One of the big issues I'm noting out amongst the devotees of the Social Justice Cult is something called "performing emotional labour". This I suppose replaces "micro-aggression" as the latest example of Evil in social relations. It seems to mean the work women--- and it's always used as being something women do ---are expected to do in providing emotional support to male partners. It's used to mean work women have to do in a relationship to keep their male partners on an even emotional keel--- listening, offering support and solace, being there in moments of crisis or despair.
Now, no one likes an emotional leech. And some people really are emotional vampires in a relationship. But "performing emotional labour" seems to imply that any emotional support offered to a partner in a relationship is somehow illegitimate, that any expectation that one be a listener and emotionally supportive of a partner is inherently exploitative.
That seems to go along with with the general attitude in the Social Justice Cult that any social or interpersonal expectations or obligations are suspect at best, and very likely oppressive or exploitative tout court. We've come to a place where social and personal obligations aren't seen as holding societies together, but as ways of grinding others down.
In any of my romantic relationships, I want two things---- sex/romance (obviously) and a haven. I very much want and need out of a relationship what Lasch called "haven in a heartless world", a place to go for safety, respite, and refuge. A place to go for support.
That isn't, or shouldn't be, a gendered thing. You offer up the same support to your partner as they do for you: Ride or Die. You listen, you support them against the outside world, you offer loyalty and a willingness to be there for them. You offer solace and encouragement and comfort. You're on their side; they're on yours. Listening to their problems, taking their part against others, having their back. This is what makes it a relationship. Will it mean investing time and emotional resources? Absolutely. But that's what you do. And it's always reciprocal--- must always be reciprocal. Ride or Die.
If you feel oppressed because someone with whom you're partnered needs solace or encouragement, why are you bothering to pretend to be a partner? The idea that any personal obligations should exist in a relationship has become suspect...why? How did this happen? Is this related to the same attitude that makes actual telephone conversations an emotional ordeal? Is this related to the same attitude that makes it a grave sin to speak to strangers? Is this related to the same attitude that wants society made up of armoured monads who interact only at arm's-length?
Any thoughts on this?
Sunday, December 25, 2016
Thursday, November 10, 2016
One Nine Three: Questions
I originally posed these questions back in 2004. I sent the list to various friends, including a girl I knew at the time who was finishing at Harvard Law and whose attitude, looks, experiences, and future left me filled with a toxic mix of Jealousy-Envy-Depression. Her answers to the questions only intensified those feelings. Nonetheless, I hope you'll read this and consider your own answers:
1. When and how did you first find the courage to make a major life decision
without consulting family/friends-- or in opposition to family and friends?
2. When and how did you define yourself as an independent person?
3. Have you ever not done something because you were afraid that family and
friends would comment/question?
4. Have you ever been too afraid to do something or say something because
you were afraid that you could lose emotional/financial support from family?
5. If you are gay or bi, were you able to come out to family and friends?
6. If straight, when and how were you able to allow yourself to be known as
a sexual person/ sexually active around family?
7. Would you ever have been too afraid to live with a Significant Other
because family might have Commented or asked Questions? Would you have not
moved in with a Significant Other out of fear of losing financial support?
8. Have you ever not introduced a Significant Other to friends/family
because they might Comment or ask Questions?
9. What things make you anxious or paralyzed with fear?
10. Have you ever feared taking any career chance or moving somewhere
because you might lose your economic position or have your standard of
living fall?
11. Have you ever thought of yourself as too lacking in skills to make any
headway in the "Real World"? Have you ever felt that you deserved failure?
12. At what point in your life did you stop getting financial support from
family? Was it sooner or later than you expected?
13. Are you ever afraid that you can't live up to the social image/role
you've wanted for yourself?
14. Are you ever paralyzed by fear at the thought of being judged and found
wanting by Others in social or career situations? Would you rather be judged
harshly or just not compete and risk humiliation?
15. Of what things in your self are you deeply ashamed?
16. Could you survive a major emotional or financial reversal? How?
17. Do you ever think that you can't win an argument with Grown Ups or with
attractive members of your preferred gender? Do you ever go into arguments
thinking that someone like yourself can never win an argument?At
18. Do you ever think your life is all behind you?
1. When and how did you first find the courage to make a major life decision
without consulting family/friends-- or in opposition to family and friends?
2. When and how did you define yourself as an independent person?
3. Have you ever not done something because you were afraid that family and
friends would comment/question?
4. Have you ever been too afraid to do something or say something because
you were afraid that you could lose emotional/financial support from family?
5. If you are gay or bi, were you able to come out to family and friends?
6. If straight, when and how were you able to allow yourself to be known as
a sexual person/ sexually active around family?
7. Would you ever have been too afraid to live with a Significant Other
because family might have Commented or asked Questions? Would you have not
moved in with a Significant Other out of fear of losing financial support?
8. Have you ever not introduced a Significant Other to friends/family
because they might Comment or ask Questions?
