I really like French kissing.
I remember the first time I did it, when I was in 7th grade, with Erin K. on the steps in her parent's condo. The thrill of it was overwhelming - it seemed incomprehensibly intimate (this was in the days when actual sexual activity between junior high school students was simply unheard-of). To this day, the first time that particular intimacy is exchanged with a woman gives me a frisson that is unique, unlike any of the other very pleasant sensations that may attend further explorations.
One time a few years back I was saying goodnight to a friend I'd been lusting after for a few years (without her knowledge - she had a boyfriend), but with whom I had never exchanged more than bear hugs and kisses on cheeks and occasionally closed mouths. I knew she was mildly attracted to me in that way that a friend can be attracted to a friend, but that carries no actual possibility of physical intimacy.
So we stand up to hug goodbye like always, do the good, deep hug, pull back for the quick kiss goodbye, do the kiss...and her mouth opens and her tongue slides into my mouth. Without thinking about it (thank ghod) I entwined my tongue with hers in the split second before she withdrew it. A thrill shot through me in that instant and I started to get hard instantly, just like that 7th grade boy. This was something that hadn't happened to me in over twenty years, that sort of instantaneous, split-second erection. We pulled back and stared at each other, bug-eyed at the line we'd just crossed without meaning to. All I could think to say was "Uhm...what was that?" She was just silent for second, then helplessly stammered, "oh my god...I don't know...I'm sorry...I didn't mean to do that, but..."
In the four years since that happened, I have not once failed to remember that moment when I've seen her: the power of that momentary act of intimacy has not dimmed at all.
I've been with a few women who didn't like French kissing very much; in most cases it was because some guy in their past had been sloppy or overeager or brutish or just unimaginative about it and they decided they didn't like it. A couple of them have just been kind of weird about having someone else's tongue in their mouth (strangely, both of them loved giving blowjobs, which seemed odd to me).
Most women seem to like it more than a little, but are apprehensive about each initial encounter, probably because of the same problems with previous guys. Gents, evidently a lot of us, possibly a majority, are not very good at this and really need to slow down, consider the value of the tease, and not mistake depth of tongue insertion for guarantor of passion. Immodest as it is to say so, judging from unsolicited reports received I'm evidently pretty good at it, which is nice to hear, considering how much I like doing it.
Then there are those women who are simply mad for French kissing, who seem like they'd rather do that than practically anything else. I've been with a few and each one has been completely different - in some cases it felt like the manifestation of a pathology, in others like the most intimate way to express a hunger for connection (these might be points along a continuum). H. was a girlfriend whose French kissing was of the latter sort; she liked sex just fine, but what truly stirred her was the passion she felt when her face and her lover's face were connected. We once kissed for three hours straight in my car, and I don't remember it ever being exasperating or tedious - her passion was that compelling.
J. was a high school classmate (with whom I would later have the first threesome; see previous post Reminiscence 3) whose mania for French kissing gradually came to seem more like a pathology. Given our relative youth, she was actually pretty good at it, especially considering that I was either the first or second guy she'd ever done it with. But there was something bottomless in her kissing, a complete absence of teasing or active ardour, but rather a desperate inhalation of whatever I could give her, like a desert animal sucking water from a stream after a long drought. She wasn't completely passive, but she was definitely receptive rather than reciprocating. I suppose I could say she was being submissive, but I wasn't thinking overtly in those terms yet and all it seemed to mean at this point was pouring as much passion as I could into her ever-open mouth, which always wanted more than I could fill.
That said, the first few times were great - 30-45 minutes of passionate kissing. But it turned out that's all it ever was, and as we continued to see each other, I began to find myself pulling away during these marathons - many long minutes of initially passionate French kissing, then my ardour inexorably exhausting itself in a shift to more conventional open-mouthed kissing, then face-kissing, and finally nuzzling.
This is, I'm convinced, a byproduct of the threshold nature of the French kiss. The French kiss is usually the first bodily invasion, and it suggests if not invites other, more serious, invasions. A line is crossed with the French kiss: it is not an impermeable line, but it is a line. One can scurry back across the line, but it is, I think, a clear decision point, and there is frequently a sort of sad decay of ardour that occurs during the minutes of a French kiss, a wordless resignation and recognition that nothing more is going to happen. Sometimes this is merely the expression of signals unmistakeably expressed elsewhere: the hand removed from the breast or ass, resistance felt at an attempt to shift from the vertical to the horizontal.
But sometimes there is a mysteriously wordless, gestureless signaling that occurs, where the kiss itself is the signal. One continues to kiss, but perhaps the tongue of the other does not venture out in response quite so ardently as it did mere moments before. Perhaps teeth click or clash together and lips close in response and do not reopen quite quickly enough - a message is sent and received. Sometimes a particular movement of one's passion will be found bizarre or distasteful - you ran your tongue across her teeth, or sucked on her tongue, or bit her lip, or sealed her mouth closed with yours so that she couldn't breath for a thrilling few seconds. One mistake and suddenly the tempo and timbre of the kissing has changed. What seconds ago was mounting passion, urgent violation, suddenly becomes cautious, judicious monitoring. Not quite perfunctory, but no longer passionate. Kisses on the cheek are mere moments away.
Then there is the sad fact that in every relationship I've been in, observed, or heard of, French kissing inevitably shifts from main course or ala carte entree of passion to special occasion seasoning. But that's an entirely different topic. Where does passion go in relationships, and why? I've never yet heard a good explanation.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Some days
I wasn't completely honest in my last post - I think I tried to hide some of the truths about the way I feel about my ex-girlfriend, in a couple of different ways.
It's something I've been having trouble with; I keep having to reorient myself towards the North Star of that odd type of purely selfish honesty that this sort of blog putatively sails towards. I think my ex still comes here sometimes - it's hard to say why. In more hopeful, generous moments, I dare to think that maybe in some sense it's to see what is happening in my life. In darker moments, I fear she comes looking solely for ammunition, for something that I might write about her that can keep alive the story she felt she had to tell herself about who and what I was. So there have been times when I have shied away from saying what I actually felt, because I don't want to write anything that can be intentionally malinterpreted. But neither, out of my own pride, have I wanted at times to admit to how much I still think about her.
Like this morning, when I woke up with an aching for her that was so intense it was like somebody had removed some vital organ or part of my body. I can deal with this rationally - it's healthy mourning, not a surprise, nothing to worry about, perfectly normal, etc. All true. But also true is the shocking intensity of this feeling, this many months on. As I've noted in previous posts, it's not like I've locked myself away, hermit-like, merely going over the past. I've had some sexual and even light-romantic dalliances. But they are what they are, and I'm pretty clear that they're pleasant interludes until something more serious comes along.
Maybe it's only then that I'll finally stop waking up like this, about once every seven to ten days, feeling around for K. So there's a naked truth - I miss her. It feels disarming to say that, like I'm somehow surrenduring some chimerical notion of disconnection, or giving something away to her. But I never wanted to be her adversary. That feels like the real defeat, to be trapped as adversaries.
In other news, I was recently reassured by a woman that I could do "whatever (I) wanted to her, really, literally". This offer, intriguing as it was, came at the end of an exhausting party at my place at about 4:30 am. I was too tired to start any sort of scene and was wary about the offer (when offers like that are made, it is best to be very wary indeed). But then she proceeded to try to reassure me of her seriousness by jabbing one of my knives about an inch deep into her thigh. To say that this bled a lot doesn't begin to capture the charnelhouse-like geysers of blood that proceeded to rain down on my couch. I must say, I certainly did not doubt at that point that she had truly meant that I could do whatever I wanted to to her. I also did not doubt that the last thing in the world I wanted to do was anything with her. Crazy women have lost some of their charm for me over the years. At least the party wasn't boring.
It's something I've been having trouble with; I keep having to reorient myself towards the North Star of that odd type of purely selfish honesty that this sort of blog putatively sails towards. I think my ex still comes here sometimes - it's hard to say why. In more hopeful, generous moments, I dare to think that maybe in some sense it's to see what is happening in my life. In darker moments, I fear she comes looking solely for ammunition, for something that I might write about her that can keep alive the story she felt she had to tell herself about who and what I was. So there have been times when I have shied away from saying what I actually felt, because I don't want to write anything that can be intentionally malinterpreted. But neither, out of my own pride, have I wanted at times to admit to how much I still think about her.
Like this morning, when I woke up with an aching for her that was so intense it was like somebody had removed some vital organ or part of my body. I can deal with this rationally - it's healthy mourning, not a surprise, nothing to worry about, perfectly normal, etc. All true. But also true is the shocking intensity of this feeling, this many months on. As I've noted in previous posts, it's not like I've locked myself away, hermit-like, merely going over the past. I've had some sexual and even light-romantic dalliances. But they are what they are, and I'm pretty clear that they're pleasant interludes until something more serious comes along.
Maybe it's only then that I'll finally stop waking up like this, about once every seven to ten days, feeling around for K. So there's a naked truth - I miss her. It feels disarming to say that, like I'm somehow surrenduring some chimerical notion of disconnection, or giving something away to her. But I never wanted to be her adversary. That feels like the real defeat, to be trapped as adversaries.
In other news, I was recently reassured by a woman that I could do "whatever (I) wanted to her, really, literally". This offer, intriguing as it was, came at the end of an exhausting party at my place at about 4:30 am. I was too tired to start any sort of scene and was wary about the offer (when offers like that are made, it is best to be very wary indeed). But then she proceeded to try to reassure me of her seriousness by jabbing one of my knives about an inch deep into her thigh. To say that this bled a lot doesn't begin to capture the charnelhouse-like geysers of blood that proceeded to rain down on my couch. I must say, I certainly did not doubt at that point that she had truly meant that I could do whatever I wanted to to her. I also did not doubt that the last thing in the world I wanted to do was anything with her. Crazy women have lost some of their charm for me over the years. At least the party wasn't boring.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Eros on recumbent bicycle
So this is much-delayed, not because there is so very much to note by way of erotic interludes or concupiscent conquests or flirtatious forays. It's just that I've been taking things and people (read: women) as they come to me rather than forcing the issue. And to my surprise, they have come, albeit not necessarily in the form that I'd choose ultimately. But then, as part of the New Model, I tell myself simply to relax in the face of the future and await that which will come. Clearly, this cannot continue forever (stasis is in any case never a real option in human lives), but as an orientation against obsession with the past and the empty future, it marks a real advance.
All of which is not to say that the past does not intrude or that the future does not loom darkly at times.
Someone at work asked me a few weeks ago if I still thought about my ex. I had to fight the urge to say, "now that's a fucking stupid question." I mean, sure, days will go by when I don't at all, but then there will be stretches of days when I'm thinking of her a lot - sometimes with sadness, sometimes with humor (we laughed a lot, so there are a lot of things, places, etc., that I associate with something funny that we said or did together), sometimes with residual resentment. Not really anger exactly, but a resentment that comes up for me about the ugliness that got chosen over something more human and kind. Still, I care about her. Why? Mostly because I'm a moron, I guess. It's nearly six months since we've had any sort of contact at all and at this point I think I'm wondering whether we ever will again.
And of course there's my father. This weekend was harder than I'd have thought. The conjunction of the Blue Angels zooming around (he was a Navy pilot and I watched a lot of Blue Angels shows with him) and the baseball playoffs just drove home the presence of his absence, a constant reminder on the periphery of whatever else I was doing that I could not pick up the phone and call him to talk about the game, politics, my job, or anything else. I was able to keep the really bad memories of his last hours out of my mind - it's impressive what we're able to suppress when we have to, I suppose. I've found myself sometimes in dalliance with the superstition of the atheistic - "if you are around somewhere, Dad (though I actually don't believe in any such realm), I love you." This is obviously more for me than for him, because he's not here anymore, but there is that ineluctable trace of the child hedging his bet, just in case, hoping a barren hope.
If I were made of sterner rationalist stuff, I'd feel really stupid about this. Instead, I choose to hew to the Roman poet Terence's wonderful declaration: Homo sum; nil humani mihi alienum. I am a human being; nothing which is human is alien to me. Including, I suppose, my own fleeting superstitious shimmer of thought about my Dad hovering somewhere else, or that stubborn aching feeling of connection to my ex that still persists, despite it all.
And the future isn't always rosy either. I had a bad day, the first bad one, actually, in a few months. It was the old tape playing: future as failure, as loneliness, as lack. I was able to recognize it for what it was and beat it back, but I was surprised by the strength the fucker had. I guess I thought two months locked in a closet might've vitiated his attack, but he was in fine fettle. And I was reminded of that insight I had sometime during the outpatient program: there will be no "after depression" for me. I have to get used to this bastard coming out of his closet, no matter how long I've had him locked up in there. I just need to remember that I can, with effort, get him back in the closet at some point.
There's been some good stuff, some kinky stuff, some weird stuff, but I'll save that for the next post, in which Eros gets on the Stairmaster and works off a few calories.
All of which is not to say that the past does not intrude or that the future does not loom darkly at times.
Someone at work asked me a few weeks ago if I still thought about my ex. I had to fight the urge to say, "now that's a fucking stupid question." I mean, sure, days will go by when I don't at all, but then there will be stretches of days when I'm thinking of her a lot - sometimes with sadness, sometimes with humor (we laughed a lot, so there are a lot of things, places, etc., that I associate with something funny that we said or did together), sometimes with residual resentment. Not really anger exactly, but a resentment that comes up for me about the ugliness that got chosen over something more human and kind. Still, I care about her. Why? Mostly because I'm a moron, I guess. It's nearly six months since we've had any sort of contact at all and at this point I think I'm wondering whether we ever will again.
