agape Archives - Thousand Petals Project

The Mormon’s landlord put him to work planting garlic almost immediately after breakfast. Breakfast had rolled lazily out around 9am, surrounded on all sides by weed and sex: the wake-and-bake kind of day that we enjoyed. The cold, damp box of his caravan seemed like home after our exhausting journey east, and we cuddled into each other’s warmth like nesting rabbits.

Rex the dog was delighted to have us home. He wriggled his fat black body from his pillowy bench to the Mormon’s bed and was rewarded by being pulled into the soft, sleepy embrace. It was family. It was home. It was love.

Despite his general aversion to work, the Mormon was motivated to try his hand at planting garlic because he’d found a way to be a carpenter, not just a field hand. He was quick to figure out spatial problems. His brilliant solutions were often left on paper, but this time, the Mormon actually created a tool. It had a long wooden handle affixed to a wide, short plank that held 6 fat pegs, spaced an inch or two apart. When these pegs were thus thrust simultaneously into the ground by a clever garlic-planter, 6 holes appeared, ready to receive 6 fat cloves.

The sun was still high when I returned from my errands that afternoon. I watched the Mormon working diligently from the comforting doorframe of Farmer Colin’s mustard yellow caravan.

Farmer Colin greeted me with as much enthusiasm as a laconic cowboy-artist who’d recently bid adieu to his lady-love could muster. His large, thickly-lashed eyes had deepened in their sockets as well as darkened soulfully to an emerald brown. He’d been alone for over a week, and his young need was sexy.

It was a sunny, windless day, and Colin’s checked scarf was slung low into his jacket so that tendrils of tattoos could slither up for air. His smile cracked in the dry cold, but his eyes danced with the novelty of conversation.

“So, how was your trip?” he asked me, as we watched the Mormon slowly impregnate the long, roughly-plowed field with husky cloves of garlic.

“I’m glad it’s over. Turns out that the bed was a memory foam mattress, which my back hates. I could actually feel my skin crawling out of the bed as though it’s trying to get out of a heavy metal mosh pit, and the pain in my back is kind of unbearable. But we slept in the caravan last night, and the Mormon’s sad little mattress was a million times better. So, I’m doing well now. I’m much less angry.”

I diverted my pain with a flood of words. No harm, ahimsa¹: that was the number one rule. I must always strive to operate out of love towards everyone, whether or not I am in their company. I didn’t want to tell Colin that I thought his friend was unbearable and infuriating (that would be harmful), but I wanted him to see it in my eyes so that we could share the intimacy of frustration. He must know that the Mormon had no hold on my heart or my loins.

“I’m leaving for a week,” I continued. “I need time alone to find peace again. The Mormon’s a nice guy, but there’s something about him that I just can’t comprehend. I need a better connection.”

Now was the time to look up at him, hand on his arm and the plug pulled out from bottom of the chocolate bathtub of my eyes. His gaze dropped into the whirlpool, and we reflected each other’s need for intimacy.

I enjoyed Farmer Colin. His company was satisfying and familiar. There’s no harm in laying the foundations of desire on top of rock-solid kindness marbled with martyrdom.

“Yeah, he’s different,” Farmer Colin said, stumbling over his dry lips. “He’s got a special way of looking at the world. How do you feel about him?”

“I’ve got a problem, Colin. I look at the world in a special way, too, so maybe the Mormon and I do fit together in some way. Just after lockdown started, I began to feel love, but a new love; a different love than usual. I’ve been in love several times, and it feels feels like my heart is a spotlight directed at one person. But this love is three-dimensional, and it shines in all directions indiscriminately, like a disco ball. I imagine this is what they call agape² love. I love everybody and even every living thing I encounter whole-heartedly: like an idiot, like a teenager. It is impossible for me not to see the shining spirit in everything. I see the inner child, the virile seed, the eternal Godhead. I don’t want this joy to end.”

“Ok. So you love him?”

“Yes, without a doubt. But I also love your cat, and Rex, and that tree on the ridge, and the guy I had for one afternoon during lockdown at the lodge, and the weed seedlings on your window ledge…” …and you, I didn’t say. “I love everything. Literally with all of my heart. What is this insanity?”

“It’s wonderful,” he shrugged. “We need more love.”

“Yes,” I replied, my smile flowing in and out. “I’ll feel more love when I’m away from the task of being with the Mormon. I don’t want to lose my open heart. Everything has the potential for love.”

