eros, logos

Period. Interrobang.

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:33:00 +0000

I've got my period. This makes me murderously cranky and yet yowly like a cat in heat. In other words, I want to fuck you and then fuck you up.

Like those cats that will suffer themselves to be petted and even rub against you before savagely biting you and raking their claws down your arm. I should have been a pair of retractable claws; I think they'd be nice to have. I could scuttle across your back and claw you ragged. I would like to bleed on someone and make him bleed on me. I can see the blood on the sheet like hieroglyphs. A nice stippling on the back. Yeah, like that.

Then, in the welcome respite from cramps which orgasm affords me, I plan to completely ignore you while I eat some ice cream and watch episodes of Project Runway back to back. I may also claw your couch. And your curtains are not safe. I will (probably) not wee on your carpet. Don't touch me. Thank you.

all apologies

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:34:00 +0000

"I'm sorry." I can pull them forth like a magician pulling a string of coloured knotted scarves out of her fist. I have one for every occasion. Formal, informal; pro forma and full frontal. Sub rosa and infra dig. Don't you?

"I'm sorry." Passive-aggressive: I'm sorry that you feel that way. Purely aggressive: I'm sorry...and you should be too! Sometimes it means I love you, don't leave me. Transatlantic: I'm sorry? as in Pardon? or Say that again, I dare you. Sometimes accusatory: I'm sorry...that you stepped on my foot, you oaf. Sometimes self-loathing: I'm sorry as in I am a sorry state of affairs. We can swap them like Scrabble tiles, pass them like Hearts.

Sometimes it's grief. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, like calling Come back. Stay. Don't. Go away. Don't leave me. Those are all stacked above me, I feel them; they're circling above me in the rainy grey sky like planes piled up waiting to land. If I once started apologising I would never stop.

I am shaking you out of my hair; I am washing you out of my eyes. I am scraping you off the soles of my feet. I am peeling your name off my body. I am lifting the imprints of your hands off me. I will change my sheets and my name and the locks on my door. I am wiping down my room for fingerprints. I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. I'm sorry.

spring

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:25:00 +0000

Closing my eyes when I came but all I saw was your mouth, shining and rainwet. I want to drink from it.
(I want to consume your words; I would steal your breath and make it mine.)
Your violent heartbeat haunts me; all I feel is mine hurrying after.
You lifted the latch and the ice unlocked.

So winter closed its fist
And got it stuck in the pump.
The plunger froze up a lump

In its throat, ice founding itself
Upon iron. The handle
Paralysed at an angle.

Then the twisting of wheat straw
into ropes, lapping them tight
Round stem and snout, then a light

That sent the pump up in a flame
It cooled, we lifted her latch,
Her entrance was wet, and she came.
Seamus Heaney, Rite of Spring

an unequal music

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:09:00 +0000

I once loved someone, quite passionately, and he did not love me.

He loved me later, and he loved me before, and this is the story about it.
He always loved me in bed, oh yes.

And sometimes he loved me out of it.....earlier, before I loved him, and later, again.

I felt in his touch that he loved me, before he could say it, and after he'd become able to say it, and even when he stopped being able to say it. Even then, I felt it still, somewhere in his touch, though more distant.
And when he said it again it was there again too, in his touch, and I knew before he said it again, some weeks before, that he loved me again.

But it was only in his touch that he revealed he loved me, for some weeks, or months, and this pained me.

I had to make a choice, and the choice I made was to continue. To continue to love him, and to never say that word. To love him as best I could, and as much as he would let me, and to give up the hope that he would love me--or at least, be able to say that word.

I weighed the options, I considered, I decided also, that I would rather love him, and that I would continue to do so, and make no demands upon him, at all to love me in return. I promised myself I would never speak that word, nor would I play games with him.

How can I explain? Why would I choose this?
I did choose, and I did so mindfully.

In part, I did so because he was my lover, and because it was like nothing I'd ever known. The awakening of sensual appetite, that had been so long denied, the joy we found in each other. The way we had loved. And when he grew cold to me, I was like the moon, the side that has never seen the sun.
but I *had* seen the sun, and so now I felt the loss of its warmth.
Its heat.

I knew also somehow, for we know everything of the beloved, --or rather, I did, and he did of me, because we were so close--that this was *because* he loved me, and was afraid. For what would this do, Love, to my life, to his?
(I was with another then, as was he.)

One night a week he would come to me, and we would make love all night, and not speak of this.

And so we continued.
Our lovemaking changed.
I was naked, on a couch, my feet on the floor, lying back
he was naked also, and on his knees.
he was between my legs

I had taken him to a sex shop. He had not been before, had not the nerve, nor the support. I had taken him there and encouraged him to buy a cock, because he wanted secretly to have one in his mouth, This I knew.
(He was partly exorcising a childhood trauma, as so many of us do in this way.)

I was wet and aching to have him inside me, and he brought out instead this toy, this shadow, this simulacrum.
He teased me with it, running it over me, my clit, my pussy.

I felt his eyes on me in curiosity, detached, like a scientist. Or an astronomer observing some remote object, far removed in time and space, the light that is millions of years old and perhaps gone already when he can see it.
I felt like an experiment, I felt myself become an object, felt myself not seen, for all he watched me.

I was not seen, although his eyes could not leave me.

He pushed it into me, slowly, watching me. My face.

He fucked me with it, thoroughly.

Part of me stood aside. I watched also myself, and I was inside cold now too.

There are some things I know, and can do, and coming is one of them.

And I did.
I came quite coldly, as women can do too, though perhaps not always as easily as men. Shutting off my emotions and my mind, choosing to concentrate on sensation.

But I was not the same again. And when he loved me again, I could not love him too, not the same way. The moon, sterile, airless....I was the moon, again, and solitary.

And when he saw me again, really saw me, and loved me, I saw him too--I'd always seen him--but pitilessly and remotely, from the moon's distance., with that cold light.

Too late.

I feel estrangement, yes. As I've felt dawn
pushing toward daybreak. Something: a cleft of light - ?
Close between grief and anger, a space opens
where I am Adrienne alone. And growing colder.
Adrienne Rich, 21 Love Poems, XVIII

ancient history: sunday mass

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 15:37:00 +0000

It's sunday morning and that is where my lover is, at mass, with his wife and children.
He often texts me during the service, and sometimes demands that I masturbate and come for him during it, though he won't be able to check his voicemail until it is over.