And of course there's my father. This weekend was harder than I'd have thought. The conjunction of the Blue Angels zooming around (he was a Navy pilot and I watched a lot of Blue Angels shows with him) and the baseball playoffs just drove home the presence of his absence, a constant reminder on the periphery of whatever else I was doing that I could not pick up the phone and call him to talk about the game, politics, my job, or anything else. I was able to keep the really bad memories of his last hours out of my mind - it's impressive what we're able to suppress when we have to, I suppose. I've found myself sometimes in dalliance with the superstition of the atheistic - "if you are around somewhere, Dad (though I actually don't believe in any such realm), I love you." This is obviously more for me than for him, because he's not here anymore, but there is that ineluctable trace of the child hedging his bet, just in case, hoping a barren hope.
If I were made of sterner rationalist stuff, I'd feel really stupid about this. Instead, I choose to hew to the Roman poet Terence's wonderful declaration: Homo sum; nil humani mihi alienum. I am a human being; nothing which is human is alien to me. Including, I suppose, my own fleeting superstitious shimmer of thought about my Dad hovering somewhere else, or that stubborn aching feeling of connection to my ex that still persists, despite it all.
And the future isn't always rosy either. I had a bad day, the first bad one, actually, in a few months. It was the old tape playing: future as failure, as loneliness, as lack. I was able to recognize it for what it was and beat it back, but I was surprised by the strength the fucker had. I guess I thought two months locked in a closet might've vitiated his attack, but he was in fine fettle. And I was reminded of that insight I had sometime during the outpatient program: there will be no "after depression" for me. I have to get used to this bastard coming out of his closet, no matter how long I've had him locked up in there. I just need to remember that I can, with effort, get him back in the closet at some point.
There's been some good stuff, some kinky stuff, some weird stuff, but I'll save that for the next post, in which Eros gets on the Stairmaster and works off a few calories.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
On the move, adjusting the rear view mirror
Something is happening to me. I can't tell exactly how big it is, or whether it's just a passing mood, or if it will stick, or whether it will be able to weather the next efflorescence of the depression. But some kind of potentially fundamental reorientation feels like it's taking place inside me.
So much of my life has been organized around loss, around lack (Lac[k]anians nod knowingly), around fear of future loss, around absence, around the probability of future loneliness. A personality based on an ontology of scarcity. I worry about who might love me now, but won't love me in the future. I obsess about who used to love me but doesn't now. I worry about what might/probably won't happen. I worry about what I've failed to do. And "worry" here should be read as "obsessively organize my emotions and basic orientation to the world around", because that's what it amounts to.
Now obviously, a lot of this is, has been, the disease. And that's not going away. I will have this the rest of my life. Which means I have to be on my guard at all times, and that I can't get too excited about what might feel like fundamental change (not that I'm predisposed to this sort of thing - I don't recall feeling like this since I went to college nearly 25 years ago). The reality of the depression means that I can't mistake this for more than it seems to be; the relatively rapid appearance of a new regulative ideal in my life, one of plenitude rather than scarcity.
The fact of the matter is that there has always been more, despite everything. I've actually dated more women, slept with and played with more women, than most men I know. I'm surprised when I look back at the various periods of my life to realize how many friends I've had during most of these; I haven't always kept them, but people have always been attracted to me in a variety of ways. Opportunities, sometimes remarkable ones, present themselves to me, even when I don't take advantage of them, out of fear. I've lived in the midst of plenty a lot of the time and instead, I've worried about future lack, unable to recognize what was around me.
One of the most ridiculous examples: I have not infrequently started relationships by asking women about how they plan to break up with me...planning for the worst moment at the best moment. Almost none of them has kept their word - I suppose I ought not to be surprised by those betrayals, including the most recent one. I've done much to create these situations wherein betrayal has such an enormous cost associated with it that it practically ensures that the breakup will be made as ugly as possible...including the most recent one. If I'd felt more confident that there would be more later on, maybe these women wouldn't feel as much guilt as they seem to at the end of our relationships, guilt that then gets expressed as resentment, which hurts both of us worse.
I'm not saying that I want to be one of those men who treats relationships or women or anything else casually; I don't think I could in any case.
But what if I take as my regulative ideal this simple thought: there will be more. Not just in relationships, but in all of life. Stop focussing on the lack, the loss, the probably won't, the I didn't: say the horizon had shimmering above it this simple idea - there will be more. It's so simple, and of course it has the horrid whiff of the affirmation around it. I prefer to think of it as a reassurance; the difference is significant to me - it's not about me, it's about the world. I'm still the same, but if I see reality I have to be alive to that fact: there will be more.
So much fear, so much worry, so much concern about the loss coming up in the future.
I've already seen evidence of how radical a shift this could be for me. The woman I've been playing with had a not-unexpected backlash reaction to the intimacy we've been sharing and started acting out a bit. This lead up to an unpleasant evening where she kind of went off on me. To her credit, she did write to sort of/kind of apologize the next day, though the apology was in the form of "I shouldn't have acted the way I did because it wasn't fair because you didn't actually do anything to deserve it last night - I was actually edgy because I've been upset about some of the things you've been doing in the past week."
Now in the past week the "things" I'd been doing had basically been expressing mild affection and doing some flirting, albeit at a distance. But even this was too much, evidently. So I just didn't respond to her email. For five days.
This is unheard-of for me; I usually rush to process everything, immediately, in fear that the other person might think poorly of me and cease liking me. But I decided that I had acted in good faith, and that I didn't really care what she was upset about. After all, there will be more. If it was that important, she'd tell me, not drop hints in an email designed to get me to ask. So I ignored the email and fought back every impulse to write, phone, process.
Finally, after five days, she sent me another email, asking if I'd received the first one. I immediately responded that yes, I had, but that it seemed like we both needed some space from each other and that I had needed some time to figure out whether or not I cared that she was upset about some things that I'd evidently been doing. Trust me, this is revolutionary for me. So she asked me if I was free for dinner a few days later and I've heard no more of the supposed things I'd been doing that irritated her, even though I made it clear that I assumed she'd let me know if it was that important. After dinner, she said we should see each other again soon. And we've left it there for now.
I just refused to engage, based on the assumption that, should this crash and burn, there would be more sooner or later. Absolutely mind-boggling.
This is new and therefore a little odd. But it doesn't feel brittle; it feels supple and calm, like it can actually become part of me rather than an unconvincing act. Who knows where it might lead?
So much for exorcism of cowardice.
So much of my life has been organized around loss, around lack (Lac[k]anians nod knowingly), around fear of future loss, around absence, around the probability of future loneliness. A personality based on an ontology of scarcity. I worry about who might love me now, but won't love me in the future. I obsess about who used to love me but doesn't now. I worry about what might/probably won't happen. I worry about what I've failed to do. And "worry" here should be read as "obsessively organize my emotions and basic orientation to the world around", because that's what it amounts to.
Now obviously, a lot of this is, has been, the disease. And that's not going away. I will have this the rest of my life. Which means I have to be on my guard at all times, and that I can't get too excited about what might feel like fundamental change (not that I'm predisposed to this sort of thing - I don't recall feeling like this since I went to college nearly 25 years ago). The reality of the depression means that I can't mistake this for more than it seems to be; the relatively rapid appearance of a new regulative ideal in my life, one of plenitude rather than scarcity.
The fact of the matter is that there has always been more, despite everything. I've actually dated more women, slept with and played with more women, than most men I know. I'm surprised when I look back at the various periods of my life to realize how many friends I've had during most of these; I haven't always kept them, but people have always been attracted to me in a variety of ways. Opportunities, sometimes remarkable ones, present themselves to me, even when I don't take advantage of them, out of fear. I've lived in the midst of plenty a lot of the time and instead, I've worried about future lack, unable to recognize what was around me.
One of the most ridiculous examples: I have not infrequently started relationships by asking women about how they plan to break up with me...planning for the worst moment at the best moment. Almost none of them has kept their word - I suppose I ought not to be surprised by those betrayals, including the most recent one. I've done much to create these situations wherein betrayal has such an enormous cost associated with it that it practically ensures that the breakup will be made as ugly as possible...including the most recent one. If I'd felt more confident that there would be more later on, maybe these women wouldn't feel as much guilt as they seem to at the end of our relationships, guilt that then gets expressed as resentment, which hurts both of us worse.
I'm not saying that I want to be one of those men who treats relationships or women or anything else casually; I don't think I could in any case.
But what if I take as my regulative ideal this simple thought: there will be more. Not just in relationships, but in all of life. Stop focussing on the lack, the loss, the probably won't, the I didn't: say the horizon had shimmering above it this simple idea - there will be more. It's so simple, and of course it has the horrid whiff of the affirmation around it. I prefer to think of it as a reassurance; the difference is significant to me - it's not about me, it's about the world. I'm still the same, but if I see reality I have to be alive to that fact: there will be more.
So much fear, so much worry, so much concern about the loss coming up in the future.
I've already seen evidence of how radical a shift this could be for me. The woman I've been playing with had a not-unexpected backlash reaction to the intimacy we've been sharing and started acting out a bit. This lead up to an unpleasant evening where she kind of went off on me. To her credit, she did write to sort of/kind of apologize the next day, though the apology was in the form of "I shouldn't have acted the way I did because it wasn't fair because you didn't actually do anything to deserve it last night - I was actually edgy because I've been upset about some of the things you've been doing in the past week."
Now in the past week the "things" I'd been doing had basically been expressing mild affection and doing some flirting, albeit at a distance. But even this was too much, evidently. So I just didn't respond to her email. For five days.
This is unheard-of for me; I usually rush to process everything, immediately, in fear that the other person might think poorly of me and cease liking me. But I decided that I had acted in good faith, and that I didn't really care what she was upset about. After all, there will be more. If it was that important, she'd tell me, not drop hints in an email designed to get me to ask. So I ignored the email and fought back every impulse to write, phone, process.
Finally, after five days, she sent me another email, asking if I'd received the first one. I immediately responded that yes, I had, but that it seemed like we both needed some space from each other and that I had needed some time to figure out whether or not I cared that she was upset about some things that I'd evidently been doing. Trust me, this is revolutionary for me. So she asked me if I was free for dinner a few days later and I've heard no more of the supposed things I'd been doing that irritated her, even though I made it clear that I assumed she'd let me know if it was that important. After dinner, she said we should see each other again soon. And we've left it there for now.
I just refused to engage, based on the assumption that, should this crash and burn, there would be more sooner or later. Absolutely mind-boggling.
This is new and therefore a little odd. But it doesn't feel brittle; it feels supple and calm, like it can actually become part of me rather than an unconvincing act. Who knows where it might lead?
So much for exorcism of cowardice.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Instant replay not available
So the free 'n easy concupiscence continues. This past weekend saw a marked increase in intensity and intimacy - the first full-blown SM scene I've done with somebody at home in a long time.
And it was extraordinary.
She was seeking something. She wanted. She needed. She responded. She didn't just take; she gave back. And it was a revelation. Any wonder, then, that the scene turned out to be one of the most emotionally intense I've ever done, reminiscent if not quite the equal of the one I described earlier with my ex?
She sought catharsis - she wanted to cry. She did not want to retreat; she wanted to be called forward, to be called, reached, touched. I do not fool myself that this kind of intensity can be maintained or replicated at will. Perhaps it is best to regard it as a sudden and unexpected gift, not as an indication of some deeper meaning or possible future. A nearly random connection, an attraction as powerful and as volatile as that between some short-lived subatomic particles, and just as existential.
She sobbed; she whispered "thank you" over and over as I held her. Later, she told me it was unlike any scene she'd ever done. I wish I could figure out what it is that makes these sorts of connections passingly possible for me, but unsustainable. Perhaps it's because I'm responding rather than asserting my own needs. Once that dynamic has been established, it's hard to go back, hard to assert rather than respond.
But at the same time, I too want to be called, to be reached, touched. But I have not yet found a partner as interested in giving that way. I thought I had until about 18 months ago. But maybe that was just the depression gaining momentum - it's hard to tell from this vantage point.
Anyway, to feel that alive again, even if only for just this once...it had been such a long time. Maybe something inside me is stirring again.
Or maybe it's just the meds working. Hard to tell from this vantage point.
And it was extraordinary.
She was seeking something. She wanted. She needed. She responded. She didn't just take; she gave back. And it was a revelation. Any wonder, then, that the scene turned out to be one of the most emotionally intense I've ever done, reminiscent if not quite the equal of the one I described earlier with my ex?
She sought catharsis - she wanted to cry. She did not want to retreat; she wanted to be called forward, to be called, reached, touched. I do not fool myself that this kind of intensity can be maintained or replicated at will. Perhaps it is best to regard it as a sudden and unexpected gift, not as an indication of some deeper meaning or possible future. A nearly random connection, an attraction as powerful and as volatile as that between some short-lived subatomic particles, and just as existential.
She sobbed; she whispered "thank you" over and over as I held her. Later, she told me it was unlike any scene she'd ever done. I wish I could figure out what it is that makes these sorts of connections passingly possible for me, but unsustainable. Perhaps it's because I'm responding rather than asserting my own needs. Once that dynamic has been established, it's hard to go back, hard to assert rather than respond.
