Jotting down a thought I will hopefully find myself able to expand upon later.
The comings and goings of a fetish or obsession of sexual nature that is all consuming one day and then almost non-existant the next. This is not a libido thing I don't think, more of a psychological 'jerk'.
Like any nervous tick or such thing it is impossible to control 100% of the time and some days far worse than others.
My preoccupation with this lies in the urgency the desire. It is something that demands satisfaction in a far greater way than hunger, which if ignored, placates itself at least for a while. There is no escaping a fetish with a tight grip on you. It is something which is a constant battle to resist and I imagine the pressure if it is a socially unacceptable one is almost unbearable when the thought is upon one.
Currently I am experiencing such a thing, the timing is abismal and it is everything I can do to function in a quasi-normal way. My hope is that it will resolve itself if I keep repressing it and leave me be.
Is this how a paedophile or rapist might feel? Is it possible that it is the same lust for pleasure - all be it a pleasure which is destructive for others - that drives them as the desire which drives me now?
How far do we resist temptation and to what end is it our duty to resist ourselves if there is a negative consequence for another human being?
If my fetish is distasteful to others but does not directly harm them, I feel I have the right to parade it to my hearts content (consider the implication sustained here with the ideology of 'Gay Pride') but is that actually the way society is structured to work or is THIS feeling of necessary repression merely a product of over assuming parenting and no background in stage schooling which encourages children free expression?
This leads me to question where my duty to society ends and my duty to myself begins; and then again to question if I have those dual priorities in the right order!
This is a blurt of thoughts with no order and should be given the credibility of such ramblings but I intend to persevere with my opinions until I have formulated a clear one.
I should probably do the same with my opinion on capital punishment as that topic comes up quite frequently and whilst I fight what I THINK is my corner, I am not 100% sure that it is really what I feel.
More later.
Friday, 4 May 2012
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
Woman vs Godzilla
Deborah Carson had always wanted a husband, and through sheer diligence and by over coming numerous heartbreaks, she had finally, at the age of thirty-nine, selected a suitable man named Thomas.
A poet and a scholar, he was academically her equal and his physique was everything she had imagined during the lonely nights of her teen years.
The sex was good and frequent without becoming a chore. They held dinner parties that friends and acquaintances clamoured to be invited to. The only blotch on their happy relationship was something that no matter how hard she tried, she could not ignore. In the evenings her husbands beautiful personality began to alter completely.
“He acts like a child!”
She would wail down the phone to her mother who would nod sympathetically at the other end of the line and say
“They all do darling!”
Her friends all agreed and so it was with a sinking feeling that Deborah resigned herself to the fact that her husband was not quite the man she had thought he was, but considering everyone agreed that it was a common feature of men she didn’t see what else she could do to avoid dying alone - apart from become a lesbian and that was something Deborah had never had any inclination towards.
It had all started a few months into their marriage. At night he began to make love impatiently, exuberantly and was ready to go again within minutes. This was something she learned to accept and put down to his caffeine intake before bed and allowed herself the flattery of thinking it was also a sign of his insatiable lust for her, but then one night she woke up alone in their bed in the small hours to the sound of a recorded guitar track that was definitely not from their gentle jazz and classical collection and stumbling downstairs, found Thomas on the kitchen floor, hunched over a note book, scribbling furiously and pushing his hair back from his face with impatient gestures. When she had asked what he was writing, he had covered it from her view jealously and grunted that it was private and she never understood him anyway.
Wounded, she had gone to bed and fallen into a fitful sleep. The next morning he made tea as usual and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her awake. When she questioned him about the book and its contents, he looked confused and shook his head. He had no recollection.
As the years moved on, he began to lose interest in sex at night. She would have put this down to age and exhaustion were it not for the fact that he would insist on strange tickling play fights and on the rare occasions she was able to hold her own, he became either sullen or over excited to the point of violence. She became used to waking in the night and hearing the sounds of computer games echoing up the stairs and didn’t bother to go and investigate what her husband was up to.
Shortly after his fiftieth birthday, the games consol was given to charity and the tickling matches stopped. In the evenings he would either read to himself of plead with Deborah to read to him. Inwardly Deborah sighed with relief. This was odd behaviour she could deal with.
At night she could sometimes make out the sounds of plastic action figures bashing against each other downstairs and would occasionally hear an argument between the two characters narrated in strange high-pitched whispers.
One night the whispering was closer and Deborah realised it was coming from the gap between her husbands side of the bed and the wall.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she could make out a bulky Godzilla action figure and some sort of plastic monkey acting out a scene on the edge of the mattress. The cord of the alarm clock was wound around Godzilla’s foot and she watched with a building irritation as slowly, inch by inch the clock was dragged forward until, with an audible thump it fell onto the floor.
