Dear M:
I wish you every happiness this new year. And well, another new year. Sigh. Were you out at some elegant-but-casual neighborhood thing? At a friend’s? What were you wearing? Jeans? Slacks? Does anyone say slacks anymore? What are slacks? Maybe you went down to NYC with friends, to somewhere comfortably passé? Or were you on your couch, your wife curled against one of your shoulders, you stroking her hair silently, with your daughter on the floor, with her sleepy head leaning on your knee, all of you watching the ball drop? Get vicarious with me. I dare you.
For the first time in my life, I was home alone on New Year’s. I survived. No bang. No whimper. I mean, I guess spending New Year’s alone is due to happen sooner or later if you live long enough. Apparently, I have lived long enough. I cooked some food and I read a book and I went to sleep. I didn’t die and I didn’t wish I was dead and I didn’t even feel sorry for myself that everyone else was on a date or in a bar or at a party or wherever it was. I ate good food and read a book and felt sleep coming like some warm relief and at 12 I heard people yelling, so at 12:05, I turned the lights out. That was it. The earth continued to spin. Somewhere between the food and sleep, a man came over and touched my body and I touched his and things happened and then the man left. I can’t remember what I did last New Year’s. I doubt I’ll remember any of this, either. Not the book, not what I ate, not any of it. It’s not really important, so.
Why is it we can remember the bad things so well, but not the good things?
I have moments – the tiniest, shiny particles of moments, freezeframes: In the one I visit the most, I was 20, and Sly and The Family Stone’s Luv n’ Haight was playing loudly with the sun pouring in the window so vigorously, the sill was almost humming. The smell of cut grass. The air was petting me gently. I wanted to rise and rise and my chest wanted to swing open like French doors to let the everything in. There are a few moments like that and you get to keep them, unimportant moments when everything was perfect. Isn’t it funny, then, that perfection is a state and ruination is a story?
Here’s a piece of perfect ruination:
There was an online personal ad. There was a man. He was just a little bit younger than me. He was tall. He sent me photos. He was blue, monochrome, brooding and pretty. He was a 60s jazz poster, a Modigliani. He was a 10 ½” blue cock. Hello, I said.
My name is Brad Duffy, he said. This is my first try at this, he said. ...If it doesn’t work, i'll keep jacking out huge loads w/ both fists every day.... Public stealth sex is probably the # 1 turn-on for me.... but for a guy so sexual, i couldn't have had less sex the past 2 years if i tried... all of the nonsense involved in it just wrecked it for me for awhile...
Tell me about the music you listened to in the 80s, he said.
The 80s, I said.
You know about those moments? I fell into one. This one had the eyes, the cogs of a cassette mix tape you made me. In your room, there was a ceiling fan that dragged its feet across the ceiling and open windows that left everything in nuclear glare. Even with the large mouths of windows yelling open, the room was full of cigarette smoke. You were smoking. You were finishing the mix for me, putting the needle on the record and I was standing by the door and you said well, sit down, and patted one hand on the bed and it took my hand and the other hand stayed on the needle and the start hiss --
I was born & raised in LA, he said, and I was a big part of the punk scene there from 80' onward... Saw hundreds of the best shows humanly imaginable... Easily the best parts of my life … someone epic played EVERY nite … nowadays ( the past 18 or so years) i listen only to : 50's R&B, 60's Soul, 50's Rockabilly, 40's to 69' country, 40's to 60's blues, early 80s new wave, and 79' to 84' punk.
In the 80s, I wrote, I listened to the beat of my frantic, surging heart. Now I listen to the seizures of the clock. In between, I have listened to the replacements, cut chemist, cocteau twins, sex pistols, big boys, blondie, descendents, bad brains, minutemen, x, rocket from the crypt, patti smith, x-ray spex, operation ivy, english beat, fugazi, husker du, nick cave, beastie boys, the jam, bauhaus,
agitpop,--
I’ll let you know, Jack said.
That week, I did not hear from him.
Or the week after.
Then, the next week, in the soft grey silence, he could hear the bump of his balls: … from here and from there through the quiet air… pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water...[1]
Which is to say, he emailed me. I’ve been busy with work. I haven’t had time to email. I live in the east bay. I looked at the photo of him again, blue and lanky and soulful. I understood.
When he said he was in the east bay, he didn’t say he was two hours east. I’ll be coming to the city soon, he said. Tonight.
Tonight?
The wasting fires of lust [had] sprang up again. …His blood was in revolt. He moaned to himself like some baffled prowling beast. He wanted to sin … to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin…the cry that he had strangled for so long in his throat issued from his lips… a cry which was but the echo of an obscene scrawl which he had read on the oozing wall of a urinal.[2]
What movies do you like, he asked.
Before I could email back, he sent a second email. Let’s meet at a movie theater. Wear a skirt and no panties. We’ll put a coat over our laps.
It was awkward. I wasn’t sure what to say. I just did that last week, I said. Could we do something else?
