In Dutch with the Mrs. (Gimpy)

Mrs. N

Either I have a "healthy obsession" (your term) or "these subjects own me" but they cannot be both. Unless for you, being owned is considered healthy.

As hard as it is for us narcissists to speak about ourselves, I will endeavor to try. What can I say, I'm a giver.

Narcissism is incurable. One is never healed. In that way, like alcoholism for instance, we are always in recovery. You are either pushing your narcissism to work for you by helping others or you're the ego maniac drifting between illusions of grandeur and offing yourself and half a city block before the nightly news comes on because someone you like didn't text you back within 4 minutes (WTF!?!).

So any task or thought we enter into, you bring your narcissism with. I for one didn't see the sign on the door that spelled out which kind of missed connections would be allowed in. And another perk of narcissism is that I'm always changing identity. 
Today I'm a smuggler. And like the nations founders, my Boston Tea party is because The East India trading company is selling the narcissism CHEAPER than even we smugglers can sell it. The bastards! 
You see back in the day Pirates were a necessary part of the controlled economy. Navigating the waters better than any nation state. 
In the new world order, shipping is the internet; the goods are data. Yo ho ho.

Nor am I sure that the female libido is all about blow jobs with Bill to ultimately bone Bob but I will take your word for it that this is how you relate. Thanks for the insight. If you just mean to imply that Nemesis played me, well, duh. And Last time I checked Esther wasn't stalking some lonely hebrew (to really boink Larry the temple guard) and leaving notes on his chariot windshield. BUT, maybe my Bible translation is dated. I'll check the footnotes.

You should know these things as you, without batting an eye, speak on behalf of all readers. I take it you met with all the craigslist readers prior to sending this. All four of them?

Did you make the coffee at this meeting also? Did you push in the chairs when it was over? Did you discuss the poor lighting over in the rant and rave section? 
Of course not as such tasks are beneath you. To you fell the high duty, singular mission of writing the ad to address the wayward gimp (I did like your use of gimp/funny). 
It appears to have been a suicide mission.

Geesh, you should have at least wiped the tables.

N. 

Viva la resistance (Jubilee)

If you believe the feud between Nemesis and myself to be sexual in nature, your mostly wrong. If you think it theological, your groin is getting warmer but for the wrong reasons.

It’s economic.

One should note the underlying argument between Nemesis and myself is debt.

The obligation, whether in commodity, money or favors- to another. 

In this case, I owe (according to her) not only for NOT returning her love offered after sex but I owe her employer. Both are contractual in her eyes and Nemesis always fulfills contracts. She collects debts. She is the accuser. 

I however come announcing jubilee. The canceling of debt. The restoration of the oppressed. The system of power in place has no other choice but to view me as a pirate, a thief, a plunderer. To charge me with now being in their debt and hence the unleashing of Nemesis. 

So her relationships are always interpreted and refigured in relation to debt. To economic status. You could argue that world history is the story of enforcing debts. Where mine are interpreted in the light of a new order. The forgiveness of debts. Which also means that my relationships are not based on money. Capitalism is the new religion and money (mammon) is its morals. Failure to repay the new morality is grounds for being sent to economic hell. To ghetto prison. 

All of us owe some entity. Even our cities are heavily in debt. And we are told that its our own fault. We did this to ourselves. The Nemesis in your life is their because you deserve it. That being in debt and paying back debt is a moral issue. Don’t piss off the gods of capitalism or your a marked man. Your buying and selling is in jeopardy. Nemesis is coming for you. Back in the pen sheep, the wolf is here. 

First, not everyone pays their debts as the wealthy avoid it regularly. Nemesis’s employer avoids his debt thru wealth and force. Thru violence. So only some of us pay our debts and secondly, and most importantly no one can tell you what you owe because no one can tell you your real worth/value. 

What we do owe is each other. We are in debt to one another as humans. Not Wall Street. Not Banks and politicians. Not the principalities and powers. Nor there gorgeous, dark angel enforcers.

I should note that the opposite of Nemesis isn’t a submissive woman but Esther. Women disobeying men and saving the world. Women asserting their bodily autonomy. Women who are brave and strong and active and anything but submissive.

Resist. Before its too late. What is truly calming is always unsettling at first.

Turn over the money changers tables. Not so you then can scramble for the coins that fall for the taking. But to then walk away into a new way of relating to one another. 

No one takes my life Nemesis. I freely give it.

 N.

I'm all choked up (That your ok)

They say everything happens for a reason. You were walking thru the Italian fest. I was cramming a cannoli into my mouth. My sunglasses concealing my eyes as they went into high speed data collection. 

In a micro second I had downloaded your image into my spank bank and began to make adjustments to the portrayal as each body part revealed more as it moved, glided and swayed. A masterpiece. 
Thats what I whispered to the mirror glass nearby. You looked good as well.

As your ass came into view I kinda got excited at the prospect of having sex with it and well, I started to choke on my cannoli. At first I thought I could cough it up but it got lodged. I was okay but barely breathing. 
Whatever attempt I was making to be discreet however gave way to the increasing need to take in oxygen. It's amazing what panic will do to the brain.

