Passion, mirages, and luck
the week
The kindness in the eyes of the man sitting across from me was obvious to anyone who looked. He’d taken me to a little jazz bar that felt like it had a lot of history. We were each on our second glass of wine. We spoke of leaving religion, kinks, past relationships. Our tongues got looser, my brain unaccustomed to the alcohol sifting across the barrier. I told him of my work as a dominatrix, he was fascinated, as they all are. It occurred to me that I do not typically divulge this lore on a first date unless I am not attracted to them. And reader, there was not even a hint of a spark with this man. He wasn’t aware of that fact, however. He texted me the next day divulging that he’d been really nervous on our date, that he’d had a lot of fun oversharing with me.
Not boasting, but it is a fact that I ace first dates. It is directly because of sex work, nothing mysterious about it. The work has given me unconscious habits that summon an air of mystery that men tend to fill with their deepest desires, projecting prayer and eroticism, sucking fantasies from your person like incubi. Most of them I cannot blame. Most are starving for tenderness, locked in the prison of patriarchy, unable to hold their fellow prisoners’ hands. Unaware that that simple act of communion would help dissolve the bars. So their hearts helplessly take refuge in mirages. This tendency on their part often results in an inability to read a vibe.
The amount of times I’ve asked friends how their dates went and the answer has been some iteration of, “great for him, bad for me,” cannot be tallied.
Anyway. This very nice man and I had a very nice time but I will not see him again. I let him down easy over text a few days later and we wished one another the best.
I’ve lately gotten addicted to reading Girl Insides blog entries. The unfiltered diary of a girl living in Los Angeles. Her posts are broken down into time slots, with detailed accounts of days by the hour. And it is never boring. It is messy and honest and makes me want to be more unfettered on this blog.
I woke up still high the other day and an overwhelming sadness dragged itself through my blood. It remained present all day, reminding me of love that I’ve lost and the prevailing solitude of its misplacement. I couldn’t concentrate, once the morning’s caffeine wore off it felt as if my mind was moorless, the melancholy having its way with me, uncontrolled. I was foggy with it. It wasn’t until I rose the next morning, miraculously clear, that I realized what I’d been feeling was cannabis-induced, the substance lingering in my consciousness a full 24 hours. I hadn’t even smoked that much, but my body’s strange reaction signaled that it may be time for another break. And the heartburn raging in my chest communicates the same about caffeine. My nervous system rejects the stimulant every few months, and I listen to it. Several months with coffee, several without. I wish my body handled stimulants better, my undiagnosed ADHD feels more controlled when its able to work alongside caffeine.
The tree outside my window looks naked since the other day when a bunch of men were up in her branches, cutting them down. It felt like some sort of metaphor. Standing on the things one is amputating, actively sawing them off while you are 50 feet up, letting them fall to the ground below and leaving yourself a little more unprotected in the air. The sound of the electric saws disturbed the entire neighborhood for hours. The branches were fed through a wood chipper and I swear I could feel the screaming of the giant sentient plant, existing for its own reasons, unlucky it was placed in a neighborhood of humans who think there’s a difference between living things.
I shared a packet of Bubble Yum with my classmates the other day and we all sat around, blowing giant blue bubbles until the flavor ran out. It was strangely bonding, the nostalgia visiting us, the cotton candy flavor recalling grade school lunch rooms and hallways between lessons. We laughed at the bubbles exploding on our faces, leaving gum bits in makeup and beards alike, bonding us further.
“I think I’m just gonna fuck whoever I want and be a slut,” my friend, wide-eyed, exclaimed to me the other night. “I think that’s a great idea,” I replied. She and I have both had a series of talking stages that haven’t gone anywhere, with many bad dates in between. It’s hard to be a lustful lover girl in the age of covert red pills.
While sitting in the front row of a screening of Wuthering Heights, having arrived two hours early to ensure we got prime seats for the panel afterwards, I showed another friend a picture of a man.
“I’m thinking of fucking this 50 year old 6’5” man with tattoos. Just fucking. That’s it,” I informed her.
She said some version of, “Right, that’s worked out well for you in the past.”
To which I said, “but it’s different this time.”
“Oh! It’s different this time,” she exclaimed, to which I began laughing. “It’s different! Of course it’s different this time,” she went on.
“It is!” I insisted.
“Ohhh ok, it’s different this time. Got it! It’s different.”
Fair enough. And I’m still laughing about it.
We’d brought scones and homemade juice to consume while we passed the time. We spoke of creative projects, people we love, and things we are excited about.
Somehow, after two hours, we found ourselves searching the files (you know which ones) for people we knew. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” my friend said, ironically. The fact that nothing is being done about any of the information in the files is depressing. The information they contain, the details, are sickening. I don’t even really want to write about it because it’s all too upsetting. Though, unfortunately, not all that surprising.
The film started with a dark shock that I believe worked. A public hanging that was disturbing to watch but perfectly illustrated the bloodthirsty mania that thrummed beneath society in the late 1700s, when the story takes place. A strange, paradoxical society of propriety, repression, hypocrisy, strict class structure, slavery. There were scenes of bloody sheets, eggy sheets, bloody pigs, lots of jello. The visuals of the sets and costumes were stunning. Though the chemistry between the two leads was questionable in my eyes. I feel like they could have brought more insanity, which I know they’re both capable of. Though the film itself was kind of unhinged, which I liked, because the book is. It aimed to shock in the same way the novel shocked the public in 1847.
I had no problem with the addition of all the sexual stuff. I actually love that movies are horny again. And the book itself is incredibly erotic, despite the fact that there is no explicit sex in it. I believe adaptations can take liberties, as Dracula, Frankenstein, Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, and many many others do.
But I will say, it is objectively insane to erase the entirety of the racial politics present in the original. Especially in this day and age. Especially when they are so central to the story. That is by far more unforgivable than any other inaccuracy born in the space between the writing of the book and the shaping of this particular film. It made it a completely different story. A story that didn’t feel as serious or as important as the author intended.
Part of me thinks that the entire thing was successful rage bait, as the whole internet and film industry is talking about it. I’m still thinking about it, so it certainly left an impression. And I confess, I want to watch it again.
After that film, another friend and I went to see the new Dracula. It was a dramatic, meta, good time. There was a part where Dracula had to be dragged away from his love because he couldn’t stop kissing her and his men needed to put his armor on him to ride off to war. Then he spent 400 years searching for her. It was terribly romantic despite the campiness of the film.
Watching two films about romantic obsession, devotion, longing, was an appropriate Valentine’s Day for this single lover girl who recently (though briefly!) backslid on yearning. I couldn’t help but feel, as I was watching montages of cinematic love, how lucky I am to have felt that. Some people go their entire lives without passion.
I ate a Valentine’s truffle that tasted like Easter and thought about how I want to make homemade peanut butter easter eggs this year. My body is aching from all the pilates I did this past week in preparation for being gone for a week. Preemptive workouts. And I’m getting a preemptive massage because I know how my body responds to flights and my hometown. My friend is giving me a haircut tomorrow and I am making up the class I will miss. Tonight we are going out for my friend’s birthday and we plan to dance and make merry and I may need a preemptive nap before but I plan on having an excellent time club hopping with people that I love. Passion isn’t just for romance. It’s for life and friends and movement and art. I have a tattoo on the back of my thigh that says Lucky. Sometimes I feel so lucky I could cry. And sometimes I do.
