Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN

B.I. #40 06-97

BENTON RIDGE OH

‘It’s the arm. You wouldn’t think of it as a asset like that would you. But it’s the arm. You want to see it? You won’t get disgusted? Well here it is. Here’s the arm. This is why I go by the name Johnny One-Arm. I made it up, not anybody being, like, hardhearted — me. I see how you’re trying to be polite and not look at it. Go ahead and look though. It don’t bother me. Inside my head I don’t call it the arm I call it the Asset. How all would you describe it? Go on. You think it’ll hurt my feelings? You want to hear me describe it? It looks like a arm that changed its mind early on in the game when it was in Mama’s stomach with the rest of me. It’s more like a itty tiny little flipper, it’s little and wet-looking and darker than the rest of me is. It looks wet even when it’s dry. It’s not a pretty sight at all. I usually keep it in the sleeve until it’s time to haul it out and use it for the Asset. Notice the shoulder’s normal, it’s just like the other shoulder. It’s just the arm. It’ll only go down to like the titty-nipple of my chest here, see? It’s a little sucker. It ain’t pretty. It moves fine, I can move it around fine. If you look close here at the end there’s these little majiggers you can tell started out wanting to be fingers but didn’t form. When I was in her stomach. The other arm — see? It’s a normal arm, a little muscley on account of using it all the time. It’s normal and long and the right color, that’s the arm I show all the time, most times I keep the other sleeve pinned up so it don’t look to be even anything like a arm in there at all. It’s strong though. The arm is. It’s hard on the eyes but it’s strong, sometimes I’ll try and get them to armwrestle it to see how strong it is. It’s a strong little flippery sucker. If they think they can stand to touch it. I always say if they don’t think they can stand touching it why that’s OK, it don’t hurt my feelings. You want to touch it?’

Q.

‘That’s all right. That is all right.’

Q.

‘What it is is — well first there’s always some girls around. You know what I mean? At the foundry there, at the Lanes. There’s a tavern right down by the bus stop there. Jackpot — that’s my best friend — Jackpot and Kenny Kirk — Kenny Kirk’s his cousin, Jackpot’s, that are both over me at the foundry cause I finished school and didn’t get in the union till after — they’re real good-looking and normal-looking and Good With The Ladies if you know what I mean, and there’s always girls hanging back around. Like in a group, a bunch or group of all of us, we’ll all just hang back, drink some beers. Jackpot and Kenny’re always going with one of them or the other and then the ones they’re going with got friends. You know. A whole, say, group of us there. You follow the picture here? And I’ll start hanging back with this one or that one, and after a while the first stage is I’ll start in to telling them how I got the name Johnny One-Arm and about the arm. That’s a stage of the thing. Of getting some pussy using the Asset. I’ll describe the arm while it’s still up in the sleeve and make it sound like just about the ugliest thing you ever did see. They’ll get this look on their face like Oh You Poor Little Fella You’re Being Too Hard On Yourself You Shouldn’t Be Shameful Of The Arm. So on. How I’m such a nice young fella and it breaks their heart to see me talk about my own part of me that way especially since it weren’t any fault of mine to get born with the arm. At which time when they start with that stage of it the next stage is I ask them do they want to see it. I say how I’m shameful of the arm but somehow I trust them and they seem real nice and if they want I’ll unpin the sleeve and let the arm out and let them look at the arm if they think they could stand it. I’ll go on about the arm until they can’t hardly stand to hear no more about it. Sometimes it’s a ex of Jackpot’s that’s the one that starts hanging back with me down at Frame Eleven over to the Lanes and saying how I’m such a good listener and sensitive not like Jackpot or Kenny and she can’t believe there’s any way the arm’s as bad as I’m making out and like that. Or we’ll be hanging back at her place in the kitchenette or some such and I’ll go It’s So Hot I Feel Like Taking My Shirt Off But I Don’t Want To On Account Of I’m Shameful Of The Arm. Like that. There’s numerous, like, stages. I never out loud call it the Asset believe you me. Go on and touch it whenever you get a mind to. One of the stages is I know after some time I really am starting to come off creepy to the girl, I can tell, cause all I can talk about is the arm and how wet and flippery it is but how it’s strong but how I’d just about up and die if a girl as nice and pretty and perfect as I think she is saw it and got disgusted, and I can tell all the talk starts creeping them up inside and they start to secretly think I’m kind of a loser but they can’t back out on me cause after all here they been all this time saying all this nice shit about what a sensitive young fella I am and how I shouldn’t be shameful and there’s no way the arm can be that bad. In this stage it’s like they’re committed into a corner and if they quit hanging back with me now why they know I can go It Was Because Of The Arm.’

Q.

‘Usually long about two weeks, like that. The next is your critical-type stage where I show them the arm. I wait till it’s just her and me alone someplace and I haul the sucker out. I make it seem like they talked me into it and now I trust them and they’re who I finally feel like I can let it out of the sleeve and show it. And I show it to her just like I just did you. There’s some additional things too I can do with it that look even worse, make it look — see that? See this right here? It’s cause there ain’t even really a elbow bone, it’s just a—’

Q.

‘Or some of your ointments or Vaseline-type jelly on it to make it look even wetter and shinier. The arm’s not a pretty sight at all when I up and haul it out on them I’m telling you right now. It just about makes them puke, the sight of it the way I get it. Oh and a couple run out, some skedoodle right out the door. But your majority? Your majority of them’ll swallow hard a time or two and go Oh It’s It’s It’s Not Too Bad At All but they’re looking over all away and try and not look at my face which I’ve got this totally shy and scared and trusting face on at the time like this one thing I can do where I can make my lip even tremble a little. Ee? Ee anh? And ever time sooner or later within inside, like, five minutes of it they’ll up and start crying. They’re in way over their head, see. They’re, like, committed into a corner of saying how it can’t be that ugly and I shouldn’t be shameful and then they see it and I see to it it is ugly, ugly ugly ugly and now what do they do? Pretend? Shit girl most of these girls around here think Elvis is alive someplace. These are not girl wonders of the brain. It breaks them down ever time. They get even worse if I ask them Oh Golly What’s Wrong, how come they’re crying, Is It The Arm and they have to say It Ain’t The Arm, they have to, they have to try and pretend it ain’t the arm that it’s how they feel so sad for me being so shameful of something that ain’t a big deal at all they have to say. Often-times with their face in their hands and crying. Your climatic stage then is then I up and come over to where she’s at and sit down and now I’m the one that’s comforting them. A, like, factor here I found out the hard way is when I go in to hold them and comfort them I hold them with the good side. I don’t give them no more of the Asset. The Asset’s wrapped back up safe out of sight in the sleeve now. They’re broke down crying and I’m the one holding them with the good arm and go It’s OK Don’t Cry Don’t Be Sad Being Able To Trust You Not To Get Disgusted By The Arm Means So Very Very Much To Me Don’t You See You Have Set Me Free Of Being Shameful Of The Arm Thank You Thank You and so on while they put their face in my neck and just cry and cry. Sometimes they get me crying too. You following all this?’

Q….

‘More pussy than a toilet seat, man. I shit you not. Go on and ask Jackpot and Kenny if you want about it. Kenny Kirk’s the one named it the Asset. You go on.’

B.I. #42 06-97

PEORIA HEIGHTS IL

‘The soft plopping sounds. The slight gassy sounds. The little involuntary grunts. The special sigh of an older man at a urinal, the way he establishes himself there and sets his feet and aims and then lets out a timeless sigh you know he’s not aware of.

‘This was his environment. Six days a week he stood there. Saturdays a double shift. The needles-and-nails quality of urine into water. The unseen rustle of newspapers on bare laps. The odors.’

Q.

‘Top-rated historic hotel in the state. The finest lobby, the single finest men’s room between the two coasts, surely. Marble shipped from Italy. Stall doors of seasoned cherry. Since 1969 he’s stood there. Rococo fixtures and scalloped basins. Opulent and echoing. A large opulent echoing room for men of business, substantial men, men with places to go and people to see. The odors. Don’t ask about the odors. The difference in some men’s odors, the sameness in all men’s odors. All sounds amplified by tile and Florentine stone. The moans of the prostatic. The hiss of the sinks. The ripping extractions of deep-lying phlegm, the plosive and porcelain splat. The sound of fine shoes on dolomite flooring. The inguinal rumbles. The hellacious ripping explosions of gas and the sound of stuff hitting the water. Half-atomized by pressures brought to bear. Solid, liquid, gas. All the odors. Odor as environment. All day. Nine hours a day. Standing there in Good Humor white. All sounds magnified, reverberating slightly. Men coming in, men going out. Eight stalls, six urinals, sixteen sinks. Do the math. What were they thinking?’

