Two Three Four: Nerve

I remember a film from long ago, a film whose name and actors I can't recall at all. I might have been in my first year at university when I saw it--- it was as long ago as that. Last night I remembered one scene, and it's stayed with me.

There was a scene where one of the main characters was exposed to nerve gas. I can't recall why, whether it was a lab accident, a military training accident, or something deliberate. I can't recall, and in the end it doesn't matter. What I do remember is the character sprawled on a floor somewhere, his body spasming and twitching as the nerve gas took effect. A scary enough scene, disturbing and grim.  What came to me last night, though, was not a character dying in the story, but how his body jerking helplessly was far too like what you might look like in the throes of having sex or, maybe more to the point, in the midst of indulging in the Solitary Vice.

Sex is almost always about loss of control.  That's coded as good in a great many scenes: giving up control in order to find pleasure, to be able to receive pleasure.  Yet while the film scene did make me think of how I (or anyone) might look during sex, thinking that also made me ashamed and depressed.

I've seen a fair number of lovely young companions indulge in the Solitary Vice over the years. That's been something I've asked them to do for me. Some, yes, have offered to do that all on their own. I've had young companions tell me that they wanted to show me what pleasure looked like. Some I know enjoyed the performance itself, enjoyed the idea of performing.  And, yes---- I watched and thought they were beautiful. I admired the way they gave themselves up to pleasure. I envied them the ability to lose themselves in what they were doing, the ability to hold my eye and bring me into their own sensations.

Do I have to say that I've always and ever been hesitant to do the same thing for them, even when they've specifically asked?  The reason why is and always has been body dysphoria, I suppose--- or at least a distrust of my body. That film scene with the nerve gas victim haunts me right now--- the jerking limbs, the aimless kicking, the head helplessly shaking. I'd imagine myself looking like that, and I'd know at some very basic, foundational level that there was nothing attractive in the way I'd look, that whatever happened with my body, the young companion watching it would either laugh or be disgusted and contemptuous.

I am not at home in my body and never have been. I have good eyes. I have long, slender hands. These days (and years too late) I have good cheekbones. But there's nothing in the way I hold myself, nothing in the way I move, nothing in the way I look undressed that's sexually alluring. There's nothing about my body these days that doesn't represent decay and failure to me. I find it harder and harder to imagine taking any pleasure in my body or taking any pleasure from it. I find it impossible here this afternoon to imagine my body giving any pleasure.

I've always thought of sex as something crafted into story arcs,  and I can't imagine a story these days where my body doesn't look like that dying nerve gas victim. I'm certainly nothing to watch, and anything physical I might offer to do with or for a young companion would look like that spasming, helplessly twitching body in the film scene. That character dies a horrible and hopeless death. Anything I'd do with my body, anything I'd try to do with a lover, would be what was happening there in that long ago film.

Two Three Three: Characters

A lovely friend in the Upper Midwest wrote this a few days ago:

rambling thoughts, now that I’m off vyvanse. Feel more clever, creative, but also difficult to channel this energy.

heading to Denver at the end of the month for a work conference. it’s fine.

falling hard for a boy who’s probably terrible for me- but the way he nuzzles my neck in bed, whispering how beautiful I am! the way he slings his arm around my shoulders and gazed at me with soft eyes. he’s gorgeous, can keep up with my brain, but we enable each other. “Do you want to go to the bathroom?” “I’ve already cheated at this point, so let’s just take our clothes off”. I’m riled up just thinking about his nearness.

I want to consume him, wrestle my fingers into his hair, feel his thighs intertwined with mine. it’s a lost cause, this craving. Nothing good will come of it. 

we stay up till dawn, listening to Russian synth pop, trading key bumps and tequila shots. his lips next to my ear, urging us to be better, to not keep going. But I always want to engage and go further.

this yearning is doomed: everyone tells me to be careful, to not get too close. I am willful and powerful and never say no. just try me, tempt me with a good time. I never say no to a dare.

I want a love the eats at me, a love unfurling in my lap. something dangerous to others but satisfies my wicked energy. 

I’m sitting in my office (door ajar, legs apart), thinking about him and only him. right now we could be dancing in darkened rooms, hipbones interlocked and mouths pressed firmly. I am obsessive, I’m possessive I know. but don’t I look good with my ripped fishnets and fading lipstick? Does he not want me like I need him? 

I despise the tuttering of others, their hushed judgments. Let me run wild with this boy, it’s all I’m capable of right now.

I read that and sighed. It's been a long time since a girl has written something like that about me.  I'm trying to decide whether what I feel is jealousy or envy. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to draw a distinction between those two things.

