Waiting to be appropriated (The LATEX club)

You will of course forgive me my absence. I was, how shall I say it, detained. Thankfully it was for a minor offense and not my current project.

Still, I was in Pan’s world. More than I care to be frankly and that made it a bit tense. Seeing as I have been robbing Pan of a good chunk of his dinero over the last 3 months. But I have bored you enough already with   small talk. Suffice it to say I am– intact. May this find you likewise.

My detention gave me time to ponder. Allow me to share one particular strain. Might I suggest a background song of M83’s Outro? Of course, to each their own.

The problem of communication is not rupture between spirits but letters that never arrive. It is not a problem of relations between minds. As in, we are so utterly different that communication is stifled. The problem is an erotic one. It is of relations between bodies.

Maybe this explains the popularity and yet insanity of the missed connections forum. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Words. They are but symbols. Blind guides. They point to a reality that never seems to manifest. I mean If I say, my heart yearns to be with you. Well. That is a sign. Signpost pointing you in a direction. Like an arrow. 

But its not real. The words don’t make it real. Only the yearning I feel is real. And some might argue even that. But the words, they are just words. How can you dear reader possibly hope to understand all I mean when I say a word like love? How can I possibly presume to know how you read that word? You and all your experiences up until this moment. The words are dead on arrival. 

I read an article about the postoffice and dead mail letters. A room where the grim task of determining the fate of letters undeliverable and unable to be returned ground to its conclusion. As I spent these last nights listening to the rummaging of societies forgotten un-returnable underbelly, the letters destiny churned uneasy in my soul. 

Letters were opened. Valuables, if any, were removed and the letters, well, mostly just burned. Incinerated. Dead. Saddened me greatly it did that a necklace was considered valuable but the carefully chosen, then penned and pained over words... were not. The loss seems greater than, words.

I suppose that these letters here– these undeliverable missed connections ads– these stabs in the dark are a lot like the dead letters in the post office and the prisoner in his cell. We pick over the corpse. Find what we need and move on. If that could be called moving on. We ourselves are the letters.

The letter without the spirit, like the body without the spirit, is only a corpse.

But we may have here also a harkening back to an older time. A time not so long ago when all letters were not written as personal communiques between very private individuals. No, no. But instead intended to be read by all, and often were. 

I’m told that prior to 1850, letters were rarely sealed. Postmasters read them. Papers in Colonial times quoted them without prior approval. Newsletters had margins for readers to add details to the story as the newsletter was passed along. Like postcards today the letter was both private and public. It reached out beyond the intension and into the eternal. Appropriated by the unknown other.

The letter never died. It became immortal. Living on. There is always a third party in any 2 way conversation. Even the dream contains the other other, the audience, the awareness of what you are accomplishing or failing at within the dream.

This is our missed connection with missed connections. The desire to not die. To avoid death. The cold grave that swallows all we hoped to be into its spiral of, well, who knows what or where. That desire is expressed sometimes rather crudely like in a glory-hole kind of missed connection but sometimes in the words we send out, often without a glimmer of hope. But the hope resides in the sending. Beyond the intension and into the eternal. Both are leaps of faith. 

What is the meaning of the letter burned in the dead letter office whose writer does not know it is lost and whose recipient does not know it was ever sent? The same meaning it has here I suspect.

Words become our sign of loss. The second you utter them, there is lacking. And unless I act, then ‘Reality’ becomes a fantasy-construction which enables me to mask the Real of my desire.

Ṇ

the certainty on which an act relies is not a matter of knowledge, but a matter of belief: a true act is never a strategic intervention into a transparent situation of which we have full knowledge: on the contrary, the true act fills in the gap in our knowledge - Zizek

Roach coach lady (Never lukewarm)

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Another world is possible

Violence operates largely thru the imagination.

I.
A single psychopath may torture and kill and NOT want his actions known and discovered, at least initially. But they all still want to penetrate our imagination. 
There are never enough bullets so the next best thing is to shoot some in a way that inserts you into the cultural imagination.

State power always wants others (the other) to know. That is the point of the torture or execution. 
If you think execution is just about eliminating that one person for his crime, you are that person. 

