Birth of an obsession

[vaneramos]

Photo: Whirligig beetles on the Eramosa River, Sept. 29.

~~~~~~~~~~

When I stand on the bank of the Eramosa and look down I can see Old Man Willow lying there in a dream, branches afire. If I look even further I can see conflagration only eight minutes away, Brünnhilde singing the song of our mortality. Looking even further I see the darkness beyond, and space reaching back to the deafening sound, a hiss not a bang at the birth of the universe.

Standing over the shallows, I can see myself in a room overlooking the black spruce beside my parents' house. I spent a whole summer in my room, afraid to go out in case Mom would give me something to do. I spent months at my drafting table creating a whole language and alphabet, the world of Derna and all its islands. I imagined a king who was lonely, and spent his energy longing for a lost queen and child—who didn't want to rule his kingdom.

Looking down into that room I see my own loneliness reaching out and finding nothing to hold. I felt apart. A place inside of me longed to be truly known and accepted for what it was, a chamber in my heart called my inner darkness. It was depression and homosexuality wrapped into one. I could feel the longing that grew, to touch and be touched, to be wanted in the same secret way that I wanted.

One of the first times I went out at night with a car alone, I drove along the lake road to the area where my friend D lived and drove in circles around thinking of him lying there, sleeping. Thinking of being near him. It was a teenage obsessions that went everywhere and nowhere at once.

It turned into a feeling that would seize me while I was driving, the need to see a naked man. Then I started stopping at variety stores far from home and buying Playgirl, later gay porn. I didn't want to see anyone in that store who might ever see me again. I would pay and run for the car. Sometimes my shame was so deep I would ditch the mag at the first opportunity, in a garbage can; never even made it home.

The first time I bought a Playboy, too, just to persuade myself, whoever was watching, that I wasn't really gay, that it was somehow legitimate. The woman in the centrefold was beautiful, but I couldn't bear to think of the wet, pink place between her legs. I pulled out that centrefold and a few pages from the Playgirl, filed them away in a remote secret part of my filing cabinet. After that I never bothered with Playboy. But it went on, that fight, for years and years. Sitting along in my room at night I would suddenly be seized with the desperate need, and drive to the store. Eventually I gave up driving far, just went to the Short Stop at the corner. It happens to be the same variety store I live near now, but we're talking about 1986. Those desperate trips continued into my marriage, when I kept a stash of photographs in a bag at the back of the closet in my office.

That's what she found. It wasn't a huge secret. She had known all along about the struggle. I never hid it from anyone close to me after I was 20. She found that stash and decided it was time for everything to blow up, and it did, like the conflagration at the beginning and end of all time.

Later, when I had resigned myself to the truth, I continued buying them without so much shame. The guilt gradually drained away. And then the internet took away the necessity of spending money on anything so vacuous.

Still, what do I see in it? The fantasy has carried through my whole life. Still my sexuality is flavoured with voyeurism, the desire to see. It sometimes prevails over the desire to be held. What am I looking for?

Passion, desire, intensity, fulfilment. I no longer feel that prickling grab, the way it seizes my heart and pulls me away. No longer a terrible secret haunting my nights, and I can choose my ways. But looking deep within the water, to the heart of everything where stories begin, I still see the lonely teenager at his desk.

Comments

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

Hugs.

So: question. Do you wonder, as I do, why there is so much porn directed at what MEN want to see? Straight men, gay men, whatever men? Stipulated that women have less buying power and cultural authority, isn't it still odd that there is so much less porn by-and-for women?

Many people have spoken about the tendency for men to be strongly visually oriented. And you show signs of that in things beyond wanting to see naked men. You're very visual, among other things.

Would thinking of things in these terms assuage any loneliness? Am I mishearing: you seem concerned about your voyeurism and somewhat different because of it. But some feminist critics have claimed that voyeurism is the "essence" of male identity.

By the way: I bought Playgirls in shops far from home on and off for years, too. I kept buying the Playboys along with them, as "cover." I sort of DID really enjoy the Playboys, too. But certainly the Playgirls more. :-)

[handlebear.livejournal.com]

Thanks Van for sharing this.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Interesting questions here, Pete. Clearly our culture presents an unhealthy ideal of what is beautiful and sexy, and this is largely driven by what men want to see. It has a heavy impact on the self-perceptions of both women and gay men. Personally I'm relatively happy with my own appearance, but the porn I enjoy commonly portrays hypermasculine images unlike my real sexual partners. Yes, this discrepancy disturbs me.

I don't feel bad about being voyeuristic or exhibitionistic, or liking porn. In fact for many years porn provided a substitute for furtive sexual encounters, which I believe would have been more damaging to my psyche. But those years were also intensely lonely, and I still tend to dip into that loneliness sometimes. It's not a question of right or wrong, but of balance.

I'm intrigued with the idea that sexual energy and creative energy are the same thing. My self-sex life becomes intense sometimes, and I would like to redirect part of that energy toward something more powerful and meaningful. No, I'm not beating myself up about this, it's just the dissatisfaction that drives all creative endeavour.

