Dante, or, The Circle That Dripped From Our Mouths

I've been thinking of how masks and/or hidden identities aid some people in feeling free to reveal who they are or perhaps try on who they imagine themselves to be. I begin to imagine masquerade balls, the history and art of Venetian masks, bank robberies, and the rubbery masks depicting politicians that seemed to be big at an earlier point in history. I think of some of the artwork of Gillian Wearing from long ago. In particular, her work Confess all on video. Don't worry you will be in disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian (1994), which was a 30 minute video of people who had answered an ad in Time Out magazine being recorded in masks confessing fantasies, betrayals and just general secrets of every stripe.  

 (pause)

Growing up Catholic, you learn to crave confessions: Your own and those of other people. The electricity of catharsis that runs through your body as you tell your misdeeds, but also the excitement and wonder at who it actually is listening on the other side of that dark-latticed window within the oak-smelling confessional booth. Perhaps someone stepped in before the priest did. Perhaps the priest is more gloriously rotten than you.  

Working in proximity to particular types of sexualized work for a number of years, that craving would get satisfied.

We all know, on particular levels, that everyone has things they do in the shadows. Sometimes those shadows are darker, sometimes they only seem dark to person who did them, and sometimes there are those who simply wonder "What's so fucking dark about this? Desire is desire. Let there be light."

I think of all of the confessions I have heard over the years, and I think of my own. Such a strange vehicle one rides in to hear stories from strangers about their secret desires or identities.  

I recall stories from men who would sneak into their mother's closets to have sex with their shoes, of men who coveted the idea of being dressed up as a girl by a woman, of men who wanted to leap over a woman in order to have her kick him in the stomach, mid-air, just to send him flying. Men who wanted to be denied. Men who wanted to be run over (Not symbolically, but literally. As in Jeeps.). 

I've lost all perspective on what is taboo these days. Recently a political figure's voluptuous husband had the curtain pulled back on his joy-smeared face in the throws of his sublime and almost saint-like bimbo-fication. For me, too often there will be these "big reveals" that seem to be nothing more than a flashlight shining into the dark dank basement people hide their desires in. Too often it is the masks of the "vanilla" mainstream that strikes me as the most perverse: Promoting family values and flat-front khakis out in broad daylight. 

In a context where all is consensual, what is the big reveal? Why the dank basements? Perhaps the basements simply function as the mask that some need in order to fully confess and access the depths of their desire.

I say to each their own and, for my own hunger,

spare no detail.

 

 

be well; be loved. 

k

P.S. What is something you've participated in that you would hesitate the most to tell another person?  

[Image: Photo from Alexander McQueen's show, Dante, A/W 1996]

On Being a Man Who Looks Like a Woman

 

Tonight I'm in a room that smells of lilacs and frankincense with a hint of lavender. The lights are warm but dim, and the only sound I can really hear is that of something I can only describe as a distant and unremarkable gear turning. (A hum of sorts. In the vein of a refrigerator hum, but more mechanical and clunky.)

I had this conversation recently. It keeps surfacing in my mind, tonight:

What are the things you would do sexually for another person when the acts, themselves, don't particularly interest you? Here, I don't mean things you actively don't want to do and/or are repulsed by. Simply things that you've never had an interest in that you would be willing to do for a person who desires it. Somehow, it's easier to reverse the question and list the things you wouldn't do. That list, it seems, would be shorter. 

The marbles of that conversation are rolling around in my head tonight, and I can feel the corner of my lip curling into a bemused smile. 

 

 be well; be loved,

 

k. 

[image: DSQUARED2 FW25 ADV CAMPAIGN. Click on the photo to make it bigger so that you can study the expression of the central character.]

Story-Making as Art and Armor

 

An acquaintance I once knew asked a friend of theirs to wear red stiletto nails and wrap her arms around their torso from behind for a photo session. A Valentine's photo shoot sparked by feeling bitter and a bit unwanted. I watched the nicely-nailed hands slide awkwardly around the acquaintance's middle in an attempt at a stylized "desired embrace" while a camera they had set up balanced just out of reach. Nothing about it seemed real or comfortable. 