Thankfully your boyfriend asked if I needed assistance. He assumed (correctly I might add) that my pissing of my own pants was an exaggerated form of "Yes!" and proceeded to Heimlich maneuver half eaten pastry from my windpipe.

I'm not exactly certain as to why you were standing in front of me as I was preoccupied with maintaining consciousness. But as you might have guessed, the pastry came out, right into your face. 
You were so stunned, that a piece slowly fell from your chin and onto your cleavage without you moving an inch. Even though I was heaving and coughing, I made sure to copy that image into the spank bank as well.

So, I'm here all alone now in my bean bag chair thinking of my cannoli cream exploding onto your face. Feeling rather proud and aroused I might add as I replay endlessly our destined encounter. 
Your boyfriend is exceptionally strong and heroic but we both know he's not for you. We have already shared so much. I felt the bonding the moment your boyfriend offered his shirt to clean your face and you screamed "Just leave me alone". 
You wanted to be with me but couldn't. Hush now. We'll be together soon. 
He chased after you so I never got your name.

I'll just call you my rainbow spunk cookie, my mascarpone money shot, taster of the sweet Sicilian rod. I'm falling to pieces as I can't forget your festival filling facial. 

N.

Visionary web sight (Nemesis)

In the words of the mighty theologian, Obi-wan Kenobi, "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

Established systems are deeply inhospitable to imagination. What you fail to see with all your vision is that the contest is NOT between the imagination and the real. 
But between two types of imagination. 

Yours is just another tired, imperialistic nightmare. Hardly can be called perceptive vision. Maybe the dreams of an indentured servant. 
Not to worry slave, as I'm Moses calling you out of Egypt. They didn't believe him either, initially. 

And the fine, horny folk who frequent these rooms know that I'm cut from the same cloth as them. As usual your vanity blinds you.

So as Yoda was oft to say to Zeus and Plato, "Know thyself. Know thy mother-fucking self".

N.

(In response to...)

Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by a horrible cunt... me. Ole Brick Top, unlike you, knew of what he spoke.

Shred the system? I am the system. Deal with it.

We could have been a great team. You and I. But you loved another. A street urchin of a women. 

Will your readers be dying doing the things they are doing now? That is to say is it worth their death? They pretend how they are living now will pay off  someday really because they are afraid to die. Their decisions are all about extending their lives. LOL and you drag them into our feud? Do you think you can save them? Any of them?

 One of your many likable flaws, Narcissus Thespiae, is that you have chosen a path and you will die doing it. I of course will be the last thing you see. If you beg or plead I will be disappointed. We both are people of our word. Followers of the path.

Your intellect is indeed profound. I don’t pretend to be smarter. But that is how I too stay alive. By being realistic. Seeing what is there. And my resources are not limited like yours. I draw on those of vast wealth and power. 

In that sense you are but a virus. And I am the Vaccine. The antidote. The remedy to the lawlessness of those just like you.

If you think I do what I do for money N., you would be mistaken. I have a duty to honor. A calling. Your second flaw is that you have faith in the eternal other. A god. A savior. This is why you will lose. You pretend to see what is not there and I see what is. Life is a contest, not a morality play. We all die. Cross or disrespect me, I will kill you. We should all live this way. The world would be a better place.

I am the fury. The punisher. The cure. God is dead N. So I am her now. You make promises. I ensure they are kept. This is what we need.

Did you tell your little audience here how you neglected little Echo? Did you wax eloquent of the night that you couldn’t resist me, tore my dress off and fucked me? Oh yes ladies, he’s a lover just not the sticking around kind. 

Truth is, for all your hatred of Pan, it was you who killed Echo. Ironic that I, who loved you more, would end up defending the little wenches honor. You are on borrowed time. You had it all, even me, but you squandered it. I allow you to live this long. I have an ending in mind and won’t be rushed. It’s fate. 

P.S.

Louisville is a shitty place to live, let alone hide N. 

Tick,Tock.

 Nemesis

The things that hate us (Atmosphere)

All ads which sell a product inadvertently sell another product, and that product is identity, and they sell it better than their own product. Using these images won't/can't convince you that Blackberry is cool, but they have inadvertently convinced you that these images are cool, that these are the standards of cool, of beauty, of funny, of intelligence. Pick and choose what parts you want to envy. "Not me! I think for myself!" Of course you do.

I. 

I’m not even saying the companies involved are aware of what they are doing as in some illuminati, back room scheme.

This is just how advertising works. And we are the nation of billboards, game interrupting TV timeouts for and of commercials.        “I watch the Superbowl for the commercials, but I’m not fooled by them.” Of course your not. Your drinking Bud light, wearing a Aeropostal hoodie and beads for bracelets because you invented that style. Lets not even mention the haircut or your dreams of being famous on... wait for it... TV.

