fetishizing

I had been thinking about writing to you for a long time, Rosemary, and am finally getting down to it. it's been really hectic here, you know; trying to plan for Cecile's college visits, setting up my new business, buying a car and looking into osteopathic schools for a potential career in primary care. I've been learning more and more about osteopathy, and the psycho-somatic aspect of it is really latching on to my interest. It's amazing how my interests have changed over the years; there was music first, then women's studies, then radio voiceovers, then pediatrics, media and sex-work. i've been passionate, however, about giving care. about providing care. the concept, how my tongue feels when i say providing care, the psychology and the drive, throughout, has really been strong, even though it has surfaced back and forth, like frozen balloons, in a steady stream of my biography. my focus has shifted from kids, specifically, to under-served minorities; the piece of my identity that i forget sometimes and i am okay with that. i'm sure you'll get updates from me in the future, but i did want to let you know that I'm doing more policy work in the fall.

I was sitting in my apartment last week on 52nd Street and Lexington Avenue, reading My Dangerous Desires by a Leftist ex-hooker Amber Hollibaugh, when someone named Robert chatted me up online.

"Hey, how's it going Tom?"

"Going well, how're you man?"I responded.

"Fine fine. Just chilling in my hotel room on 54th/Lex. What're you upto?"

I didn't reply till about 5 minutes later. I was in the middle of reading about Hollibaugh's views on the butch/femme dichotomy and forgot to check my phone.

"Reading a book about queer women. Ha." I replied.

There was a 2 minute pause. I read ahead, sipping piping hot coffee from a tangerine-striped mug; occasionally staring at the print of Roy Lichtenstein's Kiss V hanging on the wall across from me. 

"Cool. Are you looking?" read the next message.

"Not to hook up, no. Just looking for friends. Sorry. How are things in the hotel stud?" I asked.

"I'm horny man. I wanna be used as a human toilet. Like right now. Wanna come over?"

I was a little baffled. What exactly is a "human toilet"? What does this guy want me to do? I was confused and curious at the same time, perhaps slightly taken aback.

"Well, Rob, I mean...what exactly do you want me to do?" I asked. 

"You should just use me like you use a toilet. Ya know, like piss on me, or make me drink your piss. Also, don't shower, please. I want to lick your ass. Make me lick your ass, like you would use toilet paper. Do whatever man...spit on me, abuse me, whatever gets you off." 

I didn't know what to say. I just said, "Okay."

He wrote back thirty seconds later. "I can leave the door open. You can come, tie me up, slap my face and go from there. I wanna be your pig, man. Bring friends along if you know anyone in the 'hood. You up for it?"

No, I wasn't up for it. But I wanted to know more about what he had in mind. I wanted to know who this person was, his background, etc. 

"Maybe in two hours. I'm a little busy right now. Where are you visiting from?" I asked.

"From Silver Lake, LA. You a local here?"

"Yea." 

"Oh cool cool. By the way man, this has got to be discreet. I'm a professional in private equity in a big-name company and know people all around. Gotta keep it between us, you okay with that man?"

"Of course. No worries." I replied. 

There was another minute long silence. I didn't know how to react. I was entertained and confused and surprised and piqued at the same time. it made me grin. just another example of Aristotelian metaphysics, of man as a rational animal? of man the logical, the moral, the professional human being? or maybe this is man the animal? the subconscious, the unconscious desires of the dirty and filthy, the wild and the uninhibited, sprouting through the soil of propriety and reasonableness? what happened to the conventional morality, the compact set of rules that govern what men and women are allowed to desire, allowed to express? I thought of man as a coin; a two-faced entity, one surface on top, and another on the bottom. Sometimes when you flip it, or spin it on its diametric axis, you see both sides in spurts, in momentary glimpses, till you settle on seeing one side. and then, an external stimulus, will switch it back, or make it twirl, or dance in air and re-settle. new mood, alternate side, but still the same, within.

"So when are you coming man? I have a 13 inch dildo in my suitcase. You can beat up my hole with it." he wrote.

I didn't respond. I wasn't going to any more. 

Five minutes later. "I'm getting a group together with 3 other guys. They're all gonna use me, spit and piss on me, and use me like a total bitch. You wanna join dude?" 

No response.

"Well I guess not. Delete my face pic please. Don't want anyone to know. Also if you want to use me, let me know. I'm free tomorrow AM as well."