Although I comply, I feel contempt for him over this. Although I am, now, the atheist, I was once a good Catholic, and his notions of sin and trangression and forgiveness are so very far removed from mine. I am the atheist yet I judge him harshly because he does not hold his faith dear enough--his principles. My former Catholicism is why I find boundaries and transgression so compelling, but I don't think one can truly understand transgression or sin, or guilt, without having such boundaries.
---------------------
He tells me he doesn't worry about discovery, that he believes his marriage would survive it. What is between them would be strong enough to endure that revelation.

I have my doubts about this. One can love and wish to forgive, and yet ultimately find it impossible to forgive such a betrayal. I do not think any of us can predict in advance how such a betrayal will take us, much less another. The theory has a way of coming apart from the practice.

What would not survive that discovery would be us, him and me. I have no doubt that it would be a condition for her that he sever all contact with me.

I also have no doubt that he would comply.

My wife, he calls her to me, sometimes. My wife. I know her name and we use it, and these words from him, my wife, they fall on me like a blow to my chest. In those words and tone I hear finality. I hear both possession and being owned. I hear the weight of the things that hold him together, these things he has freely assumed that give him identity, that help constitute his self, the public one and the one he holds most dear.

I am no part of that identity; I am inimical to it. There is no place for me in his public world. Men shouldn't leave their families, he has said to me, and I do not think he sees why this causes me pain. It's not for any trivial and obvious reason--I don't want him to leave them.

It's because what this means to me is that I am shameful to him; it is not love for others, but shame and the fear of shame that will ultimately keep him where he is. Like Peter, he would deny me three times and turn his face from me.

She is his other half, but I am his other self, the secret one. Yet I know and have always known–I am only transient to him, an obsession he secretly hopes will lift and fade with time.

What is between us merely adds to the sum of his happiness, although it is the whole of mine.

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
Philip Larkin, Church Going

Reminder: all posts starting with 'ancient history' are posts I wrote but didn't publish then about my old situation, not now.

don't be ignorant

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:32:00 +0000

Here's an...er... interesting photo from a rally in favour of Proposition 8 in California, which eliminates gay couples' right to marry:

"Homosexuality is not a race", this woman claims. (?!)

I agree. We should slow down and take our time to enjoy it, just like with all sexuality. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

There's nothin' wrong
With me lovin' you
Baby, no, no
You know what I'm talkin' 'bout
Come on, baby, hey, hey
Let your love come out
If you believe in love

LA Times live coverage of the ongoing CA Supreme Court hearing here.

autopsy

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:19:00 +0000

'Autopsy' comes from two Greek words meaning 'to see for oneself', and writing often feels to me like an autopsy; it feels like I'm assisting at my own. Much of it is a matter of holding the knife properly, being careful not to cut too deeply or flay too much, too quickly.

(I do feel naked, often; I feel naked and splayed and laid bare by writing here. It's my own choice: to open myself like a book, to let eager hand and eye unveil me.)

Sometimes I feel like a science experiment, like I'm something he dissects and pins back despite my bleeding.

Or it's worse. I am the experiment and he peels everything away and pins me back not despite but because of the bleeding, and he touches and probes all those places because he knows that his deft and skilled touch placed exactly there will make me bleed.

It's a cover of sorts for his own bleeding, but also his desire to cut me.

What kind of beast would turn its life into words?
What atonement is this all about?
- and yet, writing words like these, I'm also living.
Adrienne Rich, 21 Love Poems, VII.

[redacted]

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:47:00 +0000

He made me kneel over then he spreading me open. I felt . I moaned biting . In the morning bruises and .

I want you to , he tells me, , .

You dirty fucking bitch, he curses me softly and , he .

Yes, . Now say it. Say you like it.

I do. I love it. I adore it. His voice shakes and , the way he .

Now he takes over and two fingers, . . .
I pleading, . sloppy that I , swollen and springy.
.

When he comes for me I , and because I make him. groan, , but I hold off, rocking on the brink, because I love , greedily and selfishly .

one art

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:37:00 +0000

Sometimes it seems to me that I have spent my life in a process of discarding things, rather than acquiring them. One symbol or symptom of this is the material--It's not that I am not a sentimental person. I am. But for some reason my sentiment doesn't attach to possessions or material things. I don't have photos, for example, or photo albums. I don't have keepsakes, I travel light. This is the opposite it seems of how we usually go through life, acquiring houses, possessions...I practice losing farther, losing faster...keys and phone numbers and shoes, and mementos I meant to keep, train tickets, silly things.
I wish I did have these things sometimes, but they run through my fingers like water, like air. The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Sometimes it makes me sad, this seeming inability I have to save material things...I think it's that I dont trust them, or that I cant bear to hold them and then lose them--so i lose them myself, first, like leaving people also.

I look for you automatically in this airport, scene of so many partings and meetings for us. I cannot help expecting to find you among the expectant faces there. How long will it be, I wonder, til I cease doing this? The involuntary lift of my heart upon arrival, the drop, when I remember, you will not be meeting me this time, --and when you do, when i allow you to again, it will not be the same. Not those meetings we once had, for so long...one of us jumping the barrier and running to the other. How many times did people applaud us, when we'd stop kissing finally? I'd blush always, we couldn't look at the crowd, only each other...and then we'd hurry, to get to the car, so we could kiss again, no audience this time.

This flight, I looked out at the dear and familar country below me, where I have so recently been, the plane banks, drops, beginning its final descent...always before I'd feel my heart lift at that moment, and it did again, but then dropped with the plane. I pressed my hand against the glass, felt the coldness sink into my hand, the only clue that the air is thin and cold, though the sun was rising and beautiful.

I looked for you in the crowd, helplessly, although it was not you meeting me, but someone else. Travel farther, faster.

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

searching

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:36:00 +0000

Hello darkness my old friend, I see google hits for 'anal' again.
Hello India hunting the clitoris and hello MIT, looking for poetry that bores us. Hello sleepless student seeking: "your tropical your practical growth" -- hopelessly asking 'meaning'? --I wonder if you understood my answers left while dreaming.

Hello fetishists looking for medical rape; hello comic book guy looking
for supergirl and capes. Hello late night looker for "makes me call myself a dirty fucking whore", I'd advise you to haggle, and make him pay more.