Q….

‘It’s what he stands in. In the sonic center. Where the shine stand used to be. In the crafted space between the end of the sinks and the start of the stalls. The space designed for him to stand. The vortex. Just outside the long mirror’s frame, by the sinks — a continuous sink of Florentine marble, sixteen scalloped basins, leaves of gold foil around the fixtures, mirror of good Danish plate. In which men of substance drag material out of the corners of their eyes and squeeze their pores, blow their nose in the sinks and walk off without rinsing. He stood all day with his towels and small cases of personal-size toiletries. A trace of balsam in the three vents’ whisper. The vents’ threnody is inaudible unless the room is empty. He stands there when it’s empty, too. This is his occupation, this is his career. Dressed all in white like a masseur. Plain white Hanes T and white pants and tennis shoes he had to throw out if so much as a spot. He takes their cases and topcoats, guards them, remembers without asking whose is whose. Speaking as little as possible in all those acoustics. Appearing at men’s elbows to hand them towels. An impassivity that is effacement. This is my father’s career.’

Q….

‘The stalls’ fine doors end a foot from the floor — why is this? Why this tradition? Is it descended from animals’ stalls? Is the word stall related to stable? Fine stalls that afford some visual privacy and nothing else. If anything they amplify the sounds inside, bullhorns on end. You hear it all. The balsam makes the odors worse by sweetening them. The toes of dress shoes defiled along the row of spaces beneath the doors. The stalls full after lunch. A long rectangular box of shoes. Some tapping. Some of them humming, speaking aloud to themselves, forgetting they are not alone. The flatus and tussis and meaty splats. Defecation, egestion, extrusion, dejection, purgation, voidance. The unmistakable rumble of the toilet paper dispensers. The occasional click of nail-clippers or depilatory scissors. Effluence. Emission. Orduration, micturition, transudation, emiction, feculence, catharsis — so many synonyms: why? what are we trying to say to ourselves in so many ways?’

Q….

‘The olfactory clash of different men’s colognes, deodorants, hair tonic, mustache wax. The rich smell of the foreign and unbathed. Some of the stalls’ shoes touching their mate hesitantly, tentatively, as if sniffing it. The damp lisp of buttocks shifting on padded seats. The tiny pulse of each bowl’s pool. The little dottles that survive flushing. The urinals’ ceaseless purl and trickle. The indole stink of putrefied food, the eccrine tang to the jackets, the uremic breeze that follows each flush. Men who flush toilets with their feet. Men who will touch fixtures only with tissue. Men who trail paper out of the stalls, their own comet’s tail, the paper lodged in their anus. Anus. The word anus. The anuses of the well-to-do ranging above the bowls’ water, flexing, puckering, distending. Soft faces squeezed tight in effort. Old men who require all kinds of ghastly help — lowering and arranging another man’s shanks, wiping another man. Silent, wordless, impassive. Whisking the shoulders of another man, shaking off another man, removing a pubic hair from the pleat of another man’s slacks. For coins. The sign says it all. Men who tip, men who do not tip. The effacement cannot be too complete or they forget he is there when it comes time to tip. The trick of his demeanor is to appear only provisionally there, to exist all and only if needed. Aid without intrusion. Service without servant. No man wants to know another man can smell him. Millionaires who do not tip. Natty men who splatter the bowls and tip a nickel. Heirs who steal towels. Tycoons who pick their noses with their thumb. Philanthropists who throw cigar butts on the floor. Self-made men who spit in the sink. Wildly rich men who do not flush and without a thought leave it to someone else to flush because this is literally what they are used to — the old saw Would you do this at home.

‘He bleached his work clothes himself, ironed them. Never a word of complaint. Impassive. The sort of man who stands in one place all day. Sometimes the very soles of the shoes visible under there, in the stalls, of vomiting men. The word vomit. The mere word. Men being ill in a room with acoustics. All the mortal sound he stood in every day. Try to imagine. The soft expletives of constipated men, men with colitis, ileus, irritable bowel, lientery, dyspepsia, diverticulitis, ulcers, bloody flux. Men with colostomies handing him the bag to dispose of. An equerry of the human. Hearing without hearing. Seeing only need. The slight nod that in men’s rooms is acknowledgment and deferral at once. The ghastly metastasized odors of continental breakfasts and business dinners. A double shift when he could. Food on the table, a roof, children to educate. His arches would swell from the standing. His bare feet were blancmanges. He showered thrice daily and scrubbed himself raw but the job still followed him. Never a word.

‘The door tells the whole story. MEN. I haven’t seen him since 1978 and I know he’s still there, all in white, standing. Averting his eyes to preserve their dignity. But his own? His own five senses? What are those three monkeys’ names? His task is to stand there as if he were not there. Not really. There’s a trick to it. A special nothing you look at.’

Q.

‘I didn’t learn it in a men’s room, I can tell you that.’

Q….

‘Imagine not existing until a man needs you. Being there and yet not there. A willed translucence. Provisionally there, contingently there. The old saw Lives to serve. His career. Breadwinner. Every morning up at six, kiss us all goodbye, a piece of toast for the bus. He could eat for real on his break. A bellman would go to the deli. The pressure produced by pressure. The rich belches of expense-account lunches. The mirrors’ remains of sebum and pus and sneezed detritus. Twenty-six-no-seven years at the same station. The grave nod he’d receive a tip with. The inaudible thank-you to the regulars. Sometimes a name. All those solids tumbling out of all those large soft warm fat moist white anuses, flexing. Imagine. To attend so much passage. To see men of substance at their most elemental. His career. A career man.’

Q.

‘Because he brought his work home. The face he wore in the men’s room. He couldn’t take it off. His skull conformed to fit it. This expression or rather lack of expression. Attendant and no more. Alert but absent. His face. Beyond reserved. As if forever conserving himself for some ordeal to come.’

Q….

‘I wear nothing white. Not one white thing, I can tell you that much. I eliminate in silence or not at all. I tip. I never forget that someone is there.

‘Yes and do I admire the fortitude of this humblest of working men? The stoicism? The Old World grit? To stand there all those years, never one sick day, serving? Or do I despise him, you’re wondering, feel disgust, contempt for any man who’d stand effaced in that miasma and dispense towels for coins?’

Q.

‘…’

Q.

‘What were the two choices again?’

B.I. #2 10-94

CAPITOLA CA

‘Sweetie, we need to talk. We’ve needed to for a while. I have I mean, I feel like. Can you sit?’

Q.

‘Well, I’d rather almost anything, but I care about you, and I’d rather anything than you getting hurt. That concerns me a lot, believe me.’

Q.

‘Because I care. Because I love you. Enough to really be honest.’

Q.

‘That sometimes I worry you’re going to get hurt. And that you don’t deserve it. To get hurt I mean.’

Q, Q.

‘Because, to be honest, my record is not good. Almost every intimate relationship I get into with women seems to end up with them getting hurt, somehow. To be honest, sometimes I worry I might be one of those guys who uses people, women. I worry about it somet — no, damn it, I’m going to be honest with you because I care about you and you deserve it. Sweetie, my relationship record indicates a guy who’s bad news. And more and more now lately I’ve been afraid that you’re going to get hurt, that I might hurt you the way I seem to have hurt others who—’

Q.

‘That I have a history, a pattern so to speak, of, for instance, coming on very fast and hard in the beginning of a relationship and pursuing very hard and very intensely and wooing very intensely and being head over heels in love right from the very start, of saying I Love You very early on in the relationship, of starting to talk future-tense right from the outset, of having nothing be too much to say or do to show how much I care, which all of course has the effect, naturally, of seeming to make them truly believe I really am in love — which I am — which then, I think, seems to make them feel loved enough and so to speak safe enough to start letting them say I Love You back and acknowledging that they’re in love with me, too. And it’s not — let me stress this because it’s the God’s honest truth — it’s not that I don’t mean it when I say it.’

Q.

