shibari

“What’s shibari?” my dear housemate asked, the one I like to touch.  We were in the kitchen, where so many important questions are asked.

A riparian housemate washed his dishes, while we others waited.

“It’s tying people up,” my knot-loving housemate answered simply.

The knot lover had offered shibari as an after-dinner game, better than the other idea of a card game.  Someone mentioned nudity, and I heard some giggles.  I might have giggled myself.

I think it’s more than tying people up.  But yes, “to tie” in Japanese?  In my experience, it’s about sensory play, it’s to be seen–in real time or photographed.  It’s erotic, and often it involves suspension.

boy scouts

Earlier the knot-loving housemate–let’s call them Desire–had trained my spouse on how to make climbing knots.  When I heard they were making a knot teaching date, I was excited.

“Wow!  You know he was a boy scout, right?” I asked.

“Right,” Desire said.

“Knot fetish,” I added.

“So were you!” my spouse said.

“Me?” I asked.  “No, I was only a Cub Scout.  I never made it to Boy Scouts.”

Turns out my spouse and Desire were both Eagle Scouts.  Hmm, knot fetish indeed.

after dinner game

“It would take a lot of rope to tie me up,” I thought as a clear sentence in my head.  Usually my thoughts are not direct finite sentences.

I went to the appointed south living room for the after dinner card game.  I imagined shibari.  Desire’s rope circling me, and Desire’s surprise at my substantial girth.  Do you have enough rope for me?

My dear housemate who I like to touch had agreed to play the card game.  He arrived.  He looked at his phone.  “Oh!  I forgot I promised to call back an old friend,” he said.

So he left.  I was slightly jealous.  Here are flesh and blood people, wanting to interact with you, love you, see you as you are.  You choose to talk to someone from your past on the phone.  Good luck with that.

I sat alone in the living room.  My spouse was not home–he was out at a concert with another housemate.

I felt lonely.  We all care about each other and want each other somehow.  But there’s so much to overcome, for connection to happen.  Shibari or otherwise.  Even in this lovely house of smart, good people.

Desire

Then Desire arrived.  They didn’t say anything and sat in a chair in the half-dark.  Were they on their phone?  Maybe, or they were just sitting there.

Desire has been grieving.  A friend recently died, and the moods move through with some intensity.  I’ve encouraged my spouse to offer support to Desire.  But what would help?  My spouse offers activity and vague care.

Sitting there silently in the half-dark, with Desire across the room, I was having a powerful memory and started to cry.  I cried quietly because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.

“I’m sorry about the non-game,” I said.

“It happens.  More often than not,” they replied.

I sat up.  “Can I tell you a story before I leave the room?” I asked.

“Yes,” Desire said.

the story

Me and my spouse were in a small town in New Mexico.  Or maybe it was Arizona.  We’d traveled with the girlfriend of our community member.

I really liked her.  She was an anxious farmer.  Kind, anxious, beautiful farmer.  One side of her family was Japanese-Hawaiian, the other side white Mormons.

She was traveling for a concert; her friends were in the band.  I can’t remember what my spouse and I were traveling for.

But we stayed at the little house of the girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend.  He was a white guy in a cowboy hat.  He had this house–I think he’d recently bought it.  Slowly he was fixing it up.

It didn’t have very much in it.  Sparse!  I remember how much I loved this house.  Rough, weird desert house.

The ex-boyfriend left–he was going to sleep somewhere else.  Maybe the room my spouse and I were in was the only room with a door that closed.

altar

But when he was helping us settle in, he said to us, “Make yourself comfortable.  You can burn whatever you need to burn, to feel ok here.”

There was a small altar on the floor of the room.

“Thank you,” we said.

I had never felt that specific type of welcome.  Weed, sage, palo santo–whatever we needed to burn.  Wow, he was letting us stay in his house–we were strangers to him.  And saying we could do what we needed.

Something in me shifted.  The world is full of people who will misunderstand and hurt me.  But the world is full of good people too.

back to the present

In the south living room, I was crying because I lost them all.  The memory was so vivid, but the people are lost to me.  The former community member, the anxious farmer girlfriend, the dude with the mostly empty house.

“I tried to stay friends with the farmer.  She was hard to stay friends with,” I said.

That visit is like a dream.  I know it really happened.  But it was like vapor almost to begin with.

Desire

“It hurts, they’re all lost to me,” I said as I cried.  “Well, I still remember them.”

“They’re elsewhere on the timeline,” Desire said.

“Yes–right,” I said.  I cried more, and stood up to go.

“Good night,” Desire said.  “How do you feel about hugs?”

I paused near the chair.  They had stood up also.

“I like hugs–not with everyone.  With you, I would like to hug,” I said.

I moved toward them.

They stood there very rigid, and we wrapped our arms around one another.  They hugged me tightly.  Their body felt very upright and still.

I felt squoze in a strange way.  Not shibari, but outlier tight and secure.  I breathed and gave myself to the experience.

Strange, after the story and tears, in the dim south living room.  I felt respected and honored to be near them, held in a long beautiful passing moment.

more

One problem with love is it kindles need.  I can give, touch, and connect.  I could learn more about shibari first hand.  But then I will need, and some people don’t want to be needed.  It varies greatly.

One hug and I do not need my housemate Desire too much.  But I would like more.

How much work will that be?  The long corridor of love.  How painful death can be, and any ending.