9. What things make you anxious or paralyzed with fear?
10. Have you ever feared taking any career chance or moving somewhere
because you might lose your economic position or have your standard of
living fall?
11. Have you ever thought of yourself as too lacking in skills to make any
headway in the "Real World"? Have you ever felt that you deserved failure?
12. At what point in your life did you stop getting financial support from
family? Was it sooner or later than you expected?
13. Are you ever afraid that you can't live up to the social image/role
you've wanted for yourself?
14. Are you ever paralyzed by fear at the thought of being judged and found
wanting by Others in social or career situations? Would you rather be judged
harshly or just not compete and risk humiliation?
15. Of what things in your self are you deeply ashamed?
16. Could you survive a major emotional or financial reversal? How?
17. Do you ever think that you can't win an argument with Grown Ups or with
attractive members of your preferred gender? Do you ever go into arguments
thinking that someone like yourself can never win an argument?At
18. Do you ever think your life is all behind you?
Monday, September 26, 2016
One Nine Two: Negotiation
I'm still thinking about "The Girlfriend Experience" and what one might expect from a professional companion. I do remember some years ago--- maybe eight or nine years ago now ---and a blog by a girl who called herself Debauchette. She had one of the first (and one of the best) escort blogs. She was clever and witty and literary and a fine writer. I miss her blog. Debauchette always called herself a professional companion. I liked the usage--- back to hetaira, of course, back to the idea of providing more services than just sex. Acquiring the services of a professional companion is about being able to afford the fees, but it's also about a certain kind of compatibility. You're paying for high-end services, but you have to be able to let your companion know what those are. You have to be able to provide a script outline that she can work with.
You'd be working with someone who comes with her own talents and background. I'm imagining it as like hiring a name actor. You give someone like that a basic outline, and then rely on their own talents. If I were to hire someone like Riley Keough's character, I'd be trusting to her interpretation of the film script in my head. That ability is what justifies her fees.
Yet I'd still have to sit and look at her across a table and explain what I wanted. That's an awkward thing, a terrifying thing. It risks being judged boring and jejune--- much worse than being judged perverted. And it requires you to be able to put what you want into words. That involves self-justification--- again, obviously. There's the temptation to explain and over-explain, to try to show that what you want isn't a bad thing, that you aren't a bad person. Any attempt at explaining what you want is all-too-likely to turn into selling yourself, with all the anxiety you'd feel at a job interview. Explanation also requires that you be very sure about what you really want and that you be willing to admit to yourself that you do want these things.
That's likely to be the hard part. This is what I am; this is what I do. That's hard enough to say into a mirror about perfectly ordinary things. Think about admitting that to a high-end professional across a table: This is what I am; this is what I do. She's probably heard it all before, but would you ever believe that? Would you want to believe that? Would you ever fully believe that she wouldn't laugh or recoil in disgust?
It's much easier to get the envelope of cash ready than it is to put together a clear statement of what you want and what you need. I need you to make me feel like this. I need you to do these things. I've always agreed with the old, old saying that if you know someone's sexual fantasies, you know what the person really is. That's one of the more terrifying things I've ever heard.
Sitting across the table in the darkened bar at the four-star hotel, trying to explain what you're looking for from Riley Keough's character--- can you do that and maintain any sense of yourself and your self-worth? And, too, do you know yourself well enough to ask for what you want?
You'd be working with someone who comes with her own talents and background. I'm imagining it as like hiring a name actor. You give someone like that a basic outline, and then rely on their own talents. If I were to hire someone like Riley Keough's character, I'd be trusting to her interpretation of the film script in my head. That ability is what justifies her fees.
Yet I'd still have to sit and look at her across a table and explain what I wanted. That's an awkward thing, a terrifying thing. It risks being judged boring and jejune--- much worse than being judged perverted. And it requires you to be able to put what you want into words. That involves self-justification--- again, obviously. There's the temptation to explain and over-explain, to try to show that what you want isn't a bad thing, that you aren't a bad person. Any attempt at explaining what you want is all-too-likely to turn into selling yourself, with all the anxiety you'd feel at a job interview. Explanation also requires that you be very sure about what you really want and that you be willing to admit to yourself that you do want these things.
That's likely to be the hard part. This is what I am; this is what I do. That's hard enough to say into a mirror about perfectly ordinary things. Think about admitting that to a high-end professional across a table: This is what I am; this is what I do. She's probably heard it all before, but would you ever believe that? Would you want to believe that? Would you ever fully believe that she wouldn't laugh or recoil in disgust?
It's much easier to get the envelope of cash ready than it is to put together a clear statement of what you want and what you need. I need you to make me feel like this. I need you to do these things. I've always agreed with the old, old saying that if you know someone's sexual fantasies, you know what the person really is. That's one of the more terrifying things I've ever heard.
Sitting across the table in the darkened bar at the four-star hotel, trying to explain what you're looking for from Riley Keough's character--- can you do that and maintain any sense of yourself and your self-worth? And, too, do you know yourself well enough to ask for what you want?