But at the same time, I too want to be called, to be reached, touched. But I have not yet found a partner as interested in giving that way. I thought I had until about 18 months ago. But maybe that was just the depression gaining momentum - it's hard to tell from this vantage point.
Anyway, to feel that alive again, even if only for just this once...it had been such a long time. Maybe something inside me is stirring again.
Or maybe it's just the meds working. Hard to tell from this vantage point.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Sweeping the past from the future.
1. I can't seem to stop the sweeping sense of the past from colliding with the fearful future. The past is represented by thoughts of my father, my ex, my past failings, the history of my depression, that sort of thing. The future is filled with possibilities, to be sure, but so many of them seem so overdetermined right now. And I can't tell how distorted my perspective is by loss. Right now, loss is like the lens that I look at life through a lot of the time.
2. But not all the time. This past week, an unexpected eruption of...well, I don't know what to call it, other than a pleasant reminder that there is indeed hope for the future. Unexpectedly, a friend I've known for some years (not the one referred to in previous post) and I have started some impromptu fooling around. Nothing terribly serious, just sex and light S/M play. It feels easy and free of expectations and secrets. I don't see a long-term future for it, but right now it feels really good, joyous and a much-needed relief from the heavy mourning I've been immersed in.
3. Which of course leads to all sorts of questions. Because my last relationship felt like that at the beginning, too - joyous, a relief from so much that had gone before. It felt much more fraught with potential than this, to be sure, and for good reason. This is a diversion. That was life-changing.
So where did it go wrong? When did the joy give way to...whatever it was that it gave way to. Ennui? Frustration? Silences and truths not told on both sides? Digging around in the muck of that is the last thing I should be doing right now, but I feel that I owe the relationship that much, if not now, then at some point. It's obvious to me now that that's how and why I started this blog. Anyway, I feel that the relationship deserves to be taken seriously, because it was that serious, she was that important, we were that close - knowing and understanding seem critical. I won't be afraid to face the truth of the relationship and my part in it. I haven't been yet, hence this site. My plaza of parrhesia.
4. My father's death continues to hit me in seemingly random moments. I bought a bagel for lunch at Noah's Bagels yesterday and looking at the old black & white photos of Brooklyn (where he was from) had me in tears. I can't believe that I'll never get to talk to him again about politics or jazz or baseball - it just seems unbelievable and when it catches up with me, the force of it is stunning.
5. I think I'm a little closer to understanding the way in which the two losses, of my father and my girlfriend, seemed linked somehow. I think they represented the stability of the past and the promise of a future. I had of course known my father all of my life; a simple and obvious fact but one that is so easy to overlook or underestimate. We weren't exceptionally close, but he did form part of the fabric of my life, a shoreline that I always knew was right there on the horizon whenever I was at sea.
And for a long time I thought that my girlfriend and I might be together for a very long time, conceivably until one of us died. At our best, there was a sort of gentle lovingness (ghod, how long ago and far away that feels now) that felt like the sort of thing that old couples talk about. Whenever you hear old couples talk about what kept them together, they always acknowledge that the heat of youth passed long before, but that there was a deeper, gentler love that persisted. I thought for a long, long time that we had that. She seemed to as well, or at least spoke and acted like she did. Maybe she was trying to convince herself - not the same as lying, exactly. And maybe I was trying to convince myself too - there were moments, terrible & terrifying moments when I thought that my love for her might not be enough, might not measure up to some undefinable standard or requirement that I myself had. In other words, that I loved her, but not enough to make it last.
But then the moment would pass, and she'd say or do something that would melt me a little, and I'd put the Bad Thought back in a box labelled Doubts That All Couples Have. And I'd be sure again. Who knows how often she was actually sure.
1. I can't seem to stop the sweeping sense of the past from colliding with the fearful future. The past is represented by thoughts of my father, my ex, my past failings, the history of my depression, that sort of thing. The future is filled with possibilities, to be sure, but so many of them seem so overdetermined right now. And I can't tell how distorted my perspective is by loss. Right now, loss is like the lens that I look at life through a lot of the time.
2. But not all the time. This past week, an unexpected eruption of...well, I don't know what to call it, other than a pleasant reminder that there is indeed hope for the future. Unexpectedly, a friend I've known for some years (not the one referred to in previous post) and I have started some impromptu fooling around. Nothing terribly serious, just sex and light S/M play. It feels easy and free of expectations and secrets. I don't see a long-term future for it, but right now it feels really good, joyous and a much-needed relief from the heavy mourning I've been immersed in.
3. Which of course leads to all sorts of questions. Because my last relationship felt like that at the beginning, too - joyous, a relief from so much that had gone before. It felt much more fraught with potential than this, to be sure, and for good reason. This is a diversion. That was life-changing.
So where did it go wrong? When did the joy give way to...whatever it was that it gave way to. Ennui? Frustration? Silences and truths not told on both sides? Digging around in the muck of that is the last thing I should be doing right now, but I feel that I owe the relationship that much, if not now, then at some point. It's obvious to me now that that's how and why I started this blog. Anyway, I feel that the relationship deserves to be taken seriously, because it was that serious, she was that important, we were that close - knowing and understanding seem critical. I won't be afraid to face the truth of the relationship and my part in it. I haven't been yet, hence this site. My plaza of parrhesia.
4. My father's death continues to hit me in seemingly random moments. I bought a bagel for lunch at Noah's Bagels yesterday and looking at the old black & white photos of Brooklyn (where he was from) had me in tears. I can't believe that I'll never get to talk to him again about politics or jazz or baseball - it just seems unbelievable and when it catches up with me, the force of it is stunning.
5. I think I'm a little closer to understanding the way in which the two losses, of my father and my girlfriend, seemed linked somehow. I think they represented the stability of the past and the promise of a future. I had of course known my father all of my life; a simple and obvious fact but one that is so easy to overlook or underestimate. We weren't exceptionally close, but he did form part of the fabric of my life, a shoreline that I always knew was right there on the horizon whenever I was at sea.
And for a long time I thought that my girlfriend and I might be together for a very long time, conceivably until one of us died. At our best, there was a sort of gentle lovingness (ghod, how long ago and far away that feels now) that felt like the sort of thing that old couples talk about. Whenever you hear old couples talk about what kept them together, they always acknowledge that the heat of youth passed long before, but that there was a deeper, gentler love that persisted. I thought for a long, long time that we had that. She seemed to as well, or at least spoke and acted like she did. Maybe she was trying to convince herself - not the same as lying, exactly. And maybe I was trying to convince myself too - there were moments, terrible & terrifying moments when I thought that my love for her might not be enough, might not measure up to some undefinable standard or requirement that I myself had. In other words, that I loved her, but not enough to make it last.
But then the moment would pass, and she'd say or do something that would melt me a little, and I'd put the Bad Thought back in a box labelled Doubts That All Couples Have. And I'd be sure again. Who knows how often she was actually sure.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
And a few more
1. I should have mentioned in the last entry that I haven't given my ex any evidence that I miss her, either. There hasn't been any communication between us at all, on either side. Somehow I don't think it's bothering her much, but I can't say that's anything other than a guess and I could very well be wrong. It's not like I've been reaching out and getting rebuffed. So that's a confession - I tend to get caught up in my own feelings of loss and not consider how I might be contributing to someone else's.
2. It's her birthday today and I'm not calling, sending a card, or emailing, not even bland "best wishes for a happy birthday", and I feel uneasy about it. I've been unanimously advised not to, so I'm heeding what I take to be wise advice, not wanting to seem like I'm trying to find an in. But it seems cold and petty.
3. Which leads me to a really guilty confession; the petty thought has occurred to me that she may in fact have learned about the death of my father and deliberately decided not to express any sympathy at all. I don't want to think that's true, and I feel petty and ungenerous for having had the thought.
And I feel guilty for thinking it in the first place, for even having thoughts about her reactions to something so huge as my father's death - even though half a dozen friends have assured me that it's only natural that I'd miss sympathy from someone I've been so close to. It seems like another way in which the two losses are linked, other than the obvious facts that I've suffered a lot of loss in a short time span and that I don't handle it well.
4. What does it mean that my father's death triggered all this renewed sense of loss about my ex? Why is that? It seems more deeply linked than what all my friends and family have said: "well, it's just natural that one loss would bring up feelings about another loss." That's a sort of magnetic theory of emotions - one emotional reaction pulls another one towards it, and so on. This feels different, like there's a substantive link inside me somehow. Something else to remind myself not to obsess about.
5. The date with UIW got cancelled because of my father's death and I don't think I'm going to reschedule - it just doesn't seem like a good or productive thing to do, for a lot of reasons. While I was away, I reconnected with an old friend who I'd had some mild romantic-sexual liason with in the past. She suggested that she might visit sometime soon and stay with me; that wouldn't be bad, because it would be light, not fraught with expectation (at least not on my side and I can't imagine on hers - she's kind of a free spirit). We'll see. If nothing else, the company and the flirtation would be a welcome diversion.
6. I'm working again, which is good.
2. It's her birthday today and I'm not calling, sending a card, or emailing, not even bland "best wishes for a happy birthday", and I feel uneasy about it. I've been unanimously advised not to, so I'm heeding what I take to be wise advice, not wanting to seem like I'm trying to find an in. But it seems cold and petty.
3. Which leads me to a really guilty confession; the petty thought has occurred to me that she may in fact have learned about the death of my father and deliberately decided not to express any sympathy at all. I don't want to think that's true, and I feel petty and ungenerous for having had the thought.
And I feel guilty for thinking it in the first place, for even having thoughts about her reactions to something so huge as my father's death - even though half a dozen friends have assured me that it's only natural that I'd miss sympathy from someone I've been so close to. It seems like another way in which the two losses are linked, other than the obvious facts that I've suffered a lot of loss in a short time span and that I don't handle it well.
4. What does it mean that my father's death triggered all this renewed sense of loss about my ex? Why is that? It seems more deeply linked than what all my friends and family have said: "well, it's just natural that one loss would bring up feelings about another loss." That's a sort of magnetic theory of emotions - one emotional reaction pulls another one towards it, and so on. This feels different, like there's a substantive link inside me somehow. Something else to remind myself not to obsess about.
5. The date with UIW got cancelled because of my father's death and I don't think I'm going to reschedule - it just doesn't seem like a good or productive thing to do, for a lot of reasons. While I was away, I reconnected with an old friend who I'd had some mild romantic-sexual liason with in the past. She suggested that she might visit sometime soon and stay with me; that wouldn't be bad, because it would be light, not fraught with expectation (at least not on my side and I can't imagine on hers - she's kind of a free spirit). We'll see. If nothing else, the company and the flirtation would be a welcome diversion.
6. I'm working again, which is good.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Confessions
1. I worry that my father was secretly ashamed of me because of my depression. I know he didn't understand the disease, but he tried to support me the best he could. I hope I didn't disappoint him. This is, I'm sure, pretty typical grieving stuff, but the pangs are acute - hoping that I wasn't the cause of pain to him, but also the less attractive hope that he thought well of me, that he approved of me, that he was proud of me in some way. The unattractive need of a child.
2. It seems clear to me that my ex doesn't miss me, doesn't mourn or miss the relationship. I don't have any evidence of this, but it just seems that way. There hasn't been any contact or communication between us at all for two months and it still hurts, and I still miss her. It got ugly, so ugly, in a way I would not have thought possible, that communication had to cease.
The missing her...it's not like that every day. I don't sit around obsessing about the relationship - it's more a matter of these sudden moments that crop up. Some days it's a keening sense of loss, when there's something that would be so natural to share with her, or something that we used to do together...and then this thought immediately shoots through my head, unbidden: she probably isn't having any feelings about you.
I had my first day at work at my new job today. When I came home, I was alone. I had a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, one I'd bought with her over a year ago (we drank a fair amount of champagne - it was a special thing we shared). So I opened it, alone, and poured a single glass. And it just felt wrong. That was one of the times when the loss-thought went shooting through my head. She probably doesn't miss you. And that just hurts. It hurts to feel like you could suddenly become so utterly unimportant to someone so important to you.
3. Which brings me back to my dad...who I'll never again be able to be important to, who I'll never be able to say "I love you" to, with whom I won't have any more chances to clarify what I really meant. He's just...gone. The totality, the irrevocability of it...my descent into cliche marks the universality of the loss - it's not like my loss is unique among all the other losses, it's just special to me. Every death can be an individual apocalypse for those left behind, or just a sad occasion. So I suppose my confession is that I wonder whether I'm just genetically/physiologically predisposed to these apocalypses. And if I am, does that somehow invalidate or delegitimate them? "Reason not the need," goes the line from King Lear, and I read it as meaning that different people have different needs and that there is no measuring stick against which the appropriateness or seemliness of one's need can or ought to be compared.
4. So my apocalypses: if they're genetic/physiologic in origin (as research into depression is continuing to show), can we still say "reason not the need" if the modern translation/implication of that phrase would be "medicate not the need"? But then, I'm medicated, quite thoroughly. I feel remarkably stable, considering what I've gone through and what's just happened with my dad's death. The meds are working. But the holes in the fabric of my days still exist and these sharp thorns still poke through relatively unimpeded.
I miss him. I miss her. Totally different kinds of loss. I keep taking my meds.