Seeing the result of the shoot I felt my face heat with embarrassment for them, though I'm not sure why. Art is art, and what business was it of mine, anyway? 

It made me wonder what message they were trying to convey, and to whom. It also made me think of my friend M. who is unable to watch television shows in which the characters do too many things that make her cringe.

 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k. 

[image: from nailsmaster1919 blogspot]

Oh Oh Oh I'm on Fire** : A Hodge Podge Update

My aching legs are back home at last. It was great to get away. I also laugh at the fact that I hear "four mile hike" and think of it linearly. Like "four miles walking in a straight line down the street". It is never that. I feel irrationally proud that I finished it and feel grateful for being with a crew of loved ones who know wtf they are doing.

(pause) 

Recently, I've been reading again about asexuality and all that can fall under the grey sexuality spectrum. The book I am currently reading (Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen) is enjoyable so far. The author, who is ace-identified, breaks down and defines terms clearly. The bulk of the book's information is based on interviews with over 100 ace-identified individuals.  In breaking down desire and types of attraction, desire, and relationship to interest in sex into various pieces, the book offers building blocks of desire so to speak. I've found myself thinking so much about how aspects of desire and attraction are assumed to be universal and/or experienced the same - even when I know that they are not. The book offers language I haven't fully understood before and helps me in thinking about and articulating topics and realities that felt more ambiguous and ineffable before starting to read the book. 

(pause) 

Lastly: One of the things I love about my job is simply the interactions that I witness. A professor, intending on giving an autistic college student some tips on how to approach fixing a spreadsheet he was working on, was met with this interaction:

Student: I don't understand how to fix this.

Professor (leans in and points to the screen):  Do you want to know a secret?

Student: No.

Professor (waits a beat and then tries more direct language): Would you like to know how I have fixed this same problem?

Student: Yes.  

 

[end scene] 

 

Here is to the beauty of attunement to those around you.

Be well; be loved,

 

k.  

 

**= Sung in Bruce Springsteen's voice 

Measuring the Width of Your Eyes as They Stare Through My Locked Window

 

I learned some skills from an artist I met a few years ago who had finished a commercial photography program. What I learned from her was less about photography; more about cropping for paintings and drawings. Up until meeting her, I'd just kind of wing it. Cutting here and there at a piece, then shifting it around in its frame until it landed where it seemed to make sense. 

As a gift, she bought me a T-square ruler: Heavy and black and metal. Sharp edges and corners with a vague nod to a crucifix. It could be used as a weapon as easily as a cropping tool. 

It's a sexy ruler. 

There is only one ruler I own that is sexier. 

(pause)

There is a scene in Pillion (which I've seen twice, now) that took me by surprise. It is brief and the intention within the film is different from mine. But, for a moment, I saw someone doing something to a lover that I had never witnessed someone else do - right in front of me. [I know that other people do it. I know there are many reasons for which it is done. I simply had never seen someone doing it to a lover in real life or portrayed on film.]

The moment involves a thin, all-black, cloth, measuring tape that is pulled from a sleek hockey-puck-like retractable spool. The tape itself is black. 

That's what got me.

I rarely feel envy of material things but, in that moment, I felt envy pour through my entire body:

I had no idea such beautiful tools existed. 

 

 

be well; be loved,

k. 

 

 [image credit: Naomi O'Hare]

A Page Sewn Into the Family Album

It turned out to be the best decision to go with you to my family reunion. How sweet and unsurprising that you managed to find one other scientist in the room in order to nerd out while hugs and introductions and memories and Polish food flowed. Even sleeping (surprisingly soundly) in my parents' haunted basement- no matter the waylay with the hot water the next morning- was so oddly right and diligent and weird. 

The conversation with my cousin 

who isn't actually my cousin 

was exactly what was needed and 

there is no one that could have gotten me to go 

but you. 

 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.

 

(And yes, that teenage relative of mine will drop his beard, eventually. How excited and relieved he seemed to be to see our genders and sexualities enter the building.)  