I deleted Robert's face picture. I wasn't interested in meeting up anyway, and I wanted to respect his desire to be anonymous. But my point is this, Rosemary Stevens. There are so many Roberts out there, who cannot express their desires, their fantasies of sex, their urges and wants and innermost wishes because they're afraid of being judged. they're afraid of being improper, being caught in a media hyperbole which could cause professional damage, bore a hole through public identity, and cost a toll on social rubrics. desires out of conventional mores cannot be discussed or described unless you find refuge in a sexualized sub-category, unless you're part of this other "culture" that all the new academics come out to study, and theorize about and criticize and rip apart. i thought, again, of all the men who told me they feel like "human ash trays", or the ones who get turned on by licking boot polish, or the 40 year olds who like to drink breast milk for fun, or snort cocaine and draw rings on their nipples. i thought of all the men who told me about how they get turned on thinking about sprinkling pepper in someone's asshole, or making someone gag on a beer can or getting their penises stretched with retractors. things that can only be talked about in private circles, desires that are never taken seriously, cravings that are looked at through the lens of absurdity. this is the sad existence of fetishizing, the side of humans that cannot be explained through nature or nurture or a combination of both, the origins of desire, the theories of attractions. that's just absurd, is always the reaction, as we sit on this buoy of normalcy, hiding behind shades, the spectrum of monstrosity. running away from the deepest voice of the pathway to pro-creation. 

I'll write another letter to you sometime next month. till then, be good. and know that I'm thinking about you.

T.

february fourteenth

a photo-series of February fourteenth. imagine, behind the lights, two souls dancing, shaking heads, gripping hands, wishing well, speaking about loving, and whistling in the wind...

and the lights went out...

on a shower

i happen to have a weirdly vivid mental image of what a man ought to look like when he showers thoroughly. i try to live up to it, as much as i can. sometimes i am successful, which makes me proud and happy and cheerfully overjoyed, but at other times i am not and it can be dissatisfying and seriously unsettling beyond words can explain. today, however, i was determined to have a picture-perfect thorough shower. so after i finished reading The UnAmericans, an NPR-recommended title that E gave me for Valentine's Day, i walked over to the bathroom sink, took off my clothes, flossed my teeth, examined an itchy red spot just chilling near my left nipple, pinched around my lower belly to detect any unfamiliar ounce of fat that may have made its way to my abdominal stucco during the weekend's binge-eating spree, manicured my scruff, made a U-turn to the bath tub and pulled the plastic shower handle to let the water flow. it took me seventy two seconds to adjust the temperature, while standing by the bath tub, leaning down, and wetting my finger tips periodically. the pivoting back and forth, between sizzling hot and bone-chilling cold takes away, typically, a good deal of my patience. especially with unfamiliar showers, figuring out the mechanics of getting the perfect temperature is nothing short of a mental marathon, a brain sweat that manifests itself through after-shower erraticism, temporary bipolarity and awfully bad mood swings.

with the right temperature in check, i hung the bath towel on the hook above the edge of the tub, and inched into the shower: right toe first, then right heel, then left foot, then calves, torso and finally, head. i flinched, immediately, when the spray of water beads touched my torso, but after a minute of getting used to, stood directly under the shower head. i got wet, in a matter of minutes, and it felt exceptionally good. the sight and sounds of falling water are quite remarkable, if you ask me, and you should take a moment to observe if you haven't done so already. sometimes, they look like concrete mercury dollops or pellets of Rogaska crystals clinking in the steam, or like copper crowns swirling in the heat, making a constant shh sound, and whistling down the strings of gravitational water veins. and at other times, they look like little pearl drops forming and disappearing, clanging and thrumming along the way of the riser rail, before crashing at the base with exhaustive thuds. then they pool around the base of the feet, chirp a little, like grasshoppers in a pageant, lilt and sway in a strong physical tension and wiggle down the bare-open rubber gasket of the shower drain.

after about three minutes of standing under the pouring shower head, i took a dime-size dab of shampoo in my palms, added a splash of water, lathered it slightly and applied it at the crown of my hair followed by my hairline. a strong aroma of caramel and honey curled up in waves, and sweetened every corner of the room. i scrubbed my hair and scalp, gently at first and then really vigorously, to make bubbles. small to medium-sized macro-spheres to micro-spheroids, transparent and prismatic, round and plump-looking bubbles, revolving in nano-orbits, and giggling at each other like little children in a yellow bus, with tummy tickles and cartoons. the ecology of bubbles, the frequency, the magnitude, etc. all add to my vision of a thorough shower. i don't know why, and i don't know how, but it's an integral part of my showering scheme. the same happens with body soap, or body butter, as i use it to rub and scrape my skin vigorously, lathering up to the extent of the frothiness of histrionic mythological floods, and feel a new sensation of cleanliness nibbling at my skin tips and tickling at my sweat glands. There is this re-dawning of freshness, that is hard to explain. this feeling that someone has used a squeegee in whopping arc-radii, and cleansed every milli-pore of skin to twinkling specklessness. i feel calm, re-energized and light.

