As this grim and sullen year counts down to a close, I am wondering about the cartography of desire. I've been writing about this for a while, but the questions remain. What are we still allowed to desire? What fantasies are we still allowed to have?
I have spent much of my life inside books (and not only erotica) looking for worlds where I'd like to live, looking for adventures and experiences I'd like to have. I've spent much of my life constructing fantasies--- about cities, about lovers, about new lives. And I am increasingly worried about those things. Social media has made us all aware that we live at others' mercy. It's made us aware that anything we say or think or feel can be mocked and derided by strangers, that the disdain of total strangers can cost us jobs, respect, social standing. We've all had to become aware that the aether is haunted by people looking for excuses to be outraged, for excuses to attack and humiliate.
When I first began reading blogs--- twenty years ago, now ---the blogging world felt safe, felt like a place for building friendships and communities, felt like a place where you could talk about your thoughts, hopes, dreams, fantasies, desires and feel safe. Back in those days, I'd imagine blogging as being like sitting in a PurePod or some Wm. Gibson converted shipping container somewhere in the high desert, broadcasting out into the night. I imagined talking late into the night, telling stories, interviewing people by phone, getting emails and phone calls from distant cities. It's all so much riskier now--- you're so much more vulnerable just for having thoughts and hopes and preferences.
I'm thinking that the time of blogs about sex is past. Given everything we've been through in the last few years, writing about sexual fantasies seems wretchedly self-centered and pointless. In a time of global pandemic, in a time when the American republic seems to have only very narrowly escaped a descent into right-populist authoritarian rule, sexual fantasies seem to be a dangerous distraction. And in an age of gender wars, desire (especially straight male desire) seems to be the enemy of social justice. Sex, as any good revolutionary will tell you, is a distraction from important work. Sex is irrational, or at least a-rational, and fantasy worlds often embody images and tropes that represent parts of the current order that need to be swept away. As someone who subscribes to much of Marxism, I can't even disagree with that reasoning.
But I will miss sex blogs and escort blogs if they vanish. I will miss knowing about adventures, costumes, scenarios, and skills out there in the world. I'll miss checklists of what escorts have in their purses. I'll miss tales of which hotels in major cities are best for affairs and encounters. I'll miss reading tales of romantic and sexual adventures and learning about what's possible, learning about things worth trying with lovers in my own life. I'll miss knowing what beautiful Young Companions out over the aether have done in their lives and what they might (in some alternate timeline) do with me. I'll miss stories. I'll absolutely miss stories. And I'll miss sharing fantasies with lovely correspondents. I'll miss feeling like my own fantasies are worth something to someone. I'll miss feeling like I'm allowed to have fantasies at all.
These days... These days, whenever I think about erotica and fantasies, I find myself freezing up. I find myself paralyzed by fears that any fantasies I have are either repetitive and boring and/or politically wrong. I can't imagine any fantasy as being judged only by a Young Companion with whom I'm sharing things. I can only imagine fantasies as being dissected and deconstructed by an invisible and hostile audience. I imagine harsh despotic voices telling me that I'm not allowed, now or ever, to want those things. It's not just the Freudian superego, either. It's the babble of voices out on the aether, telling me inside my head that I should be ashamed, that what I want unfits me for being part of any society.
The days when fantasies and scenarios and fetishes could be offered up to lovers and would-be lovers as gifts and enticements, when you could share dark dreams with someone over drinks--- those days are gone.
I no longer know what thoughts I'm allowed to have, I know that in an age of "authenticity" and gender identity and power analysis we're no longer encouraged or expected to experiment with sex and its components. Experimentation is looked down on as sharply as ever it was seventy years ago. It's been years now since strike the pose was a valid idea. It's been years since it's been seen as permissible to ask anyone to try anything new. I do know that I'm terrified of being cast out of the social pods where I live, and that kind of shame and fear is something new to me. I didn't have any of those feelings twenty years ago. But right now I'm totally paralyzed by them.
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