I write anonymously so that you aren't distracted by my age or lack of manners or political leanings. They don't matter. If you want to say that narcissism didn't play the crucial role in previous posts because-- I'm white, or single, or on the run from a homicidal maniac; then you're trapped in the very problem that is the point of these posts. So I try to take that away from you.

II.

I don't blame you for wanting to attack or defend me; that's how we've been trained to think about complicated issues. We're alive in a time where the President's attackers and defenders both assume he is lying. We don't believe words, we believe identity. If Obama did it, then it's either definitely good or definitely bad, depending on what you think of him. Never mind that if you look at what he's done, it looks almost the same as what Bush did. And Bush’s actions resemble Clintons. 

 III.

Somewhere in the past 50 years social media accidentally constructed an artificial reality that was hidden by the on-purpose entertainment of TV shows. You look at any of these CSI shows and think, "well, of course this isn't a real representation of actual crime scene investigators. N. is an asshole."  But it never occurs to you to think as they're finishing up 28 hours of straight duty, "since when did it become ordinary for professional cops in their 40s to have no kids, tons of disposable income and time, unlimited/unregulated overtime and still wing going out regularly on dates that end in sex?  And what the hell happened to body fat?"  

No wonder people think, feel and experience-- that they lose part of themselves when they have kids, or grow old. Next thing you know your on Craigslist trying to get a piece of the action that, well, doesn’t actually exist. Now theres a missed connection for ya. Thanks for playing. Aww...your post just got flagged.

IV.

Commercials are even worse. That attractive, well dressed woman who looks longingly at a passing two door Honda Accord is a synthesis that you resist-- you know that they're selling Hondas, and you're not falling for it. You're so clever, seeing through it-- you know owning a Honda doesn't make you an attractive well dressed woman, nor will it attract such a woman.    But what you don't realize you're learning is that this is what attractive well dressed women look like. Honda is selling Walmart.  And Walmart is having a sale; for the right price you can be 24 forever.

The advertising agency most likely just wanted to sell some cars today; not change the society you will want to participate in tomorrow. But there it is.

And you don’t have to watch it to be influenced by it. That it’s on in the background, always-everywhere, is good enough. When your friends discuss the new 10pm Showtime series that you missed because you were masturbating to the hot scene at the end of the 9pm guess what? now you know.

Of course If I can see it, how it changes me, you, us then you best believe the powerful see it. And I doubt they are just loitering around offices talking about the potentials.

N.

Forgive us our debts (As we forgive our debtors)

The ad says it all, really.

   The above picture of NYPD blocking a sidewalk and protecting banks from roving bands of occupy celebrators is NOT for the purpose of taking something deemed too dangerous away; but the purpose of the block is to convey the impression of a watchful eye, so that when you say, "we live in a nanny/police state!" you are simultaneously saying, "and thank God!"  

I.

The reason you think prosecuting the bad apples of the economic meltdown will work is that Banks like ‘Chase’ already exist, and if they already exist they must be safe-- or "some other omnipotent entity" would not have permitted them to come to existence. That is THE problem of  our time, or as I am oft to say, narcissism. We all believe in the big other watching over us and keeping score. Specifically watching me. I was born with a purpose! I’m one of a kind! Sure you are. Have a Dr. Pepper you rebel.

The true danger of the "Nanny State" isn't that it limits your freedoms but that it causes you to want less freedom.

II.

The point of consumer protection is not protecting the consumer from the market, but protecting the consumer for the market.

So long as the system is intact. So long as you don’t question the system itself, why, protest yourself to death if you want. And we have just the scarf for that! In fact, protest is the kind of relief valve the system needs occasionally. Maybe you get some change effected but the system goes unquestioned. 

You do of course trust the system to watch out for you. Every day you trust it to turn the lights green and the other sides red. You gobble up the food in wrappers and cans without a second thought. So safe and cozy. The TV raises your kids. Whats on exactly? Who cares. They’re quiet you idiot. 

All of our electronic gadgets have been rigorously tested and stamped with approval for you to consume. If they figure out later it all causes cancer, it will then come with a label, so your safe. Did you notice I just did it to? I said “they”. If “they” figure out...

III.

Recall if you will scolding hot McDonalds coffee spilling, small toys being swallowed by toddlers, strollers that crush infants and literally tons of examples of consumer beware. Often followed by recalls and outright bans. What is your first thought when you hear them?

 “How did those stupid toys ever make it to the store? Who approved that?”

“The dumb ass parent that bought it should be flogged!” 

“That’s what you get for buying a honda!”

 Note again and again that the instinctive reflex among the “public” is to blame the individual and protect the corporation, the system. Somehow, the person who fell HAD to be at fault. That’s how a score keeping god works. Duh. Karma. Whoever suffers as a result gets sold by the press as an object lesson in stupidity and human failure. THIS GUY deserved his heart attacks from eating hamburgers. Hate him. Your WAY to smart to die like him.

You'd think we'd be happy if the system caught an after-market danger, but clearly we aren't, it enrages us. The rage isn't because the government suddenly intrudes into our lives-- it always has-- it's because it's evidence that the system (ahem, your god) wasn't-- and therefore isn't-- all knowing. And that is what your narcissism fears most. 