Hello to Mumbai, Shanghai, Norway and Willoughby; hello to the new girlfriend of my former guy. And hello to you, dear reader mine. Hello to you and then goodbye. Hello hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère! To my unreliable narrator, my meta of metas, that's you. Hello to "getting rid of bush'', hello and adieu.

Hello searches on geometry, Sexton, Byron and more; hello seekers of meaning and 'translation' and 'Abelard's whore'. On strapons, on Borges, on Medea and all, on squirting and Larkin and Pink Floyd the Wall.

Hello wankers and tossers and punters and scrubbers; hello to the heartbroken and fellow adulterers.

She spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.

in the dreamtime

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:28:00 +0000

Dream-time: The time of the creation of the world in Australian Aboriginal mythology: "Aboriginal myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who wandered across the country in the Dreamtime . . . singing the world into existence" (Bruce Chatwin, Songlines).

---I dreamed you last night, remembering.

How did it make you feel when you woke?

Stripped like paint, laid bare like wood.

Like you uncover and navigate the erotic geography of my mind with language. Like you mark and uncover the songlines of my body by singing me into existence. The lift and fall of my orgasm, the call and response of your own. It goes like this, the fourth the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift....I dreamt you and the dreaming sang my desire into existence.

Your singing revealed the planes and curves, the hills and valleys of my body, the leap and fall of coming, the lift and rise of my breathing, the cleft in my sex and the fountain springing. You were the cartographer for the rise and fall of my wanting, you charted the dizzying steps to the heights and measured and marked the long slow plunge below.

I woke and thought of you between my thighs, drinking me like a river.

Valentine's Day

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:47:00 +0000

Happy Unvalentine's Day, that most revolting and commercial of holidays. It is also the anniversary of the loss of my virginity, a generally unremarkable experience. I was 15, and he was 19. I had been experiencing my virginity as a tiresome burden for quite some time; so much mythology surrounds that particular act. So much crap is talked about sex and love, and especially for what it 'should' mean to women.
I had an early intimation that love and sex were quite separate things, and a nascent commitment in my burgeoning consciousness of feminism that my right to pleasure was not contingent upon the permission afforded by 'being in love'. We are body and mind both but separate, and they are equally ours to dispose of, and it strikes me as obscene to suggest otherwise. It has always seemed bizarre and equally obscene to me to place such significance upon that particular act of sex, vaginal intercourse, one which is or ought to be but one in the great and vast land of possible pleasure.

If I sucked my boyfriend's cock, if I shudderingly allowed someone to finger me into orgasm, twisting against his fingers despite myself until I came-- if I let someone teach me how to stroke him into coming-- if I laid down and let someone bury his face between my thighs, but wouldn't let him make me come that way-- how was all of this eager uneasy exploration not 'real' sex?
But we are told that it's only fucking that matters and that virtue itself is bound up with a technical kind of virginity, and my body and my reason told me that this wasn't true. Each of these was a momentous act, important, secret.

In my own case, I had a morbid fear of losing that virginity to someone I loved. I suppose what I actually feared at that point was falling in love. I felt also that my virginity was a burden I did not want to bring into a relationship. I knew already that none of these acts were less important, less meaningful, and I was terrified to think of how it would shake me to let someone in, to let them inside myself. If these other acts meant so much, how much more might this mean?

I look at myself as I was then, and what strikes me is that while I was and am relatively physically fearless, I am far more frightened by emotional risk.

Consequently I fucked a boy I had been dating for some 3 months, part of whose attraction for me in this case was that I knew that I could not ever fall in love with him. It was unremarkable, and disappointing in the way these things usually are. I think we were both very nervous. In any case there was none of the trembling heat that we had generated in other carnal embraces, on substitutes for beds far less comfortable. He sent me 2 dozen roses the next day, a nice gesture which I have no doubt was observed and interpreted correctly by my father and my neighbours, and I broke up with him a week later. There was some change in him afterwards, and I think I have always had one foot out any door in any relationship. The urge to flee or leave before I can be left drives me.

I think it was the first time I had been to his house while his parents were away. He was from a family with money even in a town famous for its wealth. Not my town, obviously. One of the things I most remember about that period of my life is a general feeling of concealment, of secrecy. One thing that I think I have lost now is the feeling of imprisonment within a certain role, the role of good girl. I was always quite conscious of the fact that I was not such a thing, and yet I felt so often held back or not seen because people would look at me through this lens, expect me to be this way. In his house I know I sat modestly while he cooked for me in his splendid kitchen. He wanted to be a chef and this was the first time I ever ate caviar, which I liked both then and now rather less than some other salty/seawater-sweet things he introduced me to.

All of this and the sight of this house made me want to break things. To put a boot through the TV, to throw it out of the window into the pool, to have a Pink Floyd moment.

I imagined it while I was sitting there.

I also knew that this was not a part of me he could ever see, or understand or appreciate if he did see it. No; for him I was that terrible and colourless thing, a good girl. I hoped I would bleed on his sheets and his WASP mother would find it. Sadly, no. Not much pain either.

After this however, I went on my merry way, deflowering a few other virgins myself--I hope with more tenderness and skill. I spoke this year to the girl who had been my best friend then; we had been intensely close for some 6 years although we have been out of touch for some time. The funny thing was that I heard in her voice for the first time the accent of my old town. "It doesn't sound like you", she said to me, and I suppose it does not--neither my accent nor my words, nor the ideas I would express.

I saw J and M last week, she said to me. Of course I remembered J, the boy and then man who was in and out of her life for many years. M? I said. You know, M, she said. M?? Yes, I had forgotten even his name.

In a way I wish I had the fortitude or courage to risk losing my virginity to someone I loved. That would have happened after all only a little later. On the other hand, I certainly don't regret my decision; it was an early endorsement of the pleasures and importance of bathhouse fornication. It was also a way of breaking free at the earliest possible moment from that old lie for women: that virtue is entirely a matter of physical chastity, that sex is (or in some way, ought to be) entirely a matter of love, that being good, for women only, consists in never deviating from these beliefs.

And so I'll leave you with my own Unvalentine's Day wish: these paintings. This is what I would like to have been given:

Check out all the brilliant paintings at Broken Toyland if you are looking for an Unvalentine's gift; originals are available, as well as prints of everything she's done.

