Fear of flying

If you haven’t read it you should. At least, that is what my vague recollections tell me. I read it many years ago – Erica Jong’s ‘Fear of flying’. At the time, I’d just left my heated affair with my original lover to live abroad and pursue my dreams. That was a heady time. Heat, lust, touch, sensations. The book seemed so relevant then. It is funny how certain books strike a chord at particular times in your life. I remember reading ‘Nausea’ by Jean-Paul Sartre when I was 17. It felt as if that book had been written for me.

Where is the book I need to read now? I feel so distant from everything. I want to feel. I want to feel alive. I feel removed, behind a wall of muslin, unable to really see or feel anything. In that frame of mind, I ‘confessed’ some of my most inner thoughts to the pilot today. It felt good.

I told him how I have only had sex once with the husband in the last 6+ months. I told him how I feel so much better when we are living separately, in different countries. I told him that I have been trying to find a way to ‘separate’ without really ‘separating’. I crave independence. I long to remember who I am. I long to not be married.

It was a conversation shared with someone I have merely flirted with. In an underground car park (of all places!). Yet it meant a lot. For once, I felt a connection. I wanted to tell him so many things. I longed for a quiet corner table in a cafe (in Paris or Berlin). A bottle of wine, anonymity as we talked. For hours. That open, honest conversation one has so very rarely.

If I had been sitting in that corner of that cafe, I would have told him about the drunken sex had with the co-pilot last week. The anal sex with him on the wooden floorboards of my living room. Of digging my nails into his back until he bled. Sex that was searching, but not fulfilling.

For a few moments, I opened up. He could see that. We had a discourse, a direct and honest conversation. I trusted him implicitly. I’ve emailed him tonight, asking him to dinner. Time to overcome my fear of flying with the pilot.