This means that you will always locate such an entity because you cannot live without it; your allegiances will shift (your a Buddhist now, how cute!) but you will never permit yourself to live only in the abyss-mal world of your actions. Your always on the side of "who can fix this?," Your never on the side of "I helped cause this."  

And if that entity one day fails to save you, you'll feel the kind of rage that few mortals have felt. Adonai! Why hast thou forsaken me? See you on the news channel. 

IV.

The issue isn't the faulty banks, it is all of the correctly operating banks. The problem isn’t the toy that junior choked on but the millions of toys that no one choked on. The problem isn't the minimum balance fee, it is the credit card; it isn't the punitive late charges, it is money. 

It is the idea that because you can presently do something (banking for instance), that-something (banking) must be safe. Someone, somewhere has tested this shit out, right? It must be reasonably safe if engineers, economists and business folks above me and surely smarter than me approved of it. Wrong.

“Sure N., credit swaps on bundled sub-prime mortgage loans is risky, but banking itself is sound. Capitalism itself is... sound.”

Sure it is. Businesses are opposed to ethics. Not just shy about ethics but OPPOSED to ethics playing a role in the consumer market. Free market means zero ethics. 

Capitalism works by essentially taking “surplus” (the gains gotten from reducing wages given to workers) and storing it towards upper management (that being a generous term) and investors. This process creates a need to go back and give charity towards those who are not paid properly in the first place.

“I’m where I’m at from hard work, sweat and sacrifice. It was risky. Fuck you N. if your too lazy to earn it like me.”

You are right now completely dependent on numerous government agencies fulfilling their tasks moment to moment for your day to run smoothly. Some entity, greater than yourself and OUT THERE is handling it all. Whether it’s Daddy, the principal, the boss, road crews, cable company, electric, the FDA, water, sewer, police, the FED, NASA, Congress and Jesus. Most of these are either directly run by your government or rely heavily on subsidies all to your great benefit. Whether you use it or not. Your welcome says the rest of the nation. It’s all okay. Really, you can relax. The system will tell you when to panic. 

Which is really all you want anyway. Deep down, you assume you would not be allowed to make a truly dangerous choice anyway. Besides who wants to make life altering changes when you can vote on the next american idol! Start drinking judges.

Speaking of which, Soda/banks/clothes/beer/big macs have all been refined and improved so that you would probably like them; but it was packaged and marketed so that you would like them regardless of whether you liked them, and certainly without testing if it might eventually kill you and others. 

“I can drink high energy drinks if I want N... Its my choice.”

The question you should be asking but won’t is, am I free to not do it? Free to not use any of the above? The billions spent on advertising, market penetration, early adoption and branding must all be meaningless and silly then? Of course it isn’t. The tons of data being collected on you via facebook and google is staggering for a reason.

You cannot really say you have a choice to do or not do anymore. Your free to choose your identity through branding. Red or blue, democrat or republican, coke or pepsi, organic or genetic, chase or bank of america. Which is to say you have no choice at all. While the rhetoric for all these branded items is different (and purposefully antagonistic), they act, they do, they behave and they are... exactly the same. 

Now to choose none of the choices given requires... a leap of faith. And if you have listened at all, faith is less about belief and all about what you do, next. 

It's narcissism done right. Possibly the secret to a meaningful life. Pick an existence that is of value to more than just yourself, even if that existence defies the logic of reality-- your biology, your environment and of course everyone else. And once you have chosen who you want to be, once you have defined the parameters of this life, you force it to be true. And know that once you have invested your life in this identity, this existence-- all or nothing, even in the face of the doubt and terror that accompanies your rational self-- it will be impossible to fail.

Another world is possible.

N.

My 1 demand is B-day cake (Lower Manhattan)

Clearly, this movement is dead. 

To the fools I've been running around with the last few days. Awesome peeps. 

Happy birthday #OWS #S17

See you soon Louisville.

N. 

To believe is human (to doubt, divine)

He’s not what Freud meant, but close.

   I heard a preacher on TV making fun of professional mourners. You know, the people in olden times who got paid (PAID!) to cry at a funeral. This television shepherd of living room sheep thought that was dumb and I found that ironic. He missed the connection. So, I made a mountain out of a molehill and called them (their number was on screen) with a parable. 

Who wants to see something shitty about themselves?

I.

   There was once a young minister sitting in his house on a Sunday afternoon who was disturbed by a frantic banging at the front door. Upon opening, he was confronted by a distraught member of his church. He was exhausted from running and on the verge of tears.

   “What’s wrong?” asked the minister.

  “Please, can you help?” replied the man, out of breath. “A kind and considerate family nearby is in great trouble. Husband lost his job, wife racked with health problems and they have three young children. The man’s mother lives with them and is need of constant care. They are one day late with the rent and despite having lived there for ten years with no problems, the landlord is threatening to kick them all onto the street if they don’t pay in full by sundown!”