I know that I do feel empty and useless when I read her message. Girls have written things about me in the past. At least one made me a character in a short story she wrote where her surrogate has a teen affair with an older lover one Baltimore spring. I haven't been to Baltimore in a thousand years, but I was flattered, and I loved the description of the two characters sitting outside at a table by the harbor, the girl trying so hard to look sophisticated and open to seduction at sixteen or seventeen, the older man trying to introduce her to Thai food. I felt thrilled that she'd put me inside a story ,that she'd created, a story that was so obviously about things she wished she'd done.  I remember that when she read me a draft of the story we argued about whether "seducible" was a word. If it wasn't, she said, it should be. She remembered walking through Baltimore when she was sixteen or seventeen aching to be thought someone who could be, should be seduced.

One other girl wrote about me--- again, so long ago now. She quoted something I'd said to her one night, something about how her body was something I wanted to explore, about how her body was like a map to an unknown country. She quoted that at her blog and then asked, Why has no man ever said that about me before? I read that in my office the next day and I sat there at my desk, thinking that here was a beautiful girl who thought I was worth writing about, who thought what I could say had value.

Those things don't happen any more, and haven't for a long time.  Growing up, I'd always thought I'd be a character in at least a few stories or novels. That was vanity, true, but it was also something else. I think that in my younger days I took it for granted that if you knew literary people you'd end up as a character in their stories, that you'd be in at least a couple of short stories by age thirty or thirty-five.

I'd like to think that I was valuable enough--- or at least interesting enough ---for a lovely girl to write about.  It's been a long time since I could look into the mirror and imagine being someone a girl could think of as worth writing about.  It's been too long since I was able to imagine having any sort of effect on a lovely girl at all.

I'd like to inspire doomed yearnings, to inspire hunger.  Those days are likely enough gone, though. I'm not someone who'll be a character in any lovely girl's stories or fantasies. Here we are though, the hopeless and barely-reliable narrator of my own story,

Two Three Two: Checkboxes

I realize that by writing here at all, I run the risk of being thought obsessed with sex. I find sex and courtship fascinating, but what I'm obsessed with seems to be something else. I'm much less obsessed with sex than with the accessories and accoutrements of sex.

I'm obsessed less with sex itself than with how sex fits into stories. I see sex and courtship as based on stories, on narrative arcs. I look less at the act than at how and where it all happens. Sex in one's own bed in one's own house may be wonderful, passionate, intimate, athletic. But it's not as good as sex in a parked Aston-Martin or on a sailboat moored in Milford Sound or atop a rooftop bar in Manhattan. Location matters, just as all the sets and props around you matter. Sex matters less for the physical sensation or emotional exchange than for the stories constructed around what you've done. I've believed that all my life. Part of roué-hood is telling stories, after all. All the things I've ever done in my various careers have been about telling stories. And every story requires a setting and props. Every story requires accessories.

I've written here about Morning After Kits, and I have been obsessing over those for a couple of weeks. I want to know what lovely girls take with them to assignations. I want to go over their Morning After Kit inventories and see what exactly they're preparing for. I want to know how often they carry their Kit items--- whether they're carried only on some designated nights or whether the girl is always ready for some random coup de foudre moment.

Let's be clear here. There is envy involved. Not so much envy of the sex, or of their ability to have random encounters, but envy of the Kit itself, envy of having a list of items. A lovely girl will send me her list of Morning After Kit items, and I'll go through it to see which of those things (or their male equivalents) I either have or can acquire. A travel toothbrush and a travel-size tube of toothpaste? Check. A travel-size anti-perspirant container? Check. A body wipe or two? Check.  A sign of my own obsessions is that the first time a girl sent me a Morning After Kit list, I instantly dashed to my laptop to find and purchase a travel toothbrush. In the end, I bought a dozen or so. I knew that I was unlikely ever to need them--- if nothing else, I prefer to bring Young Companions back here to my own rooms ---but I wanted to have them because they made me feel as if I could have the same kinds of accessories and accoutrements as the young ladies of my acquaintance. That new box of body wipes on my bathroom shelf is there for the same reason: Look, it says, I can have a  Kit, too! I can be ready in hotel rooms with a lovely stranger! I'm going to take as a given that this is something that could be described as pathetic.

This happens to me. I end up obsessing over lists and checklists. I want to check whatever boxes so that my own story arcs will be as good as those of my Young Companions.  I check off accessories--- cleansers, moisturizers, hair masques, wet wipes ---and I also check off locations (parked cars, rooftop bars, sailboats, offices, bullet trains). Again, this may in fact be sad, but presentation is everything. And I do long for story arcs as good as those of my Young Companions.