Maybe it would have been less boring with his pretty blue hands rather than the hands that went to the movie with me last time. I don’t know. Those were boring hands. And I like fondling at the movies. I like the collapse of the distance between the meat and the light: the gasp and twist of skin and bone against the perfect story-high celluloid bodies, bodies in a story, the transience of both us and them; the expectancy and the servitude of the empty seats and the smells like sweet mushrooms or musk or bleach rising from the back row. Do screens remember any of their stories? What do we get to keep?
There was a movie I wanted to see, but that was beside the point. The movie was a documentary. It was about the construction of the military/police state and surveillance culture, but while those things are sexy, I didn’t really want to think about being busted for a sex crime while a stranger’s hand was in my pussy.
You can just come over to my house and we could have dinner, I wrote. Would a blue man be invisible against my blue sheets? It was cold. I was lazy. It seemed much nicer to stay at home.
Let me think, he wrote.
It pained him that he did not know … and that he did not know ... He felt small and weak. When would he be like the fellows [with] big voices and big boots … That was very far away. ... [3]
You can just come over to my house and we could have dinner, I wrote.
Public sex is my #1 turn-on, he wrote.
It’s not that I was against it. I like dirty bookstores. It’s just that it was cold out and I am lazy.
Right, I said. Ok.
I’ll be at the adult book store in North Beach across from City Lights at 7, he said. I’ll text you when I leave.
Okay, I said. You know, I said, If you’re driving, do you want to just grab me on the way? I wasn’t really on the way, but it’s at least 45 minutes by bus from my house, and I couldn’t really wear good fuck-me shoes on the bus.
I’ll just meet you there, he said.
I
started to text back, but the thing was, I understood. It was gross, but I understood.
Could I have another photo? I asked.
He sent a photo. He wasn’t blue at all. In this photo, he was wearing a baby blue suit, but he actually looked like Kevin Bacon. He was dressed up like a 1920s guy, with a hat and a suit. He had his jacket open to show off his suspenders.
I could stay home, I thought. But he was already on the road. The white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations. They are held out to say: We are alone. Come. [4]
And I had already invested in this. So I would go on the date with Kevin Bacon and look for traces of blue around the edges of his ears or cuffs, the corners of his mouth, and see what I could find and maybe the second photo was bad and the first, blue photo was right, or maybe both were right and both were there. And even if I wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which my soul … beheld[5], either way, I could go home with a slight case of unwholesome, and inbetween I could go to the best bookstore in the world. So I did.
The black arms of tall ships[6]. I browsed through the theory section and the fiction. I wanted to buy a book from the art section, but I did not want to put it down in the backroom of the porn store. I browsed through history and biography and world religions.
I’m late, he texted. He texted at an hour, an hour and a half, more. Ok, I said. Ok ok ok.
I decided that if I was the kind of girl who made fuckdates with strangers for the backrooms of porn stores, maybe that also made me the kind of girl who flashed in public and took photos of it. In the alley behind the bookstore, I pulled down my dress in front and took topless photos that I sent to the blue boy. In the poetry room, I took a photo up my skirt. It came out too dark. I tried a few more times, in nonfiction bestsellers and translation, then gave up.
Ok, I said. Ok ok ok.
And then, finally. I’m here, he texted, and in my heart, the black ships grew tall blue sails. It’s a story, I thought, and maybe there is blue in it.
Blue and pink: The disfavored status of the feminine as irrational and over-emotional in this gender binary leads to the conception of the feminine as hysterical.[7]
I waited outside, and stood there and stood there. Something flew at me. It was rags tied to a stick, a scarecrow, a ripped flag for some country that had been destroyed. It had large yellow teeth and its skin hung from its face like a turkey’s wattle. It was shouting and gesticulating wildly, arms flapping and yellowed piano key teeth chopping the air. Its hands clenched convulsively and... He stretched out his arms in the street to hold fast his frail swooning …[8]
As it clenched, it was clear: his gendered identity was built around a negation: not-hysteria. Because James believes in his own performance, he is not conscious of his own fear of hysteria[9].
Get out of the street, I said, pulling him on the curb. What’s wrong?
Flapflap. He had locked his keys in the car. Flail. Flap. Hop. His spare magnet key. Hop. Flail. Was not under the car. His eyes popped and bugged and then suddenly locked on me.
He looked me up and down. My long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane's …. my thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips… slate-blue skirts dovetailed behind me. My bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. And my long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, my face.[10]
He licked his lips, then he said, you are definitely a far cry from the gals i would ever deal with.... not that they're terribly conservative, they're just predictable & controlling & want more than i'm willing to give...
A tall black ship ran aground. Let’s go and deal with your car, I said. I bet you’re worried about that. You’ve got a long drive home. He was flapping and flailing again. You have to calm down, or I’m leaving, I said. His arms were only flying elbow high now, not over his head. He ran his not-blue hand over his thinned hair.
And he kept staring at me. His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other.[11]
He licked his skeletal lips. My gendered identity, he said, is built around a negation: not-hysteria. Because I believes in my own performance, I am not conscious of my own fear of hysteria. I react to my fear of hysteria with a compulsive need to emphasize my own rationality and masculinity.[12]
I haven’t had sex since August, he said.
