Bhurka meets Burlesque...

Burlesquey was the Sundancer's partner. She was an amorphosed bubble of light. A nurse by day and dancer by night, she was the perfect combination of playful innocence and bad ass performer of the erotic arts. She was sparkly and girly and had a knack for fashion like none before her and she thought she was the nerd! It was my twenty ninth birthday and there I stood glim glammed with makeup and a black dress, trying to taken in what i was seeing in the mirror, as burlesquey fastened the corset around my waist. "There" she said hitching the top hook of the corset while looking sheepishly pleased with what she saw in the mirror. My cleavage was spilling over.

I could not beleive that after six years of devotion to fully covering up in the name of saying NO! to objectification that here i stood with a waist cincher glued to my rib bones while the whiteness of my shadowed breasts glistened over the black backdrop. Burlesquey would prove to have come as a teacher in a different way. The virgenesque qualities of her energy gave her blatant erotica a non threatening quality of engagement. She wore sexuality respectfully and with honor but with a full on acceptance of liberation and the right to personal expression of it. I had still not gotten laid and the fire of my own breadth of erotic anticipation was burning firghtfully willing to take anything in it's wake. My sexuality was transforming, I could see that in the threads of my journeys, but i clung to it like the last shield protecting me from a windstorm. My beautiful, firey, passionate sexuality was something i felt to be a great gift. I couldn't bear the thought that mindfulness would invade it's devorous yet shameless self expression. Firespinner had elcipsed me with his physical irressitability, yet I had drawn boundaries around the potentiality of our union on account of my ethics in self honor. If he didn't have the time or relational space to get to know me, i couldnt let him into the interior recesses of my body. Who was this person I was becoming? Better yet, the sundancer appeared as an apparition of all of my truth and ironically wasn't interested in rushing into any prospect of sexual union. What was my world becoming? The hardwon rebel within me did as she always does, she continually tried to push up against what felt like this universe-imposed regulation to aid my growth yet came at me like an unsuspecting enemy. I like a small person placed within a sponge box where all i could do was keep running into and bouncing off the spongey wall in an attempt to figure out what had changed. Who did this force think she/he was interefering with my right to orgasm? In my rebellion, I returned to my internet dating profiles and sought out others looking for intimate encounters. I didn't much care *who* i picked up, it had become less about the person and more about reclaiming my right to have fearless, detached, no strings attached, firey, passionate and ultimately fulfilling, breathtakinginly satisfying sex. First, there was the small framed construction worker, a single dad. I left this encounter feeling empty, dissappointed, disrespected and disgusted. The second was, all jokes aside, a short, stalky, egotistically cute, military dude. This guy had the stealthy meat head kind of swagger my loins did acrobats for. He was a patronizing, patriarchial and most likely a misogynist asshole. I was both humored and sad for the way in which he had made decisions about his life and the experiences that brought him there. But his cocky, patriarchial male way of desiring me, turned me on. The perfect mirror of the complimentary opposite tensions that had come to represent the way in which my sexuality had formed and taken shape. We fucked vigorously and passionately all night long. He fucked me the way i wanted to be fucked and my ravenous hunger was liberated from her imprisoned yearning. The beast had been set free. The morning saw a regret that was unfamiliar. I entered the deep dark recesses of my shadow, on a rollercoaster ride of somatic symptoms of violation, and haunting images of the ways in which i had offered up my deepest treasures in one of the most vile kind of ways. I battled waves of naseau and inpenetrable darkness for almost 48 hours following his departure. This was what laid behind the sponge boundary, i so deliberately threw myself against. The slowrising of my heart continued throughout the endless number of electronic threads passed between i and the sundancer. There seemed an energy between us that encouraged me to unveil in every way. He was a good listener and I a good talker. My innermost confessions were never met with any great deal of surprise, he expressed a shared understanding of some of the things i had grown through. I awoke to the little red number sign above the messagebox of my facebook every morning..."Good morning beautiful.." he'd say. I was becoming enamored. Then, he dissappeared. Without a whisper his morning messages went away. I left him a few messages, un-returned. At one point he popped in , in a detached way. His message read "I'm just sorting some stuff out and need some space, i'll write you when I re-emerge. Some weeks later i wrote and asked him if i could come to the lodge to sweat. I was feeling shattered and could use the womb of healing. "of course" was his reply, he would find time either before or after to talk to me about what was going on for him. When i pulled up to the house where the lodge was held, i noticed him glance over at me before quickly rushing over with an anxious look in his eye. "I'm sorry, i just freaked out and began thinking about how much energy is being split to maintain these two relationships and I'm preparing for sundance...and i realized i have to be protective over my energy right now..and so I can't hold space for this relationship right now"..he sputtered as if to get it out in one long quick unmistakeable breath. That breath was so fierce it knocked the wind right out of me, leaving me hollow and empty in my chest. "Okay" i said quietly, a perplexed look upon my face and too vulnerable to ask anymore questions. He returned to the lodge and went about his regular buisness. I reeled in confusion, trying to grapple onto some truth of what had just transpired. I would grieve this short lived journey for 3 full intense days. Burlesquey would contact me to check in to how i was feeling, sharing her own experiences of what had happened. She was angry that he had failed to uphold his authentic honesty with her about the depth in which he was feeling, irritated that he hadnt been more pre-emptive in his engaging me and pissed off that he was turning away an answered prayer. It was me, she explained, that was the answered prayer. It would be her intervention that would for the very first time reveal to me her fierce and integritous devotion to the sacred journey. "Do you think being with not one, but two awesome women would be easy?" she enquired to her partner. He, looking awkward and protective, awkward at being asked the questions in front of me that would expose the vulnerability he fought so hard to protect. He would tell me later, that he ran because he was in fear, that his relationship with me would crack a layer of vulnerability wide open, that he hadn't felt in ten years. We would eventually commence our endless discussions. Madison would journey home to ontario for the summer and i would have time to continue asking and exploring the answers to, my questions.