
One happened with a track coach/professor when I was in my early twenties. I had a crush on her as did every budding lesbian at the State University of Cortland. I was working part time at a grocers, and I turned down the aisle just as she did. I did not expect it, but my whole body shudder for a brief moment. I had no idea she was a lesbian, but there were rumors of her and her blond room-mate. Even if I had known, I was too shy to flirt. But it was just her mere presence that sent my mind in to an internal libido dance. That is what I choose to call that 'butterfly' sensation.
Another internal libido dance happened later in life, as I was standing and reading posted signs in the hallway of a high school. I decided I wanted to try my hand at a writing workshop. I was both physically and mentally exhausted. My parents had just died within five years of each other, and I had some unknown diagnosis that zapped my energy. I felt that my body could only handle the lifting of a pen in those years.
The writing workshop was going to be hosted by a woman, who was also a wife, a mother of several, and who had degrees in English. I had yet to meet her for the first time on that damp, cold, autumn night when the heavy exterior doors of the school crashed open. She zoomed in to the hallway looking left and right. Her arms were filled with folders, and a carry-all bag. Her pocketbook was hanging off a shoulder. Her dark coat hung below her knees, and flapped and billowed opened behind her body, like a breeze was created just for her entrance. She was not much taller than I was, but she seemed six feet tall, with her bronze-reddish, cropped hair. An assured, dominate energy preceded her as she seemed to soar down the hallway without touching the floor.
In an instance, her intense aura, her energy, suck the air right out of me. I was flummoxed. I had that kick in the gut feeling, and was sure my mouth was agape. I had to inhale quickly to catch my breath. I had no earthly reason why I felt what I did on this one precipice of a steep moment, with this complete stranger. I was stunned. And I doubt she even saw me standing there in the school's hall, as her energy sped by me and entered the room where my adult class would begin.
As I entered the classroom, I felt like a flower caught in a passing hurricane. She had the half-dozen or so adults sit down in a tight circle of desks, and she leaned forward toward us on the edge of her seat as if she had an urgent message to impart. She prompted us - And we wrote, and wrote and wrote.
I was left wondering what eternal or external energy placed me there on that day. But I can say, that after all was said and done, she did unleash the writer in me. She did knock my socks off, but I did put them back on, one at a time.