Sunday Scribblings: Crush

I haven’t done one in a while but there was no way I could let this week’s Sunday Scribblings prompt go ignored. As a teenage girl I was queen of the film star crush, and with every birthday I reached the ages of my crushes increased dramatically; I was the fifteen-year-old crushing on the craggy-faced grey-haired actors – all father figures to be sure.

I went to an all-girls grammar school, and with no brothers or male cousins my access to real boys was limited, so it was my rich imagination that fuelled my fantasies. I’ve had three major relationships in my life, and in the first two I developed crushes on people I knew, signs of my dissatisfaction within the relationships rather than harmless daydreams. However, in my last relationship I had no crushes at all – my love was my crush, he was my matinee idol. This is part of the reason why I avoid looking at photographs of him – I don’t want him to be reduced to an icon on a piece of paper that is inaccessible to me. And so instead I find myself appreciating the intoxicating masculinity of the actors I see on the television or cinema screen; living breathing hot flesh, chiselled jaws, hairy chests, shapely strong arms. I think it would be safe to assume that my libido is returning.

While putting together the montage for this post, my friend Anna called me. When I told her the names of the actors I was including she laughed and pointed out that I have such a definite type. And it’s true, I do – the unifying feature of these four men is their absolute MANLINESS. I’m a tall undeniably feminine woman so I guess it makes sense that nature would make me in such a way that I’d be attracted to my male equivalent. No fey skinny boys for me thanks.

To admit to a crush doesn’t seem very grown-up, but I regard it as one facet of a well-rounded sexuality. I have many crushes on women too and piecing together the second montage I was struck by how similar they all are – and how they are all the very opposite of how I look. Yet I perceive qualities in them I (have been told) I have: a slightly imperious manner, intelligence, sensuality, a definite womanliness. Do we have crushes on the men we want to fuck (I’m sure Pierce is a great conversationalist, but that’s not what I’m interested in), but fancy the women we want to be (looks-wise) and who we can see glimpses of ourselves in? Is Saffron Burrows an idealised version of me, or do I simply want to get inside her knickers?

My libido is definitely returning.

Paper therapy

A woman sits on a white sofa, surrounded by jewel-bright silk cushions. She is not moving, her legs tucked under her as if sitting in meditation, but there are tears catching at the corner of her eyes. Invisible straps have her fastened against the front of a train, and the heavy weight of all the days behind her push her forwards, faster and faster, the fields rushing past, people along the way merely streaks of colour. All she can hear is the wind whistling in her ears and her own heart beating out the days, one by one by one, until finally she will reach her destination.

A woman sits on a white sofa, and though she doesn’t move she lives another life, a time filled with passion and yearning, laughter and dreams, played out in front of her like a film. She doesn’t hear the phone when it rings, doesn’t see the television flickering in the corner of the room. She sees a man’s face and she hears his voice, her back arching as he runs his palm over the curve of her hip. She sits in a restaurant and watches his face change as he speaks of his frustrations; she cradles his head in her hands as she kisses his forehead in the dark of the night and makes promises there will not be time to keep.

A woman sits on a white sofa and tries to remember how to breathe.