i had a lot of thoughts when i was in the shower today. various topics, various concerns, impressions, cravings and ideas. i thought about the fact that i haven't spoken to my parents in over six months since falling out over being distracted, wasting my life, and Eli Reisman. i thought about what my life would be like if i went into mainstream design writing, ten years from now or even twenty. and then there was Mary McCarthy's Libby MacAusland and the disheartened likes of Evelyn McHale sipping champagne at the Carnegie Institute, flummoxed by the appearance of Giacomo Puccini. somewhere in the middle of it all, there were thoughts about Bikram yoga, about red lentils, Naples and rainbows. and finally, that recurring thought about belonging, about fitting right in, about the profile of a minority. the fear of otherness and living as a category dishearten me sometimes. but i suck it all in, when the beans spill, and think about the positive side. the relentless pursuit of assimilation, to be just another one of those, to be a part of the mainstream, has its own status of non-scrutiny, its own stamp of consolation. to be a part of the ocean, to refine a niche, to blend into a majority growth wing, has its own array of rewards. Sarah Hellerstein asked me the other day, while i was waiting for the bus in front of the Juilliard School, why do people forget their roots? the way they evolved? i didn't bat an eyelid and blurted out because sometimes those roots evoke images of horror, sadness and disappointment. sometimes, and only sometimes, temporarily forgetting those roots gives a chance to begin, to re-form, to re-discover from scratch. the tailoring and laundering of identity politics, of stitching together and rehashing a dominant persona, sound easier in theory than done. and i have struggled with it a lot, and given it less and less thought over the years. sometimes all it takes for the complaints to trickle back down is a run-of-the-mill comment. don't get me wrong, i am not wallowing in depression. neither am i sitting here, ripping hairs with a glum face. it was merely a thought, and it has passed.

sometimes i want to scream, sprinkling colors of sounds all around me. sometimes i want to cry, with patterns and cuboids, stenciled on my face. sometimes i want to breathe in the melody of Bach, the rollicking of Brahms and the rockiness of Liszt. i want to learn how to Salsa, sing Rusalka, own a tuxedo and make a basket. i want to run to the mountains, eat vanilla beans, roast coffee and read. how the mind wanders, speaks, dances and spins, in the simple space of a shower cubicle is absolutely fascinating to me. where poets have composed, and lyricists have imagined, and scientists have dreamed of ambitious discoveries. in splashes of water, percussing on the body, in stains of bubbles, melting away, in the innocence of steam hissing at the ears, the washing away, the deep-cleansing, the therapeutics of water works is a critter of wonder. and shall remain unexplained. 

Diana's valentine letter

Diana,

it's been almost a year since we last saw each other at the Cindy Sherman exhibit up on the 6th floor in the MoMA. You were too busy prepping for New York Fashion Week, i remember, with your lacquered nails and bouffant hair, or was it a crown braid? i complimented you on your breast augmentation surgery, your black Tafetta dress from Coco Chanel, and your McQueen ankle-wraps; ah, how beautiful you looked! i wasn't sure, however, if i should call you Diana or Leonard or something else. if you have a preference, please let me know. i did not mean to offend. 

i heard from Henriette, who i bumped into the other day at the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle first and then again at the Minskoff Theater on 45th Street by Broadway, that Susan isn't doing very well. i can imagine how difficult it must be for you -this change, this new identity, this new life, the stares you must get and the slew of explanations you are expected to provide. but Diana, if i can help in any way, please please don't hesitate to contact me. i'm here for you and your well-being is important to me. forget the nasty things they wrote about you on The Sophian; i've always disliked that group from Smith anyway. you deserve much better, and i know you will get out of this slump. 

well, the reason i'm writing this letter to you today is that i wanted to let you know that i have been seeing someone for the past nine months. we met, shortly after Stacy and i broke up in San Francisco, at a library. it was kind of a weird encounter really; awkward and strange at first, but it glided into place within minutes! finding someone to love all over again, to rebuild a faith, to rebuild confidence and assurances is always really really hard. every time you're tossed away because there's someone else who's better than you, you tell yourself this is it. i want to lead the single life right now, drama-free, care-free. and things will eventually fall in place, if they're meant to be. and then the reality of your solitude hits you, the sporadic nature of your new found conviction bears its fangs, and it slowly depresses you, as it slithers through your veins, diffuses through your mind, perfuses and effuses through your moods and hypnotizes your satiety into a vacillating feeling of comfort and emptiness. you feel dizzyingly numb, you feel uncharacteristically hopeless; to a point, where you start questioning the worthiness of your self, the value of your contribution to this gimmick of existence. am i deserving of happiness? you ask yourself. and knowing the rhetorical nature of your depressive quandary, you feel displaced, like a swollen pendulum bob, swinging on the apices of emotional extremes, dissatisfied at once, ecstatic at once, spiraling in a rut of neurotic outbursts in between. 