    “Why of course we will help with some money from the church fund,” replied the minister as she got her coat. “How is it that you know these people?”

   “Oh,” replied the man, “I’m the landlord.”

II.

If your first instinct is to become angry with the landlord, you are protecting yourself from what you don’t want to know. If your next thought was, I want to write like N. your getting worse. Defense mechanisms are there to keep us from changing.

III.

It was Freud who suggested that we cannot escape our daily anxieties. They will come to haunt us in our dreams. A famous example he recounts is of a man who falls asleep while keeping guard over his son’s coffin in the next room. In the ensuing dream, the man is confronted by his son, who proclaims, “Father, can’t you see I am burning?” At this point the man, who feels profound guilt over the death of his son, wakes up to the smell of smoke and discovers a candle has fallen and ignited the coffin.

You might be tempted to say, well, the smoke influenced the dream and he was awakened because it didn’t fit. Why is there smoke? Oh shit! Wake up!

But one could also say, as Lacan and Zizek do, that the irritation of smoke resulted in the mind digging deeper to maintain sleep which led to the fathers direct confrontation with his deeply hidden guilt: his responsibility for the death of his son. An experience so traumatic that he sought escape by waking up.

In order to keep on ‘dreaming’, he woke himself. The confrontation of ‘the real’ in his sleep was more powerful than reality; faced with the horror of his guilt he awakened into reality instead.

IV.

Church folk love to wag fingers at late night partying, drinking, drug taking and fornication but these are not attempts to make a mundane, shitty existence pleasurable as they accuse. Rather they are often futile strategies to ward off the horrifying real that awaits us in our dreams and moments of reflection. 

   They (as well as workaholics, constant church activities, porn) can act as a protective screen that shields us from a direct encounter with what really matters to us. What drives us (often guilt). We avoid the truth of who we really are. In dreams we are confronted with everything we have hidden from ourselves during the day. Your insomnia and your black outs are not symptoms. They are your defenses.

V.

I’m no theologian but it seems to me that a Pastors job would be to lead his/her congregation into the emotional turmoil of having faith. The breaching of the many defenses we all have. Facing who we really are, during the day, so to speak. 

   In essence, they are leading believers to confront the horrific, the real, the self and the infinite. Facing death and what it might mean, sucks. Most avoid it. Facing a God who was crucified seems worse. So if you are going to do it, you had better address the anxiety of loss and abandonment, despair and forsaken-ness. In a word, Doubt.

When they DON’T do this, they create religion. Which, as we are all familiar, is just a happy, campy way to do whatever we want while also claiming an (unreflective) belief in the proper dogma. You see, says the landlord, I don’t really need to face my guilt or do anything about it like, say... engaging in practices that follow this god since you will do it for me preacher. You believe and I can leave here feeling righteous. I don’t have to actually do anything so long as I claim that I believe the right things too. Just like you. See ya next week. If I say I believe, why that’s good enough. Ah, living the dream. Narcissism: the religion of self, where actions don’t matter, only intentions.

And my intention today is to kick out some no good, delinquent renters! But I need some way to not deal with the guilt of hurting them...

VI.

Which brings us back to the professional mourner. People paid to act one way so that I, the on-looker could act another-- go about my day and always be the onlooker. The mourner paid to cry at the funeral is a substitute. A substitute for me so that I don’t have to enter that story.

   I don’t have to care for my fellow man or the loss of her. Others are paid to do that. Now I can spend my time making money, which they get a cut of, and consuming. I can be a landlord and go to church and be well respected but never have to consider how I might actually actively comply with the god I claim to believe in and care for others more than myself. Because thats risky. Better a proxy do it instead. 

By design, the minister on stage does it for me. The modern day paid mourner. The dancing clown with a tear in his eye. The louder he is, the greater my belief must be, right? Without a commitment to a lifestyle that gives me my identity... I’m left with folksy songs about how awesome we are and hatred for infidels next door because they ain’t sheer awesome like us. 

   If you reduce something to insignificance, don’t be appalled when your flock thinks it, insignificant. At least that’s what I told the polite person who answered my call.

   The priest/mourner has learned, no, not strong enough... capitalized on how to facilitate our narcissism, whose #1 defense is identity preservation (#2 is JizzHut.com if you were wondering...).

 Most of us are aware of these issues. Add in, ecological disaster, financial inequality, racism; it doesn’t matter because we refuse to confront them. Hell, thats why we are here. 

We are the landlord. Just, whatever you do. Don’t go to sleep.

The right reverend,

N.

Ghost (In the machine)

“All the predictions about the coming machine apocalypse (Terminator, Matrix, Sex and the city) were correct [laughter]. Except it’s not because technology increased exponentially until it hit the singularity: the moment we crossed into Artificial Intelligence. That might actually be better as at least we would have to band together as a people and actually do something. It’s not Skynet that killed your family. It was Facebook. The dumbing down of humanities intelligence exponentially until all that remained were intentions and cropped pictures of a life we are in fact NOT leading. The more friends you rack up the less you actually have. The whole point of leaving home is to develop a real personality by making as many nonlethal mistakes as your body can handle as quickly as possible. Now we only go out to get better wi-fi. OMFG! My ear buds are in, so leave me be.”

