The Wings at My Ankles

 

A friend and I were talking lately about how much we respect and love a person with hustle: That head down ineffable quality that involves scrap, determination, quick math, and a hefty dose of unintentional swag.  You can usually see it in the way a person moves (literal; figurative) and also in how they treat others: They tend to me more generous in their kindness and willingness to help someone out with something. 

It's hot. 

Tempered. 

Attractive.

Lately, things have been moving in an unexpected and relatively great direction.  I feel a hum underneath my feet that is elevating something beyond my control, and I am grateful for it.  Some things cannot be explained and some things are, indeed, stranger than fiction. 

A reminder: The people you protected yourself from years ago, the ones you booted who pop up to try and tell you who you are? They will always be the people with the least to say. Whack-A-Mole that shit (as usual).  Stay the course. 

And, as you do, enjoy all that unfolds in front of those humming toes of yours: 

Hermes may have nothing on you these days. 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

(Photo credit: Julien De Rosa/AFP: Bella Hadid for Saint Laurent Spring/Summer 2025)

Swims in the Pool She Used to Clean

 

The other still-summer evening R and I went to a park I hadn't been to in a very long time to eat pizza and read together. (R: An autobiography of Jean Genet; Me: The most recent graphic novel of Alison Bechdel's from the library, Spent). 

While there, my eyes moved to this one corner of the park that has cement walls (to actually make a corner of sorts) this weird memory unlocked for me. I'm not sure who it was with, and it must have taken place there years ago. What I remember is that me and the other person alternating sitting in metal lawn chairs (they came with the park) and laying on the grass, occasionally picking up baseball mitts and throwing a ball to each other. (Where the fuck had I gotten a baseball mitt?) Memory is a weird one, but it was such a surreal feeling to follow what my mind recalled had happened there: Even if I couldn't see the face or body of who I had been with. 

 *

Lately I've been sleeping deeper and having more complex dreams. There are so many reasons for this. I jot them down sometimes in the morning. A few days later I will re-read them and feel terrified in a way I did not feel while having them.

 

Be well; Be loved,

 

k.  

 

image credit: Dmitry Osipenko

title credit: I'm still on my inexplicable Jets to Brazil kick.  

Your Wings Were Never Mesmerizing to Me: On Why Drunk People With Cameras Are Boring

Embodiment, mystery, cleaning, and nail polish removal. If my day was a teeter-totter, it would be at the exact moment of balance: Satisfying, but with the warm tension and curiosity toward the next lean of life dropping you into the next dip, or pulling a gasp out of your mouth and clutch out of your hands at the next rise. 

This week there was a well-timed reunion with a person who has been in my life in some capacity for 18 years. I've never quite been able to put my finger on why and how he feels familiar well beyond the 18 years we've actually known each other but, no matter. I enjoy the ease in which we share humor and ideas and suspicions and life.  

 

be well; be loved,

k. 

 

Currently reading: My Lover, the Rabbi by Wayne Koestenbaum

Recently watched: The Letter Room, a short by Elvira Lind that (surprisingly) had Alia Shawkat in it.  

[image credit: Le Génie du Mal by Joseph Geefs, 1842 (left); Le Génie du Mal by Guillaume Geefs, 1848 (right) Source: Basler Zeitung]

The Stock of Your Greeting Cards

Lately I have been back at listening to different Hz of sound for various outcomes. Today, I have been listening to 40 Hz binaural beats geared towards focus. What results is a feeling of being in a different dimension. Not a better one nor a worse one - just one that feels markedly different. 

[I pause here to mention that I read recently that 18.98 Hz is said to cause hallucinations of "ghosts" in humans because it somehow vibrates the eyeball or the fluid within it. I have no interest in testing the theory, mainly because much of what I've read also says that it causes a feeling of dread as well. What has this level of sound? An extractor fan, evidently. Well, and the Youtube videos now made to replicate it.]

*

I spent a good part of today with a friend of mine and her brother. I asked them questions about what they were like growing up and how their relationship to each other has evolved. It was fun to learn about a loved one through the eyes of their sibling. I studied the similar shape of their eyes as they spoke and looked at each other.

* 

I've recently tried my hand at investigating Macbeth, again. Word on the theatrical street is that Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (1957) is the best filmed adaptation of it - setting it in feudal Japan. It is on the docket. 

