Inspo—
“The only thing that moves here is the light, but it changes everything.” —Grace, The Others
“When she was not actually talking to him now she found it hard to keep him distinct from everyone else, everyone with whom she had ever slept or almost slept or refused to sleep or wanted to sleep. It had seemed this past month as if they were all one, that her life had been a single sexual encounter, one dreamed fuck, no beginnings or endings, no point beyond itself.” —Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays
“And I wonder if I'm really with you now / Or just chasin' after some finer day” —Carly Simon, Anticipation
1
Spent the day lying down. Spent the day assembling the words for my despair, or at least for a newsletter, but my fingers got heavy and slipped into my lap. Dissembled what was left into rote fragments: ‘hey sexy,’ ‘pref raw,’ ‘would rather host.’ Considered ending my sex life, remembered it will live on without me anyway. Posted a photo of my ass and felt nauseous. Imagined how tired you all are.
When I’m blue, I spend the day trying to want things. It helps me waste time, too, idly searching for sex. Refreshing, repeating the same six or seven words over and over, accompanied by the same spread of photos. It’s not easy because it works— it rarely works, a whole day of fishing and I’ve caught nothing I wanted, and I don’t want too much, I swear I don’t, just a fraction of what people seem to assume I get. No, it’s easy because it doesn’t matter.
I fold myself into a nasty, little square, and fold again, into something good for nothing: a hole. It doesn’t work. With my right hand and a dollop of shea butter, I screw my head back on. I turn over.
2
A fellow performer who seemed to know a lot about steroids once explained to me something about how dopamine in your brain drops once you cum, and that’s the main reason you feel somewhat disgusted with yourself right after you jerk off. I took his word for it. I think it’s a microcosm of some greater spiritual law, maybe, that in the wake of personal triumphs we tend to feel not like ourselves. Euphoria, dysphoria. And then eventually we wind up somewhere better than before.
3
I have a difficult time with unread messages. I read every solicitation, every nervous greeting, every hopeful bit of flattery, just to make the numbers go away. Sometimes I respond, because I like to try, and then I don’t anymore, because I tried. I seem to be pulling letters out of a mailbox, and then stuffing them back in. I think of how these are whole people reaching out to me with whole needs and whole fears, and I feel helplessly cruel. What a lovely problem to have, too much attention, I think to myself, and then I think about how I might feel about it all if I were a woman. I turn over.
4
Lately I have been saying no. More or less. I have been disappearing without a word, which is still without a yes. I have been rolling over, away from the question. It’s unclear whether I’m all that depressed or just shifting away from experiences sapped of their novelty. I’ve learned to manage it all quite well by now, and can subdue the exuberant sales pitch of death down to a low, droning buzz. It’s important to check in with oneself anyhow, so I worry when pleasure slips away, about whether it will come back soon or if the sensitivity has gone for good.
I suppose it comes down to a difference between working against yourself or on your own behalf. I feel better about myself when I walk away than when I wait around. But say you come across a vacated crab shell washed up on the shore. How can you be certain it found another body to live in?
5
Between an active, intentional desire for sex and its equally generative absence, you might find yourself sinking into a listless state of looking. It is the inverse of an accidental boner, it is a rolling dune of receptivity. The stakes would be impossibly low here, if not for that of making it through the day having done something, anything that excites you. Call it boredom, or call it ‘relaxing at home.’ Call it gambling for a warm body, or call it hoping to be saved.
Somebody asks you when was the last time you got fucked. You feel prompted to lie, but can’t discern which lie would be the hot one, so you try to count. Amid reconciling your sexual history with your immediate thirst, it occurs to you that nobody asks this who really plans to do anything about it. You turn over.
6
The other night I fell asleep on my back, which I have been told prevents wrinkles. I woke up repeatedly on the very edge of my mattress, between dreams about a vacation in the woods, and I was still on my back, as if some godly wind had pushed me there. I inched back to safety, and at noon finally left my bed for the couch, prickling with dread.
XO
TY