One could say this is the case whenever one side clearly overpowers the other. Power wants to communicate to you (and by extension, others) the stupidity of contesting it via your imagination. 
You do the heavy lifting (fear), and as always, power collects the benefits (obedience).

When the sides are more equally matched this is less so. Violence is about effectiveness. 
Two boxers, evenly matched need to anticipate their opponent. Defend for his strengths. Develop a plan to capitalize on his weaknesses. 
In essence, knowing the opponent is necessary.

A tyrant however, doesn't need to know squat about the man in the noose. What motivates him. Why he chose to fight. Hell, if he's even the right guy. 
What matters is that his defeat communicates, largely thru your imagination, futility. Aspirational anxiety. Promotion dangled for those in the machine while worse consequence await resistance should you imagine it. 
None of that has to be real because its all in your head.

II.
When men say that women are unfathomable, unknowable...that may be because men, in general, don't have to learn about women. The power structure is lopsided. 

Women know men because they have to. 

Likewise minorities often seem strange and unfamiliar to the majority. Minorities often have the pulse on the majority however. This is because of the power structure. 
When you are unevenly matched, the powerful side doesn't need to know you and usually doesn't. The weak side knows you all too well. 

III.
This is the meaning of institutional violence. Structural violence. Its built into the system. Systemic. It doesn't occur occasionally. It is the system. 

It takes a lot of structure to maintain this unbalanced facade. And its an expensive, mind numbing, imagination crushing facade at that. If you work in a bureaucracy,
married into money or belong to a minority group, or turn on your television at any point, you know of what I speak. 

IV.
In order to subvert this, rupture it, displace power, break open and recreate...the imagination has to first be reawakened. 
To deconstruct and reassemble what it is you are seeing in the first place.

To dream anew. That requires a certain...prophetic touch. 
Which itself is a subverting and recreating art. For language itself must be re-imagined. The smooth everyday violence that is symbolic, rests on language.

V.
No, prophets have nothing to do with 'such and such will happen' at 'such and such time'. My god, grow up already. 

VI.
The task of prophetic imagination is to cut through the numbness, to penetrate the self-deception, to bring people to engage their experiences of suffering and to nourish them with the absurd. 

If you find it hard to imagine a world without say, capitalism or your TV or culture wars about gay sex, this is because your imagination has been turned down like a dimmer switch. 
Slowly, ever so slowly. But down.

If you are some of those asking, "Why in the world would I WANT to envision a world without capitalism, my entertainment system or hours of facebook posts about gay sex?" 
Than there is no dimmer switch as not only has your 'power' been off for some time but your hut has blown away. 

The battle is for your imagination. When you dream it, see it with the minds eye and have faith that yes, it is as possible as it is absurd, nothing can stand in the way. Which is to say everything will.
Because you inevitably act. When you don't act, you didn't imagine. This is known. This is why your imagination is being turned off, violently.
Ṇ

If hope is an impossible demand, then we demand the impossible. 

A good hand is hard to find (Like pulling teeth really)

I liked how we began. The ending? Not so much.

So I answered an ad for a masseuse with high expectations for a happy ending. Turns out this "professional" didn't have a license or a key to her own "shop". 
When I mentioned the words HPV vaccinations, she said, and I quote, "What?". Your probably thinking-- So. What could go wrong with that scenario?

After climbing through the window, she opens the door and speaks to me as if she is seeing me for the first time, despite the fact that I picked her up at her apartment and she rode with me. 
"Hi. Welcome. Come on in", as she mats her hair back into place. 

As I entered, there appeared to be a massage table, lotions, candles and towels all neatly in place. A positive development except, that is, for a giant poster of a penis covering a door. Ignoring as best I could the penis poster, 
I started to relax.

As I unzip my jeans she drops to her knees and tries yanking the Little N. out.

"Hey! Easy. Kinda want the therapeutic first, then full session..."

She was annoyed and while I disrobed she haggled over the money. So I finally said, "Half now, half when we are done." After a few back and forths, she agreed.

As I announced already, it started quite well. Possibly better than expected. I was feeling pretty loose. I did faintly notice the buzz of drills or at least what I could make of it. Maybe next door. 
Oh yea. She flipped me over and within a few she had grabbed my erectness and began to jerk smoothly and deeply. Not bad I thought. She leaned in to whisper as she continued to pull and tug.