In the meantime, if you haven't gone to see Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, I highly recommend it. I will keep this from being a film review. All you'd need to do is look up Jane Schoenbrun and it will prepare you for the dreamy, genderless meditations on being and attraction and becoming that they tend to make. The films create a feeling of an ineffable moment: Something that feels groundbreaking but simultaneously deeply familiar in the way that a long-forgotten dream resurfacing does. 

 

 

be well; be loved,

k. 

 

[image by Mohammad Alizade]

The Company You Hired to Clean Up the Mess

 

 

This weekend X and I went on our secret little biannual routine that I won't mention but that ends with Thai food and driving fast cars that I will mention. I won't lie: A Rivian goes fucking FAST if it wants to. 0-60 in less than 3 seconds. Total asshole/pussy clencher and don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. 

It was a good time, as always.

 (pause)

A bit ago, Petty Officer and I hosted some friends to come over before going to an art show and I have to say that I am slowly breaking my habit of cultivating the home of a 13-year-old boy. No one sat on milk crates, I had enough glasses for everyone there, and I had napkins of sorts as opposed to what I refer to as a "slob blanket" which is a shower-sized towel that you can put on your lap and wipe your hands on as you eat before throwing it in the washer. (In defense of the slob blanket: Not only is it environmentally friendly, but I will have you know that I've had more than a few people pick up on the habit.)

What can I say? 

A long time ago I heard a binary stereotype: Women keep their rooms spectacularly clean yet their cars looking like an actual trashcan on wheels; men meticulously detail their cars yet have their mattresses held up on cinder blocks. 

While my gender(s) don't fit exactly into this framework, I will say only that my car is almost obsessively clean yet I do not own cinder blocks. 

I will be taking no questions at this time.

 

Be well, be loved,

 

k.  

 

 

 [image credit: Hoyoun Lee via Unsplash]

 

 

The Phrase You Remember Most That Was Whispered into Your Ear

 

I speak and understand and read four languages including my own [...] I suppose that's why I have a tendency (as does Luisa, who is also an interpreter) [...] to want to understand everything that people say and everything I hear, both at work and outside, even at a distance, even if it's one of the innumerable languages I don't know, even if it's in an indistinguishable murmur or an imperceptive whisper, even if it would be better that I didn't understand and what's said is not intended for my ears, or is said precisely so that I won't catch it.

                       - From A Heart So White by Javier Marías                                                          

Recently, I watched a film short about two interpreters and have been thinking about it. The two main characters are simultaneous interpreters, the kind in which people who need the spoken language access (in this case, Hungarian) are given earphones in which to hear the  interpretation while a speaker is presenting. 

I've been around this type of interpreting and these types of earpieces a number of times. I've sat next to people using them. I've been one of the people using them. The flimsy and ill-fitting plastic-and-sometimes-foam meant to offer access to information for the price of discomfort for a few hours. The most memorable time being around these earpieces was, long ago, being in a room with Baltasar Garzón lecturing in his tailored suit and slicked back silver and dark gray hair. I recall how he gripped the emblemed, fake-wood podium at times. I remember this movement accentuating his sophisticated, almost teasing tie wear as he spoke. 

More specifically this film short taught me the term chuchotage, which I have also been in a room with and been teased by. Chuchotage is another type of simultaneous interpretation, one in which the interpreter stands (or sits) close to a person and whispers the translation in real time. There is a connection to the French verb chuchoter in its origins which means "to whisper". It tends to only be functional when there are one to maybe four people needing access to a particular language. I've been in a lot of meetings where chuchotage is going on in the back or side of the room and, before realizing that's what was happening, I thought people were just whispering during a presentation, which peaked my interest. 

I wonder, from a spoken language interpreter's perspective on simultaneous interpretation, if most prefer being the disembodied voice in the ears of a percentage of the crowd, or if most prefer to sit close and whisper. 

From a physical and interpreting standpoint, I have thoughts. There are pros and cons to them both that I can see. From my own experience interpreting, I can say that sometimes chuchotage makes my own interpreting more challenging in that it becomes harder to hear what is being said by the speaker. But I don't fault anyone for that: Access is access and it's all equally vital. 

