![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraDreamed I was visiting Ben who was living in a house with strange architecture – unattached walls floating unanchored in space, cabinets that flickered and appeared out of nowhere, a kind of ambient grey mist. He was in a remarkably upbeat and chipper mood. Jayne LeGro eventually appeared and I decided to be rude to her, to ignore her and push her aside while I was looking through one of the magically flickering cabinets for a cup.
"Hello, Patrizia," she said. "We were going to wait to tell you our news, but I suppose we'll tell you now."
"News?" I asked nervously.
"We're buying this house."
Buying a house! Always one of Ben's dreams. No wonder he looked so happy.
"Great!" I said sarcastically. "When are you getting married?"
"December," said Ben.
And I was stricken. Not by love or longing, but by the horrible unfairness of it all. What had he ever done to deserve a Happily Ever After? I was the one who deserved that! I had kept the troth we made on the darkling plain; he had betrayed it.
They lived with some kind of group, Latino elders, who herded me into a room to perform an intervention: "This is their new life together. You keep out of it."
I am out of it! I wanted to disclaim. But no, they were talking about the fact that Ben and I still text one another half a dozen times a day --
-- everybody seems to be talking about the pope's interview published today that said stop worrying about homosexuals, abortion, divorce and condoms... love each other. find god caring for one another. But...they missed the most important thing in the interview... that La Strada is the movie he loves the most
-- Okay! The Pope is clearly a brilliant and perceptive man!!!
-- and he taught literature in a high school as a young priest and was a friend of Borges – whose secretary had been his piano teacher
My texts with Ben are the ongoing cultural annotation to my life. It would make me very sad to lose them.
Then Ben was walking me to some kind of bus stop in the rain. He had moved up professionally, apparently – was managing a restaurant and a coffee house in addition to the movie theater --
"Things are going well for you, then," I said.
"Can't complain, can't complain," he said.
I could feel his fondness for me, but at the same time his anxiousness to have me gone so that he could focus things that were really relevant to his life – his success, his marriage, his new house --
At that moment, I realized I was dreaming and that things were very different in the non-dream state. Thing was I couldn't remember how to get to the non-dream state, how to wake up, so that moment pooled across eternity. The raindrops trapped the neon signage into ten thousand pinpoints, Ben drummed his fingers, the bus never came.
###
Spent most of this week being sick, which is to say showing up at work because there's a grant to write (due date Sept 30) and a sexting workshop for teens to organize (October 3), but staggering home at the end of the day because the air conditioning in that office is so high that as each day progressed, I could feel myself getting sicker and sicker and sicker...
With me, the fear of colds is that they'll always settle straight in my lungs and I'll end up having to go on antibiotics. I strongly believe that antibiotics are overprescribed. (Of course, if you develop a secondary bacterial infection, they're unavoidable.) Whenever I get a cold, I try and dose myself prophylactically with herbs like garlic and cayenne that have natural antimicrobial properties. I learned that trick from Reuben, my ESL student who used to be a medical school before he figured out that by doing manual labor in the U.S., he could earn more in a year than he could earn in three years as a doctor in El Salvador. In El Salvador, they teach you how to do medicine on the cheap.
"Eet works," he told me, shrugging.
And indeed, it does.
At home, I would pack pulverized garlic and cayenne powder into gelatin capsules and swallow them. I would then go straight to bed and sleep for 12 hours. When I woke up the next morning, I would feel weak but cleansed and... lighter somehow. The first stage of recovery.
Then I would go back to work and get attacked by the air conditioning, and get sicker and sicker and sicker.
On Friday, I finally thought, Fuck this. And called in sick. I am sick. But it's amazing how guilty I felt.
###
Sexting is just a very odd phenomenon. I suppose in reproductive biology terms, it could be described as a signaling behavior – kind of like a mandrill's bright blue rump and monstrously engorged testicles.
I don't find random pictures of naked torsos on an electronic device erotic in the slightest. But then, I can't relate to most sexual objectifications. I can't do phone sex, for example. Conversations that include lines like, "And now I'm fingering your big, meaty clit. What are you doing?" just make me want to giggle.
I don't much respond to porn either though I've certainly watched a lot of it. Note to any pornographers who may be reading this: Grunting, moaning, writhing, and muttering, "Oh, yes, Daddy! Yes, Daddy! Put your big thick cock into my love tunnel!" is not actually a clinical sign of female arousal. It's very difficult to suspend disbelief when it's just so obvious that 90% of these actresses are not in the slightest bit turned on. Unlike the dick, the pussy never lies!
There was a small sexting scandal at New Roots while RTT was there, but I never knew much about it because RTT refused to talk about it, claimed he didn't have the pictures. (I didn't believe him.)
"You'll just tell on them and get them into trouble," he said. He was right.
What amazes me most about sexting, though, is that a 13 year old can end up on the registered sex offenders list permanently by texting nude pictures of himself or herself. The state would rather see that 13 year old as a pornography distributor than as a pornography victim. That is just beyond bizarre to me.
"Hello, Patrizia," she said. "We were going to wait to tell you our news, but I suppose we'll tell you now."