Sunday, September 11, 2016
One Nine One: Judgments
I spent some time last weekend watching a cable series called "The Girlfriend Experience"--- watching the first season all the way through. Well-written, though with some soap-opera touches that weren't necessary. The actress who was the star--- Riley Keough ---was wonderful. My type, of course: tallish, painfully thin, cold and calculating. I enjoyed watching it, though I suppose that it did leave me sighing not only over Ms. Keough, but over the idea of high-end escorts.
My own version of a Girlfriend Experience would include the things I think you know about. The girl would be dressed for a role in my films-in-the-head, with all the class markers I look for. and with a very clear set of scripts. I'd be paying--- I'd be more than willing to pay ---for certain kinds of attitude and conversation. The girl would probably need a syllabus and a reading list, which says so much about my own past and about my desperate need to feel like sex and books can be combined.
I'd be willing to pay for a girl who could perform as my leading lady in my films-in-the-head. I'd certainly be willing, although it's clear that I could never afford someone who has the skills I'd want.
I'd certainly be deeply afraid of disappointing whoever I'd paid. I'd be afraid that she'd feel like her skills were being wasted, that her talents far exceeded my ability to appreciate them.
I know that there are websites for clients of high-end escorts to rate their providers' skills and performance. There seems to be a whole set of polemics about the sites, about "hobbyists" using the sites to punish escorts by harming their business. Some of the sites seem to be infected by the whole Yelp Era attitude--- demanding, arrogant, and all-too-ready to take offense...and looking for a way to extort extra services. That's all very ugly.
There are also sites now where escorts can rate their clients. Fair's fair, I suppose, and escorts have a very clear need for a place for exchanging information about clients who might be violent or obsessive. Let's take that as a given. Yes, by the way, I am thinking of Wodehouse stories, of the huge ledger where Jeeves and other valets write down their judgments about their employers. Still, though--- there's something frightening about being a client and being rated.
A small parenthesis--- what is the correct term for someone who pays for an escort's services? Apparently there's a discussion in the demimonde about whether "john" is acceptable these days, though I don't know the details. I suppose I'd be okay with "john". It's a usage that goes back a long way; I grew up hearing it. "Customer" or "client" would be a bit antiseptic, but fine as well. It's "punter" that I hate rather a lot. I think I hate "punter" almost as much as I hate "wank"/"wanker". Working-class British slang always manages to be cruel and dismissive and offensive. "John" or "client", then, but never never never "punter".
I would be terrified of being a client and finding a website where escorts rated clients by performance or looks. Please understand--- a site that discussed clients by the difficulty of their requirements or their tipping levels wouldn't be a problem. That's just business. It would be a site that rated clients as people that would be upsetting. Again, be very clear. I'd never use a rating site to rate escorts. If I had a problem or a compliment, that would be between the girl and me, or at most between the me and the girl's booker. I'm not a Yelp Reviewer type. And site that rated clients would leave me afraid ever to book an escort again.
After all--- let's be clear. One of the underlying things about booking and escort is that you aren't being judged as a person. Both parties negotiate a price for a certain specified set of activities and for a scripted scenario. It isn't about you at all. You don't have to be afraid or ashamed of your looks or skills. You're paying to be part of something: the script matters, the exchange of money for services matters, not you.
There's an old, old (very male) saying that men don't pay prostitutes for sex; they pay them to leave after sex. I've never quite understood that, but I do know that part of what I'd be contracting for in any arrangement with an escort would be freedom from judgment. My preferred scripts have some level of difficulty, some level of complexity that requires skills worth so much. That's fine. I'll pay for professional skills. I'm paid for mine every day at work. But I'm also paying to be treated with a cool professionalism. I'd be paying so that I wouldn't see contempt or derision in the girl's eyes. To be part of a set of scripts is one thing. To be judged as a person is another.
My own version of a Girlfriend Experience would include the things I think you know about. The girl would be dressed for a role in my films-in-the-head, with all the class markers I look for. and with a very clear set of scripts. I'd be paying--- I'd be more than willing to pay ---for certain kinds of attitude and conversation. The girl would probably need a syllabus and a reading list, which says so much about my own past and about my desperate need to feel like sex and books can be combined.
I'd be willing to pay for a girl who could perform as my leading lady in my films-in-the-head. I'd certainly be willing, although it's clear that I could never afford someone who has the skills I'd want.
I'd certainly be deeply afraid of disappointing whoever I'd paid. I'd be afraid that she'd feel like her skills were being wasted, that her talents far exceeded my ability to appreciate them.
I know that there are websites for clients of high-end escorts to rate their providers' skills and performance. There seems to be a whole set of polemics about the sites, about "hobbyists" using the sites to punish escorts by harming their business. Some of the sites seem to be infected by the whole Yelp Era attitude--- demanding, arrogant, and all-too-ready to take offense...and looking for a way to extort extra services. That's all very ugly.