"You gonna pay me the rest of my money?"

Now there are precious few questions I want to entertain during sex. 
An even shorter list for sure when my cock is in the hand of someone I've known for all of 20 minutes. 

Which ones you ask? Well, some questions I would allow for instance would be... "Can you pull my hair and choke me?" or "Can I get my sister and her hot friend to join us?" 
or even, "Can you only put it half way in? I just can't take it all." 

These are questions I would not only accept but welcome, seeing as like the last one, its yet to be asked. However, "You gonna pay me my money?" is not one of them. 
As I pondered all this, her grip intensified.

So, I did what any male would do if his purple BFF was taken hostage and threatened. I picked her up and chucked her across the room.

Now... listen, wait just a minute...She was lighter than I expected. Possibly I was just eager to 'free Willy' and so I went overboard. She went higher, farther and faster than I expected and so the impact was just that much more intense. 
Wasn't my intent...but overall a bronze effort maybe. Bouncing off the wall then the ground might get me the silver, but it was close and we all know how China would vote.

"I was going to pay you Dammit. No need to go Al Qaeda on my genitals."

That you got up was pretty impressive but what had my FULL attention was the sawed off shotgun you seemed to pull out of your ass. 
It came from beneath the massage table I later determined but such things seem frivolous when a women is pointing the heat at you from several inches away.

I pretended to see something awful behind her and began to slowly say, "What the F..."

And it worked! She turned just enough and I knocked the gun upwards and bolted for the nearest door, the penis door, as the gun went off. Deafening. 
Fine particles of suspended ceiling tile filled the air. Choking. And I hit the door with all I had.

The drill sound made more sense when I stood up. Dental drill. I was now in the hallway of a dentists office. Halfway between the waiting room and the billing station. 
Other than my pants, which I was holding in my hands and the giant penis poster at my feet, I was naked. An old woman nearby popped her teeth in and said, "Well, hello there young man."

The sound of the shotgun reloading hit my eardrum and I bolted out the door and into the Honda. 
For anyone one that saw me running naked...the dentist's office was really cold. Just sayin'.

Moral of this here story being: Do not take a penis poster to a gun fight. Or a masseuse to a dentist. Or something like that...

Ṇ

Your boob was in my face (Chemical warfare)

The way you pressed your warm breasts into my face was exhilarating. Your breathing rhythmic in my right ear. 

Your name tag said Melanie. 
And it too was pressing into my eyebrow as your arms came from behind my head and gently settled around my chin.

You looked beyond my iris and spoke to my soul. It was if you were looking at particular thoughts I had so painstakingly hidden. 
You combed through each one, meticulously arranging, parting and cutting. I felt naked.

You lightly brushed my chin, ran your fingers thru my hair and slapped your double D's against my face without caution. Your aroma was intoxicating. 
Finally you spoke.

"Do you want me to trim more of the sides or is that good?" You sprayed disinfectant on your clippers as your feet worked the chair pedal. Swinging me around to face the mirror.

"I think thats good, Melanie. Might I inquire as to the fragrance you wear?" 
I had a hard time disengaging from the mirror image of myself. I love mirrors.

"That is marlboro lights, banana latte coffee and hair spray darling. I was in a hurry this morning."

"If that is your rushed scent, I must partake of the finely tuned version Melanie."

"Your sweet. $15 please." We both approached the register.

"Come now. I felt a connection between us." I gave her a $20 and motioned for no change. 
"Mostly my left cheek and your right tit but I guess every journey begins with a first step."

"You like hearing your own voice don't you?" She returned me $5.

"Yes, there is that but what I share is sincere." I slipped the $5 back across the counter. 
"Lets disconnect from our play faces and go for full on nudity. Me, you, my honda, lots of orgasms..." I motioned for the door.

You briefly stared at me and then glanced around me, "Sir in the red...your next..." and back to me whispering, "I'm a Lincoln Navigator kind a girl." You smacked your ass for emphasis. 
I licked my lips.