"News?" I asked nervously.
"We're buying this house."
Buying a house! Always one of Ben's dreams. No wonder he looked so happy.
"Great!" I said sarcastically. "When are you getting married?"
"December," said Ben.
And I was stricken. Not by love or longing, but by the horrible unfairness of it all. What had he ever done to deserve a Happily Ever After? I was the one who deserved that! I had kept the troth we made on the darkling plain; he had betrayed it.
They lived with some kind of group, Latino elders, who herded me into a room to perform an intervention: "This is their new life together. You keep out of it."
I am out of it! I wanted to disclaim. But no, they were talking about the fact that Ben and I still text one another half a dozen times a day --
-- everybody seems to be talking about the pope's interview published today that said stop worrying about homosexuals, abortion, divorce and condoms... love each other. find god caring for one another. But...they missed the most important thing in the interview... that La Strada is the movie he loves the most
-- Okay! The Pope is clearly a brilliant and perceptive man!!!
-- and he taught literature in a high school as a young priest and was a friend of Borges – whose secretary had been his piano teacher
My texts with Ben are the ongoing cultural annotation to my life. It would make me very sad to lose them.
Then Ben was walking me to some kind of bus stop in the rain. He had moved up professionally, apparently – was managing a restaurant and a coffee house in addition to the movie theater --
"Things are going well for you, then," I said.
"Can't complain, can't complain," he said.
I could feel his fondness for me, but at the same time his anxiousness to have me gone so that he could focus things that were really relevant to his life – his success, his marriage, his new house --
At that moment, I realized I was dreaming and that things were very different in the non-dream state. Thing was I couldn't remember how to get to the non-dream state, how to wake up, so that moment pooled across eternity. The raindrops trapped the neon signage into ten thousand pinpoints, Ben drummed his fingers, the bus never came.
Spent most of this week being sick, which is to say showing up at work because there's a grant to write (due date Sept 30) and a sexting workshop for teens to organize (October 3), but staggering home at the end of the day because the air conditioning in that office is so high that as each day progressed, I could feel myself getting sicker and sicker and sicker...
With me, the fear of colds is that they'll always settle straight in my lungs and I'll end up having to go on antibiotics. I strongly believe that antibiotics are overprescribed. (Of course, if you develop a secondary bacterial infection, they're unavoidable.) Whenever I get a cold, I try and dose myself prophylactically with herbs like garlic and cayenne that have natural antimicrobial properties. I learned that trick from Reuben, my ESL student who used to be a medical school before he figured out that by doing manual labor in the U.S., he could earn more in a year than he could earn in three years as a doctor in El Salvador. In El Salvador, they teach you how to do medicine on the cheap.
"Eet works," he told me, shrugging.
And indeed, it does.
At home, I would pack pulverized garlic and cayenne powder into gelatin capsules and swallow them. I would then go straight to bed and sleep for 12 hours. When I woke up the next morning, I would feel weak but cleansed and... lighter somehow. The first stage of recovery.
Then I would go back to work and get attacked by the air conditioning, and get sicker and sicker and sicker.
On Friday, I finally thought, Fuck this. And called in sick. I am sick. But it's amazing how guilty I felt.
Sexting is just a very odd phenomenon. I suppose in reproductive biology terms, it could be described as a signaling behavior – kind of like a mandrill's bright blue rump and monstrously engorged testicles.
I don't find random pictures of naked torsos on an electronic device erotic in the slightest. But then, I can't relate to most sexual objectifications. I can't do phone sex, for example. Conversations that include lines like, "And now I'm fingering your big, meaty clit. What are you doing?" just make me want to giggle.
I don't much respond to porn either though I've certainly watched a lot of it. Note to any pornographers who may be reading this: Grunting, moaning, writhing, and muttering, "Oh, yes, Daddy! Yes, Daddy! Put your big thick cock into my love tunnel!" is not actually a clinical sign of female arousal. It's very difficult to suspend disbelief when it's just so obvious that 90% of these actresses are not in the slightest bit turned on. Unlike the dick, the pussy never lies!
There was a small sexting scandal at New Roots while RTT was there, but I never knew much about it because RTT refused to talk about it, claimed he didn't have the pictures. (I didn't believe him.)
"You'll just tell on them and get them into trouble," he said. He was right.
What amazes me most about sexting, though, is that a 13 year old can end up on the registered sex offenders list permanently by texting nude pictures of himself or herself. The state would rather see that 13 year old as a pornography distributor than as a pornography victim. That is just beyond bizarre to me.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 04:05 pm (UTC)I thought it was horrifying, of course—but I also thought it was kind of funny. In another light, a 13 year old boy wanting to see what girls his own age look like naked is much healthier and innocent to me than him seeking out a 25-year-old porn star with huge tits, "Oh Daddy-ing" & shooting a female ejaculation scene.
Now, of course, my friend's brother probably wouldn't have to search for pictures. I'm sure his love interests and whatever else would just send them.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-22 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-22 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-22 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-22 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-22 06:55 pm (UTC)