There are also sites now where escorts can rate their clients. Fair's fair, I suppose, and escorts have a very clear need for a place for exchanging information about clients who might be violent or obsessive. Let's take that as a given. Yes, by the way, I am thinking of Wodehouse stories, of the huge ledger where Jeeves and other valets write down their judgments about their employers. Still, though--- there's something frightening about being a client and being rated.
A small parenthesis--- what is the correct term for someone who pays for an escort's services? Apparently there's a discussion in the demimonde about whether "john" is acceptable these days, though I don't know the details. I suppose I'd be okay with "john". It's a usage that goes back a long way; I grew up hearing it. "Customer" or "client" would be a bit antiseptic, but fine as well. It's "punter" that I hate rather a lot. I think I hate "punter" almost as much as I hate "wank"/"wanker". Working-class British slang always manages to be cruel and dismissive and offensive. "John" or "client", then, but never never never "punter".
I would be terrified of being a client and finding a website where escorts rated clients by performance or looks. Please understand--- a site that discussed clients by the difficulty of their requirements or their tipping levels wouldn't be a problem. That's just business. It would be a site that rated clients as people that would be upsetting. Again, be very clear. I'd never use a rating site to rate escorts. If I had a problem or a compliment, that would be between the girl and me, or at most between the me and the girl's booker. I'm not a Yelp Reviewer type. And site that rated clients would leave me afraid ever to book an escort again.
After all--- let's be clear. One of the underlying things about booking and escort is that you aren't being judged as a person. Both parties negotiate a price for a certain specified set of activities and for a scripted scenario. It isn't about you at all. You don't have to be afraid or ashamed of your looks or skills. You're paying to be part of something: the script matters, the exchange of money for services matters, not you.
There's an old, old (very male) saying that men don't pay prostitutes for sex; they pay them to leave after sex. I've never quite understood that, but I do know that part of what I'd be contracting for in any arrangement with an escort would be freedom from judgment. My preferred scripts have some level of difficulty, some level of complexity that requires skills worth so much. That's fine. I'll pay for professional skills. I'm paid for mine every day at work. But I'm also paying to be treated with a cool professionalism. I'd be paying so that I wouldn't see contempt or derision in the girl's eyes. To be part of a set of scripts is one thing. To be judged as a person is another.
Friday, August 26, 2016
One Nine Zero: Pasts
A lovely friend who lives in New Zealand hinted for years that she had a dark secret that she'd been keeping. I'd make guesses, of course. Most of my guesses were very dark, which says more about me than about her. When she was maybe twenty-eight (she turns thirty-one in December), she did share this, about the older lover who's haunted her life:
I can't stop fantasising about my uncle (for clarification--- he's my mothers cousin, but I shall refer to his as my uncle for convenience). He must be...62-ish now. He's tall and tan and solid. He owns a pub in the outback in Australia. I first met him when I was in my mid teens, he taught me how to blow smoke rings, we drank sambuca and we fucked. Now I can't stop thinking about the last time I saw him...it must have been 2008? Or 2009? It was at a family funeral. When I saw him after the funeral I went up to him and hugged him. Brushing my hands around his waist, I felt something like an electric shock. 'Hey there, beautiful' he whispered in my ear, then kissed my cheek. An hour or so later I noticed him watching me, and nodding his head towards the bathroom. I swallowed the rest of my gin & tonic and walked ahead of him. I was wearing black heels and a black skirt. After he shut the door, he ran his fingers up my thigh, lifted my skirt and kissed my bare cunt.
I need him again.
She expanded on that a few nights later:
it has been years. but there will never be anyone else. i met him when i was 17. not so young, i suppose. but give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. cards on the table, right from the beginning. first cousin once removed is the technical term. and thirty years between us. our first night together i was drunk. sambuca flowed through my veins. but it was electric. i knew at the time it was different to anything i'd ever felt before. i didn't know that i'd never feel anything like it since. it was a cheap motel room. we fucked countless times that night, then the next day he flew back to australia. a month later he flew me to his pub in the outback. we had a whole month together. to date, that was the longest time we ever spent together. i started to understand that it was love. we'd pour drinks at his bar all night, then take a bottle upstairs with us. we would drink and talk until dawn. the sex was amazing. he went down on me for hours. i'd had men before...but not like this. i felt so powerful, so needed, and so loved.
we've been together all over the place. vancouver, tokyo, auckland, sydney, the outback, fiji, wellington. we steal long weekends. we fly each other wherever, whenever we have the chance. for a long time i wouldn't let him cum in my cunt. my mouth was fine, preferred. i got over that though. its been ten years now. and nobody touches me like he does. nobody looks at me like he does. he is the only man i want, and i can never have him.