“Don’t talk to me about potential,” Farmer Colin grimaced, his handsome face pulling tight into the wrinkles of a much older man. He pulled out his pouch of home-grown tobacco and began rolling a spliff with some of his home-grown weed. “I hate potential. Everyone’s preached to me about my potential, ever since I was old enough to draw a straight line. It’s bullshit.”

“I know!” I commiserated. “I’ve heard that from my family and teachers for decades. Potential. It’s a dirty word. It means nothing!”

“Fuck yeah! Potential means you’re not successful, but you could be successful. Potential means that if only you worked a little harder, you could be somebody. Potential is someone else’s dream that you’re supposed to live out and complete for them.”

Earth shifted in the bones of Colin’s face: his bright eyes became more hollow as his cheekbones grew denser and his brow assumed a regal weight. His wrinkles filled themselves. My body rose in response to this oak-like strength.

I nodded vigorously. “Man, I know. Potential… it’s a life sentence of disappointment. I think people just like to make stories out of other people’s lives, and they try to manipulate you into taking the hero’s journey for their own entertainment.”

I touched his hard, dirty fingers as I accepted the lit spliff.

Admiring my smoke and opting for a second puff, I slid my gaze to the swiftly approaching Mormon. He has an extraordinary sense of smell. The furry earflaps of his hat stirred with his long stride, and I returned the spliff to its owner and my hands to their pockets.

“Hey doll!” the Mormon greeted me cheerfully, hoisting his garlic-planter with pride. “Did you see how much I did? My tool works!”

Farmer Colin passed the spliff to the Mormon as he joined us, grinning loosely. I embraced the Mormon, opened to Colin’s gaze and shrugged.

“That, sir, is a fine field of garlic.”

As I was packing up this evening, separating my belongings from his, I fingered the fine film of the Mormon’s only gift to me that wasn’t food or weed or tea. It was a recloseable plastic baggie that one would get for free at a fancy grocery store to contain their bulk candy or nuts. It contained my half of our weed purchase in Motueka. Once is never enough, it said, in bold text on an acid yellow popsicle.

“Just like you,” he’d said, when he presented it to me in the privacy of a chilly hostel room in Nelson. “I thought of you when I saw it. Once is never enough for you.”

The Mormon had winked and grinned and moved close enough to finger my crotch. I’d encompassed his hand as well as I could in 3 pairs of pants, reflecting his need so that he felt loved. This was extraordinarily thoughtful of him. This was his way to love. Why wasn’t it enough?

¹ https://www.artofliving.org/us-en/non-violence-and-the-art-of-ahimsa

² https://www.nonviolenceinstitute.org/post/unconditional-love-part-2

Every once in a while, I catch Christine hard-core staring at me. Am I a threat, an inspiration, or a conundrum to her? Why do I stub my toe or burn myself in the kitchen, and then I always look up and see those enormous blue eyes drilling into me as though her thick round eyeglasses could magnify their penetrating power?

Christine stopped trying to convert me a couple of weeks ago. This situation is more stressful on the Christians than they’d like to admit. There are only four of them: Alma’s bedridden with her concussion, Jessica is absorbed in her own fears, Peter is frustrated with his obsolete role of patriarch, and Christine is overwhelmed. She’s spending more time alone, playing hymns on the lodge guitar. She’s good. It sounds like a prayer.

The last time I spoke to her, I was trying to convince Christine to dance with us one night when the wine was flowing freely and DJ Joseph wanted to give us a good time. That might have been Itai’s birthday. I wasn’t drinking, but I was tipsy with the freedom of moving my body to the music. It felt tribal. The Israeli kids were all on the dance floor. I saw Jessica moving her shoulders to the beat, but she and Christine remained glued to their chairs, as heavy as pillars of salt.

I wanted them to experience the hedonism in their hips, so I sat next to them to dispense some wisdom or encouragement. Jessica fended off my invitation to the dance floor with a wave of depression disguised as superiority. I turned to Christine, and asked her if she danced.

“Well, yes, kind of,” she said in her tight German accent. She’d prefer it if I said that her accent was Swiss, because of the Israelis, you know. “I dance, but not like that! That is so not me!” Her laugh sounds like wooden window shutters left unlatched in a storm to bang sharply against a corrugated tin house.