You chuckle at that and crawl out of my bed. Naked you launder to the toilet. You half heartedly shut the door allowing it to creak to a halt slightly open as you softly landed your ass cheeks on the toilet. I always take that as a sign you feel safe. Open, guard down. Allowing me to see bodily functions can mean this and more. It could also mean you just don’t give a shit who sees you. The way you bend your knees and rest your arms on your thigh captivates me. You cock your head to see me watching and smile. Hair now falling slowly across your face. I’m in love but can never tell you. 

Thats just how it is.

Your cell is ringing now and your smile fades. It’s not your cell of course but the pimps. The ‘company’ phone as you call it. Times up. Check in time with dispatcher. Next client.

Not surprising you are in high demand. And your clients pay well for the 2 hours of your presence. Presence? Are you really here with me? Or is your mind in anyplace but with me? Have you learned to crush the real in order to comply with every lonely creature and their deviant requests?

My insecurity grows and I look away to imagine myself as someone else. Someone you might actually care to run away with. To lay next to as morning rolls into evening and we have accomplished nothing but the exchange of fluids. Do you desire to hear me say I love you? 

Your dressed now. You wiggle into your heels and pull your skirt down. 

Across my naked body you run your hand and bent over, breasts swinging just beneath a loose fitting blouse, you tell me goodbye.

“Always fun N. Noticed a few new bruises. You can’t fight Pan and Nemesis forever. They will kill you.” Your right hand is making circles on my abs forcing them to contract.

A long moment. I try to tell you everything with my eyes. I pretend you hear me and you cry over my grave or whatever place marks my last known coordinates in my mini day dream. 

The sound of your heels on my floor brings me out of the vision. Your Audi roars to life and your out of range quickly. The faint drums of whatever song your jamming to the last thing I hear.

Skynet won't have to invent roving killbots to finish off the species. They just have to wait and we'll forget how to breed. Or read potential mate's profiles and decide we don't want to.

N.

No money for the weekend (Pocket full of shame)

It won’t look like the above later, but this is shame being sold.

I.

If you don’t know the difference between guilt and shame than this is for you.You read it because, well, your supposed to. Not unlike television. If you saw it, it was meant for your eyes. Welcome to advertising. Except I’m the anti-advertisement, prophet. 

sub·li·mate - Verb:

(esp. in psychoanalytic theory) Divert or modify (an instinctual impulse) into a culturally higher or socially more acceptable activity.

II.

If you want to understand a behavioral disorder, watch the behavior.

  One common explanation alcoholics offer us is that it is the novelty that they crave, and when enough people with pathology agree on something you can pretty much guarantee that that agreement is part of the pathology, i.e. an unconscious defense.

  The novelty is in fact trivial: yes, different bars maybe, but the same kinds of drunkenness, with the same kinds of people, in the same kind of places, in the same ways, bolstered by the same kinds of partying. Repetition compulsion masquerading as novelty seeking.  "You don't understand," says the alcoholic, "I'm always looking for the next drink." 

  The important point is that in alcoholism the addict is not satisfied by the drink he just had because he is self-consciously aware that something unidentified is missing, and that lack leaves the now drunk with an abundance of disgust and shame.  

  This “movie” plays out nightly with the alcoholic, after he has some drinks, he then immediately has some other kind of drink. This isn't an overactive thirst, it is trying to get the first drink right. That's the dialectic. After he has a night out of drinking, he goes home and drinks. Like a sex addict who after sex with a hottie, goes home and masturbates. He climaxed with her, he was done, but it didn't take. Its always about the next one because this one didn’t do it. 

  It is easier to get it right with masturbation, not because the hand knows better than the vagina/mouth/ass/breast but because there are always micro-corrections to the fantasy happening in real time-- so the movie you're shooting in your head has a woman blowing a guy, but then she gives a certain look, and then you make her repeat a half-second of that scene using a different look, then you reverse time by two seconds and make her phone her husband; then that disappears and they're outside on the deck, and it's not her but another woman, now it's a whole other scenario with a different cast, and an instant later back to her again; nudging it this way and that to suit that moments arousal. In effect, you are not watching a movie but improvising from a melody, or, basically, playing with yourself. Hence the reason you have marathon sessions of masturbation. 

Likewise our drunk on the bar stool can’t seem to get the movie in their head just right either. Nothing quite matches that first encounter with alcohol. Something is always missing. They retreat to the lonely house, shelter and then overpass. And now, even when she doesn’t want to drink anymore, she must. It’s how she puts herself to sleep. How she negotiates life. Telling them to quit is like telling them to commit suicide. Irony abounds, I know.

III.

  The key to understanding the problem is not just to look at the  types of drinks/sex they pursue, but also their attempts at having normal relationships. That's behavior, too.

