I ran across this in an email passed by me:
The only thing that scares me are the men who are not out and living a lie as straight men. That scares me and every other straight woman.
I don't think I've ever heard that said before. I must admit that I'm not necessarily inside the heads of any women, although I'm getting much better. The weird thing is that I'm coming to understand the truth of something I read from Henry Miller a very long time ago, and Henry Miller is one scary dude. He said, women eventually take it all. As in dishing it out and taking it. Henry meant, as usual, something sexual. He was somewhat impressed in the fact that women do suffer through sorts of debasement that would destroy men. Miller did his damnedest to debase women, and still they remained women. And so in that strange way I have another confirmation of something I believe to be true about women's ability to give, even under hostile circumstances. Why are women illogical? Because they must be, and they know it. A woman's ability to soothe the savage beast in man is something fundamental, something very deep. I think it is something elemental to the power of femininity. The woman who flows knows this, the brittle woman doesn't quite.
Watching my daughters I am coming to understand something about a woman's relationship to her attractiveness to men which is central to her opinion of her self - of her confidence. A lady, I was instructed, puts herself in the line of sight of a man she's interested in. The man will do the rest, he only need see her. She only need be seen. And so a woman of confidence knows very well how men who see her want her. She will not be ignored. So she is to be sure that she is seen in a very specific way. Women spend huge amounts of time and effort in controlling their image and designing their orbit of desire. In the same way a martial arts master studies for years and can draw a circle on the ground with his sword, knowing he has a zone of fatality awaiting every foe, a woman architects her beauty as the central petal in a floral display creating an orbit of desire.
And it is in this way that I understand the quote above. The gay man who masquerades as a straight man is never drawn into this female orbit by desire. It must be horribly disconcerting to the woman who assumes attraction finds at bottom, indifference, distaste or repulsion.
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