In order for him to appreciate what electronic music and a repetitive bass can mean to a person and that, yes, they are real, and meaningful, because they vibrate, like everything else in the universe, I had to explain that it feels like a heartbeat.
And the fact that a synthesizer is used, and words often aren’t, doesn’t make electronic music any less considered, experiential, or original. I say my prayers in electro every day. I like anything that makes the act of breathing, or walking down a street, or even just thinking, seem epic—and I don’t like words being put in my mouth.
I resent lyricists for speaking at me. Unlike Dad, and many of the people that I’ve been in intimate relationships with, I don’t appreciate having every little thought and feeling told to me in a story, and explained and repeated and harmonized between different rhythms and beats, and put into different sequences, and told to me over and over again.
I’ve tried to cultivate a greater appreciation for this. It’s just that one boyfriend refused to play the music of certain musicians that he admired in my presence, because he felt “weird” about it. I’m all for sacred space, and I would never have wanted to intrude upon his special time with these artists, or with their music. It’s just that when I wanted to explore their work, and what it might mean to me, he said that this made him feel “uncomfortable.”
His possessiveness in this regard said a lot about the relationship that he must have had to his thoughts, and to his feelings, because if these musicians were giving a voice to them, and he didn’t want to share that voice with me . . . Then I guess he didn’t want to share anything with anyone at all. He wanted to experience himself, alone, in a room, with the voices of people that he didn’t know, and who didn’t really care about him.
15.
I’ve traveled on foot for a few blocks now, and there are dense vibrations radiating from an enormous terrace house. It’s almighty, dilapidated, and gray. It looks like the Addams Family’s home on Cemetery Lane. It’s decorated with hundreds of fairy lights, which look like illuminated cobwebs. They’re electric blue, yellow, green, and red. There’s silver tinsel winding its way up some tree trunks, and invading most of the bushes and shrubs. A crooked, white-picket fence has red baubles dangling from it.
There’s definitely some black magic swirling around. The best parties often have a bit of black magic swirling around them. It’s like homeopathy: we need to ingest a bit of the poison in order to heal and become stronger. I often use justifications like this for going to parties because if I didn’t, I’m not sure why I would go to them at all.
The best party I’ve ever been to was in a mansion more modern than this one, and the family that lived in it was in the process of moving out. I think the girl who threw the party’s dad was in publishing, and his second wife was a second wife, and they were moving to a loft in New York or something. He had thick-rimmed glasses, and gray hair sprouting out of a turtleneck, and second wifey was in designer velour tracksuits, holding chilled glasses of sav blanc, and smiling regardless of what was happening or being said.
Their home had glass doors and polished marble floors, and at the time of the party the furnishings were covered in plastic, which was just as well. The party was messy. The theme was “derelict,” and everything about that night was politically incorrect. I still recall fragments of pseudo-intellectual conversations that I had with people in bathtubs, and of moments making out with mirrors, and of watching flowers falling from suit jacket pockets.
Just before dawn, a guy who identified himself as A Male Model—as if to reassure others that he wasn’t letting his beauty be neglected, that he was putting it to good use—who had caramel hair and skin and eyes, and who spoke with his hands, kissed me into cunnilingus on the steps of the swimming pool. He didn’t seem to care about breathing or about introductions. He came home with me and we made love after the sun was up, before I cooked scrambled tofu for breakfast, and we never saw each other again.
16.
Apparently, the French aristocracy used to dress up as the homeless and throw epic balls. Although, if you had asked anyone about this at the derelict party, I doubt they would’ve known. Most of the attendees were very privileged people, and very privileged people don’t generally take the time or put in the effort to honor the origins of things.
Far too often, privilege seems to be the result of conquering things, and stealing things, and copying things, and trying to make money out of things, before moving on to the next thing to conquer, steal, copy, and make money out of.
Australia is supposed to be one of the most privileged countries in the world, and we eat our national emblems for tea, and kill koalas while we’re driving, and knock down heritage-listed buildings in order to erect apartment blocks, and destroy the Great Barrier Reef in the name of constructing coal mines, and our unemployment benefit hasn’t been raised in twenty-five years, and we invite tourists to trample all over Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, and yet we refuse to offer asylum to refugees.
It’s as if nothing is sacred to us except for money and our own whiteness. We don’t care for what we have. We don’t use our so-called privilege very responsibly so, more often than not, we don’t seem very privileged at all.
Oh, dear. My heart always starts racing as I approach the future audience to the fact of my existence. Tonight I’m channeling my Atlantean Breast Plate, which is adorned with emeralds, garnet, pearl, peridot, and lapis lazuli. When I’m menstruating, it includes moonstone.
