Peaceful Easy Feeling
By Sue Meade
"I
like the way your sparkling earrings lay, against your skin so brown, and I want
to sleep with you in the desert tonight, with a billion stars all
around..."
It was 1977. David was a careless, curly
headed, Skoal-chewing, baseball-playing Bad Boy. I was a 15-year old girl
dangerously in love. Actually, it was more that I was so acutely, painfully,
vibrantly alive and crackling with energy so I had to attach myself to something
solid or I would burst into spontaneous flames. And he was the one I chose. Oh
God, I wanted him in whatever way I could have him.
"I get this feeling I may know you,
as a lover and a friend..."
On a crystal clear April night, under the
vast southern Arizona sky, he put his arm around me at the end of the party and
asked if I needed a ride home. Waving my girlfriends off, I told him yes. To the
ride and everything and anything else. So willing and so heartbreakingly naive.
We drove to an old abandoned cotton gin in the middle of the desert.
"Tell me where to stop," he said,
driving slowly and aimlessly.
Heart galloping out of my chest, I ventured
a shy "stop!" two seconds later.
"This is the perfect spot?" he
teased.
"This is it," I told him, looking
into his eyes. Grateful to be looking into his eyes.
"What's your favorite color?" he
asked.
"Red!" I said, mesmerized by his
attention.
"It's blue now," he stated as he
got out of the car. He walked back to the trunk and took out a baby blue
blanket. He spread it out on the ground and waited for me to do the same.
Peeling off what little clothes I had on, he then forcefully and determinedly
satisfied my aching "what is it like?" curiosities while I stared at
the glowing moon and the billion stars and thought about ten thousand things and
about nothing at the same time. Incredibly intense pain and pleasure rocketed
through me as he made love to me.
When we got back to the car, the Eagles were
on the radio and we listened in silence. I wanted to tell everyone and no one
and I didn't know what to do, think, feel, be. He dropped me off at my house
with a "see ya!" and squealed out in my driveway, waking my mother.
"But this voice keeps whispering in
my other ear, tells me I may never see you again..."
The very next weekend he drove some other
easy-feeling sweetie to that spot, or one near it, and got out that same damn
favorite-color baby blue blanket. I just tried to keep my heart from bleeding
and attempted to remember why it was I wanted to live anyway. Much less love.
"I found out a long time ago, what a
lover can do to your soul, oh but she can't take you anywhere, if you don't
already know how to go..."
I knew then that I was always going to be a
lot more easy than I was peaceful. I was an exuberant, passionate mess of
soaring highs and thundering, raging, sobbing lows. But when "Peaceful,
Easy Feeling" played on the radio, I would stop all activities save
breathing and let the soothing lyrics bathe me in hope and feet-on-the-ground
easy acceptance of love come-what-may. The kind of love that may be meant for
only one night. One time. The kind that was never meant to be forever, but would
leave its distinct tattoo on my heart for the rest of my life. The song's lyrics
illustrated an ideal state of emotional well-being. I used those words, needed
them, like Prozac.
"I've got a peaceful, easy feeling
and I know you won't let me down, because I'm already standing on the
ground..."
Twenty-five years later, the song still
affects me so powerfully. When I hear it unexpectedly, it always reminds me of a
heart and body so vulnerable and the knowledge that you can only really give
yourself in that way once. After that, the heart insists on some kind of cover.
It insists on standing on the ground.
Sue Meade is a staff writer for the Marietta Daily Journal and Neighbor
Newspapers in Georgia. She also occasionally writes freelance articles for
magazines.
SWritinWoman@aol.com