[image credit: David Trinks]

What Spines Are Made Of

Tonight I watched A Friend of Dorothy (2025; 21 minutes) by Lee Knight. It is always incredible to me to experience the level of emotion that can be elicited within the span of a short film. I mean think about it: What do you tend to experience in 21 minutes?  I've had a predictable commute in the amount of time. 

The moment a character in the film drops a book and it is a copy of the play Bent by Martin Sherman, I started crying. To be followed up by a brief glimpse of a copy of The Inheritance by Matthew López. Theater and loving friendships and gayness and books and companionship and even the familiarity and spark of Miriam Margolyes' eyes.  No wonder it was nominated for like 18 different awards. It made me think fondly of the time I spent swiping copies of plays from the drama library, unprovoked, across campus from my library. 

This week has been a particularly social one. I'm enjoying the intentional building of community, and learning the importance of presence once again. There has been the gangly-legged movements of new alliances alongside catching myself a rainstorm of times admiring the weathered pages of friendships long-standing and well-loved.  

 

 

Be well; be loved,

 

k.  

[image: enrico bet]
 

The Red That Gets You Hard, or, The Red That Gets You, Hard

Drinking coffee out of a Tom of Finland mug gifted to me a few years back for the holiday. It's blue-gray on the inside. The perfect size. I have to remember not to use it when working remotely and on video. Sometimes I forget, and have to wrap my both hands around the entire mug as I sip as if I am freezing to death in a snow storm in order to obscure the uniforms, bare chests and hard cocks straining against their pants of many stripes (sailor/leather/denim). 

I watched Do I Have to Take Care of Everything? (2011), a Finnish short by director Selma Vilhunen the other day. I don't have much to say about it (it's six minutes long and quite hetero) other than I liked the main character's dress. It showed the "socially acceptable amount of cleavage" that costume designers tend to pick to denote a moral disposition or character trait. On my end: I just like restraint. The color of the dress was a muted red. Think: A blue-red thick strip of fabric that has been in the sun for too long and has faded. Red (particularly a blue-red) makes my blood pulse faster through my veins and, more than likely, that can explain the color of many hidden accessories perfectly placed in the most private drawer of my dresser. 

On red: 

There is something to be said about art of leading a bull directly into a brick wall.  My body knows/knew not to fuck a person who whines about needing to fuck pussy in a particular way straight-out-the-gates. This breed of bull has only surfaced once in my life: The artlessness of it alerted me, and I successfully managed to dodge the bullet (plunging horns?) of an immeasurable and petulant bore. 

 

k.  

 

[Image credit:  Giovanni Calia]

 

 

A Brief Interruption Towards Obsession/Addiction

One of the fringe benefits of being with a petty officer (which, admittedly, I didn't even know was an actual term until three years ago because I know nothing about the actual rankings in the military) who is also a food scientist is that you can learn very diligent, very organized, and very fascinating things about food.  I want to share one tidbit I picked up because it is something I adopted into my everyday life for about three years now once learning about it.  (Spoiler alert: You will not hear about any science in this post. It is just pure taste obsession, more than likely laced with addiction) :

Once, long ago, A. went to a food-science-related conference where there were presenters researching all sorts of different food and food products connected to various brands. They were presenting on the science part of things and why said food worked so well or was so glorious, say, in its "mouth feel" (again, a term I didn't know existed pre-three years ago and also kind of grosses me out). 

One presenter, it turns out, was talking about the science behind coffee. And, without trying to recreate the science behind it (there is no way I would actually remember it because I'm pretty sure I zoned out while A. was explaining it...), I will just say that once I found out the brand and kind, I tried it and have never turned back. The taste is so damn perfect and, evidently, somehow backed by science. 

If you ever want to try a really incredible type of espresso that was presented and applauded at a food science conference, or, if you're simply curious about what it tastes like (I drink it almost every single morning), it is George Howell's Alchemy espresso. 

 

After this post, we will go back to the regularly scheduled writing but this one I had to pass on.  

 

be well, be loved, be nerdy about your food,

 

k.  

 [image credit: Nathan Dumlao]