I’m imagining its soft, rose-gold aura, all around my body, sparkling, and deflecting negative energy, and transmuting it into something good for the earth and all of its inhabitants to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
The gate has opened with a screech. I can’t close it properly, so I’m going to leave it open. I’m moving along a tea-candle-lit path, and a rather unromantic and incongruent sensor light has blinded me, and I can see a handwritten note on the front door that reads, “walk around the side / no throwing cigarette butts over the fence like last time / merry xmas biatches / we’re watching,” and I don’t do as I’m told.
I’m yours, party. Take me away.
17.
I’m standing outside and so far I have nothing to say to anyone, and I like it that way because it makes me seem more interesting. It’s amazing what not speaking can do for other people in terms of levels of interest.
I’m leaning against a fence and feeling grateful for the fact that I brought vodka and a martini glass and olives and toothpicks with me, because I want to enjoy myself, and I know what I like. I’m not going to drink beer, and skull fermented grapes and the remnants of milk and eggs from some random’s goon bag, in order to fit in and behave like a non-threatening prop in the mise-en-scène of someone else’s night.
People at parties are always “doing” drugs and I never feel like “doing” them. A friend once told me that I already live in a fantasy, so I have no need to “do” drugs. The experience that I already have of the world is so psychedelic and sensual.
I also don’t like having to thank someone or something outside of myself for what I experienced the night before. I want my life, and everything inside of it, to be absolutely mine. I don’t want to be indebted to a laboratory, or to a plant, or to a guru, or to a doctor, or to some guy who cooks in his basement. I want to give myself to myself, fully.
One time I went to a doctor about some paperwork that I needed for something completely unrelated to anything medical, and she asked me if I was taking prescription medication. Like, was I on anti-anxiety me
ds or anti-depressants, perhaps? I tried to explain to her that I didn’t feel comfortable having my feelings meddled with. She looked at me over her teeny-tiny glasses and insisted that taking medication might help me “deal with difficult feelings” and I said no thank you before sharing with her that feelings weren’t supposed to be “dealt” with, they were supposed to be “felt” with.
She remained silent, and I took that silence as an opportunity to go on to say that no matter how hard it might be to feel feelings, and to think thoughts, they’re all that I have, and they mean a lot to me. She craned her neck like she wanted to get a look down my throat for some reason, and I looked up at her and said, “Meditation not medication,” and she clicked the end of a pen with a company logo on it, cocked her head to one side, and replied, “Well, if you ever change your mind.”
Which I won’t, because my mind is the most powerful weapon that I have, and I’m not about to fuck with it via the use of drugs that I could never fully understand the implications of, nor am I about to “change” my mind for a doctor who feels at ease making money out of people’s vulnerability.
I mean, Traditional Chinese Medicine doctors make money when their patients are healthy not when they’re scared and sick. So. Sorry, Doctor. If anyone’s “mind” needs “changing,” it’s yours.
18.
There’s a girl who keeps looking at me standing here, and she’s smiling as she speaks to someone else. It occurs to me that my sexuality is more fluid in my mind than it is in 3D. I often wish that my sexual desires were more malleable than they are. Being solely attracted to men sucks. It’s like suffering from an irreversible case of Stockholm syndrome. I’m drawn to the very creature that has violated, oppressed, exploited, raped, kidnapped, subjugated, controlled, made fun of, manipulated, abused, belittled, objectified, persecuted, and condescended me and my people for centuries.
Even my fantasies about women involve men. I have purely woman-centric fantasies closer to my period, because I think it’s like making love to myself, and to the body that I’ve been given, during a particularly psychic and exposing window of time. I’m also a bit obsessed with big breasts because I suspect that I wasn’t breastfed for long enough, and that my food-refusing tendencies during adolescence got in the way of adequate nurturing, and nourishment. So, yeah. Big breasts represent the ultimate in womanly lusciousness, and sustenance, and it’s very easy for me to fantasize about them.
When I was touching myself recently, and dreaming away, I looked down and for the first time was aroused by my own tits. I sensed the weight of them against the bedspread and it unearthed a level of comfort and sensuality that I hadn’t accessed before. Then I orgasmed, and wept, and laughed, and I felt really happy to be alive for a minute.
I don’t think that this girl is sexually attracted to me, or that she has especially large breasts. She certainly wants something, though. She’s cute and blond and manipulative, which can be very endearing in the right lighting. Just about anything can be endearing in the right lighting. Even being murderous. I mean. Somebody fell for it.
She’s wearing a wide-brimmed, deep-purple felt hat, with a feather in it, and a big dark wrap around her shoulders, with soft black jeans, and little black sneakers poking out the bottom. She must be very hot, temperature-wise. And she doesn’t appear to have a bag, or to be wearing makeup. Nevertheless, the whole shebang seems self-conscious and labored. She wants to seem sure of herself, and she’s not. While the outfit and the lack of makeup appear to be making a statement of simplicity and ease, she’s getting no pleasure out of it. Her body language is so constricted and tense. Her elbows are locked against her torso, and her jaw is tight, and her eyes are squinty, and every movement she makes is speedy, and small, and calculated. Although she desperately wants to be seen, she doesn’t want to take up space. She doesn’t know who she is. She can barely concentrate on the people in front of her, because she’s so overcome with a desire to take who they are from them.