‘Well, it’s not as if how many of them I’ve said it to isn’t an understandable question or concern but if it’s all right it’s just that it’s not what I’m trying to talk to you about, so if it’s all right I want to hold off on things like numbers or names and try to just be totally honest with you about what my concerns are, because I care. I care about you a lot, sweetie. A whole lot. I know it’s insecure, but it’s very important to me that you believe this and hang on to it all through our talk here, that what I’m saying or what I’m afraid I might do to in any way end up hurting you doesn’t in any way lessen or mean that I don’t care or that I have not meant it absolutely every time I’ve told you I love you. Every time. I hope you believe that. You deserve to. Plus it’s true.’

Q….

‘But what it is is that it seems as if for a while everything I say and do has the effect of pulling them into thinking of it as a very — a very serious relationship and almost you could say somehow like lulling them into thinking in terms of the future.’

Q.

‘Because then the as it were pattern seems to be that once I’ve got you, so to speak, and you’re as much into the relationship as I’ve been, then it’s as if I’m almost constitutionally unable somehow to push all the way through and follow through and make a… what’s the right word—’

Q.

‘Yes, all right, that’s the word, even though I have to tell you the way you say it fills me with dread that you’re already feeling hurt and not taking what I’m trying to say in the spirit which I’m trying to talk to you about this, which is that I honestly do care enough about you to share some honest concerns that have been troubling me about even the possibility of you getting hurt, which believe me is the absolute last thing I want.’

Q.

‘That, from examining the record and trying to make some kind of sense of it, it seems as if something in me goes into a sort of overdrive in the early intense part and gets me right up to the point of yes of commitment, and then but then can’t quite seem to push all the way through and actually make the commitment to do a truly serious, future-tense, committed thing with them. As Mr. Chitwin would put it I am just not a closer. Does any of this make any sense? I don’t feel as though I’m saying it very well. Where the real hurt seems to come in is because this inability seems to kick in only after doing and saying and behaving in all sorts of ways that on some level I surely must know are leading them to think that I want a truly committed future-tense thing as much as they do. So, to be honest, this is my record with this sort of thing, and as far as I can tell it seems to indicate a guy who’s bad news for women, which concerns me. A lot. That I seem to maybe seem like a woman’s completely ideal guy up to a certain point in the relationship where now they’ve dropped all their resistance and defenses and are committedly in love, which of course seems to be what I had wanted right from the beginning and had worked so hard and wooed them so intensely to get them to do and just as I know all too well I’ve done with you, to get serious and think in terms of the future and the word commitment and then — and sweetie trust me this is hard to explain because I far from fully understand it myself — but then at just this point, historically, as best as I can figure out it’s as if something in me as it were kind of reverses thrust and now puts all its overdrive into somehow pulling back.’

Q.

‘All I can really figure out is that I seem to sort of freak out and feel I have to reverse thrust and get out of it, except usually I’m not totally sure, I can’t tell if I really want out of it or whether I’m simply freaking out somehow, and even though I’m freaking out and want out I still don’t want to lose them, it seems, so I tend to give a lot of mixed signals and say and do a lot of things that seem to confuse them and yank them around and cause them pain, which believe me I always end up feeling horrible about, even while I’m doing it. Which I’ll tell you the truth is what I’m freaking out about with you and me, because yanking you around or causing you pain is the absolute last thing in—’

Q, Q.

‘The God’s honest truth is I don’t know. I do not know. I haven’t been able to figure it out. I think all I’m trying to do here in our sitting down and talking about it is really care about you and be honest about myself and my relationship record and do it in the middle of something instead of the end. Because my record is that historically it seems to be only at the end of a relationship that I seem to be willing to open up about some of my fears about myself and my record of causing women who love me pain. Which, of course, causes them pain, the sudden honesty does, and serves to get me out of the relationship, which then afterward I worry might have been my subconscious agenda all along in terms of bringing it up and finally getting honest with them, maybe. I’m not sure.’

Q….

‘So anyway the truth is I’m not sure about any of it. I’m just trying to look honestly at my record and honestly see what seems to be the pattern and what’s the likelihood of my continuing this pattern with you, which believe me I’d rather anything than do. Please believe that inflicting any pain on you is the last thing I want, sweetie. This pulling-away thing and inability to push through and as Mr. Chitwin would say close the deal—this is what I want to try and be honest with you about.’

Q….

‘And the harder and faster I’ve come after them at the beginning, wooing and pursuing and feeling completely in love, the intensity of that drive seems to be directly proportional to the intensity and urgency with which it seems I then find ways to pull away, back away. The record indicates that this sort of sudden reversal of thrust happens right when I have the sense that I’ve got them. Whatever got means — to be honest I’m not sure. It seems to mean once I know for sure and feel that now they’re as into the relationship and the future tense as I am. Have been. Was. It happens that fast. It’s terrifying when it happens. Sometimes I don’t even known what even happened until after it’s over and I’m looking back on it and trying to understand how she could have gotten so hurt, was she crazy or unnaturally clingy and dependent or am I just bad news as far as relationships go. It happens incredibly fast. It feels both fast and slow, like a car crash, where it’s almost more like you’re watching it happen than that you’re actually involved in it. Does any of this make any sense?’

Q.

‘I seem to need to keep admitting I’m really terrified you’re not going to understand. That I won’t explain it well enough or you’ll somehow through no fault of your own misinterpret what I’m saying and turn it around somehow and be hurt. I’m feeling unbelievable terror here, I have to tell you.’ Q. ‘All right. That’s the bad part. Dozens of times. At least. Forty, forty-five times, maybe. To be honest, possibly more. As in a lot more, I’m afraid. I guess I’m not even sure anymore.’

Q….

‘On the surface, in terms of the specifics, a lot of them looked pretty different, the relationships and what exactly ended up happening. Sweetie, but I’ve somehow started to see that underneath the surface all of them were largely the same. The same basic pattern. In a way, sweetie, my seeing this gives me a certain amount of hope, because maybe it means I’m becoming more able to understand myself and be honest with myself. I seem to be developing more of a sort of conscience in this area. Which a part of me finds terrifying, to be honest. The starting out so intense, in almost overdrive, and feeling as if everything depends on getting them to drop their defenses and plunge in and love me as totally as I love them, then the freaking-out thing kicks in and reverses thrust. I admit there’s a kind of dread at the idea of having a conscience in this area, as if it seems as if it’s going to take away all room to maneuver, somehow. Which is bizarre, I know, because at the beginning of the pattern I don’t want room to maneuver, the last thing I want is room to maneuver, what I want is to plunge in and get them to plunge in with me and believe in me and be together in it forever. I swear, I really almost every time seem to have believed that’s what I wanted. Which is why it doesn’t quite seem to me as if I was evil or anything, or as if I was actually lying to them or anything — even though at the end, when I seem to have reversed thrust and suddenly pulled totally out of it, they almost always all feel as if I’ve lied to them, as if if I meant what I said there’s no way I could be reversing thrust the way I’m doing now. Which I still, to be honest, don’t quite think I’ve ever done: lied. Unless I’m just rationalizing. Unless I’m some kind of psychopath who can rationalize anything and can’t even see the most obvious kinds of evil he’s perpetrating, or who doesn’t even care but wants to delude himself into believing he cares so that he can continue to see himself as a basically decent guy. The whole thing is incredibly confusing, and it’s one reason I’m so hesitant to bring it up with you, out of fear that I won’t be able to be clear about it and that you’ll misunderstand and be hurt, but I decided that if I care about you I have to have the courage to really act as if I care about you, to put caring about you before my own petty worries and confusions.’

Q.

‘Sweetie, you’re welcome. I pray you’re not being sarcastic. I’m so mixed up and terrified right now I probably couldn’t even tell.’

Q.

‘I know I should have told you some of all this about me sooner, and the pattern. Before you moved all the way out here, which believe me meant so — it made me really feel you really cared about this, us, being with me, and I want to be as caring and honest toward you as you’ve been with me. Especially because I know your moving out here was something I lobbied so hard for. School, your apartment, having to get rid of your cat — just please don’t misunderstand — your doing all that just to be with me means a great deal to me, and it’s a huge part of why I really do feel as if I love you and care so much about you, too much not to feel terrified about in any way yanking you around or hurting you somewhere down the road, which trust me given my record in this area is a possibility I’d have to be a total psychopath not to consider. That’s what I want to be able to make clear enough so that you’ll understand. Is it making at least a little sense?’