For further Unvalentine readings, I heartily endorse Lovelorn Swain's call for revolution here.

As for this painting, apart from loving the broken toys, drug references, and heartbreak, I like the way it reminds me of Catullus:

I hate and I love, and if you ask me how
I do not know, but I do, and I am torn in two.

Not my own case at the moment, but isn't it beautiful?

Damage, 2

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:22:00 +0000

Coincidentally, or maybe not, I heard from X the other day. The strange coincidence is that he mentioned the topic in damage 1—the way he told me about his wife’s biopsy.

I suspect that he’s reading here. It doesn’t matter. He never did respect my wishes about that. If I am honest I have to admit I hope he's read me writing about someone else. I still have the desire to hurt him, you see.

What’s strange about this coincidence is that we never discussed that when we broke up, and I doubt he knew or understood how deeply it affected me and why. I am not sure I understand it all either, and I should try to sort that out.

I accused X here of lacking selfknowledge or insight, but I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge my own. One day I will have to understand why I was so willing to spend so much time in a situation where the message I was always getting was that I didn’t matter, I wrote him after we ended. I can’t say I understand all of that now, but I have some ideas.

After he'd told me he imagined something happening to her, and then told me about his wife’s biopsy, he told me that he’d be very busy at work for a few days, that he wouldn’t have much time free, ….and I already expected this. Quite frankly, I was relieved. I expected it because everytime he made some sort of confession, every time we seemed to be close, he would pull away afterwards. I was relieved because I needed to sort out what I felt and what I wanted to do.

And yet, and yet, I still loved him, or believed I did. I understood him better than he understood himself. Better than I understood myself, and my reasons for staying.

So I decided to end us, but really, the decision was already made. It was encoded in everything we did, everything we said. What’s bred in the bone will out in the flesh, and affairs always have ending encoded in their bones.

In our case he couldn’t seem to stop hurting me, or hurting himself. I understand now, he wrote me recently, every fight we had was about my refusal to see you as a person. You told me flat out this was happening, but I refused to see it.

I don’t believe I invented him, but he invented me. It’s so easy to invent the lover in an affair, to invest them with everything you want to see, to overlook the parts of their puzzle that don't neatly fill the hole in your life. What I hadn’t realized at first was this meant he couldn’t really see me. I don’t wonder you resent me now, I said to him. How dare the statue speak?
You were always too stupid to know I'd written that about you.

But before that happened, I want to tell the story….

I’d decided to leave, but I was still so in love, so blinded, that I wanted to hurt him as little as possible. I wanted to still be his friend—I thought we would salvage that. And so I waited…I waited til things would be better at work for him, til he’d hear about her biopsy, til the time of uncertainty would be over.

This was very hard for me. I’d grown accustomed to hiding my true feelings, hiding my realities from him. But it was a very hard time for me. I was sick and I hadn’t gone to the doctor. I had a sinus infection and a fever, and I felt very ill and very sorry for myself. And in the midst of this I got an email from him, an extremely rude and cruel email berating me for ‘bothering’ him, (I had asked him how he was).

As I was still reading that email I got another, this one a frantic apology, filled with excuses, justification, self-pity. I couldn’t take it in, you know. I was blindsided by this casual and small cruelty he’d visited on me.

A few hours earlier I’d gotten an email from this dear man. I didn’t know him at all at that point, he was just a reader and fellow blogger, but he’d signed me up for a word-a-day subscription.

And you know—that’s how I knew X and I were over. Finally.
Because a total stranger was more kind to me than he had been, more thoughtful than he had been—and yet I couldn’t stop that lift of my heart, that brief hope that it was from him, that he’d thought to do something for me to show me he’d been thinking of me….and I realised he'd never given me a fucking thing. A card once, I think.

And that’s how I realized we were over, and it was pointless to hope to be friends, because he was not my friend.

I still waited two weeks to tell him though.

I am not sure if that was self-denial on my part or my desire to make an exit when I could be sure he'd notice.

snapshot

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 07:14:00 +0000

I'm fucking well obsessed with you, you bitch. I can't stop.

--Good.

You fucking bitch.

--Yes. I am. Your fucking bitch.

Tell me what you're thinking, [O].
I want to know.
Tell me!

--I will. Hold me down. Hold me down first, and I will.

time's arrow

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:38:00 +0000

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

I wrote recently about the spaces between: the way affairs are interstitial creatures existing in the spaces between a life, on the fringes. These small spaces belie the way lovers create an entire world for themselves and a whole mythology. We are creatures that love and crave narrative, and when we fall in love we invent whole mythologies, narratives about ourselves and our lover, and our love, and never cease to enjoy returning to them and building them anew. In a licit relationship the archetypal story is 'how we met', and it's no wonder that children, lovers of stories, clamor to hear certain stories again and again: how their parents met, when they were born. They recognise more clearly than adults that we exist in the stories we tell and the narratives we weave. But even in unions without children, the public performance of the story 'how we met' is a duet which will alert the careful listener to the hidden tensions, if any, beneath a seemingly placid surface.

I've often thought that one could track the progress of a love by listening to the stories we tell. Do we still tell them to ourselves and each other in the same way, or has it subtly changed? Arguably a couple could never uncouple if one or the other had not dropped the narrative thread, subtly stepped back from the pattern they were weaving.

I want to write today about the way time itself has a peculiar property in an affair. It's the most precious quantity of all, and necessarily in limited supply. If there were a natural law about this, it would probably state that our craving is in inverse proportion to the time available: the less time together, the more intensely the flame burns between us. The moments are sweeter for being stolen, held more tightly and more precious to us because of what they represent. The stolen five minute phone call on a weekend just to say I can't stop thinking of you is so much more intense, so much more meaningful, precisely because of its rushed and compressed nature.

We speak of stealing time, but of course time cannot literally be stolen; it is not a concrete entity to be picked up and hidden in one's pocket. The only way we can begin to approach the nature of time is through language and metaphor itself. If we say a long time has passed, we've used two metaphors: time can be neither 'long' nor 'short'--it is not a piece of string--and it cannot 'pass' us--it is not a ship or a train.* Being spatial creatures, it is only metaphor that allows us to get a grip on what time itself is and begin to understand it, and so we use spatial metaphors like 'timeline' to allow us to comprehend it.