“You know,” I suggested, “It’s OK to experiment. You’re in a safe place. We love you here. Try something that’s not ‘you’. That’s how you get to know yourself better. You don’t have to be yourself all the time.”

Well, that was the wrong thing to say.

“I like who I am,” Christine snapped. She immediately pretended to soften the chastity belt that slammed up around her virgin mind by smiling sweetly. The wooden shutters of her laugh clanged again. Since then, she’s been staring at me with her wary bovine eyes.

I’m used to being watched, so it’s OK. Well, it’s not, it makes me radically uncomfortable, but if I yell at someone for staring at me, they’ll just stare harder. I’ve made it OK in my mind by telling myself that people look at the things that they find attractive. Unfortunately, I don’t want people to find me attractive. I just want to be left alone; to move without judgement.

It’s massively unfair. The observed is forced into a contract with the observer. They find me attractive, they feel desire or jealousy or some stupid fiery emotion, and now I’m obligated to validate their emotions by being either more or less than who I am? Why? What do I get out of it? Well, there’s only one thing to do: take back the power. Observe the observer.

I’ve caught Avi staring at me intensely several times, too. He is definitely one of my favorites, but he always does the right thing, and he has a wonderful girlfriend. So, he’s not supposed to stare at me, which makes it that much more delightful. I love the way men look when they’re trying to pretend that you didn’t catch them staring. Such discomfort in preserving the ego!

But I’ve played that game of unrequited lust far too much in my life, and it’s boring. It’s just not fair to see the naked blackness of desire in someone’s eyes and to not be able throw a match into that powderkeg. Mindfucking someone is fun if that’s all you’re allowed to do, but (to quote the Six-Fingered Man), I’m a girl of action now. I can’t waste my time. I want my interactions to be more than just the mind or the heart. Maybe I’ll take the soul… that’s interesting enough to replace the physical. Maybe I’ll ask Avi for his advice on which of the four single guys I should go after. That’ll send his logical brain spinning into dark places.

I think I know the answer. Itai has a girlfriend at home, Moshe broke his back, and Ariel is too distracted with his own machinations. Judah is left. I bet that round ass makes a nice handful. But Judah is often in the company of Shira, who is Joseph’s girlfriend. Those three eat together, walk together, and sing together. I dearly hope that they sleep together, too, but I’d guess that the chances are low, considering Judah’s carefulness around Shira. More unrequited love? What’s that about? I need to get one alone.

Peter, the head Christian, called them a flock. Last Friday, over our communal Shishi dinner, we agreed that we were both lone wolf types, and that to be a sheep would be intolerable. His precise South African accent clipped the roundness of his vowels tightly. His fiercely honest eyes were almost always set on God. That night, his wife, Alma, was missing from the long banquet table, pouting in bed with a broken face.

With Alma gone, Peter indulged in twice as much wine as usual that night. Somehow, I always end up sitting near the Christians at the head of the table (probably because we speak in English while the others speak in Hebrew), so I had the pleasure of sitting next to Peter. After the meal, we enjoyed an excellent conversation about walking our own paths, and his kind face began to loosen with gentle intoxication.

He’s quite an attractive man; he has a tall, hearty physique and a shining smile. I caught him in the Kiwi uniform of well-fitted little shorts and big black galoshes the other day, and I can only hope that my lascivious stare conveyed my appreciation of what I observed. What a shame that’s wasted on Iron Alma.

Sometime during our conversation, our knees touched under the table. I slid my warmth and attention into that leg without moving a muscle, concentrating on the inviting orange quality of the space between us. It only took a minute for Peter to relax his entire thigh against mine, and we remained pressed together under the table for a solid half hour.

I enjoyed every second of feeling his hard thigh pouring warmth into me, but I don’t dare jeopardize my home here. I’ll take anything I can get from Peter’s frustrated masculinity, as long as he comes to me. And he won’t, poor fellow; he’s far too good. I’d offer him a blowjob if he didn’t scare so easily.

It is extraordinarily wonderful to me that I feel love towards everyone all the time now. It is entirely inappropriate that I would happily have sex with any adult in our little lodge, just to hold their dear little hearts close and kiss them all over. Even Alma. They’re all fucking adorable.

Is this agape love? Or nymphomania? Did the Mormon open the floodgates of my heart so that it flows indiscriminately outwards forever? Some might choose a middle road… I am either living an enlightened life of love or I’m a menace to society.