RACHEL'S COLUMNS

These articles appeared in Rachel's column every Friday in the A3 section of The Age

A great Zen lesson at a friend's expense
9th January 2004

After reading a volume of Zen writings over Xmas, I was busting to share my recent insights.  With enlightened awareness, I could tell that my friend Rhonda, with the smoky eyes and bold cleavage, was planning to leave her boyfriend Bernie.  We met up at a club the other night and I watched shrewdly as Rhonda flirted with anyone and anything standing near the bar, including the cigarette machine.  Yet she stiffened and pulled back any time Bernie leant in to speak to her.  When he jokingly complained about Rhonda taping over his favorite Simpsons episodes, she rolled her eyes and mimed sticking her fingers down her throat as if she was about to throw up.  I'm pretty certain that Rhonda is over Bernie's larrikin charm.

 The next day Rhonda phoned and confessed she'd started a campaign to get Bernie "to wake up to the fact that I'm an attractive woman with a healthy sexual appetite.  My role in his life is not only to make sure he's using the right hair products or explain for the millionth time that radicchio is not lettuce!"

 "Let me understand this," I said, through a constipated smile.  "You expect Bernie to simultaneously feast on your body like a sleeked-hair, Mafioso-style playboy, know exactly where you are in your cycle and work out what that rattle is under the bonnet of your car."  I inhaled and continued.  "Rhonda, to quote a Zen master, how can one proceed on from the top of a hundred-foot pole?"

 Rhonda twisted her lips into a pretzel and replied eagerly, "What I wouldn't do to get on top of a six-foot pole!"

 My new Zen habit of self-searching helped me understand that like many women I've spoken to in recent times, Rhonda is feeling desperate, but doesn't want to appear desperate.  She admits to me that she wouldn't care about Bernie's pizza feasts in bed, his nights out with the boys or the way he refers to her expensive lingerie as "that see-through black thingy", if she was feeling sexually satisfied.

"Why don't you say something?"  I ask.

"I shouldn't have to!"  Rhonda replies defiantly.

We might be through with the dark days of having to put up with sexual harassment, date rape, unequal pay and in some cases even our hormones.  But many women still don't feel confident displaying a voracious appetite for sex without fearing that they'll be seen as being demanding, pushy or a sexual predator.  I remember that "Zen has no gates" and advise my friend.

"Rhonda, Zen is a 'gateless gate' that anyone can pass through, you and Bernie should meditate together."  I take her through the steps to self-awareness and caution her that she and Bernie should remain silent during the process.  "Use your hands to express how you feel, OK?"  She agrees and leaves to buy new lingerie.

Bernie calls me the next day and leaves a voice-mail message.  "It's me, Rhonda's as mad as a cut snake!  She wanted us to meditate together – OK!  No talking she says, so I do like she tells me because she's got that feisty look in her eyes.  I sit on the floor, cross my legs, concentrate on my breath and close my eyes.  When I open them she's got both her little fingers up in the air insinuating that I've got a small todger.  So I hold up my middle finger to suggest she sit on it, then she makes a fist and that was it, I walked out."

Rhonda's voice chirps via the message-bank an hour later.  "Bernie is such an enlightened being, we exchanged truths without a word.  I held up my two little fingers to represent the two of us, small and isolated in the world.  Bernie responded by holding up one middle finger to indicate that together we are one.  Then I shook my clenched fist in his face indicating that we're held together strongly by love.  Transported by our renewed honesty he left so I could be alone in the moment."

I have learnt a great Zen truth, dear reader:
Lightening flashes,
Sparks shower,
When my mouth opens,
Shove a sock in it!