Elf Effect

Howard flew up the stairs and breezed into the studio along with a small group of other participants. He was early, I recall, announcing his arrival at this Trager Introductory Workshop in an ankle length white trench coat and a matching fedora. The outfit, as striking as it was, was not half as bright as the shoulder length white hair that flew in a halo around his wide face, quick smile, and twinkling eyes. 

When he introduced himself to me, I immediately began to think of him as an elf from another world--a special strain of little people who took human form to be able to leave his Welsh homeland and come to New York City--and as homage to the human race for the pleasure he intended to have in this human body, he brought magical gifts with him from Wales. These gifts of delight, mischief, sweetness, and nimble humor he handed out, one by one, to everyone in the room, captivating each person before taking his place in the circle. No one rejected his gifts. 

The day began smoothly, with depth and richness in some simple body-mind explorations. After a short, lighthearted explanation of the intentions of this work-- intentions like grounding through sensing a release of weight, finding ourselves more pleasurably in the sensations of the moment, building our body awareness, and finding more ease in our ordinary upright movements--I had the group begin walking while inwardly recording their awareness. I followed that with an exploration of the impact on inner sensation of a smooth, flowing touch from a partner. Then had them return to walking to notice the long-lasting impact on proprioception. I had begun to lead this kind of process work with quite a bit of mastery and often in an atmosphere of jocular fun. But this day it bought out much more laughter than is usually unearthed. As I layered touch and movement and awareness into their day, and stirred the soup of group process to blend with the sensory experiences, Howard turned out to be the secret ingredient that I didn't know I was missing. 

After some extended arm-play at the end of the morning, the group expressed surprise in feeling their hands tingle. But with Howard's uncensored giggling, the rest of them let themselves give sound to their sensations too. We had a spontaneous silly sound orchestra, and I saw and heard the magic of catching a feeling by matching a sound. When, after lunch, the usual lag in group energy threatened to derail all our previously lighthearted group banter, one quip after another from Howard triggered chuckles, then out-right laughter, and eventually even had us holding our aching sides. 

Near the end of the day, I had the group pair up for a hands-on trade on the tables. The theme of the exploration was simply sensing weight in a partner's body, an exercise that is often deeply peaceful for both giver and receiver, so peaceful in fact, that people are sometimes moved to tears or other unexpected emotional expressions. 

After introducing this exercise with a short demonstration, I set the structure for their practice and helped them find partners. Then I opened my energy, relaxed my focus to hold the space, and as usual, began to assist each of the pairings one by one around the room. 

As I made my rounds, I found myself magnetized repeatedly to Howard's table. His sweet innocent joy in this play mesmerized me. I could hardly take my eyes off the glow in his mischievous face, a glow given authenticity by his watery eyes brimming with gratitude. 

He entranced me. He bewitched me. He gobbled my attention. I don't know how I kept my focus on the flow of the class, but somehow, altogether again as a group, we came to the end of the day-- sensory bodies alive, kinesthetically awake, tenderly touched, and emotionally met--and I had not embarrassed myself with gushing over this star pupil. 

I felt proud of myself for holding good boundaries around my attraction--proud of being aware enough to inwardly name my attraction, while outwardly spreading my attention evenly throughout the room. In those years, it was very important to me to bring impeccable action and thought to the art of teaching. I was zealous in preaching the benefits of unifying the body and mind in present moment sensual experience, and I fancied myself a living example of ethical relationships. 

The end of the class day meant hailing a cab in this dicey neighborhood to cart my supplies uptown. As important as I imagined myself and the work to be, I was teaching at an obscure and unlikely studio. It was a room with bright green carpet and fake wood paneling on the second floor over a mechanics garage, so far west on 37th St. it was almost in the river. This was an area of town that was hunting grounds at night for the women who stalked on stilettos looking for tricks. And during the day, it was working space for the tradesmen who kept the rest of the city in repair...plumbers, roofers, electrical supply shops and the like. It was in so many ways not my style, but it was what I could afford as I took these first steps toward what I imagined would be a dynamic career in spreading the gospel of spiritually motivated somatic movement education. This slightly grungy studio was a long way in both blocks and lifestyle from where I lived in my comfortable, spacious upper west side apartment. 

