The Frenchtuesdays White Party at Splashlight Studios, June 15, 2006.
I thought I was over panic attacks. Last Thursday, at the White Party, I experienced the weirdness, the freeze-up, a tiny catatonic state. I felt suspended, my thoughts seemed to stop, and I could not connect movement with place.
The cause was a sighting. The heartbreak, the former (unstable) boyfriend. He was there. I'm not sure if he saw me. No words were exchanged. I moved away from him as well as I could, and yet it seemed as though he was too close. And I felt paralyzed.
My big brain, recalling the psychoanalysis treatment-training I received over a dozen years ago, told me that it wasn't him that caused the panic attack. No. I know he's not worth it. And besides, I have seen him around a few times over the past year - without such effect.
No. It was a pinprick of the first hurts. The hurts rendered by family, in my case a capricious, violent father. And two years ago, my brother's rage-explosion (very like my father's habit) from which I fled. He and I have been estranged since.
It was a trigger. This time, it didn't last long. Monsieur reached out, took me by the hand, and guided me onto the outdoor deck. Minutes later, when he said he was leaving, I told him I would walk out with him and his friends.
We wound up at APT, in the Meatpacking District, joined by Liz Taylor, Jr. and Surfer Girl (the latter in a killer Pucci-looking full-length dress!).
Together, with much laughter and re-story-telling, the demon was exorcised.
And then, this week, the men in white, tennis whites, arrived in Flushing, Queens.
The Savior has toiled in the background on my behalf. It would seem that the Tennis Pro, one of those whom I met on Memorial Day weekend, is an admirer. And I saw him two weeks later, through casual arrangement by The Savior, at The Point, the same location at which I'd met him the first time.
It was casual enough, except perhaps for his comment, when he saw me, "You look great..."
And his apparent dismay, that same evening upon learning that I had to drive back to the city. He's spending the summer, living and working in the East End. And I was bound to return to the city. It was Sunday.
He was quick to add that he would be at the National Tennis Center in Flushing, starting Wednesday this (last) week, for a USTA tournament. He asked me to phone him, to join him there.
I did. The first evening I agreed to go to Queens, and took the train to accompany him to an after-match Mets game (they lost). I returned the following two days, watched matches, watched him win through the semifinals. And then the rain started. I did not make it to his final, but he did win - his division. Another player called him "the razor," since he slashed his way through every opponent.
He's fun - wacka-wacka-wooky-doodle-something. He has a tendency to drop his trousers at the most interesting times: in the middle of a phone call, or on the court after a bad play - his. I have an awareness of his whole body (and a helluva body it is), if I have not (yet?) had the opportunity to experience all of it. I need privacy and time, not during a tournament. I wouldn't dare break a streak.
He's here for the summer. And that, in and of itself, may be just right.
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