Putting all profession aside: I will forever be prone to romanticize any type of whispered access that is murmuring in the back of the room and tempting me for my attention.

 

 

Be well; be loved,

 

k.

Note: The aforementioned film short is by Barnabás Toth and is entitled Chuchotage (2018).

 

[photo credit: Kristina Flour]

Starry Configurations

While it is a myth that crickets rub their legs together in order to chirp, it is very much true that I enjoy the feeling of my shaved legs rubbing together on a bed as I type. Currently, I am casually watching the clock in order to know when to get dressed and ready to be out the door for reservations.  

I have been reading a lot lately in between everything else of life. Something beautiful and strange that I came across recently is the fact that the word disaster comes from roots (Italian and Latin) that end up translating into "bad star" (dis- meaning bad or against, aster or astrum meaning star). Poets later started interpreting disaster as "separated from the stars", implying more of a separation from the cosmos, nature, or from one another. 

Separation from one another. Disaster, indeed. 

 

 

My legs are smooth and the clock's hands are turning. 

May we all be connected to the stars within us and each other- tonight and as the cosmos continues to unfurl around us. 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

(title taken from Jets to Brazil. It feels good in one's mouth to say out loud and because it fits, thematically.) 

The Shape of Braille Upon Your Lips

 

I.

This weekend we made dairy free ice cream by hand (Hands. Many of them. Perhaps more specifically: Fists.) This was a childlike first for me: I had never made any kind of ice cream by hand before. 

Nighttime and dinner and iced tea and breakfast and daylight and forests and wary legs.

So much good food made by loving hands.

(pause) 

Something I've been enjoying as of late is the feel of my body when there is no expectation to be anything other than what and who I am at any given moment. It is such a full-bodied relaxation. The space between my shoulder blades is pet by an invisible hand into a relaxed oblivion. 

I can't get enough of it. 

I used to hear people talk about "creating a feeling of abundance" and I never knew what the fuck they were talking about. 

I think that I am beginning (rather, continuing) to. 

 

II.

A conversation this weekend elicited the externalization of something I've thought of often for a number of years, now. An appreciation of a particular aspect of language and language acquisition. Something related to what I think of as linguistic ghosts:

In my observation and experience, I've noticed that our first languages can remain as ghosts in second and third (and on...) languages that we use as we learn them. And these ghosts can sometimes teach us many things. Like any ghosts, they can show us angles into life that we may not have otherwise seen.

Go with me, here.  

As an illustration of what a linguistic ghost might look like could include: When I was first starting to learn Spanish- and sometimes even still- if I'm aiming to express, let's say, that someone is two and a half years old, I may resort back to English structure and say Ella tiene dos y medio años (coming from the English description of age in the order of 'two and a half years') instead of Ella tiene dos años y medio. In this same vein, I'll often hear Spanish speakers learning English say She is two years and a half (instead of English's 'two and a half years') which fits with Spanish language structure. In both cases, while we may be using a language other than our first language, the ghost of our first language is pulling our new language into a familiar (and sometimes technically inaccurate) form. 

One of the linguistic ghosts that I have thought of often, and that came up this weekend, has to do with the English phrase of What's wrong? being asked with a concerned look upon the speaker's face to a person who seems upset. What I've noticed over the years is that many native Spanish speakers who are communicating in English may say What happened? (something that fits more with Spanish language structure) with a concerned look on their face in the context of someone seeming upset. 

I've thought about this particular linguistic ghost so many times over the years because I think it's fucking brilliant: Direct and genius and generous in its inquiry. So much so that I'd like to see What's wrong? replaced with What happened?, frankly. 

The question of What's wrong? pushes an assumptive framing that can create so many sites of breakdown in communication. A person can be upset or have emotions without something being wrong, afterall. What I've noticed within myself is that when I am upset, a person asking me What's wrong? causes a break in communication, somehow: A mental stutter. My mind tries to figure out if something is decidedly wrong. Is something wrong, or am I simply just feeling? Instead of expressing what I am experiencing, I feel the need to respond to some unasked for, external framework asserting that something is wrong and, in the process of that, communication can start to crumple up and shut down. 

In contrast, when I am upset and someone asks me What happened? a true, uninhibited and pure response is elicited from me. Easily and almost automatically. 

So, YES.  

What happened? 