A point about this post. Of late I have been sitting down to write my posts with a few images, memories and ideas as building blocks, but no clear conception of where they will take me. That's the point of free writing. It's a powerful tool for excavating what lies in the subconscious. Today I planned to write about yesterday's visit to the river, my writing process, and my solitude and sense of isolation as a teenager. I had no idea about the porn theme, but that's what arose. It's a thing I would normally balk at discussing, but free writing shatters inhibitions.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thank you Cameron for being there and reading.

[ghostsandrobots.livejournal.com]

I've often wondered about the idea that we are conditioned to view people that way -- that is, people in pictures, magazines, or movies who can't look back at us. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but because you need technology to preserve someone's image like that and leave behind the person, it seems tied in with technology and the way we live currently.

In my personal experience, even though I find it rare to become physically attracted to a woman in "real life," it is easy for me to imagine and occasionally even fantasize about women I might be attracted to, to look at magazines and point out which women I find attractive. Somehow it isn't the same with men; with a few exceptions I only become physically attracted to men I actually see in "real life."

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

You raise a lot of interesting thoughts for me. I did notice the way your essay seemed to veer from its original subject; as a former writing teacher, the concept of "free writing" really ought to have occurred to me. :)

Anyway--yes, I recall the loneliness associated with looking at porn mags, and in fact I still experience that at times. I had a habit, as recently as a couple of years ago, of "cruising" bear personal ads and feeling isolated. And this was in the context of my existing family and network of friends and lovers, which as you know is extensive enough to keep anyone "sane" happy. :)

What a wonderful idea, though, that porn might have been better than furtive sex. Because you know what? That's how it feels to me, too, but I don't think I've ever verbalized it. As lonely as it sometimes felt, I think it was better than sexually-active-closeting. The more I look back on celibate closeting, the better I feel about it. How interesting.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

And after I became sexually active, it was almost always in the context of "getting-to-know-you," which is how I like to keep it.

But those personals! Oh man, I had forgotten about those. And the phone lines. Yes, I was starting to get to know people, but it was still a very lonely time.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

to preserve someone's image like that and leave behind the person.

That's a powerful phrase, a reminder. I often feel sexually objectified, it's a sensation I don't like, and I'm aware my own actions can contribute to the problem.

[halation.livejournal.com]

this is a beautiful post
thank you.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

You know, I thought of you when I wrote this.

Those were frightening times. The loneliness.

It's getting better.

[halation.livejournal.com]

i'm glad it's getting better

[ghostsandrobots.livejournal.com]

That probably sounded more judgmental than I meant it to. I don't think that it is inherently bad. Like you say, it's all balance.

Don't be too hard on yourself; that's a trait we share.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Of course we're even harder on non-sentient objects.

[ghostsandrobots.livejournal.com]

Hahaha! Too true.

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with the Hegelian idea of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, synthesis-becomes-the-new-thesis, or the Marxist view of history based on it?

I probably can't do it justice in a brief reply, but I came to visualize the Hegelian idea of history as a helix: it's directional through time but similar points recur as one goes around 360 degrees.

I sometimes experience loneliness and isolation reading my friends' journals--I'm sure you know that many of my online friends are people in whom I feel sexual interest among other interests--but it feels like a much healthier form of meeting new people than browsing personals did. I face similar issues through time, but life gets better and better.

So I have another question: when you say sex is part of "getting to know you," does that feel different as you get to know someone relatively well and does sex change as a result? Being in one relationship that continues as quite sexually active after over seven years, I no longer really have a "getting to know you" reaction with that person. But I, too, prefer sex as part of an "experiencing someone" context, and I do seem to like getting to know new people. :-)

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

That is, indeed, a powerful phrase. I don't know if ghostsandrobots will read this as well, but I'll ask you: do you have the sense that photos also sometimes make people "present," rather than leaving them behind? I sometimes do. Even with people I haven't met in person yet.

See, what's interesting to me is, I think pornography helped me connect to MYSELF first and foremost. I agree that it can be quite depersonalizing and objectifying, but I tended not to be interested in those forms of it.

And the sexual fantasies I had with porn were rarely explicit in terms of the sex acts I imagined ... even now, they aren't, with or without porn--my fantasies lag well behind the reality of my sex life, in a sense. But they *were* usually very much about emotional contact and physical closeness, which I wasn't ready to experience in reality, but which porn sort of helped me prepare for.

Curious, curious.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Generally pornographic photos don't make the real person present for me, rather they help me to project a fantasy.

However I do sometimes find that a particular porn model who I find sexy in photos may actually turn me off when I see him in a video, and after that the photos lose their appeal. On the other hand, some models who don't hold much visual appeal turn out to be sexy in videos, then the photos become more interesting.

[avad.livejournal.com]

beautiful post, van. and the photo! well, of course I'm enthralled.
it's what I reach towards often with my art...

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thank you, how I love your art!