Q.

‘It’s not as simple as that. At least not the way I see it. And believe me my way of seeing it is not that I’m a totally decent guy who never does anything wrong. A better guy probably would have told you about this pattern and warned you before we even slept together, to be honest. Because I know I felt guilty after we did. Sleep together. Despite how unbelievably magical and ecstatic and right it was, you were. Probably I felt guilty because I’d been the one lobbying so hard for sleeping together so soon, and even though you were completely honest about being uncomfortable about sleeping together so soon and I already even then respected and cared for you a lot and wanted to respect your feelings but I was still so incredibly attracted to you, one of these almost irresistible thunderbolts of attraction, and felt so overwhelmed with it that even without necessarily meaning to I know I plunged in too fast and probably pressured you and rushed you to plunge into sleeping together, even though I think now on some level I probably knew how guilty and uncomfortable I was going to feel afterward.’

Q.

‘I’m not explaining it well enough. I’m not getting through. All right, now I’m really freaking out that you’re starting to feel hurt. Please believe me. The whole reason I’m having us talk about my record and what I get afraid might happen is that I don’t want it to happen, see? that I don’t want suddenly to reverse thrust and begin trying to extricate myself after you’ve given up so much and moved out here and now I’ve — now that we’re so involved. I’m praying you’ll be able to see that my telling you what always happens is a kind of proof that with you I don’t want it to happen. That I don’t want to get all testy or hypercritical or pull away and not be around for days at a time or be blatantly unfaithful in a way you’re guaranteed to find out about or any of the shitty cowardly ways I’ve used before to get out of something I’d just spent months of intensive pursuit and effort trying to get the other person to plunge into with me. Does this make any sense? Can you believe that I’m honestly trying to respect you by warning you about me, in a way? That I’m trying to be honest instead of dishonest? That I’ve decided the best way to head off this pattern where you get hurt and feel abandoned and I feel like shit is to try to be honest for once? Even if I should have done it sooner? Even when I admit it’s maybe possible that you might even interpret what I’m saying now as dishonest, as trying somehow to maybe freak you out enough so that you’ll move back out and I can get out of this? Which I don’t think is what I’m doing, but to be totally honest I can’t be a hundred percent sure? To risk that with you? Do you understand? That I’m trying as hard as I can to love you? That I’m terrified I can’t love? That I’m afraid maybe I’m just constitutionally incapable of doing anything other than pursuing and seducing and then running, plunging in and then reversing, never being honest with anybody? That I’ll never be a closer? That I might be a psychopath? Can you imagine what it takes to tell you this? That I’m terrified that after I’ve told you all this I’m going to feel so guilty and ashamed that I won’t be able even to look at you or stand to be around you, knowing that you know all this about me and now being constantly afraid of what you’re thinking all the time? That it’s even possible that my honestly here trying to head off the pattern of sending out mixed signals and pulling away is just another type of way of pulling away? Or to get you to pull away, now that I’ve got you, and maybe deep down I’m such a cowardly shit that I don’t even want to make the commitment of pulling away myself, that I want to somehow force you into doing it?’

Q. Q.

‘Those are valid, totally understandable questions, sweetie, and I swear to you I’ll do my absolute best to answer them as honestly as possible.’

Q….

‘There’s just one more thing I feel like I have to tell you about first, though. So the slate’s clean for once, and everything’s out in the open. I’m terrified to tell you, but I’m going to. Then it’ll be your turn. But listen: this thing is not good. I’m afraid it might hurt you. It’s not going to sound good at all, I’m afraid. Can you do me a favor and sort of brace yourself and promise to try not to react for a couple seconds when I tell you? Can we talk about it before you react? Can you promise?’

B.I. #48 08-97

APPLETON WI

‘It is on the third date that I will invite them back to the apartment. It is important to understand that, for there even to be a third date, there must exist some sort of palpable affinity between us, something by which I can sense that they will go along. Perhaps go along [flexion of upraised fingers to signify tone quotes] is not a fortuitous phrase for it. I mean, perhaps, [flexion of upraised fingers to signify tone quotes] play. Meaning to join me in the contract and subsequent activity.’

Q.

‘Nor can I explain how I sense this mysterious affinity. This sense that a willingness to go along would not be out of the question. Someone once told me of an Australian profession known as [flexion of upraised fingers] chicken-sexing, in—’

Q.

‘Bear with me a moment, now. Chicken-sexing. Since hens have a far greater commercial value than males, cocks, roosters, it is apparently vital to determine the sex of a newly hatched chick. In order to know whether to expend capital on raising it or not, you see. A cock is nearly worthless, apparently, on the open market. The sex characteristics of newly hatched chicks, however, are entirely internal, and it is impossible with the naked eye to tell whether a given chick is a hen or a cock. This is what I have been told, at any rate. A professional chicken-sexer, however, can nevertheless tell. The sex. He can go through a brood of freshly hatched chicks, examining each one entirely by eye, and tell the poultry farmer which chicks to keep and which are cocks. The cocks are to be allowed to perish. “Hen, hen, cock, cock, hen,” and so on and so forth. This is apparently in Australia. The profession. And they are nearly always right. Correct. The fowl determined to be hens do in fact grow up to be hens and return the poultry farmer’s investment. What the chicken-sexer cannot do, however, is explain how he knows. The sex. It’s apparently often a patrilineal profession, handed down from father to son. Australia, New Zealand. Have him hold up a new-hatched chick, a young cock shall we say, and ask him how he can tell that it is a cock, and the professional chicken-sexer will apparently shrug his shoulders and say “Looks like a cock to me.” Doubtless adding “mate,” much the way you or I would add “my friend” or “sir.”’

Q….

‘This is the aptest analogy I can adduce to explain it. Some mysterious sixth sense, perhaps. Not that I’m right one hundred percent of the time. But you would be surprised. We will be on the ottoman, having a drink, enjoying some music, light conversation. This is now on the third date together, late in the evening, after dinner and perhaps a film or a bit of dancing. I do very much like to dance. We are not seated close together on the ottoman. Usually I am at one end and she at the other. Though it is only a four-and-a-half-foot ottoman. It’s not a terribly long piece of furniture. However, the point is that we are not in a posture of particular intimacy. Very casual and so on. A great deal of complex body language is involved and has taken place over all the prior time spent in one another’s company, which I will not bore you by attempting to go into. So then. When I sense the moment is right — on the ottoman, comfortable, with drinks, perhaps some Ligeti on the audio system — I will say, without any discernible context or lead-in that you could point to as such, “How would you feel about my tying you up?” Those nine words. Just so. Some rebuff me on the spot. But it is a small percentage. Very small. Perhaps shockingly small. I will know whether it’s going to happen the moment I ask. I can nearly always tell. Again, I cannot fully explain how. There will always be a moment of complete silence, heavy. You are, of course, aware that social silences have varied textures, and these textures communicate a great deal. This silence will occur whether I’m to be rebuffed or not, whether I have been incorrect about the [flexion of upraised fingers to signify tone quotes] hen or not. Her silence, and the weight of it — a perfectly natural reaction to such a shift in the texture of a hitherto casual conversation. And it brings to a sudden head all the romantic tensions and cues and body language of the first three dates. Initial or early-stage dates are fantastically rich from a psychological standpoint. Doubtless you are aware of this. Any sort of courtship ritual, game of sizing one another up, gauging. There is, afterward, always that eight-beat silence. They must allow the question to [finger flexion] sink in. This was an expression of my mother’s, by the way. To let such-and-such [finger flexion] sink in, and as it happens it is nearly perfect as a descriptor of what occurs.’

Q.