Demons and all of the scary creatures that we read about in stories are real. They aren’t made up. Just look around. There are trolls on construction sites, and witches behind cash registers, and zombies parading en masse down city streets. I once read about a phenomenon called “Psychological Gargoyling,” which is, like, a clinical term for when children take on the “evil” traits of their parents in order to survive the trying circumstances that they were brought up in. So, yeah. The monster isn’t under your bed. It’s your mum.
This girlwoman is like a vampire wanting a quick bite of everyone in order to stay alive. She’s fueling herself from a source outside of herself. She can’t stand to be alone with her own thoughts, or feelings. Not even for a second. Her conscious mind—and all of the choices stemming from it—completely revolve around seeking sustenance from others, and, right now, she’s hungry. Starving, even.
“Good lord, girl. That kimono. Amazing!”
“Thank you.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I don’t really want to answer that, if that’s ok.”
“Oh, ok? Why not?”
“Because . . . I’m not my kimono.”
“Um. What do you mean?”
“I’m not my kimono.”
“Of course you’re not. I was just . . . trying to make conversation?”
“Sorry. I guess I’m not very good at that kind of conversation.”
“Whatever. I still like your kimono! Merry Christmas.”
Ok, so that was death before dying and not in a good way. She has literally walked off and not looked back. Sometimes every attempt I make to connect and to communicate in a different way seems futile, and I fear that change is impossible, and that persecution is inevitable for us all.
I feel bad for not playing by the rules of the style of conversation that she feels at ease with, and that most people would facilitate for her. She probably perceives herself as being misunderstood and rejected, just like I do. Goddammit. I want to run after her and explain my workings out. Socially, that would seem insane: me, powering across party lines, kimono flying, Madame Butterfly-and-we’re-off-to-the-opera, high heels smashing into the concrete, hand touching her shoulder, face turning, eye contact for the first time, before speaking, and saying something, something powerful, something uniting, something else.
She was so focused on my garments, and on my physique, that she could barely look me squarely in the face. Often when I meet a woman for the first time I want to shout, “I’m up here! I’m up here!” while pointing at my eyes, and smashing at my chest.
A friend once told me that when another woman compliments our clothes or our appearance, it’s not about the clothes or our appearance. It’s about the fact that socially, and culturally, we seem to be standing out, or fitting in. We’re “winning” in terms of what’s expected of us, and we’re being admired for that. Then everyone wants to know how we’re “doing” it and where we “got it.” Which, unfortunately, doesn’t make communicating or connecting any easier. In fact, it makes it impossible.
There’s nothing to say when who and what we are is reduced to something that can be readily bought at a local vintage market or department store. There’s nothing to learn or to discover. We become the sum total of a steady stream of receipts, not revelations. We can just buy each other off the shelf. Yep, one kimono, one pair of high heels, some spandex, a mulberry lipstick, a bottle of body oil, a martini, maybe a few sessions at the gym. Easy. Answering her question would have been the equivalent of saying, “Why, yes. Of course you can purchase/be me.”
The problem is that we’re not our things and we aren’t just things. We didn’t all die, and now the only way to learn about one another is to go through the belongings that we left behind. We aren’t demographics, statistics, trends, or the outcomes of last season’s stocktake sale.
Nevertheless, we’ve reduced ourselves to that. We’ve given our power over to the
material world because it seems more quantifiable and manageable. Our conversations start there, and our conclusions about the world end there. The infinite, miraculous, mysterious nature of who and what we are has become a bit tedious.
So short, clear answers, directions, steps, and plans—with fixed outcomes—are appreciated, thank you very much. Let’s chat about the location where we all “found ourselves” as distinct from what we found or the process of finding it.
It’s far easier to reel off lists of shops, and retreats, and job titles than it is to engage with the process of self-discovery, which isn’t always easy to articulate and, sorry, it’s just that we don’t really have the time to wait around for every little thought and feeling to be considered, expressed, and shared. There are more important things to be done and bought and planned for, and more important people waiting around who are more ready, willing, and able to be reduced to the confines of their stuff, and things, and shit.
Maybe it’d be easier if we were all chairs. I mean, a chair has a specific design, and a brand, and a price tag, and it sits wherever we put it down, and it stays there, and we can find comfort in it for as long as we want to rest our arses on it, and then we can move on from it, and it won’t take offense to that, and it’ll still be there when we return, no questions asked.
What a perfect companion.
19.
I’m not sure what to do with myself now. No physical gesture or action I want to take seems socially appropriate. Well, hardly anything I ever want to do seems socially appropriate.