A friend of mine looks sad? : What happened?  

A loved one looks angry? : What happened? 

A stranger looks wistful and has tears in their eyes? : What happened?

 

I love this question 

and 

I love the linguistic ghosts that glide from one language to another and back again to teach me something more 

about myself 

and the world at large.

 

 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

[image: Johannes Plenio]

Sometimes the Simplest Move is Right

Come to me

with all your glamour and cruelty 

 

There was a one and only time I went back home for a family wedding. I wore a slim dress and wet-looking and pointed dark red stilettos. It was my little faggot wink to serving Dorothy; post-tornado. It was all so fitting.

I've been thinking a lot about the audacity of being oneself. How angry people can get about it. [Why are you wearing that tie? Where are your children? Are you a boy or a girl? Why don't you hate your job? Who do you think you are telling me no? Why don't you react to the mean things I say to try and bait you? Wah, wah, wah. Don't these people know that the spanking they crave isn't free?] 

It may be the one thing in common with all of the friends I have had for multiple decades, now. Whether it's brazenness, confidence, neurodiversity, or some wild combination of all of it, the thread that runs through them all is their uniqueness and unwillingness (inability?) to give a fuck enough to hide who they are or give you what you want unless (the brilliant unless)... 

wait for it...

...they want it, too.  

be well; be loved,

k. 

[Italicized words and title credit: From Art Pop by Lady Gaga] 

[image credit: porcelaine Tumblr]

What the Handle of a Garter Belt Dagger Touches

 

Lately, I have been in summertime mode. My annual craving for iced teas laced with berries or citrus, traveling to places that will slow me down but will not leave me sunburned, and enjoying the contrast of the cool of sheets mixed with the hot of skin a bit more than usual at night. 

Currently, I have been reading Lair: Radical Homes and Hideouts of Movie Villains (2019). Gorgeous photographs, drawings, explanations and commentary. Villains, who always have the more impressive color palette (such a seductive bruise they all are). Villains who, as it turns out, also dwell in the most incredible homes and hideouts (a purple and blue pearl hidden within an angular and perfect black widow made of pure obsidian). 

 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k. 

(Image: Aesthetic Academia via Tumblr) 

Slow Dancing in Our Living Room

 

I. 

This week I've had an unhealthy relationship with the Pomodoro Technique. Yes, I have been wildly productive. However, something has shifted where I feel like my life is existing in 15 minute intervals*. It reminds me of when I was a child and some adult would have an old-school slide projector and would be showing images of photos they had taken, or perhaps works of art. There would be a heavy clunk-shift sound, then an image projected onto a screen. Just ask you started to lose yourself in the image: Another clunk-shift. A new image, pulling you out of the world you had just started to immerse yourself in. 

II.

I never really understood souvenirs until I experienced them through you. You told me that you liked to get things to commemorate particular experiences. Capturing a memory before it became a memory. Slowly, you started getting me little (as in tiny, my favorite) mugs here and there on our adventures. 

Over the years, it continues. I love it. 

My favorite so far is what may be the softest shirt I've ever had on my body that you picked up from a Midwest doughnut shop. You took me there to show me why they may be the best donuts around in that sun-faded, somehow familiar hometown. 

 

be well; be loved,

k. 

 

 

*= (I have been doing 15 minute increments, not the traditional 25). 

 

[image from Ifoundshelterhere tumblr] 

Car Culture and the Lines of a Tailored Suit: Passenger Princes and the Bratty Boy Behind the Wheel

The rain on my car is a baptism.

                                 -- From that one movie. You know the one. 

These past few days have had a calm within me. Externally, there have been storms for some around me. Asks for emergency Zoom calls; texts for last minute tarot reads. This kind of thing doesn't happen often but, when it does, it just feels good to be able to have and offer the capacity to hold and take on some of the weight of it. The timing feels serendipitous and for that, I am grateful. It has been sunny for several days now, but it has been raining hard in other realms.

This weekend will be a housewarming party: The house filled with family and love and laughter-  with or without a functioning barbecue. 

* 

Lastly, because I don't know the order in which to put it, I learned earlier this week that a loved one's sibling died by suicide. 

[This loved one is of so many years. Years of letter-writing, romance, friendship, clues. The first blueprint of something true. Their father helped me figure out how to buy my first new-for-me vehicle. Their sister the first child aside from my niece I had bought a present for back then.] 