loneliness had become my dependable aphrodisiac. i had a love-hate relationship with it; mostly because it gave me the independence i always wanted, but pinched me to tears from time to time. when you are lonely, you have a lot of time on your hands and more often than not, find yourself mulling over personal histories, memories, day dreams and promises. it feels as if you're going through a catalog, a sheaf of paper, a bundle of circumstances, and re-living bygone moments. and you tell yourself that you were tired, utterly exhausted, of being the appendage, the second option, the could-have-been. and when that point comes at the pinnacle of your recollections, you recoil into a state of quiescence, where you exist without living. you survive without feeling. you continue without meaning. and then you learn to love this new existence, to live in the new reality, leading the cues to a complete makeover.

your mind begins to bark, slowly, at sounds of silence. it becomes a juxtaposition of the empty slots of a crossword puzzle; like the blank checkers of a scrabble board, filled and re-filled with alphabets of consolation. time and time again, you develop this strong companionship with your inner loneliness, a voice only you can hear, a voice that only makes sense to you. after you slide downhill, so easily, so smoothly on the course of negativity, it now becomes a new defense against accusation of carelessness, a new weapon, a new instrument of body politics. but you see the positive side of loneliness; the independence that comes with the lack of accountability and the focus on the self. for a while, you learn to live that non-committed life, the altruistic one, but then a craving engulfs you so suddenly, that you don't know what to do. this rousing voice unfurls within you, like an awakening tendril of a garden pea, and says, i want to be held, i want to be loved and i want to be wanted.

i was ready, both mentally and physically, before i met E in the library. you know, it felt a little awkward at first, a little forced and queasy; but we broke the shell within a minute. we shook hands, exchanged greetings, and smiled, for a while. who knew you could read so much from a simple smile? or maybe i had just forgotten what smiles meant anymore. but we ended up at a restaurant on 105 Street and Broadway, pouring liquor, clicking nails, brushing our legs under the table in gentle bumps and smooth glides. it was easy, despite the nervousness, to speak out again, to put myself out there again, to someone who would listen. and over the course of nine months, Diana, we have grown so much together, literally. with someone who has an open heart, an edge of crisp, a magnetism so smooth, you feel nourished when you enter to live a life together. i feel that with E, despite my occasional discomfiture. never in my life have i felt so loved, so cleansed, so beautifully held, and so richly infused with emotions not involving harrowing negativities, as i have in these months. the genuineness of a bound chemistry, seethed in trust, simmered in a spectrum of romantic notes, oozes in me a distinctive calm. like a powerful propeller, un-mechanizing the thrust of routine existence; it helps with a social evolution, even a personal revolution of turning over, of un-becoming and re-becoming a better person. 

my pride does remain in the identity of a sex radical, and this point has caused a lot of altercation between the two of us. i am a proponent of sexual exploration, even in the midst of a conventional tie, learning and experiencing ways and cravings of the human body, the human mind. there is love, and there is lust. the two intersect in the caricature of a Venn diagram, but their identities do not meld. and neither does mine -in my role as a practical anarchist, in using my body to test the limits of sexuality. i have no shame, and i do not blush at the ideology of body-selling. i have no judgment reserved for the hoochies and hustlers. through breaking the limits of operational elastics, the normative dicta of institutional morality, i take pride in myself, in, what i consider, extreme liberalism. the cross roads of love and lust is not clear-cut, and the quest to self is highly unwarranted. we need a middle ground, Diana, and we will work towards it. with E, talking is easy; and conversation flows. everything feels so natural, and so delicately together, that i sit and tell myself -i'm glad the hollowness ended. 

i hope that sometime in the future you will get to meet E, the person who brings so much contentment in my daily life. that gift of thought, that gift of desire, that gift of being wanted -oh how enriching it is, i cannot explain in words. to think about, in moments of silence, that someone else is thinking about you, is the greatest gift i could ever have.

i hope you have a wonderful valentine's day, Diana. i'll stop by Cheryl's tomorrow night to drop off a few envelopes and tell her you said hello.

all the best, T.