And as spatial creatures, as interstitial creatures creating our own world, our narrative and our time are twinned. Unlike the licit couple, we do not usually have an audience for the stories we tell; we exist in a private world where only the two of us exist. And unlike the licit couple, time is a commodity to be hoarded. Our affair exists in the spaces between, like those small interstitial ecosystems in between grains of sand, but it also exists in the times between, when we think of the other and long for them in their absence, when we tell and retell our stories to ourselves, waiting, patiently for the next episode.

The stolen hour in the hotel room both lasts forever and is our eternity and passes all too quickly, those hidden sands running out of the hourglass of our selves.

* Frye's English Delight: Metaphor. Listen here.

therapy

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 06:39:00 +0000

What do you want to talk about today, he asks me.

--I don't know. Nothing. I don't want to talk.
....

You know what just came into my head, he says, --the word 'violence'.
Why do you think that is?

I think about the person I don't want to talk about. Or think about. AlI the many secrets that fall under that category.

I think about the violence that hangs in the air with him and me, heavy and still, and that sometimes is present, alive, a bleeding, raw and bruised entity.

I think of how it's a living thing that runs through my life like a dark and tangled bloody vine binding me to a bed.

--I don't know, I lie.

I can't see my own arms and legs
or know if this is a trap or blessing,
finding myself back here, where everything

in this house has long been over,
kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,

including my own body,
including the body I had then,
including the body I have now.
Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House

the keeper

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:53:00 +0000

I want to be the keeper of your keys, he tells me.

The one to whom you turn in the dead of night, whispering for me to open and explore and release you.

The one to whom you plead to invade you and violate you.

To deprive you of the gift of your language.

I want you to invade me.

I want you to own me.

I want you to have access to all my secret places–the only one who does. I want you to have access to all my rooms, just as I want you to have access to every secret passage that leads inside me.

I want to give you the keys to everything. I can't use language with you–only the raw and bloody language of pulse and breath and gasp, of animal cries, of love and violence.

I love and I hate that you reduce me to that even while I crave it.

Inside my head are many rooms, and inside these rooms I wait for you.

In one of them I’m kneeling on a stone floor for you.

In one of them I’m tied and blindfolded, bound to an enormous bed.

In another I bend over a chair with my skirt pulled up and my panties pulled down, masturbating and waiting for you.

In still others I am a whore. You stand in the doorway and wait your turn, watching with your cock in your hand, ready.

In some rooms I am waiting for you with another woman. Sometimes we tie you down.

Sometimes I only let you watch us.

In another you're on your knees for me, parting my thighs to taste me. I want to drown you.

In another I hand you the belt and mutely turn for your blows to fall on me.

In some I beg you to bite me. In still others I leave you marked and bruised.

In some you make me beg; in others I make you crawl.

In another I lie on the bed with my legs spread and my ass raised to you.

We have the never-ending geography of desire to map, a world only we inhabit in the places between. Our secret map existing in the spaces between breaths or heartbeats, but present to you in the daylight world whenever you close your eyes and remember me, let me inside your head and body for that moment.

Come to me lover, you have the keys. Open me.

O, my America, my Newfoundland [...]
How am I blest in thus discovering thee!
John Donne, Elegy 20

on words

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:15:00 +0000

Logos is part of what drives me to write, here and elsewhere. Logos: the word made flesh. Thoughts are not complete until they are expressed, whether in writing or in speech, and I have this compulsion to express certain ones of mine here, if nowhere else. I write here as I think to myself, and in writing here I discover or uncover the narrative of my own life, my secret history, secret because unknown even to myself until it is given expression. This is why I have the illusion of privacy when I write here most personally, as though it were a note in a bottle that I then buried, as though I dug a hole in the earth and whispered to it alone my secrets, and then covered it up hastily and left, leaving no sign by which anyone could find it, including me.

That is one reason for the name of this narrative. The other reason is that the two are not distinct for me. I can't say why this is so, except that it has something to do with the deep connection between mind and body. I would like to be solely one or the other, at times, but I never can seem to manage that trick.

Words are what undo me; they have saved me and they save me every day, and yet they also ravage me, ravish me. I can find myself stripped more naked by words than I could ever be by hands, and I can be stripped bare by the words of someone who does not know me nor write for me, and wrote 300 years ago.

And now I would like to write about the words we use in fucking.

I wrote recently here in defense of the word whore. The meaning of words is not fixed and static, and I loathe the sensibility which would take them to be so, that would overlook the importance of speaker's intent, and I also despise the idea that having been named is sufficient for naming.

We name ourselves and create ourselves and each other anew by so doing, and this is one reason why lovers always struggle against the limits of language: Why are there no words in English other than love, to express what I feel? the lover laments, and it is felt as a physical pain, that absence, that grief, that lack.

Words abandon us precisely when we would want them most, to capture the transcendent. This is when they abandon the most rational of us, in the extremity of passion, whether that passion be grief or eros, and there is nothing I have treasured more, erotically, than the ability to reduce someone brilliantly articulate to cries and gasps and the inability to speak; there is nothing that moves me more, as eros or logos, than to do that, to steal thought from those who value it highly, along with their breath.

This simply isn't possible unless one is dealing with someone normally hyper-cerebral. There is no art or skill involved in rendering the already mute inarticulate, and I can find no true pleasure there. It's also what I treasure in a lover, the reciprocal ability to reduce me from a thinking thing to a creature of sensation and appetite alone.

And so I also love the tearing down of walls. I love the demolishing of old and false ideas, and I find something of that same intellectual passion in tearing down inhibition, mine and those of my lover. I want to get inside him. I want to peel him open. I want everything. I want to ravish him as he does me. I want to break down those walls, and train the voice that speaks so well and fluently of ideas or of love, to say also I want to fuck you, and not only I want to make love to you.
I need that. Sometimes the word fuck is the only one that will fit, and it strikes me as wrong--as foolish, as sad, as aesthetically impoverished --to think that the use of those words must mean the absence of love also.

I think this is one reason for the peculiar bed death of many longterm relationships, this belief that the same voice that says I want to protect you from pain, cannot be the same voice that says, I need to bend you over that desk and fuck you hard right now. It requires a kind of trust, a kind of faith. Most of all it requires nakedness, the ability to bear being naked like that.