   He’s drinking beer after beer after beer and chasing with shots and come next afternoon, he's disgusted with his life and decides he needs to become a normal person.  

  This is your Dexter/Matrix moment: he knows he's whacked, and he knows what normal looks like-- he can fake it-- but he can't feel it inside. What to do?  Our addicts create an alternate universe and then get confused about which one is real-- they become psychotic. You try to create a fake world where you act like a normal person and substitute it for the real one where you are not: Wake up Neo...

This is why addicts of all types walk around as one who is in a dream.

  Everything our addicts see is sex or a cold beer. In the staggered brick pattern of the wall he sees a 69 and a Miller High Life; the rounded elevator button reminds him of a clitoris or a cap popping off a ice cold long neck; a footstep behind her is someone sneaking out of their spouses bed or the bartender with the first round. These are instantaneous and millisecond association flashes that happen all the time.

   So they decide to try a normal relationship-- No hooking up but a real, honest date. Connect, love. Tonight, you declare, your just not going to drink. Of course you run the date like it's a movie scene, you do things you assume normal people do in normal relationships: you ask out a nice person, take them out to a nice dinner, order, talk about where their from, etc. The alcoholic attempts to just have a few O'Douls instead and nothing more. 

  But what drives our characters is their addictions. So why would we assume Matrix addict’s pursuit of a girlfriend/sober evening comes from a different power source than his pursuit of his addiction normally? Everything he sees is porn: Even his choice of a “nice” female is apart of his addiction. I propose that he chose this particular female because he knew it would fail with her, and when it isn't failing he will hit the failsafe: impotence.

  I simply mean that there is a good chance this character would have diminished expectations for the relationship he was attempting relative to other women, which is why he attempted it. He’s not trying to be normal - he’s trying to fail. 

Likewise our alcoholic may try near-beer. Alcohol-free beer but this choice is a part of his addiction. He’s in the matrix. He's in the bar doing all the same things. He chooses that precisely to fail and he will be drunk very soon. “I tried to change. I can’t.” Right.

Neither want to change. Not really. 

If this is true, it brings us to a very important conclusion: They are both using others. No, maybe he wasn't going to use his normal date for sex, but he wasn't going to really love her either.  He was using her for his identity. Which says, I’m the kind of guy that this kind of girl would be seen with. The alcoholic wants his identity to. As a guy who just has some very bad luck of late with cops, courts and bosses. It’s not him you understand. There is a word for this level of personal deception. Narcissism.

Read this again and understand: when he uses the whores and the quickies to get off he feels SHAME, but when he uses a very nice girl with a legitimate interest in him for his pathetic charade at normality, he feels NOTHING for her.   

When the other gets drunk and passes out he awakes to intense SHAME, but when he tries to spend the day NOT drinking and being ‘normal’, he feels NOTHING for that life. And some shame is always better than nothing.

IV.

 I do not assume normality for you, I let you decide that for yourself. This is not a rant about what sex and beer and how much of each is appropriate. 

However, if you tell me you are unhappy, if you tell me you are all mixed up about the life you are leading, then expect a critique of the life you are leading, not just the pathology you are projecting it all onto. "I'm a sex addict!" says the guy who can't get it up with his new monogamous relationship and is again looking elsewhere. You picked your life. Saying, "I had no choice," is itself a choice. Your choices may be stupid, but they're still choices.  

And I get that most addictions looks like fun taken to excess, but a real addict doesn't think any of it is fun, he thinks it's all terrible. Sit in an AA meeting one afternoon just to see. So that's where we start: why are you doing terrible things?

V.

  Well, what makes it terrible? The bible? Your Dad said don’t do it? Your own buried commitment to never really enjoying anything, ever?

   No one uses the actual consequences as a reason to stop. Yes, you get to feel "shame" for falling short of some standard out there, but the real problem with addiction isn't that it destroys your life but that it destroys everyone else's life.  Thats reason enough to stop. 

  The risk of alcoholism isn’t that you drive your car into a tree but into a SUV with children on board and set them on fire. While your own family is withering away, neglected and damaged. And the risk of sex addiction isn't that you contract a disease, the risk is that you spread the disease. This is the difference between shame and guilt. Shame is about me. Guilt is about what I did/do to you. Shame is to narcissism what cold is to beer. What lotion is to anal. An enhancer. Let that sink in. Let the understanding sink in, not the anal, oh, never mind...

  Our addicts know they can get any kind of sex/booze any time they want, so it always fails. Not sometimes. Always. 

But they keep trying, in the same ways, over and over. As if freedom to do otherwise itself was the enemy. Well, it is. When you sign a contract with narcissism there's a clause you should pay attention to: if it's easy, it doesn't count. Try again.

  If you are a product of your behavior, start wearing a watch again to discover who you actually are. If the alcoholic gets a watch what she will discover is that she has practiced no other skill more diligently than pursuing empty drinking that she knows is unsatisfying to her. That's what she's spent the most time on, that's what she knows how to do the best. Better than driving, better than speaking, better than Xbox-- she has that mindset down to a reflex.  As does the sex addict. So why would you expect she'd use any other technique for any other life problems that comes up? 