“The only obsession everyone wants: ‘love.’ People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open.”
and i have tried to not let it consume me. i slept with men his age. boys my own age. girls. there is only him. i've had long-term boyfriends, who thought nothing when i flew to fiji for a 'girls weekend' and spent four blissful days with his tongue in my cunt and his arms around my waist. when i flew to vancouver with friends he arranged to be there for a weekend too...i told them i was catching up with my uncle, and had his hand in my cunt in the lift up to his hotel room. another time we were together for four nights in auckland. we stayed at a house in devonport, and it was like this 'what we could have been' experience. we cooked for each other, and read aloud to each other. we played cards, and mixed each other drinks. we walked around naked. we bathed together. we came together all week. it was agony to catch the plane home after that.
he is my addiction. we're a chemical reaction.
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
some nights i stay up late, drinking straight bourbon and smoking. habits i learnt from him, of course. they aren't my only bad habits. on those same nights i might cut and purge. i didn't pick up those habits from him, but i'd say he inspired them. it would kill him to hear me say that. what we have together chokes me. it annihilates me. it is everything, yet it can never be anything. how did it end up like this? i was young and drunk, our first night together should have been just that, a drunken regret. not the start of an affair which would come to both doom and define me.
and a few weeks ago i got a text. i will see him soon.
this is my secret.
I read those two e-mails and sat back with a drink and tried to decide how to react to her story. I don't find the travel implausible. She's from a posh family, and she grew up taking travel for granted. I know her family's place in Wellington society; I know the firm where she works. I know her tastes in older men--- I'm one, after all. I had no way of knowing how true it all was, but it was all quite plausible. Accept it as true--- I decided that she wasn't making it all up after a few bourbons. What I felt was...well, jealousy of course. Obviously jealousy. She's haunted my thoughts for years, and I can only wish that I could evoke that kind of romantic obsession in her. I wish I could mean that much, for good or bad. So of course I felt jealous.
It says a great deal about me that I read "Sambuca" and let my mind go to the last time I'd had Sambuca. Years and years ago, in an Italian seafood restaurant in Vienna of all places. I thought about her description of Sambuca flowing like electricity through her veins. I tried to recall the girl I was with in Vienna and what the sex had been like for us that nightWhat. It says a great deal, too, that I was a bit disappointed about her clarification of who her older lover had been. "Uncle" is simply far hotter in this context than "first cousin once removed"--- a status I couldn't begin to define or diagram. If she had to be with him, he should've been her mother's biological brother. The vision of an incestuous affair is hotter than simply a years-long affair with a much older man--- even if the older man happened to be, well, me.
What I felt was a mix of jealousy, envy, and depression--- a toxic enough cocktail. Jealousy that I wasn't the older lover she could obsess over. Envy that she got to fly to distant cities and carry on an affair in elegant hotels and exotic settings. Depression that I wasn't likely to have that kind of amazingly literary obsessive romance in my life ever again. Jealousy, envy, depression--- I used to note that mixture as JED in my paper journals, and note that it never ended well, that it was always associated with self-destructive time in my life.
It's certain that the thing that makes her stories most painful for me to read is that I don't have stories of my own right now to match hers. Her past is full of stories, and this season I can't imagine that any of my own are as good as hers, or ever will be again.
I've spent my lifetime living through stories, living inside stories, aspiring to be part of stories. JED is the dangerous and corrosive feeling I get when it strikes me that my days of having worthwhile stories to tell may be over. I always see sex and romance as being about the stories one gets to inhabit, the stories one gets to trade with lovers, the stories that one uses in seductions.
I love the stories my NZ friend tells. But I do sit alone and recognise that I'm not likely ever to have stories worth telling a lover again.
I can't stop fantasising about my uncle (for clarification--- he's my mothers cousin, but I shall refer to his as my uncle for convenience). He must be...62-ish now. He's tall and tan and solid. He owns a pub in the outback in Australia. I first met him when I was in my mid teens, he taught me how to blow smoke rings, we drank sambuca and we fucked. Now I can't stop thinking about the last time I saw him...it must have been 2008? Or 2009? It was at a family funeral. When I saw him after the funeral I went up to him and hugged him. Brushing my hands around his waist, I felt something like an electric shock. 'Hey there, beautiful' he whispered in my ear, then kissed my cheek. An hour or so later I noticed him watching me, and nodding his head towards the bathroom. I swallowed the rest of my gin & tonic and walked ahead of him. I was wearing black heels and a black skirt. After he shut the door, he ran his fingers up my thigh, lifted my skirt and kissed my bare cunt.
I need him again.
She expanded on that a few nights later:
it has been years. but there will never be anyone else. i met him when i was 17. not so young, i suppose. but give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. cards on the table, right from the beginning. first cousin once removed is the technical term. and thirty years between us. our first night together i was drunk. sambuca flowed through my veins. but it was electric. i knew at the time it was different to anything i'd ever felt before. i didn't know that i'd never feel anything like it since. it was a cheap motel room. we fucked countless times that night, then the next day he flew back to australia. a month later he flew me to his pub in the outback. we had a whole month together. to date, that was the longest time we ever spent together. i started to understand that it was love. we'd pour drinks at his bar all night, then take a bottle upstairs with us. we would drink and talk until dawn. the sex was amazing. he went down on me for hours. i'd had men before...but not like this. i felt so powerful, so needed, and so loved.
we've been together all over the place. vancouver, tokyo, auckland, sydney, the outback, fiji, wellington. we steal long weekends. we fly each other wherever, whenever we have the chance. for a long time i wouldn't let him cum in my cunt. my mouth was fine, preferred. i got over that though. its been ten years now. and nobody touches me like he does. nobody looks at me like he does. he is the only man i want, and i can never have him.
