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Foucault after midnight
September 14, 2005
My days are bracketed - begun and ended - with my fingers buried in the sticky slick sweetness of my own vulva. It’s like touching base, coming home. Its not like wishing someone was here with me; its guttural moans for the sake of the vibrations in my throat and chest, writhing on my sheets, coming and not having to concern myself with anyone else. Home. Comfort. Alone.
Its past midnight and my pants are off on the street, my garter straps digging into my thighs, I’m glad I wore platforms to combat the cobblestones. Some bleary eyed bar patrons and democractic primary election drunkards shuffle past, ignoring the camera and the legs in front of it. Cabs screech to a halt as I flash the camera beneath a street light. We laugh almost hysterically and make sarcastic comments at passers-by almost before they finish expressing their incredulity. I love the feel of the September air on my breasts; I’m not seething with libidinous anything, I’m enjoying being in my flesh, happy to flaunt conventions like “wear clothes when on the streets of New York.”
I switch from heels to chuck taylors, now heading back to Brooklyn. I dig out Foucault’s History of Sexuality, bury my nose in it for the umpteenth time, smile to myself at the notes I scrawled in the margains when I first read this book at 19, laden with Marxist analyses and the desire for something new, something beyond what the world was offering me. I’ve got my notebook open next to the text - not the school notebook, not the “lists o bullshit” one either, not the one with loose interpretations of my schedule, a fresh journal, my captain’s log, my -what- eighth this year. I’m off and running, hand too slow, brain too scattered. Foucault, Foucault, you arrogant fuckwit, writing circles around so many, me chasing footnotes and trying to crack the code, thinking of real fucking and the “task of telling everything concerning sex.”
It’s the sexuality and the theory in my head I’m thinking of as I open my apartment door, the clock on the stove telling me its three a.m. as I pour myself some soy milk. I revisit what its like to get out of that cage as I shed my clothes and flop into bed, pawing through my pile of porn - tonight it’ll be she-males receiving foot jobs that rockets me into orbit. The theory evaporates and I don’t care about sexual politics or condoms in porn, I’m coming.
Sleep and reprise, wake myself with an orgasm, alarms are for people with places to be. It’s back to another day in my head - Emily Dickinson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, I’m in my underwear in my cozy chair, eating chocolate pudding (there’s a documentary-worthy moment, a girl and her brain - very compelling, haha).
A spark of jealousy rises as I read Madeline’s latest - I remember the feeling of being surrounded by my loves, late night phones calls to report on steamy adventures with others, roomsful of steamy flesh, the tastes of different lovers on me, the sights of different bodies burned into the image center of my brain. It subsides as I think about sharing my time and energies, sacrificing anything, putting up with bullshit, personalities - you know, the things of human interaction, the things I’ve shirked for now.
I realize that I haven’t yet spoken out loud to anyone today, if I didn’t have class, would I even notice the silence?
It doesn’t quite feel like absence, but I read the swirling words and worlds of my blogging cohorts and wonder if I’m letting things slip by me and if that’s a bad thing. I’m resting maybe, saving my energies or something, not connecting, not even trying really. But happy in my head, in my bed alone, words on the screen, words on the page.
Posted by Dacia at September 14, 2005 04:00 PM
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Comments
This is a beautiful entry. Lazy meanderings in thought and life. Melikes. Thankee.
Posted by: Lioness at September 14, 2005 07:10 PM
Reflection, thoughtful and deep mediation come to mind as I’ve been reading your words lately. Sometimes the best things come from the quietest places.
Posted by: Casey at September 14, 2005 11:00 PM
Your words are beautiful. Couldn’t have said it better myself! Really and truly. I know exaclty how you feel and what you mean. It is those bullshit personalities that make one seek comfort in oneself. However, memory is both feeble and deceptive, and soon the bullshit is forgotten and one seeks companionship in others once more.
Posted by: VS at September 15, 2005 12:16 AM
A still garden breathes new life into our soul. Beautiful piece of writing - very connective and contemplative. Even Foucault can’t disturb the peace.
Posted by: magdelena at September 15, 2005 08:05 AM
Now thats writing!!! Nuff said.
Posted by: nhcareyjr at September 16, 2005 02:04 PM
So does this mean if I post the chapter of “Beyond You and Me” where Cassie, her lover and her husband talk about Deconstruction that you’ll be one of the five people actually reading it? ;-)
Posted by: w. s. cross at September 20, 2005 03:24 PM
