Golden Gate [X]Press : A Date with the Golden Gate
On a clear day like today, the vermilion majesty of the Golden Gate Bridge is brilliantly visible. The absence of fog allows the curves of its cables to slice across the bright, open sky. It's a Wednesday afternoon, nearing 4 o'clock, and the stream of cars whizzing across the bay is steady. The force of their rush is matched only by the thrashing wind tousling the hair and clothing of beaming tourists posing for pictures.
Through the buzz of commuters and map-toting vacationers utilizing both form and function of San Francisco's instantly recognizable symbol, Erika Eiffel's gaze rises to meet its lofty towers.
She's dressed in chill-defeating layers; the only patch of skin exposed is the triangular area inside the V-neck of her brown top. An immaculately detailed tattoo of an original blueprint of the Eiffel Tower peeks out from behind the front of her denim jacket.
"This bridge is proud to stand as a symbol of the sexual minority," she says, her eyes full of reverence, a smile on her face.
Eiffel, thirty-six, has been in love with the bridge since she was eleven years old. According to Eiffel, the bridge loves her back.
"We have something good--something real," Eiffel says. "Who cares if the world doesn't get it? Half the time, I can't find the words to describe my relationships. I can't convince anybody that what I feel is real."
Since adolescence, when her peers were hopelessly devoted to one another, Eiffel has known that she's physically and emotionally attracted to objects. She compares her sexual orientation to hetero- or homosexuality. "I'm not wired to find love with other people, so I don't waste my time looking there," she says. Her romantic past is full of lovers and intense connections. Some were low-profile and more personal, like Japanese swords and local fences. Others were public figures she's had to share with the rest of the adoring public, like the Berlin Wall, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Eiffel Tower.
After years of admiring the bridge from afar, through the plane surface of photographs, Eiffel finally visited it for the first time in 1993. "He was all lit up and he looked amazing," she recalls, with a wistful tone. "I looked at him, and I started to sing. I don't remember the song, but I just started singing. And I thought, 'Pictures do not do him justice.'" Since that initial visit, she's walked across the bridge's span countless times. Sometimes she stays for hours, until the sun passes below the horizon and the temperature plunge is too drastic to bear.
Suspension bridges are not usually her favorite form--she's typically attracted to more angular shapes--but the Golden Gate is an exception to that standard. It stands proud and exudes power, and that's why it caught her eye. Bridges are the main objects of her affection. She's drawn to the way they connect and support their surroundings. "You can just put your hand on a bridge and get a sense of the compression," she says. "The engineers were aware of that when building [the Golden Gate]. I am empowered by the energy of bridges."
In order to establish and solidify her fondness for bridges in general, in 2007 she held a union ceremony between herself and the Eiffel Tower, a monument she considers the "matriarch of bridges" as it was built by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, known for his engineering work in that field. Among a small group of friends, she and the tower exchanged vows, and with that act of commitment, she changed her surname. "I know this isn't a legal marriage. I'm not asking for it to be legal," she insists. "This is just my way of living life. I did [the union] for me and her and that's it."
"Me and her"--she always refers to the tower with feminine pronouns and adjectives, just as she considers the Golden Gate male because of its mighty stature. It's easy to assume that the tower might be viewed as male--as a colossal steel phallus reaching for the Parisian sky. But the tower's French name is decidedly feminine: La Tour Eiffel. And to view it as a phallus, one would have to compare it to a human characteristic, something Erika Eiffel has never done. "I don't look at men in a sexual way," she asserts. "There is nothing humanistic about the objects I love."
The issue of sex is acutely explosive for Eiffel, particularly in the aftermath of the documentary released last year featuring her and another objectum sexual (OS) woman in some compromising positions. "Strangelove: Married to the Eiffel Tower" did a lot to raise awareness for the OS community, but its influence has turned out to be more negative than Eiffel could have ever imagined.
She has been trying to shake the image of her gyrating on the Eiffel Tower--an image she says came about due to a combination of director's suggestion and malicious editing--from public memory.
"I can't tell you the tears I shed when that film came out," she says.
Produced in the U.K., it hit the Internet shortly after its release. The sensational concept of women having sex with monuments and amusement park rides--in public, no less--made the OS lifestyle fodder for bloggers and self-appointed online judges, juries, and executioners.
"I have never had sex with the Eiffel Tower," Ms. Eiffel contends. "I would never compromise a symbol. Why would I discredit my own love? I wouldn't share something like that with the world. My relationship with objects is too important."
Many theorize that Eiffel and other objectum sexuals have either consciously or subconsciously chosen the lifestyle because this, that, or the other reason has driven them to find love the "easy way." Eiffel's lovers will never challenge her verbally, strike her out of anger, or simply get up and walk away, but she insists that her relationships can be painful. Falling in love with a public object is a challenge, and Eiffel feels tested by the restrictions of her relationship every day. When she goes to bed at night, she can't lie beside the Golden Gate Bridge and kiss it goodnight. During a visit, she is happy to oblige tourists who frequently approach, asking if she can take their picture in front of the bridge. But the constant attention it draws and its function as a commuter bridge means that she and her lover can never truly be alone.