"Not at this pay scale your not." I accurately noted as she walked away. "But If shooting for the moon is a regular thing for you, than I'm. Your. Man." 
And then, I could not help myself. I really couldn't. Meaning, my hand stretched out almost involuntarily and slapped her ass as she walked past. Instantly I thought: Too hard, oversell, and exit.

As I drove away, I could hear the sirens coming closer. 
I imagined myself taking on the sins of Gotham and bearing this shame for the better of the city. The dark knight being pursued but never caught. 
But my eyes were watering too heavily from the mace to savor that thought much and now the honda smells of it too.

My Melanie Melons. Sweet cutter of the follicle and deft dispenser of mace. I should have known your fast, scissor fingers would be my undoing.

But know this...Honda's are smaller yes, but far better on gas mileage and longevity. That is to say, more bang for your buck.

N.

They do not know what they are doing (But they are doing it)

I.

As we all know, there is no Santa Claus but we continue the illusion because, well, we are not really sure why. Something about the children and then tradition and before you know it, we are angry and need a drink.

II.

So you tell your children there is a Santa though you do not believe it. You want them to believe it but not really. A child who really believes in Santa is considered kinda slow. The child that suspects this is a lie but conceals this is considered smart. And why not, as they be imitating us. The child who refuses to STOP believing in Santa as a teen is called an american. Wait, what?

Most children do not believe in Santa but want to. They also want the parent to think they believe so they pretend to not notice presents in mommies closet and late night wrapping and hushed discussions over credit card bills with daddy or the person we call daddy now.

As the facade breaks down with age the disappointment grows but everyone involved is pretending and never quite sure why. They do not know what they are doing but they are doing it.

III.

Real, true believers, in anything, are always suspect. 

Consider the true believer of say, the soon end-of-the-world by rapture Jesus. Even the christians who buy the novels of this theology do not believe it. They still make long term plans and worry about long term problems. But when someone quits there job, moves the family to a hilltop and waits, why that man is considered looney by even christians. He must be crazy because your not supposed to believe that as REALITY. 

The belief in rapture Jesus, in Santa, in the invisible hand of market capitalism is proxy for something else. It serves as ideology. A belief construct (usually belonging to some other person like the oft quoted but never found “They”) to explain something else, namely-- what I am doing at any given moment. It is illusion.

“The experience that we have of our lives from within, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to account for what we are doing, is fundamentally a lie—the truth lies outside, in what we do.” - Zizek

IV. 

But If you believe the illusion is reality, you cannot function continues Zizek. The ancient Greeks were not idiots. They didn’t think if you climbed Mount Olympus that you would find Zeus naked, laying divine pipe to a lovely Nymph. To ACTUALLY believe in Santa is to be unable to fully function in the world. To actually believe ideology is to be so busy climbing your very own olympus that you cease to be any worldly good. We call those that actually believe, insane. 

This is how advertising works. We know damn well that the juicy burger on TV will NOT look anything like the drab, flat, shitty burger we get in the restaurant. We don’t even complain when it happens. We know damn well that name brand clothes don’t change our character or convey status. Yet! Still we allow the belief to continue though we claim not to believe it ourselves. We don’t have to. The others belief will do. 

I do it because the kids think its true. 

Yea. Sure. What-ever. Always the other. Believe me, I know. A ton of books I bought sit just waiting to be read. Still somehow just owning them tempts one to feel as if the knowledge is imparted. I can act as if I read them because to read them ALL, why, thats, insane.

V.

It is not necessary for anyone to literally, subjectively believe that eating or not eating at Chick-fil-A conveys status for it to function as a status symbol, it is enough that everyone presumes that someone else believes in it. 

Even if I “know very well” that Chick-fil-A is just an ordinary eatery run by teens that has been suffused with signifying power through advertising (positive and negative), it still produces its desired result for me if I believe that everyone else is naive. It doesn’t matter if you hate Chick-fil-A at this point or love them. That isn’t the point. But alas you are so busy climbing olympus (to prove or disprove it) that you don’t see it. 

But you will continue to act as if the owner really does have higher status – Whether as a racist fundamentalist or a faithful, servant of God. You will go there to kiss your same sex partner or show solidarity with the purchase of the #2 meal deal. Because you do not know what you are doing, but by golly, your gonna fucking do it! 