2. It seems clear to me that my ex doesn't miss me, doesn't mourn or miss the relationship. I don't have any evidence of this, but it just seems that way. There hasn't been any contact or communication between us at all for two months and it still hurts, and I still miss her. It got ugly, so ugly, in a way I would not have thought possible, that communication had to cease.
The missing her...it's not like that every day. I don't sit around obsessing about the relationship - it's more a matter of these sudden moments that crop up. Some days it's a keening sense of loss, when there's something that would be so natural to share with her, or something that we used to do together...and then this thought immediately shoots through my head, unbidden: she probably isn't having any feelings about you.
I had my first day at work at my new job today. When I came home, I was alone. I had a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, one I'd bought with her over a year ago (we drank a fair amount of champagne - it was a special thing we shared). So I opened it, alone, and poured a single glass. And it just felt wrong. That was one of the times when the loss-thought went shooting through my head. She probably doesn't miss you. And that just hurts. It hurts to feel like you could suddenly become so utterly unimportant to someone so important to you.
3. Which brings me back to my dad...who I'll never again be able to be important to, who I'll never be able to say "I love you" to, with whom I won't have any more chances to clarify what I really meant. He's just...gone. The totality, the irrevocability of it...my descent into cliche marks the universality of the loss - it's not like my loss is unique among all the other losses, it's just special to me. Every death can be an individual apocalypse for those left behind, or just a sad occasion. So I suppose my confession is that I wonder whether I'm just genetically/physiologically predisposed to these apocalypses. And if I am, does that somehow invalidate or delegitimate them? "Reason not the need," goes the line from King Lear, and I read it as meaning that different people have different needs and that there is no measuring stick against which the appropriateness or seemliness of one's need can or ought to be compared.
4. So my apocalypses: if they're genetic/physiologic in origin (as research into depression is continuing to show), can we still say "reason not the need" if the modern translation/implication of that phrase would be "medicate not the need"? But then, I'm medicated, quite thoroughly. I feel remarkably stable, considering what I've gone through and what's just happened with my dad's death. The meds are working. But the holes in the fabric of my days still exist and these sharp thorns still poke through relatively unimpeded.
I miss him. I miss her. Totally different kinds of loss. I keep taking my meds.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Is it even worth trying?
Trying to pull all of this together: the resurgence of the loss, the shock of the grief, the shame at the loss in the face of the grief, the sheer overwhelmingness of it all. The hundred little things that run through your head that you'll never get to say, that you never got around to saying. Such a cliche - not the gut-wrench of movies, but more of an ache that waxes and wanes.
To have lost a job, my lover and my father in the space of seven months just seems ridiculous, like something out of a fever dream. I can't quite believe it's actually happening, has happened, to me.
There is a connection, at least one, here; the humming, quivering constant in my life: the disease. The self-doubt, the emptiness of the loss, the self-accusatory quality of the grief, the shame at my own reactions, the inability to simply feel without judging myself, the cascade of emotion that overwhelms me in the middle of the day: all gifts of the disease. Well, some of them are normal, I'm sure, but the particular valence they have, the luminescence they have for me right now, are a little gift. I'm fighting it, much better than I'd have thought possible even a few months ago, but really, this seems cosmically cruel and comical. I mean, on a soap opera, OK, but really...enough.
But maybe that's just the typical self-absorption of the disease... Fun, isn't it?
What would you say, Dad? Just do my best. Alright. I miss you.
To have lost a job, my lover and my father in the space of seven months just seems ridiculous, like something out of a fever dream. I can't quite believe it's actually happening, has happened, to me.
There is a connection, at least one, here; the humming, quivering constant in my life: the disease. The self-doubt, the emptiness of the loss, the self-accusatory quality of the grief, the shame at my own reactions, the inability to simply feel without judging myself, the cascade of emotion that overwhelms me in the middle of the day: all gifts of the disease. Well, some of them are normal, I'm sure, but the particular valence they have, the luminescence they have for me right now, are a little gift. I'm fighting it, much better than I'd have thought possible even a few months ago, but really, this seems cosmically cruel and comical. I mean, on a soap opera, OK, but really...enough.
But maybe that's just the typical self-absorption of the disease... Fun, isn't it?
What would you say, Dad? Just do my best. Alright. I miss you.
Friday, June 08, 2007
This all seems very small right now
My father died a few days ago after a short illness.
Suddenly, all of this seems unbelievably self-involved and unimportant.
But I'm also overwhelmed by a sense of loss over my ex. This is probably normal - grief bringing up other, unresolved, grief. But I fear that I'll be so alone when I leave my family in a few days, missing her will be as fresh as it was months ago.
I have to write a eulogy now; I already wrote the obituary. Everybody knows I'm the writer of the family. If they only knew the confessional self-obsessed crap I mostly write about. I feel ashamed.
Suddenly, all of this seems unbelievably self-involved and unimportant.
But I'm also overwhelmed by a sense of loss over my ex. This is probably normal - grief bringing up other, unresolved, grief. But I fear that I'll be so alone when I leave my family in a few days, missing her will be as fresh as it was months ago.
I have to write a eulogy now; I already wrote the obituary. Everybody knows I'm the writer of the family. If they only knew the confessional self-obsessed crap I mostly write about. I feel ashamed.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Neither confession nor reminiscence
So I have a date with UIW1. Inevitable, I suppose. Why? I think it's an auto-de-fe' of sorts, a proof to myself that I still can do this. She is, after all, UI. And it's not like I'm quite so easily over my past relationship. To the contrary, I wonder how my ex is doing nearly every day. I hope she's OK, but engaging with her doesn't seem like it does anything but piss her off, so I've ceased all communication with her for over a month now. I'm surprised at my self-discipline, actually - I haven't looked at her blog even once, not in two months. There simply can't be anything I need or want to see there, so what would be the point? Have I at long last learned to stop damaging myself unnecessarily? Probably not; it's probably just powerfully buttressed by the chemical assistance I'm getting from all the meds.
So I'm back up to full strength on this one drug I'd stopped taking a few years ago and it seems to be working pretty well...and it's making me feel like an idiot. Why? Well, what if going off this one drug was what set in motion all of the events that lead to the growing depression, getting fired and the end of the relationship? What if I'd stayed on it? What if I'd started taking it again along with this other one I started taking a year ago or so? What if, what if....crazy-making hypotheticals.
Back to the date with UIW1. This is distraction, I guess, a way of tossing a stone into what looks like a bottomless, black pool of empty days or years of loneliness stretching ahead. What are we going to talk about? Probably how very inappropriate we are for each other, our various meds, the fine contours of our illnesses... Very romantic.
At the same time, there's another woman (friend of a friend) who is clearly interested in some sort of hanky-panky when she's in the area (she lives in another state). I'm just not into it. She's funny and smart, but this isn't my thing. What would be the point? Besides, as previously noted, she's married (poly marriage).
What else...the weird, borderline-addictive porn & masturbation behavior has just....stopped. It's not like I've made a conscious decision to stop it; it's just kind of stopped. I'm not sure what that means. I think it's good, though it too is probably the result of much medication. I feel stirrings of libido here and there that require satisfaction, to be sure, but not in the self-abnegating, mechanical way that started back around September of last year and really just got worse and worse. Once I'm working again I'll be in therapy and see if I can chase down what the hell this is/was about.
So much uneasiness, so much loss, so much regret, so much uncertainty. Surely I'm ready for dating.
So I'm back up to full strength on this one drug I'd stopped taking a few years ago and it seems to be working pretty well...and it's making me feel like an idiot. Why? Well, what if going off this one drug was what set in motion all of the events that lead to the growing depression, getting fired and the end of the relationship? What if I'd stayed on it? What if I'd started taking it again along with this other one I started taking a year ago or so? What if, what if....crazy-making hypotheticals.
Back to the date with UIW1. This is distraction, I guess, a way of tossing a stone into what looks like a bottomless, black pool of empty days or years of loneliness stretching ahead. What are we going to talk about? Probably how very inappropriate we are for each other, our various meds, the fine contours of our illnesses... Very romantic.
At the same time, there's another woman (friend of a friend) who is clearly interested in some sort of hanky-panky when she's in the area (she lives in another state). I'm just not into it. She's funny and smart, but this isn't my thing. What would be the point? Besides, as previously noted, she's married (poly marriage).
What else...the weird, borderline-addictive porn & masturbation behavior has just....stopped. It's not like I've made a conscious decision to stop it; it's just kind of stopped. I'm not sure what that means. I think it's good, though it too is probably the result of much medication. I feel stirrings of libido here and there that require satisfaction, to be sure, but not in the self-abnegating, mechanical way that started back around September of last year and really just got worse and worse. Once I'm working again I'll be in therapy and see if I can chase down what the hell this is/was about.
So much uneasiness, so much loss, so much regret, so much uncertainty. Surely I'm ready for dating.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Occasional Confession IV
Post-relationship flirting invariably leads to either nothing or trouble. So the current roundup:
#1 UIW1* - flirting continues, but this can only be trouble
#2 New flirtation with married woman who lives far away and already has another lover, so this is merely to keep oneself occupied and in practice; still, she is brilliant and very good at the on-line flirtation thing, so its not time wasted.
#3 UIW2 - flirtation died away when depth of psychological troubles became clear. Could only have been trouble anyway.
Are these all possible signs of common sense rearing its head?
Please.
************************
UIW - Utterly Inappropriate Woman
#1 UIW1* - flirting continues, but this can only be trouble
#2 New flirtation with married woman who lives far away and already has another lover, so this is merely to keep oneself occupied and in practice; still, she is brilliant and very good at the on-line flirtation thing, so its not time wasted.
#3 UIW2 - flirtation died away when depth of psychological troubles became clear. Could only have been trouble anyway.
Are these all possible signs of common sense rearing its head?
Please.
************************
UIW - Utterly Inappropriate Woman
On the Childhood Origin of Perverts
I think my proclivities were mostly the result of lurid covers of mystery books owned by my father (I remember in particular a frisson created at age 8 by one of a large-breasted woman with a look of desperation on her face being pulled/held below the surface of the ocean by a man's hand. Something about the look on her face just affected me powerfully in ways I couldn't then specify; I knew there was something 'dirty' about it, and that I'd get in trouble if I was caught staring at it, but I didn't even know what sex was yet, much less what this was about.
In the same period when I was gazing at these hard-boiled mystery book covers (and at some salacious record covers of my dad's - thank you Les Baxter, Martin Denny, and Herb Alpert!), there was a series of plastic model kits being sold by the Aurora company that featured lurid tableaux that you could glue together and paint. One was "The Victim" - a woman about to be raped, or ravished, or harmed in some way. I seem to recall a dungeon tableaux as well, equipped with a busty attendant or victim. I wanted these, though I couldn't have said why at the time. They are evidently now highly prized collector's items; I'd buy them if I had the scratch.
At about the same time, I was a big fan of the Batman TV show, which always featured our heroes being tied up by one villain or another. My favorite episodes were when Catwoman was the villainess - that lead to a fetish for spandex & catsuits that is now 35 years old. There were other moments too: an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that had one of the protagonists tied to a chair being tortured by sonic waves or something like that.
Also at this time, there was a slightly older girl in the neighborhood, the American-born daughter of Filipino immigrants attached to the same Navy base my father was stationed at. She must have been 10 and she liked to play a variant of chase/doctor/victim-and-rescuer in which I'd chase her, catch her, 'inspect' her (never all that explicitly), at which point she'd dramatically escape and pin me down, always careful to position her crotch right over my face. This was enormously exciting in ways that I didn't understand at the time. This may have been the origin of my attraction for more darkly-complected women, come to think of it. I can still picture her dark brown legs holding down my arms while her rainbow-patterned bathing suit hovered over me.
All of this was in the early 1970s. Polymorphously perverse little creatures, children. Now from all this you might assume that I ended up a submissive or at least a bottom. Nope; confirmed dominant/top. That switch didn't occur until adolescence, though, a topic for another time.
In the same period when I was gazing at these hard-boiled mystery book covers (and at some salacious record covers of my dad's - thank you Les Baxter, Martin Denny, and Herb Alpert!), there was a series of plastic model kits being sold by the Aurora company that featured lurid tableaux that you could glue together and paint. One was "The Victim" - a woman about to be raped, or ravished, or harmed in some way. I seem to recall a dungeon tableaux as well, equipped with a busty attendant or victim. I wanted these, though I couldn't have said why at the time. They are evidently now highly prized collector's items; I'd buy them if I had the scratch.
At about the same time, I was a big fan of the Batman TV show, which always featured our heroes being tied up by one villain or another. My favorite episodes were when Catwoman was the villainess - that lead to a fetish for spandex & catsuits that is now 35 years old. There were other moments too: an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that had one of the protagonists tied to a chair being tortured by sonic waves or something like that.
Also at this time, there was a slightly older girl in the neighborhood, the American-born daughter of Filipino immigrants attached to the same Navy base my father was stationed at. She must have been 10 and she liked to play a variant of chase/doctor/victim-and-rescuer in which I'd chase her, catch her, 'inspect' her (never all that explicitly), at which point she'd dramatically escape and pin me down, always careful to position her crotch right over my face. This was enormously exciting in ways that I didn't understand at the time. This may have been the origin of my attraction for more darkly-complected women, come to think of it. I can still picture her dark brown legs holding down my arms while her rainbow-patterned bathing suit hovered over me.
