Yes, now you remember. She looked at the dark, smiling
face that appeared to have seen many years of hard, honest work, and then let
the man into her home. She did this because she was still a young girl who
naively trusted adults. And when the man had determined that she was alone, he
took a knife from his pocket and told Christine what he wanted to do and that
if she let him do it and did not scream, he would not kill her. And she said
yes because she did not want to die. That was the masculine evil that had
entered into her life.
But that was not the
end of the story—though there can never be an end really for a victim of such
violence. It was not long after the incident that it was discovered that the
young Christine was pregnant with her attacker’s child. When that became known
to the media the case received more attention than it normally would in a city
where rape occurs daily. Interestingly, the issue that was addressed in the
media was not the crime of rape but the issue of abortion. The pro-life
organizations argued that the life of the unborn child should be saved, that it
would be a great act of compassion if Christine allowed the child to live and
be adopted. What the pro-life advocates seemed to overlook was that Christine
was really still a child herself.
The pro-choice
advocates argued that every woman has a right to decide whether or not she goes
through with a pregnancy because it is her body that is being used as a host in
the parasitical relationship between the mother and child. In a pregnancy that occurs
out of love the child remains a parasite living off the mother, but it is a
beloved parasite, just as children remain parasites until they leave the home,
which replaces the womb, to live off their own labor. But this is especially
true, the pro-choice advocates argue, in cases in which the father of the child
has forced himself upon the woman against her will. In such a case, the mother
of the child becomes a slave of an unwanted parasite, just as the rapist made
her a slave, a human object, in the act of raping her.
However, Christine’s
parents refused to enter the debate. For them, there was nothing to debate.
Their child had been rape and implanted with a presence no less unwanted than
the rapist himself. Christine’s mother took her daughter to a doctor in San Francisco
where an abortion was performed. Christine was then sent to live with Ruth and
her father until the trial.
Now the reader can
better understand why Christine was withdrawn during her high school years,
during which she imagined that she was known as the girl who had been raped,
though most likely very few people knew that she was that girl. The traumatic
character of the incident also explains why each summer Christine would leave
the city Albuquerque, a haunting city for Christine, and why her parents
allowed her to go though they did not want her to leave.
So now we come to why
Christine has been drawn to Ruth and Candice. It makes perfect sense. You may
recall Christine’s remark about the seaman Art’s bright sea-blue eyes that
revealed an enchanting wantonness and that she would not allow those who ravaged
her once to enter her garden again. But who are those? We know of only the small, smiling Mexican man who forcibly
stole Christine’s innocence. I know of no other. Thus, those must refer to all men, to masculinity itself. So now we are
able to understand why Christine welcomes the love offered by Candice, a love
not tainted by memories of harm done as a result of masculine desire. What
about Robert? That Christine would give herself to Robert, not out of desire
but out of compassion, reveals the generous nature of her gift to him.
Before you leave me,
I wish once again to confess my bias. This story is my world, and its
characters are my characters. I cannot escape, though often I wish I could have
had at least a minor role to play, the opportunity to love just once… But each
of us must be satisfied with the degree of reality that fate pours into his or
her small cup. I sometimes think that my cup is a little too small, a
demitasse, certainly much smaller than yours. For me, this discussion about
love is merely academic. I envy you, my reader. I envy even the confusion you
might experience. I don’t envy suffering, though I might pretend to so that I
might know more fully the human experience. Suffering is the price that all
creatures must pay for their existence. It is a severe price that to my mind
make life an inherently tragic affair. I believe the old fisherman said as
much. I was saying that old woman fate has been awfully stingy with me. My cup
of life is not filled with the wine of life, but only with words—dry, brittle,
fleshless words. Yet, perhaps I should be grateful. It is the world I was
given, and it is certainly a better world than none at all. And though it be a
confined and arid place, it does not lack love, beauty, and charity. Thus, I
cannot condemn those young women who are so important to my little kingdom of
words and its beauty and goodness. Their generous hearts are too good, their
love—amid the eternal elements of the sky, sun, sea, and earth—so extraordinary
and indispensable. I cannot condemn two souls drawn together by their own
goodness and beauty. I would gladly give up the emptiness of my arid
disembodied state to feel such love and tenderness if only for a moment.