But that's what I value, nakedness.

As syllable from sound.
Emily Dickinson, CXXVI

opening

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:50:00 +0000

Thank you to the wonderful Madeline for fleshbotting me! Check her blog out, if you don't already read it you should.

In bed he tells me to shut my eyes and open my legs. Wider, he says, he wants me spread wider, splayed open. He wants all of me open to him. I feel invaded but I do what he tells me. I can feel his greedy sight plundering me the way he’s probed me before, with hands and fingers, tongue and lips, cock. I hold myself open for him and my breath is already coming fast, I can feel I’m already getting wet, when he says

There is a room that is empty. No one goes there, you don’t let anyone in.

In the corner is a box. Just an anonymous box with a lock. You don’t open it much but you have to, sometimes. You can’t stay away from it.

Sometimes you don’t think about it or what’s in it, but sometimes you can’t stop.

Open it now. Tell me what’s in it.

I don’t want to, but eventually I do.
Everything he says is like a secret voice speaking out of my bones.

Later he bites the inside of my thigh. He says he wants to mark me, he wants me to feel him on my skin later when we’re not together. I tell him I want to look down at my body and see where his hands have been on me.

But of course, I already feel him everywhere anyway.

Still later I get a text from him: I will have to stay away from you sometimes, it says. Right now I’m addicted. All I can think about is the next hit.
I want to open that secret chest and spread the contents of it over the walls and the floor.

I'm afraid, but I want that too.

(Welcome Fleshbot readers. Try Whore, 2, and Lift, 3)

but why put it into words?

Isolate rather this element

That spreads through other lives like a tree

And sways them on in a sort of sense

And say why it never worked for me.

Something to do with violence

A long way back, and wrong rewards,

And arrogant eternity.
Philip Larkin, Love Again

whore

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:40:00 +0000

The name of wife may seem more sacred or more worthy but sweeter to me will always be the word lover, or, if you will permit me, that of concubine or whore…my love rose to such heights of madness that it robbed itself of what it most desired beyond hope of recovery, when immediately at your bidding I changed my clothing along with my mind,, in order to prove you the possessor of my body and my will alike…..God is my witness that if Augustus, Emperor of the whole world, thought fit to honour me with marriage and conferred all the earth on me to possess for ever, it would be dearer and more honorable to me to be called not his Empress but your whore.

Heloise to Abelard, letter 1

I’m inside you. Haven’t I always been?

I want your name written on me. I want all the words you’re afraid to say, the ones you can say only to me. The ones you can’t believe you’ve said or thought but that I can tear out of you despite yourself. The secret ones. Like your secret wishes that you don’t always know you have til I bring them forth.

He dips a finger inside me and traces my mouth, making me taste my own desire for him. Longing rises up in me like a wave that will knock me down, drown me. A vast ocean of sorrow and grief that you can eradicate for me. Obliterate, annihilate, take me beyond the limits of language and of self and of thought, of past and future both, a gift you can bring me and I you.

Then I put my fingers inside myself, wetting them, and write my name on your chest, marking you just as you have marked me.

I know your language. I speak your secret one, the language of blood and bone and nerve endings, of secret names and the doors that unlock at my knock. I want access to all your rooms, every dark corner. If you let me in perhaps you can finally see what I always knew, that they’re beautiful and filled with light.

You dirty fucking whore he moans when he comes, shuddering, and his words sink into my bones with a pleasurable shock. It’s like a key turning in a lock. It’s like his cock sinking into me, like it sank into my throat earlier with his hands in my hair binding me to him while he thrusts hard and deep, gagging me. Whore, he names me, but it feels like he’s groaned Love, love.

When I come I'm breaking open, gushing, spilling all over him, covering him, and I tell him his secret desire, what he already knows…..he’s my whore too.

I would reach inside him and pull his soul inside out if I could. I want to inhabit you. Look through my eyes.

While he sleeps I crawl out of bed to write this, putting on wet panties that I’ll soak still more, his essence and mine mingled.

I have to write while I still feel you inside me.

I leave this at your ear for when you wake
A creature in its abstract cage asleep
Your dreams blindfold you by the light they make.
WS Graham, I leave this at your ear

emotional bliss: isis and femblossom

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:06:00 +0000

A beloved friend recently said to me, I always stop reading sextoy reviews halfway through because I can never afford the product. I sympathise, being a broke grad student, but who doesn’t sympathise right now in these times? 150 dollars (for example) is a lot to spend on a toy when you can’t even be sure in advance if it will work for you. I’m reluctant to spend even 40 dollars on something so frivolous as a sextoy right now and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Besides, is any sex toy worth 150 dollars? Colour me sceptical. (I imagine that as a sickly pale greenish hue, by the way.)

So that’s my question this week. I’m reviewing two products from Emotional Bliss, the Isis and the FemBlossom. Are they worth the pricetag, even with Babeland's sale? My qualified answer--bearing in mind that I am taking SSRI's and my response pattern is dulled-- is no. I’ll explain why I didn't like these and recommend some alternatives.

Any luxury item should be ranked on at least three factors:

1) Aesthetics: This is very hard to quantify, but it’s the subtle factor that warrants paying more money for one item over another. It’s the factor that justifies huge differences in price. This is the factor that the advertising industry exists to invent when true aesthetics are not present. Advertising exists to convince us that item A is more desirable than identical item B. Consequently, bear in mind that many people confuse brand names with aesthetics.

2) Utility/practicality: the bottom line. Does the item do what it’s supposed to do? This is why buying perfume might ultimately be more practical than buying eau de toilette: because it is more concentrated, a smaller amount of perfume will linger longer than eau de toilette, and this justifies the difference in price. Not always, but sometimes.

3) Packaging. This might seem frivolous, but it is absolutely folded into the price of any highticket luxury item and properly speaking it’s made up of equal parts of 1) and 2). You’re not just paying for the item and its materials; you are paying for the presentation. This is partly for aesthetic reasons, and partly for reasons of utility. The better the packaging, the longer the item will last, the easier it is to maintain, the easier to store.