Despite no-one really believing the idea of Santa Claus, rapture jesus, or commodity branding-- it has its effects. So long as someone else might think it true we allow ourselves to buy into ideology without then becoming idiots. Or so we like to think. Even though, ironically, it was ideology that killed jesus, santa and my fly, no shoe laces Adidas sneakers, circa 1986. 

Oh, You bastards.

N.

“Everyone is deceived by our marketing. Buy our product or don’t, and everyone will think that you really are what we say you are.” - Lucy4

This is not about me (Its always about me)

Just a shot out to all the supporters, fans, haters, emailers, straights, bi and tries and of course those too high, wasted or ignorant to put together coherent sentences. 
You are all loved. To thine own selves be true.
I will see you and yet, not see you over the weekend. 


N.

Wanna make it wit chu (mostly its the same)

I was killing time by the loading dock. Waiting for that bastard, the time clock, to let me off the hook. The days sweat had soaked my shirt and my tats glistened on my sleeveless arms in the unyielding sun. 

Across the parking lot, in the several business’s tucked away there, your white mini skirt hailed me from a wicked daydream like a brakes locked - screeching car. 

You strode with power and purpose. The heels never buckling even slightly under the long strides. You were all leg and the boxes you carried seemed to float out from your breasts.  Which were teasingly kept close to your chest but the sheer volume suggested a more perky and pointed handful.  

I cracked a smile at your plight. Dress down and your a prude, show too much and you’re a whore. You can’t win. Games rigged. But you knew this. All women not idiots do.

A necklace of some sort is sending me bright morse code. Something about...come dot- dot- dot- ravish me.

Distance too far to determine if bling is on the wedding finger. Like it matters anymore. These mysteries of life just ain’t my thing.

The only thing I knew for sure was what I wanted to do to you. And how good I would look doing it.

I suppose I should mention that I was also on the dock guiding a truck in. The driver inexperienced both in spoken english and the art of jacking an 18 wheeler into a tight 90. The latter being of immediate significance. So I probably should have noticed he was off course. Way off course. But that would have required caring.

The sound of impact startled your lovely melon which popped up and scanned my way. Blonde hair flinging out as you felt fear and forgot your composure, even if just briefly. I feel privileged somehow to have been apart of the sneaked intimacy. We shared a moment that you no doubt don’t ever let others see.

We are bonded. As tightly as my erection is too my jeans.

“What the fuck was that!!” The human voice intruding our cosmic encounter belongs to upper management. You can tell without looking because its squeaky and always in the form of a dumb question salted with anxiety. 

“That, was the sound of your future. Times up. I’m out.” Me heading towards exit.

“Now wait a minute N., this is...who the hell is that....”

Not your future.

N.

Hope in common (Scapegoat)

I thought you were waving to me as I filled up the Honda.

But you weren’t so my wave back to you was awkward to say the least. You were with your friends and so you all had a good laugh at that. In fact you all walked to your car mimicking my wave and yucking it up pretty good.

One of you yelled for me and then waved as if mentally handicapped. Pretty much everyone at the station at that moment was in on the hilarity. Even an old man seemed amused and tried explaining the whole episode to his wife still seated in the car. Being hearing impaired meant they used their loud voices.

“That dummy over there thought those girls were waving at him, I think...No Mildred, he doesn’t appear to be drunk...”

That set off a new round of jokes, laughs and finger pointing from the dozen or so patrons now just milling about. I wondered what happened to the proletarian revolution as I waited an eternity for my tank to fill up. 

The attendant came over the loud speaker. “Pump six, your set for a wave. Sorry, I mean pump 5. That was intended for pump 5. My bad.”

The now moving car full of girls almost wrecked upon hearing that. And as you drove away, over the curb, everyone waving out every available window, I saw the way you looked at me.

Behind the disdain and contempt lay a genuine smile. A young girl who just wanted love like I do. A moment not alone in the brutal, exposing light of humming fluorescent bulbs.

“Ultimately, “the revolution”, however conceived can never really go away, because the notion of a redemptive future remains the only way we can possibly make sense of the present...” - David Graeber

N.