All of this was in the early 1970s. Polymorphously perverse little creatures, children. Now from all this you might assume that I ended up a submissive or at least a bottom. Nope; confirmed dominant/top. That switch didn't occur until adolescence, though, a topic for another time.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
The sad, final acts
Packing up her things, putting them in bags. Wrapping up the few breakable items (gifts I'd bought in happier times). Finding a few things that were heartbreaking reminders, noticing a few things that were missing, suggesting that she knew she was leaving for the last time before she told me. That really hurt. For some reason, taking her shampoo and conditioner out of the bathroom and packing those away was a really hard moment; such simple things, but so intimate, such potent symbols of a life together.
I've written here of the problem of my sexual attraction to her; she discovered those writings and was very hurt by them. Because I never thought she'd find this blog, I didn't go into as much detail about all the myriad other ways I was attracted to her, ways that counted for at least as much. I mean, I stayed in the relationship for a reason. Packing her things away managed to remind me of almost all of those: her laughter, her idiosyncracies, her ineffable sweetness (most of the time), her focused intelligence. Her sheer loveableness. I hope I showered her with enough love - I know I tried to.
I had to write a note to go along with the bags of her stuff, which were to be delivered to her by a friend of mine. That was brutally hard, my hand shaking so badly I wonder whether she'll even be able to read it. The finality of that short letter, written on old-fashioned stationery; it shook me literally and figuratively. Even in those final moments I was careering wildly between wanting to express my pain at the separation, my hurt at some of the things she'd said and done, and my love for her. It must read like the ravings of a demented meth addict.
I managed to keep from crying while I wrote it, up until the very end, when I told her that I loved her and wanted her to be happy. Those two messages were I think the most consistent things I told her during our relationship, and saying them for the last time just tore the heart out of me. Then I realized that she might be in a place where she can't even read the letter from a perspective of openness, trust, or generosity - she might still be trying to pathologize me. But what I wrote is true, and if she doesn't realize it now, eventually she will. I know that. As confused as I was, I know that my truths were simple and clear.
There was one other sad, final act. Deciding for some reason to hold on to one symbolic set of things: a set of absinthe glasses and a bottle of absinthe. I don't drink the stuff, but it was just too sad to pack those away and literally have no trace of her here, other than the gifts she gave me (which were and are several and significant). But this was about her, not about me, because I don't like absinthe, and suddenly it just seemed so awful to have literally nothing that was about her in my space. The bottle and the glasses were talismans, in other words, markers for some hoped-for future when she and I will be able to be friends and she'll feel fine about coming over and having a drink from her bottle of absinthe. I don't know why that seemed so important, but it did.
Losing even the hope of friendship is just too awful, but that's where this has been headed recently, which is why I was so glad finally to have gotten rid of her stuff. It had become this symbolic issue upon which she'd begun to project all kinds of horrible shit: I was holding it hostage, or I was going to physically harm her if she came to get it, or her friends told her she should just forget about it for fear of having to actually see me. I can't begin to express how much all of that hurt. It was all untrue, the wild fabrications of girlfriends supporting a friend who wasn't thinking clearly about who the man she'd been in love with for 3 years really was, but that didn't stop her from writing these awful things, and they really, really hurt. Getting her stuff out of my space was critical to my moving on and getting the poisonous rage and projection out of my life.
But.
But I can't seem to let go of hope for some sort of "later", some sort of "after", when the wounds have closed and the healing has finished, when the good memories start to creep back in and gradually supersede the bad feelings, when some sort of equipoise of emotion has been achieved. That this is foolish and probably pointlessly self-destructive I realize.
But anyway, that's why I have two absinthe glasses and a bottle of absinthe. They're not the worst traces of her to have; absinthe was something we argued about early, something that she turned out to be right about, something vaguely mystical and mysterious, something in keeping with her enthusiasm for Dada and Surrealism and the artistic temperament of the early 20th century. I tried to find her the best absinthe I possibly could; I had this conviction that nobody had ever given her much and I tried to make up for that. She had some trouble accepting that for what it was, later on.
There's probably a much worse, probably Freudian, analysis, about a gift that I retained. I bought them for her and then kept them. I think my motives are good, but who really knows, right? Who knows why I held on to these reminders of her? Who knows what I hope they'll bring about? And who knows how long I'll actually hold them.
But I do have this simple, compelling vision: some unknown months in the future, me standing behind my bar, her sitting at it, catching up on what's gone on, waiting for the glassy, barely green liquid to turn milky white-green as the water mixes into it, like time transforming the hurt and pain of our separation into something less potent, bittersweet, something that can be approached and appreciated for what it is. I might even share a glass with her.
I've written here of the problem of my sexual attraction to her; she discovered those writings and was very hurt by them. Because I never thought she'd find this blog, I didn't go into as much detail about all the myriad other ways I was attracted to her, ways that counted for at least as much. I mean, I stayed in the relationship for a reason. Packing her things away managed to remind me of almost all of those: her laughter, her idiosyncracies, her ineffable sweetness (most of the time), her focused intelligence. Her sheer loveableness. I hope I showered her with enough love - I know I tried to.
I had to write a note to go along with the bags of her stuff, which were to be delivered to her by a friend of mine. That was brutally hard, my hand shaking so badly I wonder whether she'll even be able to read it. The finality of that short letter, written on old-fashioned stationery; it shook me literally and figuratively. Even in those final moments I was careering wildly between wanting to express my pain at the separation, my hurt at some of the things she'd said and done, and my love for her. It must read like the ravings of a demented meth addict.
I managed to keep from crying while I wrote it, up until the very end, when I told her that I loved her and wanted her to be happy. Those two messages were I think the most consistent things I told her during our relationship, and saying them for the last time just tore the heart out of me. Then I realized that she might be in a place where she can't even read the letter from a perspective of openness, trust, or generosity - she might still be trying to pathologize me. But what I wrote is true, and if she doesn't realize it now, eventually she will. I know that. As confused as I was, I know that my truths were simple and clear.
There was one other sad, final act. Deciding for some reason to hold on to one symbolic set of things: a set of absinthe glasses and a bottle of absinthe. I don't drink the stuff, but it was just too sad to pack those away and literally have no trace of her here, other than the gifts she gave me (which were and are several and significant). But this was about her, not about me, because I don't like absinthe, and suddenly it just seemed so awful to have literally nothing that was about her in my space. The bottle and the glasses were talismans, in other words, markers for some hoped-for future when she and I will be able to be friends and she'll feel fine about coming over and having a drink from her bottle of absinthe. I don't know why that seemed so important, but it did.
Losing even the hope of friendship is just too awful, but that's where this has been headed recently, which is why I was so glad finally to have gotten rid of her stuff. It had become this symbolic issue upon which she'd begun to project all kinds of horrible shit: I was holding it hostage, or I was going to physically harm her if she came to get it, or her friends told her she should just forget about it for fear of having to actually see me. I can't begin to express how much all of that hurt. It was all untrue, the wild fabrications of girlfriends supporting a friend who wasn't thinking clearly about who the man she'd been in love with for 3 years really was, but that didn't stop her from writing these awful things, and they really, really hurt. Getting her stuff out of my space was critical to my moving on and getting the poisonous rage and projection out of my life.
But.
But I can't seem to let go of hope for some sort of "later", some sort of "after", when the wounds have closed and the healing has finished, when the good memories start to creep back in and gradually supersede the bad feelings, when some sort of equipoise of emotion has been achieved. That this is foolish and probably pointlessly self-destructive I realize.
But anyway, that's why I have two absinthe glasses and a bottle of absinthe. They're not the worst traces of her to have; absinthe was something we argued about early, something that she turned out to be right about, something vaguely mystical and mysterious, something in keeping with her enthusiasm for Dada and Surrealism and the artistic temperament of the early 20th century. I tried to find her the best absinthe I possibly could; I had this conviction that nobody had ever given her much and I tried to make up for that. She had some trouble accepting that for what it was, later on.
There's probably a much worse, probably Freudian, analysis, about a gift that I retained. I bought them for her and then kept them. I think my motives are good, but who really knows, right? Who knows why I held on to these reminders of her? Who knows what I hope they'll bring about? And who knows how long I'll actually hold them.
But I do have this simple, compelling vision: some unknown months in the future, me standing behind my bar, her sitting at it, catching up on what's gone on, waiting for the glassy, barely green liquid to turn milky white-green as the water mixes into it, like time transforming the hurt and pain of our separation into something less potent, bittersweet, something that can be approached and appreciated for what it is. I might even share a glass with her.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Reminiscence 3: My First Threesome
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Saturday, April 21, 2007
I can't remember
What it was like to come with her. I can't remember what it was like. I remember holding her close while we fell asleep. I remember kissing her neck. I remember her orgasms, but it had been so long since I had one with her that I literally can't remember what it was like. This is not something I'm blaming on her - it was a problem but not anybody's fault.
How funny that we'd end up inverting the usual scenario; the wife/girlfriend who complains of not having come in over a year. We never were a typical couple; she was a lesbian when we met, for beginners.
How funny that we'd end up inverting the usual scenario; the wife/girlfriend who complains of not having come in over a year. We never were a typical couple; she was a lesbian when we met, for beginners.
Men like me
I was just reading, on the recommendation of Mu Ling at The Pavilion, the blog of Hiromi X. Both blogs are written by women unafraid to tackle personal issues that cut to the heart of who they are. It had been my intent initially to attempt something similar here, and yet...
And yet, I've found a couple of things inhibit me.
First is the old gendered, stereotyped characterization of this sort of soul-baring; that it's unmanly, somehow marked as unmistakeably and disagreeably feminine, and that any man who would engage in such an activity is similarly, well, you know... That this should carry any weight with me at all surprises me, having grown up in the era of feminism and having fought battles and carried scars about just such expectations since I was around 10 or 11.
In fact, my depression, social anxiety and a whole host of other problems probably have root in the social dynamics (or, he thinks, ever the careful social scientist, may themselves have caused the dynamics - one musn't get the causation backwards when all we really know is correlation) surrounding the expectations of maleness. I entered junior high school in 1974, about the high point for the ERA-era (sorry) of feminism, when all sorts of gender stereotypes were coming into question. I heard phrases like "male chauvinist pigs" and the like a lot back then, and I didn't want to be one. Anyway, my point is that this sort of self-examination, despite Socratic admonitions regarding the unexamined life, seems culturally typed as feminine.
Second, I note that men rarely comment on each other's blogs of these sorts. Instead, those of us who do it at all seem to have our own cadre of what might uncharitably be called 'blog hags', a group of women who are supportive and read the blogs, comment on them, etc. Maybe plenty of men read them, but to actually interact with the writer, well, that seems to cross into a sphere of intimacy and connection that is, again, gender-typed and inappropriate. How this came up is that I was reading Hiromi's blog and in addition to all the other reactions I had to it, I was just kind of jealous of the support she gets from other women to her experiences. I wish men would do that for each other, too.
Third, now that the anonymity of this blog has been destroyed by my ex, I wonder still about the utility of it. I really valued that aspect of it. Of course, I could just post whatever the hell I want to now that the relationship is over and damn the consequences, but I've already self-censored two posts concerning her for various reasons, on the assumption that she'll occasionally check back in on this blog. I'm pissed at myself for doing that, and of course still angry with her for having so fundamenatally violated my boundaries in this way (she talked a lot about her boundaries and my failures in respecting them, yet seemed unable to recognize mine and her own depredations against them).
Fourth, I notice that my posts veer wildly in tone and focus, making me wonder what exactly it is that I'm doing - the changes in writerly voice seem indicative to me of....something. The blogs of women like Mu Ling and Hiromi seem much more consistent. This could just be doubts about my own authenticity, borne of an early immersion into the preoccupations of existentialism (hey, it was the only philosophy available in libraries and bookstores in small, conservative Southern Californian towns in the mid-late '70s).
So that's it. After a start filled with promise (uncensored exploration of the area where my sexual history intersected with my self-image and depression, and in particular with my issues surrounding attachment), I come to this point, wondering whether I've realized that the goal was either beyond me, poorly conceived, too socially proscribed, or...
And yet, I've found a couple of things inhibit me.
First is the old gendered, stereotyped characterization of this sort of soul-baring; that it's unmanly, somehow marked as unmistakeably and disagreeably feminine, and that any man who would engage in such an activity is similarly, well, you know... That this should carry any weight with me at all surprises me, having grown up in the era of feminism and having fought battles and carried scars about just such expectations since I was around 10 or 11.
In fact, my depression, social anxiety and a whole host of other problems probably have root in the social dynamics (or, he thinks, ever the careful social scientist, may themselves have caused the dynamics - one musn't get the causation backwards when all we really know is correlation) surrounding the expectations of maleness. I entered junior high school in 1974, about the high point for the ERA-era (sorry) of feminism, when all sorts of gender stereotypes were coming into question. I heard phrases like "male chauvinist pigs" and the like a lot back then, and I didn't want to be one. Anyway, my point is that this sort of self-examination, despite Socratic admonitions regarding the unexamined life, seems culturally typed as feminine.
Second, I note that men rarely comment on each other's blogs of these sorts. Instead, those of us who do it at all seem to have our own cadre of what might uncharitably be called 'blog hags', a group of women who are supportive and read the blogs, comment on them, etc. Maybe plenty of men read them, but to actually interact with the writer, well, that seems to cross into a sphere of intimacy and connection that is, again, gender-typed and inappropriate. How this came up is that I was reading Hiromi's blog and in addition to all the other reactions I had to it, I was just kind of jealous of the support she gets from other women to her experiences. I wish men would do that for each other, too.