As the group began to gather their things and head out the door, I overheard Howard say he was headed uptown after class. Without thinking too hard about it, I offered to take him if he would wait while I gathered all my stuff and got a cab. It made perfect sense to be gracious and offer him a ride, but I immediately questioned the wisdom and appropriateness of it, too. Was I too forward or taking advantage of the power differential inherent in being his teacher? Was he interested in me personally, or just in what I had been teaching? Was he always this way, this lively, this much fun? 

These questions were quickly answered when he slid into the taxi's backseat and immediately took my hand. With interlaced fingers, he pulled himself close, smiled in my face, and whispered "That was a very lovely day". 

And to be sure he was completely understood, he nibbled my ear, then lay his head on my shoulder for the 20-block ride to where I was to let him out. Lovely, indeed. 

Before he got out, I timidly asked if he wanted to get together sometime. Without a beat, he shot back "How about tonight?" And winked. 

We both laughed, exchanged numbers, and he whirled off down the street, white trench coat threatening to swallow him whole. If there was to be a power differential in this new relationship, Howard grabbed it from the beginning. My being his teacher first became a non-issue from that moment. 

Howard came with his own weather system, and it was always sunny. His lighthearted banter, quick wit, and easy laughter was just what I needed at the time. I am often a victim of my tendency toward intensity. With him, everything that happened or didn't happen was an opportunity to exercise good humor. 

We dated for about six months. He was a wonderful companion and quickly became part of my social circle, a circle of seekers and players in the emerging and overlapping fields of movement, awareness, and energy spirituality. We laughed a lot. We cuddled and caressed each other in and out of bed. We took workshops together, and he assisted me in the classes I taught. When I pointed him toward some interesting system of energy healing or personal growth work, he enrolled with glee. 

But in all the fun, I was unsuccessful in drawing his light spirit down to earth enough to look at its shadows. Serious conversation, in-depth inquiry, never got a foothold in our relationship. I continued on my own to get up early each morning to meditate, and followed that up with a thorough energy cleansing using movement and intense breathing techniques. I'd been practicing this work for a couple years, and had been experiencing the subtle ways in which it supported the creative inspiration in my choreography and more importantly, in the potency of the healing effect in my bodywork sessions. I was also convinced that this inner work had drawn Howard to me in the first place. But to be sure I was not deluding myself, I made twice a month treks to my therapist in the Catskills to stare this magical thinking in the eye, to route out the resistant places I found in my twisted inner conversations with myself, and to find support for practicing a kind of radical self-kindness that I was convinced was dissolving hard places in my psyche. 

From the first night, sex with Howard was warm and emotionally nourishing, but it would eventually lose momentum for lack of muscularity. We drifted rather quickly into a companionable friendship, but not before we experimented with everything and anything that caught our fancy, kissing and wrestling and laughing our way through all the sexual behaviors that were already being classified as unsafe. 

Was he aware of avoiding difficult subjects? Or was his inner elf just doing what he was gifted to do? He spread a lot of light and a lot of joy in those months. But all that time, he was carrying the deadly virus. 

He would not survive long after we stopped dating. He would find another boyfriend to stay with him through to the end. He died before there was any treatment, and many years before the antiretroviral cocktail was developed. 

I later wondered if he was avoiding facing some darkness in his past, or if that would have made any difference to HIV. 

He had flitted and danced around responsible behavior. But so had I. And so had so many of the dancers and actors and singers and musicians in the NY arts scene, those whose beauty and creativity inspired our generation. 

Did I somehow have a genetic resistance to the virus? Or was my unflinching commitment to embodiment, self-awareness, and a grounded spiritual practice, a cocktail powerful enough to neutralize the virus? Was this the formula that gave me health in the face of this plague, this plague that so completely eviscerated the vital, sensual, and erotic community that surrounded Howard and I in the 1980's? I still don't know.