“For God’s Sake Thomas!”
Tried beyond endurance Deborah sat up and slapped her hand down on the light switch. From beside the bed there was a gasp and a familiar looking little boy stood up. He was wearing her husbands pyjamas and he looked as if he were about to cry.
“I didn’t mean to wake you up darling.”
His voice was high and pure, he couldn’t possibly have been more than ten years old, and yet …
“Thomas?”
Deborah blinked in confusion and sweat prickled under her arms.
“Am I in trouble?”
The child crawled onto the bed and sat blinking at her, holding the waistband of the pyjama bottoms in one tiny fist and his Godzilla in the other.
“How … What is happening?”
Her husband shrugged his narrow shoulders and shyly offered her the toy, causing one side of his pyjama top to slide down his skinny arm.
“You wanna play? You can be the cool one.”
Deborah stared at his outstretched limb. The hair across it was so fine she could barely make it out in the lamp light.
“If you wanna play you should hurry up. We only have a little while left before …”
The child moved his hand to the top of his head and raised it as high as he could to indicate his growth.
Deborah blinked at him slowly. She was now fifty-two years old, she had let her figure go slightly. Could she find another man? Did she want to? Thomas, her Thomas not this strange hybrid child, was kind, hard working, loving … could she really throw it all away because at night time he was a little … unusual?
With a trembling hand, she took Godzilla from him.
A poet and a scholar, he was academically her equal and his physique was everything she had imagined during the lonely nights of her teen years.
The sex was good and frequent without becoming a chore. They held dinner parties that friends and acquaintances clamoured to be invited to. The only blotch on their happy relationship was something that no matter how hard she tried, she could not ignore. In the evenings her husbands beautiful personality began to alter completely.
“He acts like a child!”
She would wail down the phone to her mother who would nod sympathetically at the other end of the line and say
“They all do darling!”
Her friends all agreed and so it was with a sinking feeling that Deborah resigned herself to the fact that her husband was not quite the man she had thought he was, but considering everyone agreed that it was a common feature of men she didn’t see what else she could do to avoid dying alone - apart from become a lesbian and that was something Deborah had never had any inclination towards.
It had all started a few months into their marriage. At night he began to make love impatiently, exuberantly and was ready to go again within minutes. This was something she learned to accept and put down to his caffeine intake before bed and allowed herself the flattery of thinking it was also a sign of his insatiable lust for her, but then one night she woke up alone in their bed in the small hours to the sound of a recorded guitar track that was definitely not from their gentle jazz and classical collection and stumbling downstairs, found Thomas on the kitchen floor, hunched over a note book, scribbling furiously and pushing his hair back from his face with impatient gestures. When she had asked what he was writing, he had covered it from her view jealously and grunted that it was private and she never understood him anyway.
Wounded, she had gone to bed and fallen into a fitful sleep. The next morning he made tea as usual and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her awake. When she questioned him about the book and its contents, he looked confused and shook his head. He had no recollection.
As the years moved on, he began to lose interest in sex at night. She would have put this down to age and exhaustion were it not for the fact that he would insist on strange tickling play fights and on the rare occasions she was able to hold her own, he became either sullen or over excited to the point of violence. She became used to waking in the night and hearing the sounds of computer games echoing up the stairs and didn’t bother to go and investigate what her husband was up to.
Shortly after his fiftieth birthday, the games consol was given to charity and the tickling matches stopped. In the evenings he would either read to himself of plead with Deborah to read to him. Inwardly Deborah sighed with relief. This was odd behaviour she could deal with.
At night she could sometimes make out the sounds of plastic action figures bashing against each other downstairs and would occasionally hear an argument between the two characters narrated in strange high-pitched whispers.
One night the whispering was closer and Deborah realised it was coming from the gap between her husbands side of the bed and the wall.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she could make out a bulky Godzilla action figure and some sort of plastic monkey acting out a scene on the edge of the mattress. The cord of the alarm clock was wound around Godzilla’s foot and she watched with a building irritation as slowly, inch by inch the clock was dragged forward until, with an audible thump it fell onto the floor.
“For God’s Sake Thomas!”
Tried beyond endurance Deborah sat up and slapped her hand down on the light switch. From beside the bed there was a gasp and a familiar looking little boy stood up. He was wearing her husbands pyjamas and he looked as if he were about to cry.
“I didn’t mean to wake you up darling.”
His voice was high and pure, he couldn’t possibly have been more than ten years old, and yet …
“Thomas?”
Deborah blinked in confusion and sweat prickled under her arms.
“Am I in trouble?”
The child crawled onto the bed and sat blinking at her, holding the waistband of the pyjama bottoms in one tiny fist and his Godzilla in the other.
“How … What is happening?”