Third, now that the anonymity of this blog has been destroyed by my ex, I wonder still about the utility of it. I really valued that aspect of it. Of course, I could just post whatever the hell I want to now that the relationship is over and damn the consequences, but I've already self-censored two posts concerning her for various reasons, on the assumption that she'll occasionally check back in on this blog. I'm pissed at myself for doing that, and of course still angry with her for having so fundamenatally violated my boundaries in this way (she talked a lot about her boundaries and my failures in respecting them, yet seemed unable to recognize mine and her own depredations against them).
Fourth, I notice that my posts veer wildly in tone and focus, making me wonder what exactly it is that I'm doing - the changes in writerly voice seem indicative to me of....something. The blogs of women like Mu Ling and Hiromi seem much more consistent. This could just be doubts about my own authenticity, borne of an early immersion into the preoccupations of existentialism (hey, it was the only philosophy available in libraries and bookstores in small, conservative Southern Californian towns in the mid-late '70s).
So that's it. After a start filled with promise (uncensored exploration of the area where my sexual history intersected with my self-image and depression, and in particular with my issues surrounding attachment), I come to this point, wondering whether I've realized that the goal was either beyond me, poorly conceived, too socially proscribed, or...
Monday, April 16, 2007
The vast mimetic distances between us - Pt. 1
Because I think she's now blocking cookies, I can't be quite as sure that she's reading this at specific times from specific locations, but more basic traffic patterns seem to indicate that I'm still getting visits from my ex here. No matter. If you are reading, K., this is done without malice. This post is about us anyway, and about one of the reasons why I think something was finally revealed to have been missing. And about why it may never have been available, may in fact never be available to be found in any case.
And it's about why I still miss her, or at least the possibility that I thought she represented.
One of the first scenes we ever did together would turn out to be the best one we'd ever do. It may yet be the best scene I'll ever have in my life, or one of the two or three. And it may have set us both up with expectations and hopes that could never be fulfilled in the quotidian realm of an ordinary day-to-day relationship, particulary one between equals. If we'd entered into the strange nether world of explicit D/S relationships, there might have been some small, slim chance, but I kind of doubt it, and besides, a huge part of the attraction between us was that we were frequently intellectual sparring partners, a dynamic quite difficult to maintain within the parameters of D/S.
It was very early in our acquaintance; I'm pretty sure it was months before we'd call ourselves boyfriend/girlfriend. She was at my place and we were playing in my back room. I had her tied to an inversion table (bondage table thing that can be used to hold a person at any point on a 360 degree axis), but was mostly using it as a stable flat surface upon which to restrain her.
Already there was some kinetic bond between us, some sense that there was something special if indefinable there, something latent with possibilities far beyond the usual play partner stuff. I'd played with literally a dozen women in the year prior to this, and I hadn't had this feeling before. She seemed emotionally available in a way that I was, in a way that I needed and needed to reciprocate.
She was lying on her back, restrained, and I had lots of little plastic clips all over her most sensitive anatomy. Once they were all on, I was doing some very painful things to those clips, things designed to bring her to higher and higher levels of pain. And they did, quite succesfully, until at one point she actually started to scream.
Now, screaming is a mixed blessing for S/M tops. We love it, but if you live in an apartment, it can have all kinds of nasty ramifications. So I lent forward, told her to scream into my mouth, and covered her mouth with mine. And kept hurting her. It was one of the most intense, intimate things I've ever done or shared with somebody.
At some point after I'd stopped the active pain part of all this, I was looking down at her and there was this look in her eyes...she wanted to feel again, she wanted to love, she wanted to belong to somebody, and she thought at that moment that I was the one. But she was scared, too. And she was crying, because it had been an intense scene, both physically and emotionally.
And as I looked into her sensitive, beautiful eyes, I suddenly started to cry too, because I felt the same needs - to feel, to love, to trust, to have someone belong to me, to belong to them, and after what we'd just shared, I thought it seemed she was probably the one. And the crying together was even more intense than the screaming into my mouth and all the other painful stuff. It was an amazing, transcendent moment, when I felt myself melting into her, and her melting into me, the boundaries between us giving way to the heat we'd just created.
Nothing was between us.
I would give anything to have that moment with her back again.
And it's about why I still miss her, or at least the possibility that I thought she represented.
And I'm telling you
I know what you've been going through
In my heart of hearts
When I was here
And you were there
Nothing was between us- Magazine, "Back To Nature"
One of the first scenes we ever did together would turn out to be the best one we'd ever do. It may yet be the best scene I'll ever have in my life, or one of the two or three. And it may have set us both up with expectations and hopes that could never be fulfilled in the quotidian realm of an ordinary day-to-day relationship, particulary one between equals. If we'd entered into the strange nether world of explicit D/S relationships, there might have been some small, slim chance, but I kind of doubt it, and besides, a huge part of the attraction between us was that we were frequently intellectual sparring partners, a dynamic quite difficult to maintain within the parameters of D/S.
It was very early in our acquaintance; I'm pretty sure it was months before we'd call ourselves boyfriend/girlfriend. She was at my place and we were playing in my back room. I had her tied to an inversion table (bondage table thing that can be used to hold a person at any point on a 360 degree axis), but was mostly using it as a stable flat surface upon which to restrain her.
Already there was some kinetic bond between us, some sense that there was something special if indefinable there, something latent with possibilities far beyond the usual play partner stuff. I'd played with literally a dozen women in the year prior to this, and I hadn't had this feeling before. She seemed emotionally available in a way that I was, in a way that I needed and needed to reciprocate.
She was lying on her back, restrained, and I had lots of little plastic clips all over her most sensitive anatomy. Once they were all on, I was doing some very painful things to those clips, things designed to bring her to higher and higher levels of pain. And they did, quite succesfully, until at one point she actually started to scream.
Now, screaming is a mixed blessing for S/M tops. We love it, but if you live in an apartment, it can have all kinds of nasty ramifications. So I lent forward, told her to scream into my mouth, and covered her mouth with mine. And kept hurting her. It was one of the most intense, intimate things I've ever done or shared with somebody.
At some point after I'd stopped the active pain part of all this, I was looking down at her and there was this look in her eyes...she wanted to feel again, she wanted to love, she wanted to belong to somebody, and she thought at that moment that I was the one. But she was scared, too. And she was crying, because it had been an intense scene, both physically and emotionally.
And as I looked into her sensitive, beautiful eyes, I suddenly started to cry too, because I felt the same needs - to feel, to love, to trust, to have someone belong to me, to belong to them, and after what we'd just shared, I thought it seemed she was probably the one. And the crying together was even more intense than the screaming into my mouth and all the other painful stuff. It was an amazing, transcendent moment, when I felt myself melting into her, and her melting into me, the boundaries between us giving way to the heat we'd just created.
Nothing was between us.
I would give anything to have that moment with her back again.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
A great whooshing sound
The sound that hope makes as it leaves a body isn't like that at all. It's more like the labored sigh of a bed-ridden cancer patient.
The great whooshing sound is what comes flying in to occupy the newly vacated space. Most of the time there are a number of prospective tenants for even dilapidated old walk-ups. Despair, rage, panic, they all take turns squatting. But eventually the credit checks are complete, the deposit checks return marked 'NSF', and the unit is left vacant. And the landlord is absent.
That's how it is for me, anyway. I've never yet been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness other than depression, so maybe my point of view will change upon the discovery of some cluster of misbehaving cells or a shaped charge of genetic plastique. But so far in my life, this is how it is for me, every time.
So when does this harrowing occur for me, when does this horrific expiry of hope reach the stage of sigh and whoosh and Notice To Quit?
Too stupid: the death of love. When it seems like the estrangement of my Other from me has gone beyond a certain point, then hope reaches for the call button and sighs its last.
And just to be clear, this isn't hope for a revival of the relationship. This is hope for survival in some form of the love; I have never yet been able to understand (and surely this is a basic failure, a psychological malformation so obvious that not one of half a dozen therapists has bothered to name it or point it out to me) why love has to end when the relationship does. Why be in a relationship at all? It's like agreeing to hold guns to each other's heads for some period of time, then guessing who'll pull the trigger first. I don't enter relationships that way. I fully expect that something will survive the end of the romantic/sexual/partnership phase of a relationship; otherwise I wouldn't enter into them.
So: am I hoping for too much, or somehow, too little? Do I need to have a gun to my partner's head for it to count as a real relationship with a chance? Is that my problem, that I expect love to survive in some form and am not desperate until it's too late?
Perhaps it is time to lock and load, so as to prevent looters and squatters; property values seem to drop in this neighborhood all the time...
The great whooshing sound is what comes flying in to occupy the newly vacated space. Most of the time there are a number of prospective tenants for even dilapidated old walk-ups. Despair, rage, panic, they all take turns squatting. But eventually the credit checks are complete, the deposit checks return marked 'NSF', and the unit is left vacant. And the landlord is absent.
That's how it is for me, anyway. I've never yet been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness other than depression, so maybe my point of view will change upon the discovery of some cluster of misbehaving cells or a shaped charge of genetic plastique. But so far in my life, this is how it is for me, every time.
So when does this harrowing occur for me, when does this horrific expiry of hope reach the stage of sigh and whoosh and Notice To Quit?
Too stupid: the death of love. When it seems like the estrangement of my Other from me has gone beyond a certain point, then hope reaches for the call button and sighs its last.
And just to be clear, this isn't hope for a revival of the relationship. This is hope for survival in some form of the love; I have never yet been able to understand (and surely this is a basic failure, a psychological malformation so obvious that not one of half a dozen therapists has bothered to name it or point it out to me) why love has to end when the relationship does. Why be in a relationship at all? It's like agreeing to hold guns to each other's heads for some period of time, then guessing who'll pull the trigger first. I don't enter relationships that way. I fully expect that something will survive the end of the romantic/sexual/partnership phase of a relationship; otherwise I wouldn't enter into them.
So: am I hoping for too much, or somehow, too little? Do I need to have a gun to my partner's head for it to count as a real relationship with a chance? Is that my problem, that I expect love to survive in some form and am not desperate until it's too late?
Perhaps it is time to lock and load, so as to prevent looters and squatters; property values seem to drop in this neighborhood all the time...
Monday, April 09, 2007
You're still reading
I know you're still looking here, K. You read this Friday morning at work, then again Friday afternoon, then again yesterday at work even after the late night play party. You checked it from home on Saturday and Sunday. Maybe yesterday you were hoping/fearing to find some emotional reaction from me to seeing you at the party? But I was surrounded by friends, people I hadn't seen in a long time, so it didn't bother me that much, if that's what you were hoping for. I hope you aren't that petty or vindictive. Anyway, by the time you showed up, I'd already finished my scene, so I had little energy left for atmospheric disturbances.
I wish I knew why - I wish I knew what it was you were hoping or fearing to find here so that you could have whatever peace it is you need to move on. Because that truly is all I want between us and for each of us.
But I also know that you're telling others about this site, which I specifically asked you not to do. I repeat, please stop it, immediately. You have violated my privacy enough.
I wish I knew why - I wish I knew what it was you were hoping or fearing to find here so that you could have whatever peace it is you need to move on. Because that truly is all I want between us and for each of us.
But I also know that you're telling others about this site, which I specifically asked you not to do. I repeat, please stop it, immediately. You have violated my privacy enough.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Probably moving on
Unfortunately, the anonymity of this blog has been compromised. My ex, for reasons known only to herself, evidently felt engaged enough with me to indulge a search for a private blog of mine that became known to her.
That this represents a total violation of my privacy is obvious, insofar as I stated that it was crucial to me that this private blog (unnamed, content unspecified) remain private and anonymous and was acting as a place for me to work things out in almost complete anonymity (hitherto, only one person knew who I was on here). She knew that and decided to hunt for it anyway, for whatever reason. That this feels like a massive betrayal goes without saying. That it is also vaguely and creepily stalkerish is also pretty obvious, but people in love and pain do weird things to each other.
As a result, I'll probably have to move along to other, even more anonymous pastures. If anybody out there can come up with a good reason for me to keep this open, please let me know.
That this represents a total violation of my privacy is obvious, insofar as I stated that it was crucial to me that this private blog (unnamed, content unspecified) remain private and anonymous and was acting as a place for me to work things out in almost complete anonymity (hitherto, only one person knew who I was on here). She knew that and decided to hunt for it anyway, for whatever reason. That this feels like a massive betrayal goes without saying. That it is also vaguely and creepily stalkerish is also pretty obvious, but people in love and pain do weird things to each other.
As a result, I'll probably have to move along to other, even more anonymous pastures. If anybody out there can come up with a good reason for me to keep this open, please let me know.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Not dying, sorting things out, and other necessary tasks
Well, it just gets weirder. And as Dr. Hunter Thompson used to say, "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
So far no dying. This is good.
So far no dying. This is good.
Additional conversations with Utterly Inappropriate Woman #1 have ensued since she's been in the in-patient unit, but I remain fully aware of the idiocy of anything beyond support here. And it hasn't been limited to her.