So I am here: Showered and quiet, contemplating the complexity of these kinds of deaths. They churn the stomach, the mind and the heart in a way that is distinct from other kinds of deaths. In their immediate shadow, there are never exact words to say and, perhaps, it is better that way. 

Memorial Day, indeed.  

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

[image: Jing Wen for Vogue UK, March 2018  Mert & Marcus]

Sunset Through a Keyhole

Such endless-summer-with-your-friends feel tonight. One of those endless hang outs that could easily go on for a few more hours. Sunset, ice cream, the waterfront, great conversations, and me finally witnessing (and thus dispelling) the mysteries of electric car charging stations. 

* 

Last night was the sound performance. Fifty of us in an auditorium with 1800+ seats, all sitting in the center of the first seven rows (for the best experience of the three dimensional sound). All in the dark. Seventy minutes. Brief, haunting human  vocals, but mostly field recordings of the most gorgeous and vast sounds spilling from front to back to left to right. Train wheels into violins; birds into fear into the power of the ocean. Underwater and above the atmosphere in the span of the hands on the clock.

Leaving the auditorium was disorienting for a thousand beautiful reasons. 

be well; be loved,

k.  

The report, once delivered, included:

Excerpt from a letter dated [redacted] years ago:

 

I'm so relieved you told me about the [redacted]. I've been wanting to tell you: She keeps coming up to my cafe. When she first came in, she introduced herself and reminded me that she had met me through you once. I know she doesn't live anywhere close to there.

[redacted] 

She 'liked' every photograph I was in on my workplace's Instagram page. Nothing else. Maybe she didn't think the people at my work would notice. They did. (We are an imperfect but caring work family). She sent a request to follow my personal account. I left it pending. If she asks me about it, I will tell her that I don't mix my work life with my personal life.

 

 

[Image credit: Artem Nadyozhin via thephotoregistry Tumblr]

Sound Vibrating Your Hipbones While Lying on the Floor

A book that I am reading at present proposes that asking the meaning of life is akin to asking a chess master what "the best chess move is". Which is to say that the question makes no sense. There is no singular answer and, what is more, each individual's answer is so specific to the alignment of the multiple contexts in which he finds himself. 

Am I searching for the meaning of life? No. 

Am I reading Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl because I was on the waitlist for months and it was, at last, my turn? Yes.  

Not quite the beach read material that the season whispers, but fascinating nonetheless. 

[In case one is unfamiliar, Frankl was a psychiatrist, philosopher, survivor of the concentration camps of the Shoah, and founder of Logotherapy. (If Freud was "will to pleasure", Logotherapy is "will to meaning". Existential/humanistic at root.)]

Something I'm thinking about is this tactic/idea he talks about in the book known as Paradoxical Intention, where a person is able to overcome a behavior they would like to change by aiming to desire the very thing they wrestle with or fear.  So, for example, in the book he describes a person who sweats a ton when they are nervous. Instead of "trying not to sweat", he instructs the person when faced with a situation that may make them nervous to, instead, think along the lines of "Normally I sweat a quart of perspiration. I'm going to try and sweat three quarts of perspiration tonight!" Evidently, it somehow overrides something and the person no longer sweats. He offers examples of this being effective with OCD handwashing, fear of sleeplessness that ends up causing sleeplessness...all sorts of things.

It's a bit of a mind-bend to imagine. Simultaneously, it makes me curious to attempt.  I'll have to think on what I could use it for. 

What would you use it for? 

Let's do it and report back.

**

In other news, this week I'll be in art fag high heaven.  There is an event for sound nerds that will take place within a room set up with high-fidelity multi-channel system that are constructed for immersive, spatial audio experiences and I can't wait.  I will report back but, some of the concepts behind the pieces are so nerdilicious that I may look into the option of just living out the rest of my life in the room with the performances on repeat. 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

 

P.S. For the past two weeks, if I hit any level of low motivation, I have had Diljit Dosanjh's most recent album on repeat and all motivation skyrockets. (Yes, the song Morni in particular, as I'm sure is obvious.) If you're feeling low inspiration, check it out.  