“The only obsession everyone wants: ‘love.’ People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open.”
and i have tried to not let it consume me. i slept with men his age. boys my own age. girls. there is only him. i've had long-term boyfriends, who thought nothing when i flew to fiji for a 'girls weekend' and spent four blissful days with his tongue in my cunt and his arms around my waist. when i flew to vancouver with friends he arranged to be there for a weekend too...i told them i was catching up with my uncle, and had his hand in my cunt in the lift up to his hotel room. another time we were together for four nights in auckland. we stayed at a house in devonport, and it was like this 'what we could have been' experience. we cooked for each other, and read aloud to each other. we played cards, and mixed each other drinks. we walked around naked. we bathed together. we came together all week. it was agony to catch the plane home after that.
he is my addiction. we're a chemical reaction.
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
some nights i stay up late, drinking straight bourbon and smoking. habits i learnt from him, of course. they aren't my only bad habits. on those same nights i might cut and purge. i didn't pick up those habits from him, but i'd say he inspired them. it would kill him to hear me say that. what we have together chokes me. it annihilates me. it is everything, yet it can never be anything. how did it end up like this? i was young and drunk, our first night together should have been just that, a drunken regret. not the start of an affair which would come to both doom and define me.
and a few weeks ago i got a text. i will see him soon.
this is my secret.
I read those two e-mails and sat back with a drink and tried to decide how to react to her story. I don't find the travel implausible. She's from a posh family, and she grew up taking travel for granted. I know her family's place in Wellington society; I know the firm where she works. I know her tastes in older men--- I'm one, after all. I had no way of knowing how true it all was, but it was all quite plausible. Accept it as true--- I decided that she wasn't making it all up after a few bourbons. What I felt was...well, jealousy of course. Obviously jealousy. She's haunted my thoughts for years, and I can only wish that I could evoke that kind of romantic obsession in her. I wish I could mean that much, for good or bad. So of course I felt jealous.
It says a great deal about me that I read "Sambuca" and let my mind go to the last time I'd had Sambuca. Years and years ago, in an Italian seafood restaurant in Vienna of all places. I thought about her description of Sambuca flowing like electricity through her veins. I tried to recall the girl I was with in Vienna and what the sex had been like for us that nightWhat. It says a great deal, too, that I was a bit disappointed about her clarification of who her older lover had been. "Uncle" is simply far hotter in this context than "first cousin once removed"--- a status I couldn't begin to define or diagram. If she had to be with him, he should've been her mother's biological brother. The vision of an incestuous affair is hotter than simply a years-long affair with a much older man--- even if the older man happened to be, well, me.
What I felt was a mix of jealousy, envy, and depression--- a toxic enough cocktail. Jealousy that I wasn't the older lover she could obsess over. Envy that she got to fly to distant cities and carry on an affair in elegant hotels and exotic settings. Depression that I wasn't likely to have that kind of amazingly literary obsessive romance in my life ever again. Jealousy, envy, depression--- I used to note that mixture as JED in my paper journals, and note that it never ended well, that it was always associated with self-destructive time in my life.
It's certain that the thing that makes her stories most painful for me to read is that I don't have stories of my own right now to match hers. Her past is full of stories, and this season I can't imagine that any of my own are as good as hers, or ever will be again.
I've spent my lifetime living through stories, living inside stories, aspiring to be part of stories. JED is the dangerous and corrosive feeling I get when it strikes me that my days of having worthwhile stories to tell may be over. I always see sex and romance as being about the stories one gets to inhabit, the stories one gets to trade with lovers, the stories that one uses in seductions.
I love the stories my NZ friend tells. But I do sit alone and recognise that I'm not likely ever to have stories worth telling a lover again.
Saturday, August 20, 2016
One Eight Nine: Holmes
Downtown on a Saturday morning, watching sleepy-eyed co-eds and young twenty-somethings drift into the coffeeshop by the river. Bright and surprisingly hot so early--- a morning for iced coffee rather than anything hot. The girls I'm watching are on their way home, threading their way through older, empty streets and construction zones back to their own rented rooms or to the new condos in reno'd buildings along the river streets. I can sit at a corner table with my own iced coffee and a stack of books from the tiny downtown library branch and try to read faces. I suppose it would be a novelist's feast, watching the faces of Saturday morning Walk o' Shame girls--- so many stories in those expressions.