Her husband shrugged his narrow shoulders and shyly offered her the toy, causing one side of his pyjama top to slide down his skinny arm.
“You wanna play? You can be the cool one.”
Deborah stared at his outstretched limb. The hair across it was so fine she could barely make it out in the lamp light.
“If you wanna play you should hurry up. We only have a little while left before …”
The child moved his hand to the top of his head and raised it as high as he could to indicate his growth.
Deborah blinked at him slowly. She was now fifty-two years old, she had let her figure go slightly. Could she find another man? Did she want to? Thomas, her Thomas not this strange hybrid child, was kind, hard working, loving … could she really throw it all away because at night time he was a little … unusual?
With a trembling hand, she took Godzilla from him.
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
Irish lit
I can feel my stomach, swollen with the need to urinate pressing against the waistband of my trousers. The atmosphere in the seminar is strange today. People are sniping at each other for no reason. The older lady in the class, definitely married - possibly a mother - is always pissy. She is twenty years older than everyone else here. She has started wearing colourful bits of chic vintage ribbon around her waist and wrists. Her lipstick forms rivers in the cracks in her lips. Her glasses are expensive and fashionable but ultimately she is striving toward something she will never capture here.
Beside her is a black kid with a hat on. He attends class even less than I do. He has a huge note book and no pen to write with. He looks happy constantly.
Beside him is our depressive. She is always starting sentences with "Maybe it's the Prozac but I think..." this makes me smile every time. Either she is genuinely on anti-depressents or she is not and instead feels it gives her an aura of being an outcast. Personally I think she is probably not on them. Prozac is too common, there are millions of breeds of anti-depressant out there and the likely-hood is she would be on one of those and could brag about that, taking even greater pleasure in her difference.
Beside her are the cute couple who scoff at every vague moment of humour that our tutor creates. They smile and shake their heads, delighting in showing off their understanding of each and every literary quip Prof. Vance makes. One of his favourites he trots out every week and every week they laugh and smile and nudge each other and the boy normally winks at Vance. The girl wears a pearl necklace and her long honey coloured hair is always wrapped in a loose bun. I could probably imagine her naked and pass my time that way except for that horrible fake wrinkle of laughter. I blame her boyfriend. His worn loafers and beige socks are annoying because they have only appeared in the last two weeks to replicate Vance's own. He asked Vance to sign a copy of the text book he wrote and solemnly swore he would treasure it always.
I am obsessing over this boy. He is the car crash I can't stop staring at.
Beside him is the girl I have named 'Claire' who I wrote about in my previous post.
Beside her is a black kid with a hat on. He attends class even less than I do. He has a huge note book and no pen to write with. He looks happy constantly.
Beside him is our depressive. She is always starting sentences with "Maybe it's the Prozac but I think..." this makes me smile every time. Either she is genuinely on anti-depressents or she is not and instead feels it gives her an aura of being an outcast. Personally I think she is probably not on them. Prozac is too common, there are millions of breeds of anti-depressant out there and the likely-hood is she would be on one of those and could brag about that, taking even greater pleasure in her difference.
Beside her are the cute couple who scoff at every vague moment of humour that our tutor creates. They smile and shake their heads, delighting in showing off their understanding of each and every literary quip Prof. Vance makes. One of his favourites he trots out every week and every week they laugh and smile and nudge each other and the boy normally winks at Vance. The girl wears a pearl necklace and her long honey coloured hair is always wrapped in a loose bun. I could probably imagine her naked and pass my time that way except for that horrible fake wrinkle of laughter. I blame her boyfriend. His worn loafers and beige socks are annoying because they have only appeared in the last two weeks to replicate Vance's own. He asked Vance to sign a copy of the text book he wrote and solemnly swore he would treasure it always.
I am obsessing over this boy. He is the car crash I can't stop staring at.
Beside him is the girl I have named 'Claire' who I wrote about in my previous post.
Studded Leggings in Irish Lit
Claire wears studded leggings
she flicks the little silver studs
with short bitten nails
and the sound pierces the silence.
Her shoes are flattened against the chair legs
and the tartan pattern is stained with red sauce.
They don't have laces.
You couldn't kill yourself with those shoes.
Her jumper is green and knitted,
a giant yellow cat face smeared across her breasts
nipples for pupils and her spine for its tail
it fits her badly all the same.
A military print mini skirt,
dirty with a chocolate wrapper sticking from one pocket,
sticking into her fleshy hip, accusingly.
Faded. A broken resolution no doubt.
These are observations of a girl
possibly named 'Claire' They are stupid but ...
Anything to stop me noticing the fluffy haired Jock
making 'bed me eyes' at our tutor.
she flicks the little silver studs
with short bitten nails
and the sound pierces the silence.