‘Alive and kicking. She lives with my sister and her husband and their two small children. Very much alive. Nor do — rest assured that I do not delude myself that the low percentage of rebuffs is due to any over-whelming allure on my part. This is not how an activity like this works. In fact, it is one reason why I propose the possibility in such a bold and apparently graceless way. I withhold any attempt at charm or assuasion. Because I know, full well, that their response to the proposal depends on factors internal to them. Some will wish to play. A few will not. That is all there is to it. The only real [finger flexion] talent I profess is the ability to gauge them, screen them, so that by the — such that a preponderance of the third dates are, if you will, [finger flexion] hens rather than [finger flexion] cocks. I use these avian tropes as metaphors, not in any way to characterize the subjects but rather to emphasize my own unanalyzable ability to know, intuitively, as early as the first date, whether they are, if you will, [f.f.] ripe for the proposal. To tie them up. And that is just how I put it. I do not dress it up or attempt to make it seem any more [sustained f.f.] romantic or exotic than that. Now, as to the rebuffs. The rebuffs are very rarely hostile, very rarely, and then only if the subject in question really in fact does wish to play but is conflicted or emotionally inequipped to accept this wish and so must use hostility to the proposal as a means of assuring herself that no such wish or affinity exists. This is sometimes known as [f.f.] aversion coding. It is very easy to discern and decipher, and as such it is nearly impossible to take the hostility personally. The rare subjects about whom I’ve simply been incorrect, on the other hand, are often amused, or sometimes curious and thus interrogative, but in all events in the end they simply decline the proposal in clear and forthright terms. These are the cocks I have mistaken for hens. It happens. As of my last reckoning, I have been rebuffed just over fifteen percent of the time. On the third date. This figure is actually a bit high, because it includes the hostile, hysterical, or affronted rebuffs, which do not result — at least in my opinion — which do not result from my misjudging a [f.f.] cock.’

Q.

‘Again, please note that I do not possess or pretend to possess specialized knowledge about poultry or professional brood-management. I use the metaphors only to convey the apparent ineffability of my intuition about prospective players in the [f.f.] game I propose. Nor, please also note, do I so much as touch them or in any way flirt with them before the third date. Nor, on that third date, do I launch myself at them or move toward them in any way as I hit them with the proposal. I propose it bluntly but unthreateningly from my end of a four-and-a-half-foot ottoman. I do not force myself on them in any way. I am not a Lothario. I know what the contract is about, and it is not about seduction, conquest, intercourse, or algolagnia. What it is about is my desire symbolically to work out certain internal complexes consequent to my rather irregular childhood relations with my mother and twin sister. It is not [f.f.] S and M, and I am not a [f.f.] sadist, and I am not interested in subjects who wish to be [f.f.] hurt. My sister and I are fraternal twins, by the way, and in adulthood look scarcely anything alike. What I am about, when I suddenly inquire, à propos nothing, whether I might take them into the other room and tie them up, is describable, at least in part, in the phrase of Marchesani and Van Slyke’s theory of masochistic symbolism, as proposing a contractual scenario [no f.f.]. The crucial factor here is that I am every bit as interested in the contract as in the scenario. Hence the blunt formality, the mix of aggression and decorum in my proposal. They took her in after she suffered a series of small but not life-threatening strokes, cerebral events, and simply could no longer get around well enough to live on her own. She refused even to consider institutional care. This was not even a possibility so far as she was concerned. My sister, of course, came immediately to the rescue. Mummy has her own room, while my sister’s two children must now share one. The room is on the first floor to prevent her having to negotiate the staircase, which is steep and uncarpeted. I have to tell you, I know precisely what the whole thing is about.’

Q.

‘It is easy to know, there on the ottoman, that it is going to happen. That I have gauged the affinity correctly. Ligeti, whose work, you are doubtless aware, is abstract nearly to the point of atonality, provides the ideal atmosphere in which to propose the contractual scenario. Over eighty-five percent of the time the subject accepts. There is no [f.f.] predatory thrill at the subject’s [f.f.] acquiescence, because it is not a matter of acquiescence at all. Not at all. I will ask how they feel about the idea of my tying them up. There will be a dense and heavily charged silence, a gathering voltage in the air above the ottoman. In that voltage the question dwells until it has, comme on dit, [f.f.] sunk in. They will, in most cases, abruptly change their position on the ottoman so as suddenly to straighten their posture, [f.f.] sit up straight and so on — this is an unconscious gesture designed to communicate strength and autonomy, to assert that they alone have the power to decide how to respond to the proposal. It stems from an insecure fear that something ostensibly weak or pliable in their character might have led me to view them as candidates for [sustained f.f.] domination or bondage. People’s psychological dynamics are fascinating — that a subject’s first, unconscious concern is what it might be about her that might prompt such a proposal, might lead a man to think such a thing might be possible. Reflexively concerned, in other words, about their self-presentation. You would almost have to be there in the room with us to appreciate the very, very complex and fascinating dynamics that accompany this charged silence. In point of fact, in its naked assertion of personal power, the sudden improvement in posture in fact communicates a clear desire to submit. To accept. To play. In other words, any assertion of [f.f.] power signifies, in this charged context, a hen. In the heavily stylized formalism of [f.f.] masochistic play, you see, the ritual is contracted and organized in such a way that the apparent inequality in power is, in fact, fully empowered and autonomous.’

Q.

‘Thank you. This shows me you really are attending. That you are an acute and assertive auditor. Nor have I put it very gracefully. What would render you and I, for example, going to my apartment and entering into some contractual activity that included my tying you up true [f.f.] play is that it would be entirely different from my somehow luring you to my home and once there launching myself at you and overpowering you and tying you up. There would be no play in that. The play is in your freely and autonomously submitting to being tied up. The purpose of the contractual nature of masochistic or [f.f.] bonded play — I propose, she accepts, I propose something further, she accepts — is to formalize the power structure. Ritualize it. The [f.f.] play is the submission to bondage, the giving up of power to another, but the [f.f.] contract—the [f.f.] rules, as it were, of the game — the contract ensures that all abdications of power are freely chosen. In other words, an assertion that one is secure enough in one’s concept of one’s own personal power to ritualistically give up that power to another person — in this example, me — who will then proceed to take off your slacks and sweater and underthings and tie your wrists and ankles to my antique bedposts with satin thongs. I am, of course, for the purposes of this conversation, merely using you as an example. Do not think that I am actually proposing any contractual possibility with you. I scarcely know you. Not to mention the amount of context and explanation I am granting you here — this is not how I operate. [Laughter.] No, my dear, you have nothing to fear from me.’

Q.

‘But of course you are. My own mother was, by all accounts, a magnificent individual, but of somewhat shall we say uneven temperament. Erratic and uneven in her domestic and day-to-day affairs. Erratic in her dealings with, of her two twin children, most specifically me. This has bequeathed me certain psychological complexes having to do with power and, perhaps, trust. The regularity of the acquiescence is nearly astounding. As the shoulders come up and her overall posture becomes more erect, the head is thrown back as well, such that she is now sitting up very straight and appears almost to be withdrawing from the conversational space, still on the ottoman but withdrawing as far as she possibly can within the strictures of that space. This apparent withdrawal, while intended to communicate shock and surprise and thus that she is most decidedly not the sort of person to whom the possibility ever of being invited to permit someone to tie her up would ever even occur, actually signifies a profound ambivalence. A [finger flexion] conflict. By which I mean that a possibility which had hitherto existed only internally, potentially, abstractly, as a part of the subject’s unconscious fantasies or repressed wishes, has now suddenly been externalized and given conscious weight, made [f.f.] real as an actual possibility. Hence the fascinating irony that body language intended to convey shock does indeed convey shock but a very different sort of shock indeed. Namely the abreactive shock of repressed wishes bursting their strictures and penetrating consciousness, but from an external source, from a concrete other who is also male and a partner in the mating ritual and thus always ripe for transference. The phrase [no f.f.] sink in is thus far more appropriate than you might originally have imagined. Such penetration, of course, requires time only when there is [f.f.] resistance. Or for example doubtless you know the hoary cliché [f.f.] I can’t believe my ears. Consider its import.’

Q….

‘My own experience indicates that the cliché does not mean [sustained f.f.] I can’t believe that this possibility now exists in my consciousness but rather something more along the lines of [sustained and increasingly annoying f.f.] I cannot believe that this possibility is now originating from a point external to my consciousness. It is the same sort of shock, the several-second delay in internalizing or processing, which accompanies sudden bad news or a sudden, inexplicable betrayal by a hitherto trusted authority figure and so on and so forth. This interval of shocked silence is one during which entire psychological maps are being redrawn, and during this interval any gesture or affect on the subject’s part will reveal a great deal more about her than any amount of banal conversation or even clinical experimentation ever would. Reveal.’

Q.

‘I meant woman or young woman, not [f.f.] subject per se.’

Q.