But there is also necessary sorting out to be done. Last weekend, there were some unfortunate events that had to do with:
- my forgetting that I'm not really a normal person; and
- my forgetting that my ex isn't really a normal person either
- my forgetting that the particular combination of mental illnesses, while fine and even supportive when love was the predominating mode between us, is not so good when she's at pains to expiate or suppress guilt at her behavior at the end of the relationship, and the love has been replaced by this guilt, the resultant resentment, projection, and the rest of the ugly panoply of defenses.
- my cascading emotions around all of this: loss of idealized image of ex, which was crushing if a little late in coming, all things considered; renewed sense of betrayal; sense of shame at being emotionally labile in the first place and at all susceptible to this sort of horseshit; sense of hopelessness at ever being able to find my way out of the morass. Hence the need for the Happy Face Optimism Mantra to be found one post previous.
Now before all this, which all took place Sunday, I had been doing well. I'd thought that she and I had reached a pretty happy and tender equilibrium with each other - I felt reassured that she was not doing what I most feared, she seemed reassured that I wasn't interested in continuing bitter recriminations, and we had a meeting that seemed to remind both of us how very much we care/cared about each other. It felt sad, but OK-sad, not awful-sad.
Anyway, it had made my 2nd week in my outpatient program much, much better. Knowing that she was out there and didn't suddenly just hate me or not care whether I lived or died was comforting - it reaffirmed the emotional reality of the preceding 2 1/2 years. Sometimes two people can love each other a lot and just not have conditions be quite right, and it's OK. I always loved and trusted her, and it was very important to me to feel that I'd not been wrong to trust her that way. The death of that trust...it would have been awful, like the death of something inside me. Or worse, the death of part of me.
So I'd made quite a bit of progress during that 2nd week (last week), and was even reaching out to other patients, both in group and out of group. One young guy, previously alluded to, needed to hear that nobody hates him, so I made sure to let him know in a couple of different ways on a couple of different days how much I enjoy him (nothing cheesily obvious - I'm capable of greater subtlety than the flat description given here would indicate). Another guy was all alone in the city, having come out of inpatient after all his friends had moved out of the city. So I gave him a call on the weekend, just so his phone would ring and someone would ask him how he was. I expressed to the group as a whole how valuable I'd found our discussions and common work and initiated a phone & email list so we could contact each other in crisis. Little stuff like this. And of course, sure, another call to the Utterly Inappropriate Woman.
So yesterday what happens? Utterly Inappropriate Woman's inpatient roommate joins our group, and at lunch, gets a bit flirtatious with me. Worse, she's insanely, ridiculously, achingly, just stupid attractive. Dark, dark eyes, indeterminately exotic background, multiple visible piercings that suggest others...hugely alluring, in a word. Physically, pretty much everything my little heart could desire. Considering that she'd been on the inside for a few weeks, who knows what her particular emotional/mental state was/is, though. Probably suicidal depressive from the look of things.
So say hello to Utterly Inappropriate Woman #2. This is going to drive me mad. Oh, and I came home yesterday from all this to a phone message from UIW#1, who had phone privileges.
I am catnip to the mentally/emotionally fragile. Sadly, they're always at least slightly more fragile/complicated/screwed up than I am. Obviously, there's an inherent self-bias here, but testimony from several friends, including during the present breakup, confirms this general impression. To be sure, the ex was by _far_ the most sane of my recent girlfriends, but she has plenty of problems and perhaps the biggest is her inability/refusal to admit that these problems might be playing a part in her problems with relationships. Everything wrong in our relationship was, you see, basically my fault, at least according to her.
Now, how often is that really true? It's not like she had a brilliant track record either prior to me. For example: two successive and totally different partners basically lost interest in having sex with her after a great beginning - coincidence? I'd say no, but I'd also never broach a topic that brutal, that potentially destructive, with her. Hence the "cowardice" theme of this blog. Her selfishness during sex. The odd, passive, nearly dissociative quality alluded to in a different post. Other, more intimate, if prosaic problems. Things I never said to her that I should have at least brought up. Too late now, obviously. A catalogue of cowardice, compiled too late.
So now what?
Well, clearly, #1 is don't die.
#2 is don't try to enter into relationships because they're there right now. In other words, don't be as desperate as my ex. And especially don't do this with UIW.
#3...I've got to somehow move beyond this past weekend with the ex. It really hurt, albeit not in the typical ways (jealousy, rage, etc). It's hard to explain, particularly in brief, but I think/thought very, very highly of this woman. I respected her, thought she was morally highly evolved & conscious, unlike a few of the women I'd been most recently involved with before her. She cared about how people felt, she thought about how her actions would affect others, she was thoughtful: she was fully human, in other words, something so rare, when you think about it.
That she now doesn't seem quite so ennobled is unfortunate, but has little to do with me. She has her needs, and I have mine. I simply have to concentrate on retaining the strength I need to not fall into the bad patterns (see: UIWs). Whether or not she has the strength of insight or character to see into herself that deeply can't occupy me, however fervently I want to believe in that vision of her.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Don't die
Just repeat as necessary. Prayer, mantra, intervention, self-hypnosis. All the psychic power of the tone-poem dervish of the whirling mind brought to bear on one thought, one idea, one heartbeat, one thing that must be known out of the ocean of that which cannot be known: don't die.
Don't die. Don't die. Do not die. Just do not die. Repeat as necessary, no matter how enticing the invitation, how reassuring small the guest list. Mindful of this one thing above all else - don't die.
Lather up the scrubbing bubbles of the simplicity of the phrase, rinse, and repeat: don't die. Do not go out and die. Do not lay down and die. Do not curl up and die. Just don't die.
If you're capable of it and you've got the necessarily lustrous body for it (some of us are thinning), add the creme rinse of contract: you can't die because of your mother/because of your friends/because of your ghod/because of the mess it would leave for whoever finds you/because of the one you love. You can't do that to them, so don't die.
Unfortunately, all the shibboleths of the demiprofessionals (suicide hotline phone answerers, bad therapists, cops called to your house by terrified friends or lovers, moderately informed friends, late-night radio talkshow hosts) are like baby shampoo - unequal to the task of deep mindful cleansing at hand.
Permanent solution to temporary problem? No, that is incorrect. Rather, permanent solution to the current acute outbreak (among how many excruciating outbreaks? how many must be borne?) of a recurrent, seemingly incurable and permanent disease.
Selfish? This is a charge simply too stupid to bear much scrutiny, except to point out that the very last thing most of us are feeling at this moment is a surfeit of self. Quite the contrary. The idea is to get very, very small indeed, smaller than a concept, smaller than a notion: certainly we are already smaller than an identity.
Mantra, self-intervention, hypnotic prayer, numbing repetition until the correct drugs are found, the right cocktail mixed, until the tumblers fall into place, until the therapeutic/pharmaceutical philosopher's stone transmutes the base metal of dosage and talk into the gold of a quiet mind: don't die.
Don't die. Don't die. Do not die. Just do not die. Repeat as necessary, no matter how enticing the invitation, how reassuring small the guest list. Mindful of this one thing above all else - don't die.
Lather up the scrubbing bubbles of the simplicity of the phrase, rinse, and repeat: don't die. Do not go out and die. Do not lay down and die. Do not curl up and die. Just don't die.
If you're capable of it and you've got the necessarily lustrous body for it (some of us are thinning), add the creme rinse of contract: you can't die because of your mother/because of your friends/because of your ghod/because of the mess it would leave for whoever finds you/because of the one you love. You can't do that to them, so don't die.
Unfortunately, all the shibboleths of the demiprofessionals (suicide hotline phone answerers, bad therapists, cops called to your house by terrified friends or lovers, moderately informed friends, late-night radio talkshow hosts) are like baby shampoo - unequal to the task of deep mindful cleansing at hand.
Permanent solution to temporary problem? No, that is incorrect. Rather, permanent solution to the current acute outbreak (among how many excruciating outbreaks? how many must be borne?) of a recurrent, seemingly incurable and permanent disease.
Selfish? This is a charge simply too stupid to bear much scrutiny, except to point out that the very last thing most of us are feeling at this moment is a surfeit of self. Quite the contrary. The idea is to get very, very small indeed, smaller than a concept, smaller than a notion: certainly we are already smaller than an identity.
Mantra, self-intervention, hypnotic prayer, numbing repetition until the correct drugs are found, the right cocktail mixed, until the tumblers fall into place, until the therapeutic/pharmaceutical philosopher's stone transmutes the base metal of dosage and talk into the gold of a quiet mind: don't die.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Occasional Confession III
I'm partially hospitalized these past few days, during the days - an outpatient thing for some of us with more acute episodes of mental illness not requiring full lock-down, straps-on, suicide-watch fun. More a series of group therapy sessions that actually seem to be doing me some good. It's good not to be hiding in the apartment for 8-10 days at a time, harvesting more and more obscure porn for less and less pleasurable and understandable reasons.
So these groups are mixed in a few ways. It's not all unipolar depressives. Some borderline personality disorder types, one mildly psychotic guy, a few classic bipolar type I folks. The group is for you could call high-functioning mental defectives (he said in jest): in my particular cohort of about 11, there's a med student from a top 10 med school who had a nervous breakdown, an executive from a tech company, a person who won a prestigious writing fellowship, a teacher at a well-known prep school, an accomplished attorney with a government agency, etc. Me, I was a Ph.D. student in a very prestigious program at an even more prestigious university at one point, but never finished my Ph.D., about which I feel a considerable amount of shame and unresolved...guilt? Anger? I don't know.
Anyway, it's also variable in age - my cohort ranges in age from 21 to about 54, and we're coed. So naturally I've developed a crush on someone, right? I mean, of course. I just became single - I'd have to immediately attempt some pointless, hopeless object choice, something guaranteed to leave me feeling worse than before.
But this takes the cake. Really.
Very cute, very sexy, busty late-20s woman with some depression. Always with the tight jeans and tight tops.
Oh. And paranoiac delusions. Thinks people can read her mind, unless she's drunk, and feels that most people she runs into are out to get her. So far, she hasn't been able to tell what's been on my mind, fortunately.
But here's the even more pathetic part: I truly care about her and how she does, to the extent that it's possible to care about the well-being of a near-stranger (sound familiar? vide infra re Angela Devi). She had to be hospitalized today after a bad bout of paranoia during group yesterday and I was really concerned. More concerned than I "should" have been? Probably, yeah. I was concerned last week when our young psychotic guy "went inpatient" (as they put it), but then, I don't occasionally have fantasies about tonguing him while we're having morning check-in.
But of course I recognize the madness (le mot juste!) in this. Nobody is in any position for a relationship. Christ, nobody is in any position for a meaningless fling. She's sick. I'm sick. We need to heal. She needs a friend, she needs medication, same as me. But the thoughts are there (this is the confession part).
So the concern: it's real, but it's not 'pure'. But how much concern is ever 'pure' like that? Maybe for pets, I suppose. Do I see us together? Um, I'm not the psychotic one. Mostly it's just fun to look at this attractive woman and think dirty thoughts, and then fantasize about maybe (and this is the dangerous part) being a guy (the guy?) she could trust, the one she'd realize wasn't reading her mind...
Right. Perhaps my reality attachment needs a bit of work while I'm at the Happy House.
So these groups are mixed in a few ways. It's not all unipolar depressives. Some borderline personality disorder types, one mildly psychotic guy, a few classic bipolar type I folks. The group is for you could call high-functioning mental defectives (he said in jest): in my particular cohort of about 11, there's a med student from a top 10 med school who had a nervous breakdown, an executive from a tech company, a person who won a prestigious writing fellowship, a teacher at a well-known prep school, an accomplished attorney with a government agency, etc. Me, I was a Ph.D. student in a very prestigious program at an even more prestigious university at one point, but never finished my Ph.D., about which I feel a considerable amount of shame and unresolved...guilt? Anger? I don't know.
Anyway, it's also variable in age - my cohort ranges in age from 21 to about 54, and we're coed. So naturally I've developed a crush on someone, right? I mean, of course. I just became single - I'd have to immediately attempt some pointless, hopeless object choice, something guaranteed to leave me feeling worse than before.
But this takes the cake. Really.
Very cute, very sexy, busty late-20s woman with some depression. Always with the tight jeans and tight tops.
Oh. And paranoiac delusions. Thinks people can read her mind, unless she's drunk, and feels that most people she runs into are out to get her. So far, she hasn't been able to tell what's been on my mind, fortunately.
But here's the even more pathetic part: I truly care about her and how she does, to the extent that it's possible to care about the well-being of a near-stranger (sound familiar? vide infra re Angela Devi). She had to be hospitalized today after a bad bout of paranoia during group yesterday and I was really concerned. More concerned than I "should" have been? Probably, yeah. I was concerned last week when our young psychotic guy "went inpatient" (as they put it), but then, I don't occasionally have fantasies about tonguing him while we're having morning check-in.
But of course I recognize the madness (le mot juste!) in this. Nobody is in any position for a relationship. Christ, nobody is in any position for a meaningless fling. She's sick. I'm sick. We need to heal. She needs a friend, she needs medication, same as me. But the thoughts are there (this is the confession part).
So the concern: it's real, but it's not 'pure'. But how much concern is ever 'pure' like that? Maybe for pets, I suppose. Do I see us together? Um, I'm not the psychotic one. Mostly it's just fun to look at this attractive woman and think dirty thoughts, and then fantasize about maybe (and this is the dangerous part) being a guy (the guy?) she could trust, the one she'd realize wasn't reading her mind...