VI.

The solution to your problem -- is not to refrain -- you can't resist your desires forever.

You must practice a new skill, you must become the kind of person who wouldn't turn to porn/sex when you are: lonely; horny; bored. If you practice a new skill enough times, it will become second first nature, and you will be a different person. Please note that it is that last part, not the giving up of porn, that makes the change difficult. Giving up porn is easy. Giving up bedding the first guy who buys you a drink is easy. Becoming the kind of person who doesn't need to do this on Thursdays at 11:30pm because that's when you have a few hours free is hard. 

This is exactly what AA seems to do for the alcoholic. You surrender to a higher power to become someone who doesn’t drink all day and night. Who turns to alcohol as a cure all. The actual quitting is easy. Alcoholics are always quitting. But the 12 steps (and numerous other programs) help them move into the realm of being a new person, who acts in new behaviors and who finds, amazingly, they no longer need alcohol.

I'm supposed to say porn, glory hole sex and black outs is bad for you and you shouldn't start, but too late. That you deserve hell. At least thats what your shame wants me to say.

But the practical thing addicts do wrong with their addictions is put it in the Matrix: pretend to themselves it's bad, pretend it's not something they do, and yet spend tons of time, in fact doing. So it drags on for hours. Years. Lifetimes.  Accept it. If after reading this far you think I’m on some crusade against porn and drinking, your a nincompoop. You should do the exact opposite of every gut feeling you ever have. 

VII.

 Finally, there is a crucial instance of guilt: You should feel shame but that just keeps the cycle going. Guilt is the sign your thick head is starting to get it.

You know shit is your fault with total certainty even when it isn’t.  You just...know.

What we often actually feel guilty about isn't that we weren’t there for another who needs us-- that's too easy to get out of-- but that our commitment to our own life made us not be there for the other.  Anyone who has ever lost someone to suicide knows this feeling, and everyone else does not.  The guilt, re-framed relentlessly, over the rest of your life: if I hadn't been so into my work; if I hadn't been so wrapped up in defeating my nemesis; if I hadn't been cheating on my wife; if I hadn't been so religious; if I hadn't watched TV every night and instead devoted that time to him; if I X, if I hadn't Y.

The truth is there is no real answer there, because when you hit the bottom of that devotional cycle you end back up the other way: maybe if I had given her more space, if I had given her more time alone, if I hadn't forced him to spend so much time with the family, if I had worked longer hours to teach him that life is work, or X...  

The only thing I've ever found that works, is a God who can forgive you, and/or to understand your guilt as not coming from the failing but generated by you as self-punishment, so that you can go on with the rest of your life. Have you suffered enough today? Then go have a Pastrami on Rye, they're tasty. You've earned it.  

The guilt always stays with you. Always. It never goes away. Never. I'm of course not saying you deserve it, but I know it is your inevitable tormentor. So either you reach some kind of stalemate with it or it beats you down. That stalemate is sublimation.

In the addicts case it is this graduation from shame to guilt which motivates him to try and change his life, so when he sees the married woman again in the store he doesn't go over to flirt with her. He doesn’t enter the liquor store, he goes home. He lets her go, he has decided to be the kind of person who sublimates his sex drive, his desire for a cold beer, to devote more attention to his sister with cancer and her kids, or her own dysfunctional kids or his church or his community or her political party. 

To being a better person.  

N.

The life that we wanted / to live without warning - sung by Alberta Cross

I kicked your kid in the balls (Like a boss)

What can I say really? I mean, I was attracted to you. You seemed to be attracted to me.  We chatted. Made the usual sexual innuendo’s at the appointed time. Yours were pretty funny. Mine took the house down. Always do.

We shared a space in line at the convenience store and we both chuckled that it was so not convenient of late. The wait in line recently has just been ridiculous. You thought it was the extra traffic from construction. I waxed eloquent about the capitalist overlords who absentee style, ran the place thru a minority proxy to assuage our anger. Clearly your point was small and ill defined in comparison to mine. But whose keeping score?

What I could not overlook however was the noise making bafoonery taking place at your feet.  Your melon-headed, nose picking, ass wipe offspring needed some discipline. Ancient Mesopotamia style.

And, like any pretentious white male who, being subjected to long lines now considers himself a civil rights victim, I gave it to him.

In my defense, I did not see the door was being held open. I really had no intention of launching him into the busy parking lot traffic. I also thought he would be heavier. Given the amount of noise coming from his blow hole, I would have presumed him to be thicker and denser. 

I haven’t played soccer in years but there is no denying that I still have game. It takes mad skills to hit a moving target, in the balls, and get the kind of distance I got. 

Amid all the screaming, crying and yelling, I forgot to purchase my slim jim, so I’m still kinda pissed but I’m willing to overlook the bafoonery and hook up sometime if you promise to send ‘Damien’ to any of the several males you think might be the father. 

Hopefully his balls will drop, someday. 

Ṇ