Twenty-odd years ago, there was a Zalman King "version"--- a very, very free "version" ---of "Delta of Venus". It actually wasn't so bad on its own terms, and it's worth watching. It just wasn't Anais Nin in any way--- take that judgment however you wish. There was a fun scene where the two leads walk through Paris streets in that odd Phony War autumn of 1939 and try to construct stories for passers-by. They sit in cafes and do the same--- watch the other tables and construct whole lives for the couples who flirt or bicker or sit silently. Well, I liked the girl who played the lead in the film; I'll admit that. I did like the idea of sitting with a lover and constructing stories. That's one of the things I've loved, and one that I wonder if ever I'll do again.
Walk o' Shame stories for sleepy-eyed co-eds--- always a lovely chance to see what you can do with imagination and deduction. I won't refer here to all those moments in Sherlock Holmes stories where Holmes deduces a whole life from details. I hated those moments, really. Far too arrogant, and I was never a Holmes fan. I'll always admit to using imagination more than deduction. I'm turning the girls at the coffeeshop tables into characters in a story, not assessing them as potential clients or criminal suspects.
Sleepy-eyed, I always say. If they've been with lovers, they should be sleepy--- they should've been having sex 'til not long before dawn. Hungover a bit, too. What's sex without vodka shots or bourbon on the rocks? Pensive, sometimes--- you can see the girls thinking about whether last night was a mistake or a disappointment, thinking as well about whether last night was a one-off or whether there's an affair beginning. Sometimes you can see them wondering about how to explain to roommates that they slept in a new bed last night. Once in a while you do see smiles--- they liked the guy, liked what they did, enjoyed the sex. Sometimes you see them looking at cars parked on the street, or at couples, and wondering why they're walking home alone, without their new young gentleman escorting them. That expression leads to all kinds of interesting speculations about social rules here in the new age, right?
It's all different if you're male, I suppose. The walk home is less thoughtful, less a contemplative time. More triumph, less analysis---- unless that's an image that we've decided to reject here in the new age of equality and diversity. My own experience has been that the walk home is a victory march--- proof of my own value, proof that for one night I've won a battle against time and decay and my own body and past.
But it's still a fact, I think. Male stories on mornings-after are much, much less interesting, and they're so much less complex.
Well, a morning that's all summer sunlight. You can sit and sip vanilla iced coffee and watch girls with stories in their eyes and try to imagine what their lives are like. Surely there was a third Holmes brother who was a novelist---- surely.
Twenty-odd years ago, there was a Zalman King "version"--- a very, very free "version" ---of "Delta of Venus". It actually wasn't so bad on its own terms, and it's worth watching. It just wasn't Anais Nin in any way--- take that judgment however you wish. There was a fun scene where the two leads walk through Paris streets in that odd Phony War autumn of 1939 and try to construct stories for passers-by. They sit in cafes and do the same--- watch the other tables and construct whole lives for the couples who flirt or bicker or sit silently. Well, I liked the girl who played the lead in the film; I'll admit that. I did like the idea of sitting with a lover and constructing stories. That's one of the things I've loved, and one that I wonder if ever I'll do again.
Walk o' Shame stories for sleepy-eyed co-eds--- always a lovely chance to see what you can do with imagination and deduction. I won't refer here to all those moments in Sherlock Holmes stories where Holmes deduces a whole life from details. I hated those moments, really. Far too arrogant, and I was never a Holmes fan. I'll always admit to using imagination more than deduction. I'm turning the girls at the coffeeshop tables into characters in a story, not assessing them as potential clients or criminal suspects.
Sleepy-eyed, I always say. If they've been with lovers, they should be sleepy--- they should've been having sex 'til not long before dawn. Hungover a bit, too. What's sex without vodka shots or bourbon on the rocks? Pensive, sometimes--- you can see the girls thinking about whether last night was a mistake or a disappointment, thinking as well about whether last night was a one-off or whether there's an affair beginning. Sometimes you can see them wondering about how to explain to roommates that they slept in a new bed last night. Once in a while you do see smiles--- they liked the guy, liked what they did, enjoyed the sex. Sometimes you see them looking at cars parked on the street, or at couples, and wondering why they're walking home alone, without their new young gentleman escorting them. That expression leads to all kinds of interesting speculations about social rules here in the new age, right?
It's all different if you're male, I suppose. The walk home is less thoughtful, less a contemplative time. More triumph, less analysis---- unless that's an image that we've decided to reject here in the new age of equality and diversity. My own experience has been that the walk home is a victory march--- proof of my own value, proof that for one night I've won a battle against time and decay and my own body and past.
But it's still a fact, I think. Male stories on mornings-after are much, much less interesting, and they're so much less complex.
Well, a morning that's all summer sunlight. You can sit and sip vanilla iced coffee and watch girls with stories in their eyes and try to imagine what their lives are like. Surely there was a third Holmes brother who was a novelist---- surely.
Sunday, August 14, 2016
One Eight Eight: Smile-Mask
When I was young, I read a lot of Marxist theory. I was good at it for a while, and I knew all the arcane definitions and analytical techniques that Marxism had developed on its own or absorbed from critical theory. I knew the terms of art--- interpellation, ideology, alienation, comprador capitalism. I'm having problems these days with something more personal: the idea of "emotional labour".
