Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

I invited an intimacy that flowed in one direction. Come to me, show me all of who you are, and I will love you without judgement, I will support you through everything, I will take your pain as my own, I will pleasure you without expectation of return. But I will remain cloaked in my robe, hidden from you.

Sometimes, when I trusted a lover enough, I would shed that robe -- but the expectations and terms and dynamics of the relationship were already in place, and often those lovers would be confused or frightened when that all suddenly changed. And those experiences reinforced for me the idea that deep inside I was monstrous and hideous.

A very few saw through the robe from the beginning -- but convinced that if they saw deeply enough they would find something dark inside me I pushed them away.

It has taken me a long time to look deeply enough in myself to see all that I tried to conceal.

I see now that my wildness and strength are beautiful, just like the wildness and strength of the women who stir my desire.

I see now that in refusing to be seen and desired I have denied those who have tried to come close to me the very experiences I sought from them -- the pleasure of giving pleasure, the pleasure of feeling love and lust, the pleasure of touching deeply.

I see now that my wildness is at the core of my heart, that it is the wild part of me that is in love with the world and seeks to defend it, and that to tear out my wildness would be to tear out the beating heart that pumps my lifeblood.

Still not sure how much and to what extent these realizations of truth in his life apply also to me, but there's definitely a kernel of similarity in the way I carry myself in my few relationships or attempts at them, and likely a layer of universal meaning in his thoughts.