Her shoes are flattened against the chair legs
and the tartan pattern is stained with red sauce.
They don't have laces.
You couldn't kill yourself with those shoes.
Her jumper is green and knitted,
a giant yellow cat face smeared across her breasts
nipples for pupils and her spine for its tail
it fits her badly all the same.
A military print mini skirt,
dirty with a chocolate wrapper sticking from one pocket,
sticking into her fleshy hip, accusingly.
Faded. A broken resolution no doubt.
These are observations of a girl
possibly named 'Claire' They are stupid but ...
Anything to stop me noticing the fluffy haired Jock
making 'bed me eyes' at our tutor.
Thursday, 2 February 2012
Duck-Bills-Taxi-Wuss.
An experienced taxidermist goes to bed and has a dream in which a happy, prosperous duck removes her liver and replaces it with padding to pay the phone bill, and swaps her eyes for lovingly selected rounds of white and blue glass to keep her pretty and put food on the table. She wakes in the morning a happy trainee-carpenter with no idea how to pay her council tax, hoping she won't one day dream of trees.
The grass don't stay greener for long Son.
As a young boy he watched men walk away from obligation freely and without apparent stuttering of conscience. It intrigued him, how his elders could ignore the lessons they drilled into him day after day for as long as he could remember. Now, a grown man himself, he is sick of his own obligation and the nagging sense of waste which haunts his journey to the office everyday. His life is comfortable physically but emotionally he is in constant pain. Making the descision internally before he registers his movements he is running away from his beautiful middle-class suburban life. He jumps eagerly over his prison fence, and in that brief moment of flight he feels all the optimism of his youth return to him. His limbs work in perfect harmony as he vaults the pretty, white sticks which have caged him for so long. His beer gut bounces joyfully at the prospect of brighter days. The cramp in his hand from constant repeated clicks of a computer mouse is all but forgotten as his fingers splay out in anticipation. He is leaving behind him all that has ever gone wrong with his life and the neighbouring emerald carpet stretched out before his eyes seems eternal. He is doing what his glorious fore-fathers have done! He is finally learning what it is to be a man! He lands with one pristine Nike-capped toe in pedigree poodle shit and cursing, shuffles back through the gate his money paid for.
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
In which I realise I am miserable
I paid my train fare which has gone up again and have dutifully sat in a barren lecture hall listening to a nice middle-aged drone on about renaissance architecture. It feels incredibly like I am wasting my time continually. I have just moved into a great flat with a fantastic companion but between a pointless job in which my boss calls me a cunt when angry about staffing issues and a flaccid degree which seems to be shrinking my mind to fit with academically acceptable norms as opposed to broadening my appreciation and understanding of ...anything; it feels largely like I am existing just to breath and function.
I want more than this. I miss my liberty. People constantly talk about the freedom of University but I don't get it. University is a privilege but it is a fucking huge tie to one place for a minimum of 3 years. Even if you transfer you are just tied to another place. Also just like a job, if you cease turning up they kick you out. This is fair enough of course but don't tell me uni is a place of freedom. There is just as much red tape here as there is in any other institution. This is the issue with not having a decent or constant circle of university friends. If I had that it would probably feel less like a milestone of obligation.
I tried to make friends with 3 people today. They were welcoming and we laughed about the crap tea from the machine. I sat with them during a seminar and took fewer notes than normal because we were muttering amongst ourselves. Then somehow the subject got round to politics and race. Two of them believe that black people of African descent deserve to be paid 50% more than white people because they have suffered in the past. I asked if Jewish or Asian people should be given the same boost. They got angry and said I didn't understand. The other man has to spit every time he hears the word 'Tory'. Not pretend spit, actual spit.
My 3 new friends are now 3 new acquaintances.
I want more than this. I miss my liberty. People constantly talk about the freedom of University but I don't get it. University is a privilege but it is a fucking huge tie to one place for a minimum of 3 years. Even if you transfer you are just tied to another place. Also just like a job, if you cease turning up they kick you out. This is fair enough of course but don't tell me uni is a place of freedom. There is just as much red tape here as there is in any other institution. This is the issue with not having a decent or constant circle of university friends. If I had that it would probably feel less like a milestone of obligation.
I tried to make friends with 3 people today. They were welcoming and we laughed about the crap tea from the machine. I sat with them during a seminar and took fewer notes than normal because we were muttering amongst ourselves. Then somehow the subject got round to politics and race. Two of them believe that black people of African descent deserve to be paid 50% more than white people because they have suffered in the past. I asked if Jewish or Asian people should be given the same boost. They got angry and said I didn't understand. The other man has to spit every time he hears the word 'Tory'. Not pretend spit, actual spit.
My 3 new friends are now 3 new acquaintances.
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