He hadn’t had sex since August, and he’d lost his hide-a-key.
With a sudden movement he bowed his head and joined my lips to his... It was too much for him. He closed his eyes, surrendering himself to me, body and mind, conscious of nothing in the world but the dark pressure of my softly parting lips. They pressed upon his brain as upon his lips as though they were the vehicle of a vague speech; and between them he felt an unknown and timid pressure, darker than the swoon of sin, softer than sound or odour.
What was after the universe?
Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began?[13]
His breath was something fetid under insistent wintergreen. I mean, I hadn’t pityfucked anyone in a long time, and I hadn’t ever seen a 10 ½ inch cock so I was curious, and had anyone loved this man? With his anger and his tantrums? His frustration and his history better than his present? His misogyny and his fear? What would it be like to let him feel desired, adored. What would it be like to give him a story? There was also the small, disturbing fact that thinking about getting used by a pathetic, unattractive guy in a porno booth made me wet. Fuck. Really wet.
He was awkward at the desk, trying to get change when the place ran on tokens. I didn’t help him. He got nervous because the sign by the booths said one person per booth. He didn’t want to get kicked out.
It’s ok, I told him. I am inherently dangerous: as a feminine audience I have the ability to affirm your performance of masculinity, but as a potentially hysterical woman I also have the ability to radically undermine that performance.[14]
We went into the booth. He did really well standing behind me, playing with my nipples through my dress, pressing his hard cock against the cleft in my ass, but he just couldn’t quite work it out. He wasn’t smart enough to tug my dress down just a little to free my tits. In one move, my dress could have come off and i could have been totally naked. But he was terrified. He stood there, staring at the porn screen. He waved his hands up and down. I put them back on my body. I put mine on his to show him things that hands can do. His palms came off my body and they were blue. Then he showed me his cock. I opened my mouth and the booth turned blue, the midnight television blue shone through my teeth. Then he moved to fuck me without a condom. Then I said no. Then it was clear that he didn’t have one. Then I fished one out of my coat. Then he couldn't get his hard on back. He didn't ever touch me, not the whole time. Not slapping or caressing, not mouthing or licks, not even pulling and spitting. He just watched the porn, pulling on his elastic cock that was nowhere near 10 ½ inches. It was like a train going in and out of tunnels and that was like the noise … when you opened and closed the flaps of the ears… tunnel, out; noise, stop. How far away it was![15] Then he fucked me, my chest pressing against the dirty screen of the video booth and it was everything, getting fucked really deep, right THERE, breathless fuck dear god YES THERE and then the smell of meth thick in the air from the booth next to ours like some vicious perfume, and my whole body almost a seize and his heart danced upon my movements like a cork upon a tide,[16] and then he got soft again. And the video time ran out. He complained that it was too hot in the booth, and that if it wasn’t too hot – and that if he was in a bed with a glass of water, if he was in a bed, then he could really show me a good time, and maybe he could come over for dinner or something sometime. His eyes were dimmed with tears, and, looking humbly up to heaven, he wept for the innocence he had lost.[17]
And I said:
Although sexuality is often associated with masculine gender roles, you interpret sexuality as an inherent threat to your masculinity.[18]
And I said:
As Irigaray so rightly points out, the example of feminine pleasure is nothing more than a solace for men... male dominance typically depends on the perpetuation of female passivity and dormant sexuality. Overt female sexuality is a direct threat to patriarchy. [19]
And I said:
I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.[20]
It was time for me to go. He begged me not to judge him, and to please give him a chance to redeem himself. I nodded and shook his hand. I took a $15 cab home.
He was alone. He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone … and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and[21] soon roadside assistance would come and open his car, but he would never find the hide-a-key.
Please write me a story and send it soon.
Kind of blue,
Yours,
Ms. S
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[1] James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
[2] Ibid.
[3] James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
[4] James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Adam Quinn, “Hysteria and the Performance of Masculinity: A Feminist Reading of James Joyce’s ‘A Painful Case’”, The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English.
[8] James Joyce, Portrait.
[9] Adam Quinn, Hysteria and the Performance of Masculinity: A Feminist Reading of James Joyce’s “A Painful Case”, The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English.
[10] James Joyce, Portrait, third-person references changed to first person.
[11] James Joyce, Portrait.
[12] Adam Quinn, Hysteria and the Performance of Masculinity: A Feminist Reading of James Joyce’s “A Painful Case”, The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English.
[13] James Joyce, Portrait.
[14] Adam Quinn, Hysteria and the Performance of Masculinity: A Feminist Reading of James Joyce’s “A Painful Case”, The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English.
[15] Joyce, Portrait.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Adam Quinn, Hysteria and the Performance of Masculinity: A Feminist Reading of James Joyce’s “A Painful Case”, The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English.
[19] Linda Elam, “Theoretical modelling: James Joyce’s women on display,” James Joyce and the Difference of Language, edited by Laurent Milesi
[20] Joyce, Portrait.
[21] Ibid.
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