EB toys are pretty, there’s no denying that. Made of medical grade plastic with antibacterial agents, they claim it kills 99.9 % of germs. Cleanup is with soap and water. They come packaged in a cardboard box with a sleeve and two kinds of lube (water and silicon-based) and a universal converter. I appreciate the lube, and really appreciate the universal converters for electrical current, but the boxes are tacky and large. For this amount of money I would want something better. If you own only one toy or two, the EB cardboard box might seem like a good idea. For the rest of us, it’s not the best storage item, nor is it particularly appealing as a gift. If anything, it's appealing only because the typical packaging standard for sextoys is so appallingly low: plastic bags or nasty smelly plastic boxes seem to be standard.

The isis is a fingertip vibe with a low vibration. Ultimately I found the vibration is too low. The Chandra has a higher vibration and might work better. I think either would work better as a toy for couples than for solo use. For solo flights I don’t think the ridiculously named Isis would work especially well. Speaking of which, why has no one named a toy the Isadora, after Isadora Wing of Fear of Flying? Someone should. In fact someone should name a series of toys after female sexual role models. Maybe the problem is that it’s so hard to find such role models. I certainly wouldn’t buy something named after Hester Prynne or Emma Bovary.

At the risk of sounding like a late night infomercial, I would like to recommend the Fukuoku 9000 as a less expensive, and I think far superior, alternative to each. I like that it has different sleeves for the vibrator to alter the texture, plus it has a nice carrying case. Unlike the EB toys, it isn't rechargable, so bear that in mind.

I really, really wanted to like the Femblossom. I love the way it looks and I love the concept, but ultimately it didn’t work for me. The femblossom is designed to vibrate the whole vulva, and for me the vibrations were not intense enough. It has 3 different modes, each with 3 different intensities, for a total of 9 different vibration patterns. I think this might be a good toy for someone starting out, but at 135$ it’s an expensive experiment--although babeland has it on sale for half that. I generally eye these toys with multiple settings and buttons with grave suspicion. Frankly, I can barely remember which buttons to push on my iPod at times, so how can you expect me to figure out complicated buttons and vibration patterns when in the throes of sexual ecstasy? There’s even something a little offputting about the whole idea, isn’t there? I will say that the buttons are surprisingly easy to use and intuitive. Don’t think, look! ...or in this case, Don't think, feel!

This would be an excellent toy for someone who masturbates by rocking on a hand or a pillow, or anyone who prefers indirect forms of stimulation. I think it would probably be a wonderful first vibrator for many people. I would have loved this at around the age of 12, but by the time I could legally have bought it I was in the market for something more intense.

Having decimated these two toys by Emotional Bliss, are there toys that warrant the high price tag, or that would make an excellent gift for Valentine's Day? I think Njoy sets the gold standard. I’ve written about their fun wand over here. I can’t recommend their toys highly enough. Each comes packaged in a black box with a deep pink silk cushion lining. The material is medical grade stainless steel; consequently their toys can be sterilized, so one toy can do double duty or can be shared with a partner. Finally, their presentation means that these are toys that can genuinely be given as gifts without embarrassment; they are gorgeous and gorgeously packaged. This is what I would recommend for a Valentine’s gift or for serious investment.

a grain of sand

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:27:00 +0000

I took a marine biology class in college and became fascinated by interstitial creatures. These are the creatures that exist in the spaces between, microscopic creatures that make up a whole world in between two grains of sand. So too do lovers invent a whole world and a mythology for themselves, stories we like to tell ourselves and others, and in the case of an affair this illusion of a separate and perfect world is only heightened.

Affairs are interstitial creatures too. They necessarily exist in the spaces between: between the events of your other life, the real one, on the fringes of a completed world.

Some rules to remember: (see here for my post Geometry on the axioms of an affair)

Rule one: The lover will always win over the spouse. The game is rigged from the start. The limited amount of time together means that every encounter is erotically charged, emotionally significant, in a way that would wear off in another relationship, a normal one. You always see each other at your best, and you're always making that effort to present yourself at your best. You don't have to fight over bill paying or look at them bleary eyed the next morning after taking care of a sick child all night. So hands down, it's a contest that the lover wins, effortlessly. It's very easy to think that someone is perfect when you've only spent four weekends together in a hotel, shagging with abandon, not thinking for once about anything in your 'normal' life.

Rule two: The spouse will always win over the lover. This isn't a contradiction. Sometimes marriages will end over an affair, but not often, and not often in order to be with the lover. The very mundane bonds mentioned above that ensure that the lover will always win the romance/erotic contest hands down are what hold the marriage--and every lasting relationship-- together. The comfortable routines of cooking together, falling asleep together. Holiday routines. The entwining of your families, friends, your finances, your lives.

Anne Sexton wrote it best, in a poem saying farewell to her lover, fellow poet WD Snodgrass:

Let's face it, I have been momentary.
A luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.
She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,
has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,
done this with her legs spread out
in the terrible months in the chapel.

.....I am tired of existing in the spaces between a life.

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

haiku of sexual dysfunction

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:39:00 +0000

What fresh hell is this?
sexual dysfunction poems--
10 haiku, for you

1. I sneak out to see
if your penis will fit me
under the fall moon

2.Just as we're coming
muscles clenched and legs wrapped tight
The butt plug shoots out.

3. "Where is the lube?" I
implore the heavens, raising
empty hands skyward.

4. I am almost there---
What?!!? No!!! Don't stop! -- Idiot!
Alas, it's too late.

5. Fucking like bunnies
Suddenly the cell phone rings
It's your wife again

6. I plead abjectly,
"Fuck me like an animal"--
but you are sloth-like.

7. The flower droops here
in its sad vase; stale water
smells. Your cock droops too.

8. Forlorn! The very
word is like a bell. Keats was
a wanker, like you.

9. Hot backseat groping--
Cop knocks on the window. Quick!
Where are my knickers?

10. That was the best sex
I've had, you say--"Really?", I think,
" I do not love you."

The five tanka of emotional dysfunction are here.

orchid g

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Anastasia wrote recently about the link between orgasms (or lack thereof) and depression. In November I was diagnosed with clinical depression. The antidepressants I've been taking have the pleasant side-effect of reducing the frequency and intensity of my thoughts about jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, or hanging myself, but they've also played havoc with my libido. That is, I suddenly have a libido again, but orgasms seem elusive. This is very upsetting; orgasms have never been a problem for me. I think of regular orgasms as essential for emotional and physical health. None of my trusty toys or techniques have been working. I suspect this is the dirty little secret many sex bloggers don't want to talk about. Half of us are on antidepressants, but hardly anyone seems to be suffering from the usual sexual side-effects of SSRI's.