I do understand that there's a difference between "emotion work" and "emotional labour". One is, I think, more about presentation of the self at work, and other is more domestic. I don't know the dividing lines. What I do know is that the underlying concept--- when it's applied to domestic, personal concerns ---leaves me even more depressed and exhausted than the labour-market application.
My understanding--- based on reading any number of the more political sex blogs ---is that "emotional labour" is used to mean male demands on women for emotional support in a relationship. It's a male demand, of course. The male half of the relationship demands that the female half provide emotional support and help him through emotional downswings. This is regarded as evil, since it's a male demand. I suppose I'd always thought one of the desirable things about a romantic relationship was that you had someone there who would offer you emotional support, who wanted to raise your spirits and help steer you through depressing moments. Oh, of course you did the same for them. That goes without saying--- loyalty and support in return, always. Always. But the hope-- for both parties ---would always be that in a romantic relationship you'd have someone who would see it as worthwhile, or as part of the relationship itself, to be there for you, to say the small romantic things you need, to offer solace and congratulations and care.
Reading the blogs about the evils of "emotional labour" in a relationship, all I can think is that there's no longer any room for such things. Once again, it's better--- best ---to remain silent. Never ask a lover for anything, not support, not solace, not kind words. Never ask, never expect. Never hope. The new rules call for silence and distance. No one--- and especially the male half of the relationship ---should ever display any emotional needs or ask for any emotional support. Never ask for anything that could be spun as a demand. Never offer anything that could be spun as condescending or smothering. Simply enough, never ask for anything.
There was a time when I believed that lying back in a lover's arms would be safe, that I'd feel safe and supported and loved. A relationship could be a haven in a heartless world--- a phrase Marx supposedly used about the bourgeois family. Haven in a heartless world---- a kind of blanket fort against the outside, a place where someone believes in you and supports you, where someone sees it as part of their role to make you feel better, to make you feel desired and loved. For the record, and to stave off ranters, I'll be clear: you do all that for your partner, too. Ride or die--- you give that to them just as they give it to you. Those days are over. The new rules make it impossible to look at a romantic relationship as a haven, or to think you might get--- or seek ---any support.
There are things I'd hope for in a Young Companion, and things I'd like to tell a lover I'd need. There are things I'd like to ask for. I can't, of course. I can't even begin to say anything. I can't even hint. All you can do in these latter days is stay silent. Never ask, never hope, never expect.
I do understand that there's a difference between "emotion work" and "emotional labour". One is, I think, more about presentation of the self at work, and other is more domestic. I don't know the dividing lines. What I do know is that the underlying concept--- when it's applied to domestic, personal concerns ---leaves me even more depressed and exhausted than the labour-market application.
My understanding--- based on reading any number of the more political sex blogs ---is that "emotional labour" is used to mean male demands on women for emotional support in a relationship. It's a male demand, of course. The male half of the relationship demands that the female half provide emotional support and help him through emotional downswings. This is regarded as evil, since it's a male demand. I suppose I'd always thought one of the desirable things about a romantic relationship was that you had someone there who would offer you emotional support, who wanted to raise your spirits and help steer you through depressing moments. Oh, of course you did the same for them. That goes without saying--- loyalty and support in return, always. Always. But the hope-- for both parties ---would always be that in a romantic relationship you'd have someone who would see it as worthwhile, or as part of the relationship itself, to be there for you, to say the small romantic things you need, to offer solace and congratulations and care.
Reading the blogs about the evils of "emotional labour" in a relationship, all I can think is that there's no longer any room for such things. Once again, it's better--- best ---to remain silent. Never ask a lover for anything, not support, not solace, not kind words. Never ask, never expect. Never hope. The new rules call for silence and distance. No one--- and especially the male half of the relationship ---should ever display any emotional needs or ask for any emotional support. Never ask for anything that could be spun as a demand. Never offer anything that could be spun as condescending or smothering. Simply enough, never ask for anything.
There was a time when I believed that lying back in a lover's arms would be safe, that I'd feel safe and supported and loved. A relationship could be a haven in a heartless world--- a phrase Marx supposedly used about the bourgeois family. Haven in a heartless world---- a kind of blanket fort against the outside, a place where someone believes in you and supports you, where someone sees it as part of their role to make you feel better, to make you feel desired and loved. For the record, and to stave off ranters, I'll be clear: you do all that for your partner, too. Ride or die--- you give that to them just as they give it to you. Those days are over. The new rules make it impossible to look at a romantic relationship as a haven, or to think you might get--- or seek ---any support.
There are things I'd hope for in a Young Companion, and things I'd like to tell a lover I'd need. There are things I'd like to ask for. I can't, of course. I can't even begin to say anything. I can't even hint. All you can do in these latter days is stay silent. Never ask, never hope, never expect.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)