World I Need You, Won’t Be Without You
Women can regard a beginning as the start of something like a love affair.
I always wore a white vest without a bra that summer. I thought that only those who didn’t appreciate the erotic would be scandalised, so fuck them. My attitude later changed with shame but I wonder what the monk sat opposite would have said had I broached the topic. D. H. Lawrence wrote that the Pope understands more of sex than Europe’s most prolific whore, and I agree, while more frigid than ever.
But I was conscious of my body, sat opposite the monk. You visit Italy in the summer and cover your shoulders in every major church. I seethed at blue paper ponchos by the end. My body isn’t only erotic in England, but in the Med, dressing sexy is about sex. I didn’t understand that until womanhood. All I understood then was that this man had renounced women and my nipples were visible opposite him in a six-person rail carriage. How to catch a breath with a closed door , a feverish brain, a grip on my throat?
Francesco, the Franciscan, spoke to me first. You spend enough time in Italy and you learn that priests and monks are men who like women. Perhaps they even love them, and they occupy worlds of men only, so want the conversation. I was writing, writing, writing while panicking in that carriage. Francesco asked about my journal. I told him that I’d be a famous novelist, and soon, by 22. He believed that I would do it. He told me that he’d remember my name so he could buy my book. I have remembered his, naturally.
Francesco was 29 years old and was named for St Francis. Francesco had known his whole lif his destiny was to follow his namesake and his mother must have, too. Francesco had the smile of a boy and eyes that sparkled like a child’s. The lovely apparition of the puer aeternus has haunted my adult life (“Remember that the conflicts you face in reality reflect your inner life; cultivate your inner world, and the outer will follow”. Today, I confess that neither of us ever had it in us). Francesco lived in a Friary in Assisi, where he charmed the birds from the trees. No one can love a man like God; nothing earthly and visibly reciprocal comes close. In The Song of Solomon, the beloved never comes through the door, but I have felt him waiting, just outside view.
In his backpack – that so contrasted with his robe, and sandals, and rope – Francesco carried drawings his nephew had done, of superheroes and himself and his Mum. He showed me them, one by one, and discussed the subject matter. Spiderman in a mystic’s palm. Francesco’s sister had a little boy, and he was returning to Naples, where he grew up, to visit the young family. His face and gestures were alive with love, as was I.
Some scholars believe Shakespeare’s procreation sonnets represent his longing for physical love to endure into perpetuity, rather than evanesce. When I read Sonnet III, I remember telling my former lover that he would make a fantastic father, so he should stay open to the possibility. Die single and thine image dies with thee. Later in the same conversation, I said that we had played a very long game of hide and seek I was losing, but my fortune was about to change. Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest/ Now is the time that face should form another.
Both celibacy and marriage are considered gifts in the New Testament, but only a few can receive the gift of celibacy for heaven’s sake. For most of us, the demands of eros make celibacy too difficult and it is better to sanctify our desires in marriage. Either way, in heaven there will be no husbands and wives, but we will rather live like angels. In Botticelli’s Mystical Nativity, angels embrace humans on earth – a taste of what will come. I am foolish enough to think it looks romantic.
On the approach to Naples, I left the carriage. I needed to put on deodorant, and I didn’t want to in front of Francesco. He came out while I stood with one arm up, palm toward the sky, the other applying roll-on. I felt like Diana bathing. He asked me to come closer.
“Do you see that mountain?” His arm, pointing, was beside my cheek. “That is Mount Vesuvius. In the Ancient Roman times – as there are today – there were vineyards on that mountain. Some believed that those were the vineyards of Dionysius, the god of wine and ecstasy. His followers would drink it and fall into trance… You must drink some of this wine while you are in Naples.”
I promised him that I would. Francesco told me that I must visit Assisi, and that he would meet me when I went. I assured him that I would one day, but I still haven’t. I know that when I go, I’ll recognise him. Perhaps this is the year; I still haven’t seen the Giottos.
Women can regard a beginning as the start of something, like a love affair. Francesco was easy to leave at the station but departures get harder as the years progress. I listened to Let me love you alone on a train too often. I have too often tried to explain the virtues of sex and failed, grinding myself to dust against the indifference of tradition. But yoga means union; the Song of Songs praises conjugal love; and
The fountains mingle with the river And the rivers with the ocean, The winds of heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things by a law divine In one spirit meet and mingle. Why not I with thine?— See the mountains kiss high heaven And the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth And the moonbeams kiss the sea: What is all this sweet work worth If thou kiss not me?