~Subject: Re: different mindsets
~Date: 15 Nov 92 05:54:28 GMT

wi.6498@n7kbt.rain.com writes:
	...
:>I (and presumably countless others) had been thinking like bottoms
:>for months or years, in and out of bed

Yes, I, too. It is barely more than one year since I accepted to switch, the
previous almost 30 I always was a bottom, more, a slave, although most of them
I found no Master that would have me fully.

:>To deny that this mindset affects recovery from a breakup shows
:>a narrow minded foolishness I would not have expected from Alex
:>Martelli.

I will not flame. I will not flame. I will NOT flame. I am sweet and caring
and loving and I do not DO flames! I take a DEEP LONG breath and go on. But
if you were looking to challenge the tigress in me you came near! :-)

:>"bottom mindset" as soon as the scene is over.  But if you do something long
:>enough, or intensely enough, you can't slip out of the role that easily.  I'm

True, this.

:>I dare Alex (or anyone who agrees with him) to convince me that a top is as
:>desparately lonely and afraid as a bottom, given that both were recently 
:>dumped without warning, and that neither can slip out of character easily.

Ah, now this is the challenge which made me post. My first Master's degree was
in Indian Culture, as as traditionally all Indian husbands are top to their
wife, I can find all examples you want. In case you doubt this automatical
top/bottom relation, I quote Gandhi: "For a hindu wife total obedience to
her husband is the highest form of religion, the hindu husband is the wife's
lord and master, her duty is to be always at his orders". Thousands of years
of acculturation lie behind this, the strength of this precepts made obvious
by the very fact that even the Mahatma quotes them in his Autobiography. So
you think such a husband cannot be desperately lonely and grieve madly?
Ramayana is the first counter example that I think of, when "top" Rama loses
"bottom" wife Sita irretrievably (he's foolishly send her away for suspicion
about her purity with demon Ravana, and she asks the mother earth to take her
into her loving arms for ever), he grieves and despairs for all the years of
life that is left to him. He is destroyed, smitten.
But let us leave the classics and come to the greatest author of this century,
and _not_ by chance to my masters thesis. :-) That was titled "From Hams and
Jag'ran to Godan: the themes of Prem'cand's journalism in the genesis of his
novels" [old transliteration as my knowledge of Hindi dates to early 80ies].
It's in italian and from Roma "La Sapienza" university. Prem'cand, great hindu
journalist and sublime novelist, fought for many progressive causes including
women rights, but he is steeped in the deep roots of Indian Culture. A better
analysis of his novels that my humble thesis is "Hindi upanyas - Prem'cand
tatha uttar Prem'cand kal: 1955 tak", by Susma Dhavan, Raj'kamal Prakasan,
Dilli 1961.  "Godan", "the Gift of the Cow", his masterpiece novel, has TWO
relevant examples.  Govindi, the wife of Khanna, pushed by his cruelty and
faithlessness, finally leaves his house, taking her smallest child with her,
meaning never to return; the description of Khanna's crazy desperation is
masterfully done, his realization what the eternal lack of the woman he
beated, insulted, mistreated in every way, will mean!  By this shock he is
cleansed of his sins, and when she later in the novel returns, convinced
by Mehta the philosopher, their relationship changes forever to the better.
Similarly Gobar mistreats mercilessly his wife Jhuniya; but when he lies
ill, and she must leave the house to work and he wakes and does not find
her and believes she has run away, he is also desperate and destroyed, mad
with grief and rage, thinks to take his life... she also returns (she had
not really escaped, just gone to earn some money for them to eat) and here
too reconciliation and a man made permanently better follow.

You do not want novels, or you say that Prem'cand dedition to seva-dharma
distorts his outlook and makes him write that?  Ok here is real life then!
I told that of course me and Alex had had bad times, black ones, but I do
not normally dwell on sad memories, I prefer the joyous present, but this
time I will make exception. 1983 was the worst year we ever had. He did
top me, yes, but did not accept me as his slave; he spent more time with
books and work and study and meditation and less and less with me, I felt
maybe unfairly treated as dirt, ignored, and slowly and sadly, and it was
very hard, convinced myself that it was all over. Finally in december I
gathered my courage and told him, although terrified he might react badly,
maybe violently or worse by starting some terrible pontification and
utterly demonstrating that I was fully in the wrong, logically and morally
and inescapably, compounding my guilt and making me miserable, but I could
put it off no longer. I happened to tell him as he was in his bath, and
then ran off to the kitchen, and when he did not follow me there I was
even relieved and started doing something else to distract myself.
A couple of hours later I noticed I had not heard him or seen him any
more, had he walked out in a rage or what? I went around to check.
He was still in the bathtub, long drained of any water. His body shivered
with cold, his look faraway and distracted, his face ashen. I took
fright and started rubbing his body to warm it up, he did not even
seem to notice. I half carried him to the bed, put him under the blankets,
stood there worried and not knowing what to do, what had happened...

What had happened in detail he might be the only one that can tell, but I got
the gist of it later. At the news that it was all over, and he took it at face
value, not just *something* but *everything* inside him broke. At a sudden he
realized he had nothing left worth having, all his books and work and all he
had, turning into ashes around him. Poor me, the mistreated bottom, had been
the only key to everything in his top life. He did not rage or pontificate or
reason, he told me much later, as the utter USELESSNESS of everything without
me around had struck him SO totally; similarly, while he had mused for a
little about taking the razor and ending it all, he hadn't bothered, for death
he saw just as pointless as life...
His luck in all this was that he had been working on zen koans long, and
apparently was near the crossover point. The push of my leaving him was so
strong to precipitate him straight into the dark night of the soul, letting him
nothing and nobody to cling to, just utter gray eternal desperation. From that
night he later emerged awaken, and our relationship not only revived, but
soared on to dizzling heights, but, that is another story. It is however true
that the general model is exactly like the two in "Godan": mistreated woman
bottom desperate leaves husband top (or he believes she left) and he is so
smitten and made hopelessly crazy and destitute of joy by this, that his whole
outlook on life changes and things are made whole again. Yes, it is "happy
ending", but then I never liked movies without happy endings! :-) But take
away the positive ending, the "eastern religion" bias of the darkest point
being just before the sun breaks through the clouds, and you are left with the
total desperation and grazy grief of the top left alone by his bottom, just
what you disbelieve and challenge us to "prove".
I realize your own life experience differs. But never I said, or Alex either,
that it DOES not happen that a poor bottom feels destroyed by being abandoned!
Just that it happens as much to abandoned tops, actually to abandoned lovers
in general, if the LOVE is for real then your full existence can only revolve
around it, like we do around the Sun, if the Sun disappears and we are left in
gloom eternal how CAN desperation and searing pain not ensue? By saying that a
top cannot be shattered by being left you are as much as saying that a top
cannot REALLY LOVE, really GIVE ALL. You are wrong. Very deeply wrong. Can I
*prove* it? No more that you or I can *prove* a bottom's feelings; it is
INSIDE, you have to FEEL it. Two years ago I could have said I _thought_ you
are wrong, now that I switch I KNOW FOR SURE that you are; when I am on top I
feel no less love, far from it, nor is Alex any less crucially important to
me then. My love slave is my precious possession, my treasure; "and where
your treasure shall be, there shall also be your heart"...


The brightest, most loving blessings to you all,
          Laylah
	-- 
All I must do, all I must know,//Is teach the birds to sing, the grass to 
grow
     Laylah Martelli     (lela@am.sublink.org; or, wi.5292@n7kbt.rain.com)