When Eiffel was fifteen, she was devastated when a bridge she loved was destroyed in a flood. "The pain and suffering I felt was unbearable. People said to me, 'They're going to build another one--it's not a big deal,' because they didn't quite understand. When you lose someone you love, you don't just say, 'Another person's gonna be born.'"
So Eiffel finds ways to ensure she can still feel connected when she can't physically be near. Manufactured models are insufficient, so through touch, observation, and visual aids, such as her own videos and photographs, she constructs smaller versions of her objects that are often based on the original blueprints. The models she builds become extensions of the objects that inspired them.
"Everything on this earth is molecular, and therefore there is a temperature exchange. When I touch an object, there's going to be a change of energy," she says, placing her palms flat on one of the bridge's concrete walls. "If you feel this wall, it's warm--it's warmer than my hands...I sense the movement and flow of energy. When I approach an object, my receptors are up." Before she walks on, she stops to kiss the wall.
"Growing up, I thought I was the only one. I sought counseling for it and kept my interest in objects discreet. Nobody had any answers for me." Eiffel's family discovered her secret when they found her, at age fourteen, in bed with one of her objects--a situation Eiffel insists was completely innocent and not sexual. "My family was very angry; my mother was horrified," she says. "I've lost a lot for being OS. Despite all that, I don't feel I should change."
Without the support of her family, Eiffel felt she had no outlets to discuss her lifestyle. She tried talking to church leaders and her friends, but nobody seemed to want to hear it. When she alluded to her sexuality with friends in the past, some of them picked up on it, but others did not. When she finally came out, her declaration was mostly met with support. "I told them, 'This is who I am, this is what I am,' and they reacted by saying, 'We knew that--it's just great to hear you say it,'" she says. "I did lose some friends when I came out, but I guess they were never my friends to start with. People might say, 'I feel sorry for you because you'll never know the wonder of human interaction.' My OS love is fulfilling to me."
She's tried relationships with men in the past, but they haven't lasted. Quite simply, she never felt romantically connected or willing to be physical. "I ended up hurting them because they thought something was wrong with them, that they were the reason we didn't connect."
Eiffel has studied the community and worked to unite it through the Internet for six years. She moderates the largest English-language international forum for OS members, and has kept the community tight and well protected. "Nobody wants to talk unless their conversations will be protected," she says.
"[There are a lot of members of the community that] don't come out. Some of them are married to regular people. They don't come out because of fear, and I don't blame them. They have jobs and connections with people that they don't want to lose. So people who are more appealing to the mainstream aren't coming out. There are others who have nothing to lose. I'm the exception--I have a lot to lose."
Perhaps Eiffel is willing to bear the spotlight for her community because she is a seemingly levelheaded woman whose life has been full of accomplishments--something people who don't understand OS might not expect. To those who may question or pity her, she's happy to mention her various achievements, which were all propelled by objects she's loved. She was a cadet in the illustrious U.S. Air Force Academy because of her fondness of the F-15 aircraft and studied sword fighting in Japan after falling in love with a sword she used to protect herself from an attack. Her passion for a bow drove her to study archery and eventually become a world champion archer.
"Objects have been at the root of my goals and dreams. To honor an object I love so much, I will be the best that I can," she says. "When I held my bow, I could feel the molecules flow through the bow and back into me."
According to Eiffel, the world is full of objects that radiate energy. She wasn't born with a super power that allows her to reach them, like Aquaman's ability to speak with sea creatures. She says that we all have the ability to communicate with objects; we simply do not because we do not need to. "I do not verbally communicate with my objects. We have an inability to communicate in one way, so we find another. Sense, touching, temperature, smell. I pick up on details other people do not. I use senses that other people do not." On more than one occasion, as Eiffel has touched her way along the railings, she has been offered help across the bridge by passersby who assumed she was blind.
"People tend to have a problem with the relationship aspect. But it's not fair to define someone else's relationship. I don't do it to anyone else and I expect the same courtesy from others." Looking out at the bay and the bridge's lanky shadow stretching across the glistening surface, she takes a moment before she adds, "I respect that that's how they see it...Nobody will argue that this bridge possesses character. But people don't see it's possible for me to be in love with him if there's no human-like interaction. Unless people see the bridge hugging me, they don't understand how I could love him. It's okay for people to question [OS], but I shouldn't be ostracized or turned away. I'm not hurting anyone."
As she reaches the walkway that leads to the beginning of the bridge, her hands immediately connect with the lustrous side railing. Eiffel comes across as a passionate and caring woman, and those qualities swell when she stands on the bridge. She wraps her right arm around the rail and her smile widens.
"We're all puzzle pieces. Some of us are in the center of the puzzle, connected to other pieces on all sides," she imparts. "Maybe I'm just on the edge. But I'm still on the puzzle."