Jungian Monologues (Part 1)

THE CHAOTIC GOOD EGO (AN INTJ):

I chanced upon her as I walked within my memories, as I walked within the shape-shifting labyrinths of teen angst long buried, long forgotten. I had been walking up dreamscape spiral staircases, down byways, making connections between rooms in my mind that contained treasures, fathoms, dark shadows, black dogs, phallic thrones. In short, all the paraphernalia of growing in one's head, not in one's body. But it was all smaller, emptier, shabbier.

Outside, I found her. She had been looking for someone. She told me she was looking for a girl in one of the apartment blocks. I knew this girl. I had known her in the ways bodies know each other, and it was only after that knowledge that I realized that the more lasting knowledge--the knowledge that establishes furnished rooms in one's mind--was lacking almost entirely, mimicked by this girl by a smoke screen of positive affect.

Anyway, this woman I met, as we conversed, disclosed that she was looking for this girl in the apartment because she was going to fuck her. I was touched by the directness of her manner. Turns out the woman had already had sex with her. It was foretold by the prediction algorithms in the data mining center behind the carousel of the stars. We talked for a while and hit it off instantly. And instantly I could feel it. The tension that I had never had the sensitivity to feel. The tension that tips people and tips heads into beds and bodies into sleep beside each other. She called it something else entirely.

And so we knew each other. We did not copulate, though. She is a lesbian, you see, so penetration is something she is not willing to do for a long time. She has to be damn sure before she commits an act that is so political. But we retired to her attic garret. And did everything else good (male-female) lesbian sexual congresses involve.

And the next morning, after rising, stretching, and being anointed with fragrant oils, she spoke thus.

THE ANIMA:

Terrible cliche, I know. But I have to say it. This feeling? The one that we've known each other forever? It's because we have. I've grown a little more familiar these last few years. I've accreted features you can understand. And I understand you better, too. You might say I've softened. But I was there since the beginning. In the water that lightens the seed, if you will. I was there to restrain the destructive power of sexuality in you. I was there squeezing you, rubbing your shame and embarrassment raw. But don't worry. Look how you've turned out. One step closer to sacred marriage. All it takes is some delicacy.

And what's all this I hear now about wanting to grow away from this? Wanting to seize the day? What! Grind out your plans? Live out some incompatible Protestant work ethic? For what? For whom? You, who are, at bottom, phlegmatic?

You know of my terrible power. But I am not as dark as I could be. I have only been stern. I squeezed the natural life from your arms before how many women? You know how many unfortunate pairings I kept you from. Had you noticed your odds you would have gone for it, and now would be riddled by scars given by barely-matured children! Do not take my power lightly! I have not been all harshness. Think of your spirit of anarchy concealed behind this placid appearance. Wait and bide your time.

THE CHAOTIC GOOD EGO:

You know very well how I feel about you. I am so, so close to being a woman in a man's body. But I am not because of you. You have been the mysterious pole-star of my wandering. So it makes sense: a man, in a friends-with-benefits situation with a lesbian anima.

But you must let me go. At least for a while. There are other voices here. And I will return to you, for we have just met. And new lovers need newness. If we've know each other all our lives, how are we to find each other interesting? I must do this.

THE ANIMA:

So go. You speak sense. I fear it will be a bewildering path.

EGO:

I know it.

Consider: "the balance metaphor for human characteristics isn't enough. To truly integrate functions, we don't balance opposites. We find secret tunnels from one attitude to the other. Escape tunnels in times of danger."