[image credit: André Kertész]

The Pulse of Chlorine in Your Eyes

 

Lately, in order to feed a particular writing project A and I will return to soon,  I've been steeping in the intersection of writing and the condensed emotion of film shorts. It has continued to blow my mind how filmmakers are able to create worlds and depth and impact in the span of less-than-25-ish-minutes (sometimes as few as 6). When I think back on shorts that I have watched over the years, such a disproportionate number of them are engraved into my memory because of their economic use of image, tone, movement, and writing. 

Tonight after a high-speed day slowed into a cool evening, I settled in to watch an 18-minute long short entitled Barbie Blues (2011) by Adi Kutner. The film, in my understanding, was originally made as part of a BA program at Tel Aviv University and ended up having a nomination at Sundance for International Fiction, as well as another nomination in the Jerusalem Film Festival. 

In truth, I had only read the first sentence of the description of the film. It read: When Mika, a suburban teenager, finds a disturbing creature in her pool, she asks her new friendly neighbor Gershon for help. I didn't bother to read the rest of the description. I figured, cool. A film that has some sort of sci-fi vibe to it in which a girl and her neighbor deal with a mysterious creature that has turned up in her pool. 

What actually ensued was my body and mind starting to tense about 180 seconds into the film. I started to realize that, perhaps, there would be no sci-fi element to the film.  During the18 minutes of the film, I was able to feel the oddest sensations in my body and mind. Clenching, bracing, not-quite-releasing-but-not-quite-not-releasing. My breath held then released; shallow then deep. There was something reassuring in knowing that whatever I felt, it would not last longer than 18 minutes as the story unfolded. 

Now? I keep thinking about the film. The last few lines that are spoken. Who says them. What is said. How the story is told without being said, exactly. Mostly, I can't stop thinking about what I felt in my body and mind during the film.  

I can't say that I would recommend the film, nor would I advise against it exactly. I'll just say that if you happen to see it, or if you choose to see it (it is available on Vimeo, Kanopy and the like), pay detailed attention to your body and tell me later 

what it said. 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

 

[Photo credit: Jamie Street] 

The Bit You Put in Your Mouth to Tame Yourself

 

Wade asked me if I was experiencing the "(delectable) hangover" associated with stepping back into life after an extended travel/visit/guest/extravagant disappearance. I had never thought about it in those terms.  

I was. 

I am. 

It's wonderful. 

It's disorienting. 

The scents I catch upon my clothes are as intoxicating as they are exquisite. 

 

be well; be loved,

k.  

 

 

Envelope in my mailbox today. A handwritten note (appreciated). 

Case summary: Same obsessions; different pet. Nothing changes other than the delusions of her mind with the phase of the moon.  

Report to follow, albeit a predictable read.

- P.  

 

[Image credit: Maxime Ballestero DTSM SS2016 via Tissue Magazine]

Weird Science

 

 

In less than 24 hours a helping of the Midwest will be scooped up and weighted down next to me. My sleep shifts so significantly in the presence of said scoop: Like a satisfying last puzzle piece locking into place.

Insert an image, here, of an analog paper map with all of its pen-drawn circles and highlighted routes: Something between a blueprint and Frankenstein's stitches. There is the electricity of sleeplessness and anticipation of all the good reasons to stay awake. 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

 

[P.S. One of the art exhibits I have thought about the most in the past year and some has been Business, Pleasure, Pressure, Release by Nick Doyle.  There is a sterile, measured, official description of it here .  However, I encourage you to look for short video footage of the other video invitations and tagged photos from the actual opening parties on Instagram or other outlets (@nickdoyle333 or @human_resources._ ). 

There is one video of a woman with thick red lipstick locked within the bar that is shown in the aboved-linked video. While locked within it, a black stiletto filled with champagne is brought towards her face and is poured from the stiletto directly into her mouth, which she drinks without being able to touch the stiletto to steady it. It is just spectacular in the image and concept.]

 

[image credit: Raymond Woolhead] 

The 15th (Not the Wire Song; Not of This Month)

The closest thing to blue flowers

The only straight person who knew The Maids

The pages on your walls I was afraid to read

The one who inadvertently introduced me to Shakespeare 

The blurred memory of the murder mystery castle you took me to and the groundskeeper who seemed to be everywhere

Your comfort with getting dirty 

 

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.]