‘The true cocks, the rare ones I have misjudged, will yield the briefest of these shocked pauses. They will smile politely, or even laugh, and then will decline the proposal in very direct and forthright terms. No harm, no foul. [Laughter.] No pun intended — [f.f.] cock, foul. These subjects’ internal psychological maps have ample room for the possibility of being tied up, and they freely consider it, and freely reject it. They are simply not interested. I have no problem with this, with discovering I’ve mistaken a cock for a hen. Again, I am not interested in forcing or cajoling or persuading anyone against her will. I am certainly not going to beg her. That is not what this is about. I know what this is about. The — and force is not what this is about. The others — the long, weighted, high-voltage pause, the postural and affective shock — whether they acquiesce or become offended, outraged, these are the true hens, players, these are the ones whom I have not at all misjudged. As their heads are thrown back — but their eyes are on me, fixed, looking at me, [f.f.] gazing and so on, with all the intensity one associates with someone trying to decide whether or not they can [f.f.] trust you. With [f.f.] trust now connoting a great many different possible things — whether you are having them on, whether you are serious but are pretending to have them on in order to forestall embarrassment should they be outraged or disgusted, or whether you are in earnest but mean the proposal abstractly, as a hypothetical question such as [f.f.] What would you do with a million dollars? meant to elicit information about their personality in possible deliberation as to a fourth date. And so on and so forth. Or rather whether it is in fact a serious proposal. Even as — they are looking at you because they are trying to read you. To size you up, as you have apparently sized them up, as the proposal appears to imply. This is why I always propose it in a blunt, undisguised way, abjuring wit or segue or preparation or coloratura in the pronunciation of the contractual possibility. I want to communicate to them as best I can that the proposal is serious and concrete. That I am opening my own consciousness up to them and to the possibility of rejection or even disgust. This is why I answer their intense gaze with a bland gaze of my own and say nothing to embellish or complicate or color or interrupt the processing of their own internal psychic reaction. I force them to acknowledge to themselves that both I and the proposal are in deadly earnest.’

Q….

‘But again please note I am in no way aggressive or threatening about it. This is what I meant by [f.f.] bland gaze. I do not propose it in a creepy or lascivious way, and I do not appear in any way eager or hesitant or conflicted. Nor aggressive or threatening. This is crucial. You’re doubtless aware, from your own experience, that one’s natural unconscious reaction, when someone’s body language suggests a withdrawal or leaning-away from him, is automatically to lean forward, or in, as a way to compensate and preserve the original spatial relation. I consciously avoid this reflex. This is extremely important. One does not nervously shift or lean or lick one’s lips or straighten one’s tie while a proposal like this is sinking in. I once, on a third date, found myself with one of those annoying isolated jumping muscles or twitches in my scalp which seized on and off throughout the evening and, on the ottoman, made it appear that I was raising and lowering one eyebrow in a rapid and lascivious way, which in the psychically charged aftermath of the sudden proposal simply torpedoed the whole thing. And this subject was by no stretch of the imagination a cock — this was a hen or I’ve never inspected a hen — yet one involuntary twitch in one eyebrow decapitated the whole possibility, such that the subject not only left in such a frenzy of conflicted disgust that she forgot her purse and not only never returned for the purse but refused even to return telephone messages in which I phoned several times and offered simply to return the purse to her at some neutral public location. The disappointment nevertheless drove home a valuable lesson as to just how delicate a period of internal processing and cartography this post-proposal moment can be. My mother’s problem was that toward me — her eldest child, the elder of the twins, significantly — her nurturing instincts ran to rather erratic extremes of as it were [f.f.] hot and cold. She could at one moment be very, very, very warm and maternal, and then in the flash of an instant would become angry with me over some real or imagined trifle and would completely withdraw her affection. She became cold and rejecting, rebuffing any attempts as a small child on my part to receive reassurance and affection, sometimes sending me alone to my bedroom and refusing to let me out for some rigidly specified period while my twin sister continued to enjoy unconfined freedom of movement about the house and also continued to receive warmth and maternal affection. Then, after the rigid period of confinement was over — I mean to say the precise instant my [f.f.] time-out was completed — Mummy would open the door and embrace me warmly and blot my tears away with her sleeve and would claim that all was forgiven, all was well again. This flood of reassurance and nurture would once again seduce me into [f.f.] trusting her and revering her and ceding emotional power to her, rendering me vulnerable to devastation all over again whenever she might choose again to turn cold and look at me as if I were some sort of laboratory specimen she’d never inspected before. This cycle played itself out repeatedly throughout our childhood relation, I am afraid.’

Q.

‘Yes, accentuated by the fact that she was by vocation a professional clinician, a psychiatric case-worker who administered tests and diagnostic exercises at a sanitarium in the neighboring town. A career she recommenced the moment my sister and I entered the school system as barely toddlers. My mother’s imago all but rules my adult psychological life, I am aware, forcing me again and again to propose and negotiate contracted rituals where power is freely given and taken and submission ritualized and control ceded and then returned of my own free will. [Laughter.] Of the subject’s, rather. Will. It is also my mother’s legacy that I know precisely what my interest in carefully gauging a subject and on the third evening suddenly proposing that she allow me to immobilize her with satin restraints is, derives, comes from. Much of the annoying, pedantic jargon I use to describe the rituals also derives from my mother, who, far more than did our kindly but repressed and somewhat castrated father, modeled speech and behavior for us as children. My sister and I. My mother possessed a Master’s Degree in Clinical Social Work [sustained f.f.], one of the first conferred upon a female diagnostician in the upper Midwest. My sister is a housewife and mother and aspires to be nothing more, at least not consciously. For example, [f.f.] ottoman was Mummy’s term for both the sofa and the twin love seats in our living room. My own apartment’s sofa has a back and arms and is, of course, technically a sofa or couch, but I seem unconsciously to insist on referring to it as an ottoman. This is an unconscious habit I seem unable to modify. In fact I have ceased trying. Some complexes are better accepted and simply yielded to rather than struggling against the imago by sheer force of will. Mummy — who was, of course, after all, you are aware, someone whose profession involved keeping persons confined and probing and testing them and breaking them and bending them to the will of what the state authorities deemed mental health — quite hopelessly broke my own will early on. I have accepted this and reached an accord with it and have erected complex structures in which to come symbolically to terms with it and redeem it. That is what this is about. Neither my sister’s husband nor my father were ever involved in poultry in any way. My father, until his stroke, was a low-level executive in the insurance industry. Though of course the term [f.f.] chicken was often used in our subdivision — by the children with whom I played and acted out various primitive rituals of socialization — to describe a weak, cowardly individual, an individual whose will could easily be bent to the purposes of others. Unconsciously, I may perhaps employ poultry metaphors in describing the contractual rituals as a symbolic way of asserting my own power over those who, paradoxically, autonomously agree to submit. With little other fanfare we will proceed into the other room, to the bed. I am very excited. My manner has now changed, somewhat, to a more commanding, authoritative demeanor. But not creepy and not threatening. Some subjects have professed to see it as [f.f.] menacing, but I can assure you no menace is intended. What is being communicated now is a certain authoritative command based solely on contractual experience as I inform the subject that I am going to [no f.f.] instruct her. I radiate an expertise that may, I admit, to someone of a particular psychological makeup, appear menacing. All but the most hardened fowl begin asking me what it is I want them to do. I, on the other hand, very deliberately exclude the word [f.f.] want and its analogues from my instructions. I am not about expressing wishes or asking or pleading or persuading here, I inform them. That is not what this is about. We are now in my bedroom, which is small and dominated by a king-sized Edwardian-style four-poster bed. The bed itself, which appears enormous and deceptively sturdy, might communicate a certain menace, conceivably, in view of the contract we have entered into. I always phrase it as [no f.f.] This is what you are to do, You are to do such-and-such, and so on and so forth. I tell them how to stand and when to turn and how to look at me. Articles of clothing are to be removed in a certain very particular order.’

Q.

‘Yes but the order is less important than that there is an order, and that they comply. Underthings are always last. I am intensely but unconventionally excited. My manner is brusque and commanding but not menacing. It is no-nonsense. Some appear nervous, some affect to appear nervous. A few roll their eyes or make small dry jokes to reassure themselves that they are merely [f.f.] playing along. They are to fold their clothes and place them at the foot of the bed and to recline and lie supine and to erase all vestige of affect or expression from their face as I remove my own clothing.’

Q.

