An Ode to Two Irish Lovers

This is a painting i did last year when i was falling in love with chris. That's me on the left and him on the right...or maybe it's him on the left and me on the right. I call it Two Parrots Kissing (also in Paintings Gallery 1). Anyway, for me, it's about the innocence, playfulness, joy, and silliness of falling and rising and being in love. I wanted to offer an image of love as my first painting on these airwaves (so to speak). And on the theme of love...

A couple of nights ago there was a Spoken Word reading at the local cafe in honor of St. Patrick's Day. I decided to write a piece called An Ode to Two Irish Lovers that morning. Here it is:

My first Irish lover was Jane with whom I share a name -- I'm Alina Jane Ever. She was also my first woman lover. I’d been waiting a long time for her.

Though I wore the buttons of my cause, I was still a virgin with women. I’d had multiple long-pining crushes on straight girls for years. And I was tired of it. Jane and I met at an Al-Anon meeting. Both of us trying to heal our painful family stories. She was taken by my "closets are for clothes" button, short curly hair, and cute earnestness. Back in her weekly therapy group, Jane’s therapist told his clients that children of alcoholics often had questions about their sexuality and sexual orientation. Ding went a bell in Jane’s head. For years, she’d been trying to suppress memories of her first relationship with a girl in high school.

So on a dare from her therapist, Jane asked me out. I was delighted and terrified. Our first date: a night at the movies. I’ll never forget it, sitting there in the dark theater, one of us (I can’t remember who) reached out and took the hand of the other. And there we sat clutching each others clammy aching hands for three long hours because  unfortunately... we’d chosen to see Gandhi. Yet it was a beginning.

Jane also helped open my heart after a long time of tight-closedness. She encouraged me to learn to cry again and value my inner life. She brought soft-stuffed animals back into my bed. Jane called me bubele and wrote me sappy love cards with cut-out red hearts pasted on them. She sent a dozen lavender roses to my workplace, embarrassing my stuffy shy boss. She shared with me her love of nature by taking me hiking and camping in the mountains of Vermont and New Mexico. Jane and I danced wildly at lesbian nightclubs and birthday celebrations with friends. We had teddy bear tea parties. We made love in the dunes of Provincetown…until a police officer discovered us and shooed us away. Later we laughed and got short trendy dyke haircuts with maroon highlights in the gay town. Then walked hand in hand on the windy cold beach. One year we got matching eggplant colored buttersoft leather jackets from under the Christmas tree (courtesy of Jane).

And maybe best of all, we dreamed of moving to the gay mecca, San Francisco. Even now, I get excited thinking about how the city held so much glitter and promise for me back then. And eventually we did move to the big city together. But by the time we moved, our relationship was coming apart, and two years later, we said our goodbyes.

After a long period of sadness over losing Jane, I began to tentatively move into a different San Francisco world. For several years, I had been in the cocoon of the lesbian community. My friends were older, mostly married lesbians, rather socially and sexually conservative. Now I was finding myself drawn to radical street artists and performers, people without 9-to-5 jobs, sexworkers, jugglers and clowns, stiltwalkers and acrobats, muralists, and pagans of every variety. I was searching for my joy after a childhood and young adulthood of over-seriousness.

It was at that time that I met my second Irish lover, Jeff. I first saw him at a meeting of the multicultural ritual group. This was a diverse group of individuals called by Starhawk, a local witch of wide renown. Starhawk had called me and left a message on my answering machine asking if I’d consider joining the group. My friend Miriam, a sweet-smiling Jewish lesbian, was in this group but ready to leave, and Starhawk, born into a Jewish family and still feeling herself to be ethnically a Jew, wanted to find a replacement for her. Miriam recommended me as the new Jew priestess in the group. I had been starting to lead Jewish pagan rituals in several communities in San Francisco and the East Bay and I was exploring earth-based and goddess roots of Judaism. I eagerly accepted.