Well, I'm talking about it. Women are twice as likely to suffer from depression as men, and most people who suffer from it have more than one episode. I recommend reading about depression here, also William Styron's excellent Darkness Visible, and finally, a visit to my favorite sex toy store, Babeland.

Babeland rocks. It's run by women, the salespeople are uniformly helpful and well-informed, the return policy is great, and best of all, it's thanks to them that I can announce my long orgasm dearth is over. I've always been ambivalent about the notion of reviewing sex toys in this space, but my love for the company is strong enough that I can happily endorse them. I was sent a few toys to review, and while I'm not sure the world needs more reviews of sex toys by highly orgasmic women; on the other hand, there is probably some value in reviews by someone who currently has trouble coming.

So I'm happy that I can recommend the Orchid G. It's angled for Gspot stimulation but the vibrating head can be used for clitoral or labial stimulation. Made of hard plastic, it cleans up with warm water and soap, and it's water resistant. It comes in three colours, pink, purple, and aqua and is just adorable. It takes two double AA batteries. Twist the bottom to increase the speed and intensity of vibrations. One con is the roommate factor: it's a bit loud. the good news is that if you're hiding under a duvet like me in an underheated flat, you won't notice any sound, but otherwise the sound is a little loud and I think would be distracting. On the highest setting the noise it makes is extremely loud and rather alarming. The bottom line is that this is a good serviceable, inexpensive toy that will get you where you're going. It doesnt have the presentation factor that the more expensive toys have, but it doesn't need it. It's an excellent beginner's toy for the Gspot. It's currently one of Babeland's bestsellers and I can see why. If you're looking to explore your Gspot or female ejaculation, the Orchid G genuinely is a good place to start. Best of all, it's only 22.00 USD, so it's definitely affordable for any budget.

I'm an affiliate for babeland, so if you buy anything through one of my links it's a nice way to help support my blog a little.
The website is great, plus their shipping is completely discreet with a nondescript return address and something equally bland showing up on your credit card statement, if that is an issue for anyone.

UPDATE 2/7: please read femme fatale's excellent review of the orchid g for the flip side--someone who really didn't like the product at all. Stick around and check out her blog; you'll be glad you did.

body

noreply@blogger.com (O) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 01:33:00 +0000

It's a more or less familiar point now that culture is written on the body. It's especially been so for women, that the body has been and continues to be a mechanism for social control. I do not mean only in the sense I have written about before when discussing my abortion and my assault by my gynecologist: control of fertility.

I refer rather to the ways in which cultural norms are inscribed onto women's bodies, in clothing and the body itself . De Beauvoir writes of the objectifying gaze, of woman as Other. And so we are: the female body exists as an object of attention, regardless of what we wish, and in a peculiar way. It is a sort of gaze that turns us into Object, and not subjects in our own right, this invasive, penetrating, gaze.

I remember when I began to be conscious of myself as Object and Other. I was around 12; this is probably around when most women begin to receive that sort of attention. It brings with it a certain kind of nakedness or vulnerability. I don't mean only that you are looked at in such a way as if you were naked all the time, but that's part of it. It's as if overnight one becomes aware that one exists in the gaze of others, and purely as a physical thing. It's wearying. It is also frightening. Not just the obvious things,--the flashers, the men on public transport that lean into you and grope you, the cars that stop or slow down in the street when you walk, the complete strangers on the street who say things to you. All those things are frightening, and especially so when you are 12 and first receiving them. But what is truly frightening, and annihilating, is the realisation that they are a universal experience--this is happening not only to you, but to virtually all women, all who meet a certain low standard of "attractiveness" (and it is low: being a teenager and/or having breasts and hips is virtually sufficient to guarantee these sorts of male attention).

Those overt acts though are only the most obvious reminders of this inescapable and exhausting awareness that one comes to have all the time: the awareness that you are forever being seen, without being seen.

You suddenly discover a power you have, but it is one which corrupts because it alienates. It alienates you from the self as Subject, this constant awareness that one is seen first and always as beautiful or desirable sexual Object.

It's surely no coincidence that it is right around this age when we start to see a perceptible decline in women's performance in math and science. It's as if we are told to make a choice, body or mind, beauty or brains but not both, never both...and never, never, never too much of either. That would be too much of a threat, you see.

This is probably the grain of truth behind the fat is a feminist issue camp. Yes, we should all love our bodies, in all their variety; and the current cult of anorexic thinness is about more than the fear or loathing of mature womanhood, those hips capable of bearing children, those breasts capable of nurturing them. One can also view anorexia as the manifestation of a literal desire to take up less space in the world. It is both subversive and highly conformative. Pathology as protest, it is as if the anorectic says, I will take your ideas of womanhood, of self-denial, of restraint, and I will excel at them. Is this what you want from Women? Here it is, take it.

But it is not truly liberating to either slavishly embrace or fiercely reject the notions of beauty that are dictated to us. Reacting against them and embracing the opposite is to be just as controlled by them as the woman who hates waxing, pedicures,-- all the physical maitenance of the self as Object--- but performs it dutifully anyway. Worse, the condemnation among some 'feminists' of women who are beautiful--the assertion that having breast implants, for example, somehow makes someone less of a feminist--is exactly the old story of female competition, now dressed up as ideology.

This sort of feminism exactly replicates what they accuse the 'patriarchy' of: judging the value of a woman--in this case, her political commitments--based entirely on her appearance. Object and not Subject, again: meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I reject these ways of thinking. I reject the pressures that tell us to have tits but not brains, or brains and no tits. I reject the pressures that tell me that to have my brains taken seriously I can't also look female. Yes, you will look at my tits; but I won't hide them for all that, anymore than I would ever hide my brains. I love them both, you see, and my sort of feminism tells me that I must reject the false dichotomy that demands I be one or the other, body or mind but not both. In fact my sort of feminism tells me I must be both: I need to hit you with everything I am, and by doing so I force you to acknowledge all of me....and even if you can't, I still win, because I've neither denied nor suppressed any part of me.

I assert women's right to be both, and to own both: beauty and brains, body and mind, sex and sensibility, embodied spirit, and ensouled body. Too much? I say, too bad.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own.