‘Sometimes, sometimes not. The excitement is intense but not specifically genital. My own undressing has been matter-of-fact. Neither ceremonial nor hurried. I radiate command. A few chicken out part of the way through, but very, very few. Those who wish to go, go. The confinement is very abstract. The thongs are black satin, mail-order. You would be surprised. As they comply with each request, command, I utter little phrases of positive reinforcement, such as, for instance, Good and That’s a good girl. I tell them that the knots are double-slips and will tighten automatically if they struggle or resist. In fact they are not. In fact there is no such thing as a double-slip knot. The crucial moment occurs when they lie nude before me, bound tightly at wrists and ankles to the bed’s four posts. Unknown to them, the bedposts are decorative and not at all sturdy and could no doubt be snapped by a determined effort to free themselves. I say, You are now entirely in my power. Recall that she is nude and bound to the bedposts, spread-eagled. I am standing unclothed at the foot of the bed. I then consciously alter the expression on my face and ask, Are you frightened? Depending on their own demeanor here, I sometimes alter this to, Aren’t you frightened? This is the crucial moment. This is the moment of truth. The entire ritual — perhaps ceremony would be better, more evocative, because we — of course the whole thing from proposal onward is about ceremony — and the climax is the subject’s response to this prompt. To Are you frightened? What is required is a twin acknowledgment. She is to acknowledge that she is wholly in my power at this moment. And she must also say she trusts me. She must acknowledge that she is not afraid I will betray or abuse the power I’ve been ceded. The excitement is at its absolute peak during this interchange, reaching a sustained climax which persists for exactly as long as it takes me to extract these assurances from her.’

Q.

‘Pardon me?’

Q.

‘I’ve already told you. I weep. It is then that I weep. Have you been paying even the slightest attention, slouched over there? I lie down beside them and weep and explain to them the psychological origins of the game and the needs it serves in me. I open my innermost psyche to them and beg compassion. Rare is the subject who is not deeply, deeply moved. They comfort me as best they can, restricted as they are by the bonds I’ve made.’

Q.

‘Whether it ends in actual intercourse depends. It’s unpredictable. There’s simply no way to tell.’

Q….

‘Sometimes one just has to go with the mood.’

B.I. #51 11-97

FORT DODGE IA

‘I always think, “What if I can’t?” Then I always think, “Oh shit, don’t think that.” Because thinking about it can make it happen. Not like it’s happened that often. But I get scared about it. We all do. Anybody tells you they don’t they’re full of it. They’re always scared it might happen. Then I always think, “I wouldn’t even be worried about it if she wasn’t here.” Then I get pissed off. It’s like I think she’s expecting something. That if she wasn’t lying there expecting it and wondering and, like, evaluating, it wouldn’t have even occurred to me. Then I get almost kind of pissed off. I’ll get so pissed off, I’ll stop even giving a shit about can I or not. It’s like I want to show her up. It’s like, “OK, bitch, you asked for it.” Then everything goes fine.’

B.I. #19 10-96

NEWPORT OR

‘Why? Why. Well, it’s not just that you’re beautiful. Even though you are. It’s that you’re so darn smart. There. That’s why. Beautiful girls are a dime a dozen, but not — hey, let’s face it, genuinely smart people are rare. Of either sex. You know that. I think for me, it’s your smartness more than anything else.’

Q.

‘Ha. That’s possible, I suppose, from your point of view. I suppose it could be. Except think about it a minute: would that possibility have even occurred to a girl who wasn’t so darn smart? Would a dumb girl have had the sense to suspect that?’

Q.

‘So in a way you’ve proved my point. So you can believe I mean it and not dismiss it as just some kind of come-on. Right?’

Q….

‘So c’mere.’

B.I. #46 07-97

NUTLEY NJ

‘Alls I’m — or think about the Holocaust. Was the Holocaust a good thing? No way. Does anybody think it was good it happened? No way. But did you ever read Victor Frankl? Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning? It’s a great, great book. Frankl was in a camp in the Holocaust and the book comes out of that experience, it’s about his experience in the human Dark Side and preserving his human identity in the face of the camp’s degradation and violence and suffering total ripping away his identity. It’s a totally great book and now think about it, if there wasn’t a Holocaust there wouldn’t be a Man’s Search for Meaning.’

Q.

‘Alls I was trying to say is you have got to be careful of taking a knee-jerk attitude about violence and degradation in the case of women also. Having a knee-jerk attitude about anything is a total mistake, that’s what I’m saying. But I’m saying especially in the case of women, where it adds up to this very limited condescending thing of saying they’re fragile or breakable things and can be destroyed so easily. Like we have to wrap them in cotton and protect them more than everybody else. That it’s knee-jerk and condescending. I’m talking about dignity and respect, not treating them like they’re fragile little dolls or whatever. Everybody gets hurt and violated and broken sometimes, why are women so special?’

Q.

‘Alls I’m saying is who are we to say getting incested or abused or violated or whatever or any of those things can’t also have their positive aspects for a human being in the long run. Not that it necessarily does all the time, but who are we to say it never does, in a knee-jerk way? Not that anybody ever ought to get raped or abused, not that it’s not totally terrible and negative and wrong while it’s going on, no question. Nobody’d ever say that. But that’s while it’s going on. The rape or violation or incest or abuse, while it’s going on. What about afterwards? What about down the line, what about the bigger picture then of the way her mind deals with what happened to her, adjusts to deal with it, the way what happened becomes part of who she is? Alls I’m saying, it’s not impossible there are cases where it can enlarge you. Make you more than you were before. More of a complete human being. Like Victor Frankl. Or that saying about how whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. You think whoever it was that said that was for a woman getting raped? No way. He just wasn’t being knee-jerk.’

Q….

‘I’m not saying there’s no such thing as a victim. Alls I’m saying is we tend to sometimes be so narrow-minded about the myriads of different things that go into making somebody into who he is. I’m saying we get so knee-jerk and condescending about rights and perfect fairness and protecting people we don’t stop and remember nobody’s just a victim and nothing is just negative and just unfair — almost nothing is like that. Alls — how it’s possible even the worst things that can happen to you can end up being positive factors in who you are. What you are, being a full human being instead of just a — think about getting gang-raped and degraded and beaten down to within an inch of your life for example. Nobody’s going to say that’s a good thing, I’m not saying that, nobody’s going to say the sick bastards that did it shouldn’t go to jail. Nobody’s suggesting she was liking it while it was happening or that it should have happened. But let’s put two things into the perspective here. One is, afterwards she knows something about herself she didn’t know before.’

Q.

‘What she knows is that the totally most terrible degrading thing that she ever could have even imagined happening to her has really happened to her now. And she survived. She’s still here. I’m not saying she’s thrilled, I’m not saying she’s thrilled about it or she’s in great shape or clicking her heels together out of joy it happened, but she’s still here, and she knows it, and now she knows something. I mean really knows. Her idea of herself and what she can live through and survive is bigger now. Enlarged, larger, deeper. She’s stronger than she ever deep-down thought, and now she knows it, she knows she’s strong in a totally different way from knowing it just because your folks tell you or some speechmaker at a school assembly has you all repeat you’re Somebody you’re Strong over and over. Alls I’m saying is she’s not the same and how some of the ways she’s not the same — like, if she’s still afraid at midnight walking to her car in a parking garage or whatever of getting jumped and gang-raped, now she’s afraid in a different way. Not that she wants it to ever happen again, getting gang-raped, no way. But now she knows it won’t kill her, she can survive it, it won’t obliterate her or make her, like, subhuman.’

Q….

‘And plus now also she knows more about the human condition and suffering and terror and degradation. I mean, all of us will admit suffering and horror are part of being alive and existing, or at least we all pay lip service to knowing it, the human condition. But now she really knows it. I’m not saying she’s thrilled about it. But think how much bigger now her view of the world is, how much more broad and deep the big picture is now in her mind. She can understand suffering in a totally different way. She’s more than she was. That’s what I’m saying. More of a human being. Now she knows something you don’t.’

Q.

‘That’s the knee-jerk reaction, that’s what I’m talking about, taking everything I say and taking and filtering it through your own narrow view of the world and saying what I’m saying is Oh so the guys that gang-raped her did her a favor. Because that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying it was good or right or it should have happened or that she’s not totally fucked up by it and shattered or it ever should have happened. For any one case of a woman getting gang-raped or violated or whatever, if I was there and I could have the power to either say Go ahead or Stop, I’d stop it. But I couldn’t. Nobody could. Totally terrible things happen. Existence and life break people in all kinds of awful fucking ways all the time. Trust me I know, I’ve been there.’