When I walked into the funky collective house on the busy street in the Mission district, my eyes were immediately drawn to this jester figure. Jeffrey Alphonses Mooney was dressed in a purple velvet vest, puffy white linen shirt, and soft suede britches (or something like that). He sported big shoes, a shock of messy bright red hair and the sparkliest blue eyes I’d ever seen. He was lying on the carpeted floor of the big attic room with his legs splayed over another man and caressing whomever he could reach with his available limbs. He threw me a huge toothless grin – Jeff had lost his front tooth somewhere along the line – and I was immediately charmed. Later I realized that it was in that first moment that I fell in love.

But at the time, I was a lesbian and I couldn’t admit to the feelings I was having. I thought, oh good, a brother, a gay man, someone I can easily relate to in the group. Little did I know. Later as I came to know Jeff a bit more in the group and saw how he flirted unceasingly with both women and men, I thought, I guess he’s bisexual. Later still, as I observed him more closely and asked around, I discovered that he was straight as a pin. And later still, I conceded that the somersaults I was feeling in my lower parts were feelings of lust for the boy. Soon after, we were engaged in a ferociously hot love affair.

Jeffrey Alphonses taught me so many things. He showed me a world I had only read about in books and dreamed of on the sly. A world of play. A world where people got up in the morning and did as they pleased. A world of painting sidewalks and drumming on empty water jugs. A world of spontaneous playful political demonstrations where people carried political signs at the same time that they drummed and danced around in colorful costumes. They were righteous AND having a great time! What a revelation to me. Jeff helped me move out of my hard-work-on-every level life and into a world of art and music, sensuality and magic. I’ve never looked back.

Yet it was a big deal for me to get involved with a man again after thirteen years of not sexually relating to the other half of the species. AND after ten years of being a lesbian. What would my community think? At the time I began to be lovers with Jeff, I looked around at my world and was bolted by a startling realization. It was no longer lesbian. My friends were freaks and hippies, artists, and street performers, musicians and nudists, polyamorists, and bisexuals. I was amazed.

They were all completely supportive. Well I did lose a few lesbian friends. But even then I knew that what I gained was worth the loss by far. Take one example: Every year in the spring, Jeff got naked, covered himself from head to toe in mud, found a bunch of friends to do the same, and led them, crawling on all fours and speaking only in gibberish, in the downtown financial district of San Francisco at noon. Picture all these well-heeled professional suits leaving their offices for lunch and being descended upon by the mudpeople. Jeff was a leader among freaks, a true working-class hero, a man both famous and infamous. How could I not fall for the guy?

Ours wasn’t an easy relationship though. Jeff was a believer in having multiple lovers, never wanting to feel bound to any one person. My deep freedom-loving nature eagerly embraced this lifestyle, but my insecure heart was not at all ready to see Jeff kissing other women in public. Over time though, I have learned to love myself deeper and better which culminated in marrying myself several years ago (more on this later). From this place of self-love, I have been able to open to loving a lot more freely, not perfectly, but not dependently as I did in the past. Through Jeff, I began to integrate my true nature back into myself. One without labels or political dogmas. One which is free and playful at the core. An artist of life. And having learned lessons of love and freedom from my two Irish lovers, I continue the journey of reaching for unconditional loving of myself and others. And having fun along the way...

Comments

[colleen]

Way to go, Alina. It works. I knew the art would look awesome posted. Color and words, what could be more fun. I'll pass the link on.

[Carly Burke]

Hey Alina,
Your latest paintings are awesome!!! The Blue Ridge Sunset and the Irish Lovers really speak to me. I think of you often, hope you are well.
Lots of Love,
Carly

[Vicki]

hi alina,
i wanted to 'visit' you this morning. this made me smile inside...

i see Alphonsus from afar at public rituals still. do you know at Summer Solstice the ocean now covers the flat part of the beach so much that the circle was half-way up the dunes? so powerful, she is!

we are getting close to buying our co-housing unit in the Fruitvale; land amendments start soon.

would love to hear how your niece and nephew are doing, "offline."
love you! vicki