Right. Perhaps my reality attachment needs a bit of work while I'm at the Happy House.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Reminiscence 2: Trans-Pacific Lust, Submission & Stupidity
"Oh God, I can't believe I'm doing this!"
Her voice was like a cat's purr to me. She was on her cell phone, in a stall in the women's restroom in a high-rise office building in Kuala Lumpur. It was late in the day for her, which meant it was very early in the morning for me in California - I think it was around 4:00 AM my time, so around 7:00 PM her time...something like that. Anyway, late enough that she didn't fear coworkers coming into the restroom and overhearing.
I was in my bed, tired but aroused, trying to think of things to say to a woman I'd never met, nasty things that would push her limits just enough but not too much. She was an Indian woman who, it would turn out, I would never actually meet, but I didn't know that yet.
I'll call her Shareen, but my real nickname for her was "Tiger", because of this incredibly sexy, throaty, purring voice she had. As previously noted, Indian women are a real weakness of mine, and this was not a porn star, but a lonely, bored, disaffected Indian woman separated from a bastard husband in the U.S., living with her family in Malaysia. Evidently this isn't so rare a phenomenon. She'd lived here in the States with him for a few years, trying to make it work, but she was never going back to him.
So how did she come to be on the phone with me, and what was she doing, and why? And what was I thinking?
* * * * * * * * *
"Now, pinch your left nipple as hard as you can and don't stop until I tell you to. I want it to hurt so bad it brings tears to your eyes. Do you understand?"
"Oh, yes sir, but I don't think I can-"
"Just shut your mouth and do what I told you to do, like an obedient tiger."
"Oh god, I can't believe I'm doing this!"
Several long seconds of silence; a small whimper, then a tremulous intake of breath followed by a low, quiet moan.
"Now squeeze it even harder, as hard as you possibly can."
"Oh-aaah....aahhh....aaaaaaahhhh"
A few more seconds of this, at which point I relented: "Alright, you can let go."
"Oh, thank you, sir."
"Now do the other one."
We repeat the process; same protestations, same demand, same build-up whimper/breath/moan, same demand for more pain, more plaintive moaning.
"Now, is your purse hanging on the back of the door?"
"Yes."
"Good. Put your phone in it and do both nipples at the same time - I want to be able to hear you from inside the purse. Do you understand?"
"Oh, god."
Protestations, demands, capitulation. She is clearly enjoying all of this. Soon enough I can just make out what sound like authentic whimpers and moans of pain. Who knows? I'm inside a purse and literally on the other side of the world. I'm also paying for this at the rate of around $2.00 a minute.
After several seconds of this, then some seconds of silence, a small, purring voice: "Can I stop now?"
I yell "Yes" into the phone, hoping she's close enough to hear it...it's impossible to plan for everything in a S/M scene. You always forget something.
She picks up the phone again. "Hi."
I have one last command. "Now reach under your skirt and push two fingers into your cunt and tell me how wet you are."
This is so much better than I could have hoped: there is an actual audible gasp after the swish of a skirt and the snap of nylons being pulled down.
"Oh my god..."
"So?"
"It's like I've wet myself."
I nearly laugh at this, but manage instead a restrained and knowing chuckle, as if to say, "of course you're sopping wet, silly girl - my sexy baritone voice and intimate knowledge of Malaysian Indian female sexual fantasies left no room for doubt in the matter."
In reality, of course, I was lying in bed on the West Coast of the U.S., hoping against hope that somehow, this bizarre interlude might actually mean something, might signal a real human connection, might even lead to a relationship someday.
In the end, I may have had a more meaningful, or at least honest, relationship with Angela Devi.
More to follow.
Her voice was like a cat's purr to me. She was on her cell phone, in a stall in the women's restroom in a high-rise office building in Kuala Lumpur. It was late in the day for her, which meant it was very early in the morning for me in California - I think it was around 4:00 AM my time, so around 7:00 PM her time...something like that. Anyway, late enough that she didn't fear coworkers coming into the restroom and overhearing.
I was in my bed, tired but aroused, trying to think of things to say to a woman I'd never met, nasty things that would push her limits just enough but not too much. She was an Indian woman who, it would turn out, I would never actually meet, but I didn't know that yet.
I'll call her Shareen, but my real nickname for her was "Tiger", because of this incredibly sexy, throaty, purring voice she had. As previously noted, Indian women are a real weakness of mine, and this was not a porn star, but a lonely, bored, disaffected Indian woman separated from a bastard husband in the U.S., living with her family in Malaysia. Evidently this isn't so rare a phenomenon. She'd lived here in the States with him for a few years, trying to make it work, but she was never going back to him.
So how did she come to be on the phone with me, and what was she doing, and why? And what was I thinking?
* * * * * * * * *
"Now, pinch your left nipple as hard as you can and don't stop until I tell you to. I want it to hurt so bad it brings tears to your eyes. Do you understand?"
"Oh, yes sir, but I don't think I can-"
"Just shut your mouth and do what I told you to do, like an obedient tiger."
"Oh god, I can't believe I'm doing this!"
Several long seconds of silence; a small whimper, then a tremulous intake of breath followed by a low, quiet moan.
"Now squeeze it even harder, as hard as you possibly can."
"Oh-aaah....aahhh....aaaaaaahhhh"
A few more seconds of this, at which point I relented: "Alright, you can let go."
"Oh, thank you, sir."
"Now do the other one."
We repeat the process; same protestations, same demand, same build-up whimper/breath/moan, same demand for more pain, more plaintive moaning.
"Now, is your purse hanging on the back of the door?"
"Yes."
"Good. Put your phone in it and do both nipples at the same time - I want to be able to hear you from inside the purse. Do you understand?"
"Oh, god."
Protestations, demands, capitulation. She is clearly enjoying all of this. Soon enough I can just make out what sound like authentic whimpers and moans of pain. Who knows? I'm inside a purse and literally on the other side of the world. I'm also paying for this at the rate of around $2.00 a minute.
After several seconds of this, then some seconds of silence, a small, purring voice: "Can I stop now?"
I yell "Yes" into the phone, hoping she's close enough to hear it...it's impossible to plan for everything in a S/M scene. You always forget something.
She picks up the phone again. "Hi."
I have one last command. "Now reach under your skirt and push two fingers into your cunt and tell me how wet you are."
This is so much better than I could have hoped: there is an actual audible gasp after the swish of a skirt and the snap of nylons being pulled down.
"Oh my god..."
"So?"
"It's like I've wet myself."
I nearly laugh at this, but manage instead a restrained and knowing chuckle, as if to say, "of course you're sopping wet, silly girl - my sexy baritone voice and intimate knowledge of Malaysian Indian female sexual fantasies left no room for doubt in the matter."
In reality, of course, I was lying in bed on the West Coast of the U.S., hoping against hope that somehow, this bizarre interlude might actually mean something, might signal a real human connection, might even lead to a relationship someday.
In the end, I may have had a more meaningful, or at least honest, relationship with Angela Devi.
More to follow.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Cowardice or Realism?
I fear growing old alone more than anything.
I want to buy a gun as an insurance policy against that happening, so that on my 50th, or 55th, or whatever birthday, if I'm still alone, I'll have my out.
The 5150 complicates this, making it illegal for me to own a gun for 5 years, though I can appeal. Of course, it's easy enough to buy guns, and what do I care if I'm owning it illegally? I only plan to use it once, if ever.
So why all this anticipation of desolate age, why the near-certitude of being alone as the years go by? Why the morbid talk of guns and 'ways out'?
Simply put, I appear to be too diseased to carry on a successful, healthy relationship, though it is what I want more than anything. Some fundamental defect, some twist of helical genetic goo, some repressed trauma, something prevents me from achieving that most elemental of human aspirations, the loving relationship with a partner.
Facts: I'm 44. I've never been married. I'm balding - probably never will be completely bald, but whatever. I'm perpetually overweight, unless I've had a severe (i.e., life-threatening) bout of depression, in which case the pounds just melt away! I'm told I'm not physically unattractive, but then friends say that, right? At my best, I might hit 7 of 10, well-dressed, in my best shape, when I'm "on" in a social situation, surrounded by the magical glow of friends.
So what are the odds that I'll ever be married at this point? Do I have a problem with commitment? Nope. I used to be quite skilled sexually, though that's fallen into such desuetude in the past 2 years that it's hard to say at this point whether it's gone or just in mothballs.
There's just....something wrong. So is it cowardice to plan for a future relationship with a 9mm rather than a wife, or is it just grim realism? After all, in some instances, I insist, suicide is quite clearly a wholly rational choice. The moralists always try to define that possibility out of existence, but I in fact go further.
I think suicide is one of the most human things we do. In committing suicide, all of the things that make us a species unique among all others come together: conceptual reflection on a self, connection of past, present and projection of future, ability to determine material conditions of existence, ability to assess likely outcomes of different hypothetical courses of action, etc.
This was a lot more fun to read when I was writing about memories of busty 8th grade girls and dead Indian porn stars, wasn't it? It's all connected, though, trust me.
So today, while weeping because she won't respond to my email and appears to be abandoning me, despite dozens of promises that she would never do this, I managed somehow to download nearly 400 porn images and came twice. If anybody has a label for that, I'd love to hear it.
"Joyless" doesn't quite begin to describe the experience. Mechanical - or programmatic, actually. First, uhm...let's see...haven't checked these old bookmarks for breast sites in a long time. Anything new there? Mostly dead now, but a couple of images worth getting. Oh, a link to a nylon fetish site I've never heard of...should probably check that out...she used to show up at my apartment every morning in nylons because she knew it would turn me on. Back then our sex life was amazing. Huh...OK, 3 really cute Asian women in nylons, I'll get all of those. What about all the links in this folder called "Porn to check out 5/05"?
Black girls covered in come. Wow....that's.....a lot of come. Thai hookers wearing ridiculous outfits all getting done in really degrading ways by this nasty-looking Brit...I bet he's enjoying his 50s more than I'll enjoy mine. Latina lesbians. Oops, make that "lesbians". Some old links to INSEX photo captures that are dead - those were insanely hot and very disturbing. She used to like to do insanely hot and disturbing things.
I'm coming apart and the pieces don't even have names. I'm entering a hospital tomorrow so we'll see if they can help.
I want to buy a gun as an insurance policy against that happening, so that on my 50th, or 55th, or whatever birthday, if I'm still alone, I'll have my out.
The 5150 complicates this, making it illegal for me to own a gun for 5 years, though I can appeal. Of course, it's easy enough to buy guns, and what do I care if I'm owning it illegally? I only plan to use it once, if ever.
So why all this anticipation of desolate age, why the near-certitude of being alone as the years go by? Why the morbid talk of guns and 'ways out'?
Simply put, I appear to be too diseased to carry on a successful, healthy relationship, though it is what I want more than anything. Some fundamental defect, some twist of helical genetic goo, some repressed trauma, something prevents me from achieving that most elemental of human aspirations, the loving relationship with a partner.
Facts: I'm 44. I've never been married. I'm balding - probably never will be completely bald, but whatever. I'm perpetually overweight, unless I've had a severe (i.e., life-threatening) bout of depression, in which case the pounds just melt away! I'm told I'm not physically unattractive, but then friends say that, right? At my best, I might hit 7 of 10, well-dressed, in my best shape, when I'm "on" in a social situation, surrounded by the magical glow of friends.
So what are the odds that I'll ever be married at this point? Do I have a problem with commitment? Nope. I used to be quite skilled sexually, though that's fallen into such desuetude in the past 2 years that it's hard to say at this point whether it's gone or just in mothballs.
There's just....something wrong. So is it cowardice to plan for a future relationship with a 9mm rather than a wife, or is it just grim realism? After all, in some instances, I insist, suicide is quite clearly a wholly rational choice. The moralists always try to define that possibility out of existence, but I in fact go further.
I think suicide is one of the most human things we do. In committing suicide, all of the things that make us a species unique among all others come together: conceptual reflection on a self, connection of past, present and projection of future, ability to determine material conditions of existence, ability to assess likely outcomes of different hypothetical courses of action, etc.
This was a lot more fun to read when I was writing about memories of busty 8th grade girls and dead Indian porn stars, wasn't it? It's all connected, though, trust me.
So today, while weeping because she won't respond to my email and appears to be abandoning me, despite dozens of promises that she would never do this, I managed somehow to download nearly 400 porn images and came twice. If anybody has a label for that, I'd love to hear it.
"Joyless" doesn't quite begin to describe the experience. Mechanical - or programmatic, actually. First, uhm...let's see...haven't checked these old bookmarks for breast sites in a long time. Anything new there? Mostly dead now, but a couple of images worth getting. Oh, a link to a nylon fetish site I've never heard of...should probably check that out...she used to show up at my apartment every morning in nylons because she knew it would turn me on. Back then our sex life was amazing. Huh...OK, 3 really cute Asian women in nylons, I'll get all of those. What about all the links in this folder called "Porn to check out 5/05"?
Black girls covered in come. Wow....that's.....a lot of come. Thai hookers wearing ridiculous outfits all getting done in really degrading ways by this nasty-looking Brit...I bet he's enjoying his 50s more than I'll enjoy mine. Latina lesbians. Oops, make that "lesbians". Some old links to INSEX photo captures that are dead - those were insanely hot and very disturbing. She used to like to do insanely hot and disturbing things.
I'm coming apart and the pieces don't even have names. I'm entering a hospital tomorrow so we'll see if they can help.
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