Q.

‘And I get the feeling this is the real difference. You and me here. Because this isn’t really about politics or feminism or whatever. For you this is all ideas, you think we’re talking about ideas. You haven’t been there. I’m not saying nothing bad ever happened to you, you’re not badlooking and I bet there’s been some degradation or whatever that came your way in your life. That’s not what I’m saying. But we’re talking Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning—Holocaust-type total violation and suffering and terror here. The real Dark Side. And baby I can tell just from just looking at you you never. You wouldn’t even wear what you’re wearing, trust me.’

Q.

‘That you might admit you believe yeah OK the human condition is full of terrible awful human suffering and you can survive almost anything or whatever. Even if you really believe it. You believe it, but what if I said I don’t just believe it I know it? Does that make a difference in what I’m saying? What if I told you my own wife got gang-raped? Not so sure of yourself now are you. What if I told you a little story about a sixteen-year-old girl that went to the wrong party with the wrong guy and his buddies and ended up get — having done to her just about everything four guys could do to you in terms of violation. Six weeks in the hospital. What if I told you she still has to go in for dialysis twice a week, that’s how bad they did her?’

Q.

‘What if I told you she’d never say she in any way asked for it or enjoyed it or liked it or likes only having half a kidney and if she could go back and have a way to stop it she would but if you asked her if she could go into her head and forget it or like erase the tape of it happening in her memory, what do you think she’d say? Are you so sure what she’d say? That she wishes she never had to, like, structure her mind to deal with it happening to her or to all of a sudden know the world can break you just like: that. To know that another human being, these guys, can look at you lying there and in the totally deepest way understand you as a thing, not a person a thing, a fuck-doll or punching-dog or a hole, as just a hole to shove a Jack Daniel’s bottle in so far it blows out your kidneys — if she said after that, totally negative as what happened was, now at least she understood it was possible, people can.’

Q.

‘See you as a thing, that they can see you as a thing. Do you know what that means? It’s terrible, we know how terrible it is as an idea, and that it’s wrong, and we think we know all these things about human rights and human dignity and how terrible it is to take away somebody’s humanity that’s what we call it somebody’s humanity but to have it happen to you, see, and now you really know. Now it’s not just an idea or cause to get all knee-jerk about. Have it happen and you get a real taste of the Dark Side. Not just the idea of darkness, the genuine Dark Side. And now you know the power of it. The total power. Because if you can really see somebody just as a thing you can do anything to him, all bets are off, humanity and dignity and rights and fairness — all bets are off. Alls — what if she said it’s like a quick expensive little tour of a side of the human condition everybody talks about like they know but really they can’t even imagine it, not really, not unless you been there. So if alls it is is her way of seeing the world was broadened, what if I said that? What would you say? And of herself, how she understood herself. That now she understood she could be understood as a thing. Can you see how much this would change — rip away, how much this would rip away? Of yourself, you, what you used to think of as you? It would rip all that away. Then what would be left? Can you even imagine do you think? It’s like Victor Frankl in his book says that at the very worst of it in the camp in the Holocaust, when your freedom’s taken away, and your privacy and dignity because you’re naked in a crowded camp and you have to go to the bathroom in front of everybody else because there’s no such thing as privacy anymore, and your wife’s dead and your kids starved while you had to watch and you don’t have any food or heat or blankets and they treat you like rats because to them really you really are rats you’re not a human being, and they call you out and bring you in and torture you, like scientific torture so they can show you they can even take your body away, your body isn’t even you anymore it’s the enemy it’s this thing they use to torture you because to them it’s just a thing and they’re running lab experiments on it, it’s not even sadistic they’re not being sadistic because to them it’s not a human being they’re torturing — that when everything that has any like connection to the you you think you are gets ripped away and now all that’s left is only: what, what’s left, is there anything left? You’re still alive so what’s left is you? What’s that? What does you mean now? See now it’s showtime, now’s when you find out what you even are to yourself. Which most people with dignity and humanity and rights and all that there don’t ever get to know. What’s possible. That nothing is automatically sacred. That’s what Frankl’s talking about. That it’s through suffering and terror and the Dark Side that whatever’s left gets to open up, and then after that you know.’

Q.

‘What if I told you she said it wasn’t the violation or the terror or the pain or any of that, that it — that the biggest part, afterwards, of trying to like structure her mind around it, to fit what happened into the world of her, that the worst part the hardest part of it was now knowing she could think of herself that way too if she wanted? As a thing. That it’s totally possible to think of yourself not as you or even a person but just a thing, just like it was for the four guys. And how easy and powerful that was to do that, to think that, even while the violation’s going on, to just split yourself off and like float up to the ceiling and there you are looking down at this thing getting worse and worse things done to it and the thing is you and it doesn’t mean anything, there’s nothing that it just automatically means, and it’s a very intensive freedom and power in many ways, that now all bets are off and everything’s taken away and you can do anything to anybody or even to yourself if you want because who cares because what does it really matter because what are you anyway just this thing to shove a Jack Daniel’s bottle into, and who cares if it’s a bottle what difference does it make if it’s a dick or a fist or a plumber’s helper or this cane right here — what would it be like to be able to be like this? You think you can imagine it? You think you can but you can’t. But what if I said now she could? What if I told you she could because she’s had this happen and she totally knows it’s possible to be just a thing but just like Victor Frankl that every minute from then on minute by minute if you want you can choose to be more if you want, you can choose to be a human being and have it mean something? Then what would you say?’

Q.

‘I’m calm, don’t worry about me. It’s like Frankl’s thing of learning it’s not automatic, how it’s a matter of choice to be a human being with sacred rights instead of a thing or a rat and most people are so smug and knee-jerk and walking around asleep they don’t even know it’s something you have to actually choose for yourself that only has meaning when all the like props and stage-settings that let you just go around smugly assuming you’re not a thing are ripped away and broken because all of a sudden now the world understands you as a thing, everybody else thinks you’re a rat or a thing and now it’s up to you, you’re the only one that can decide if you’re more. What if I said I wasn’t even married? Then what? Then it’s showtime, believe you me baby, which believe me everybody that’s never had that kind of total attack and violation happen where everything they thought they were just automatically born with that smugly lets them walk around assuming they’re automatically more than a thing gets skinned off and folded up and put in a Jack Daniel’s bottle and shoved up your ass by four drunk guys who your suffering and violation was just their idea of fun, a way to kill a couple hours, no big deal, none of them probably even remember it, that nobody that hasn’t had that kind of thing really happen to them ever gets to be this broad afterwards, to always deep-down know it’s always a choice, that it’s you that is making yourself up second by second every second from now on, that the only one that thinks you’re even a person every second is you and you could stop anytime you wanted and whenever you want go back to just being a thing that eats fucks shits tries to sleep goes for dialysis and gets square bottles shoved so far up their ass it breaks by four guys that knee-jerked you in the balls to make you bend over that you didn’t even know or ever saw before and never did anything to to make it make any sense for them to want to knee you or rape you or ever ask for that kind of total degradation. That don’t even know your name, that do this to you and don’t even know your name, you don’t even have a name. You don’t automatically have a name, it’s not something you just have, you know. To get to find out you even have to choose to even have a name or to be more than just a machine programmed with different reactions when they do different things to you when they think of them to pass the time until they get bored and that it’s all up to you every second afterwards and what if I said it happened to me? Would that make a difference? You that are all full of knee-jerk politics about your ideas about victims? Does it have to be a woman? You think, maybe you think you can imagine it better if it was a woman because her external props look more like yours so it’s easier to see her as a human being that’s being violated so if it was somebody with a dick and no tits it wouldn’t be as real to you? Like if it wasn’t Jewish people in the Holocaust if it was just me in the Holocaust? Who do you think would care then? Do you think anybody cared about Victor Frankl or admired his humanity until he gave them Man’s Search for Meaning? I’m not saying it happened to me or him or my wife or even if it happened but what if it did? What if I did it to you? Right here? Raped you with a bottle? Do you think it’d make any difference? Why? What are you? How do you know? You don’t know shit.’