the habit of being

I sit in the grass on Washington Square Park. There are pigeons and people, so many people, on the 4th of July.

The first time I came to New York I was 13. Now, I am 18, and this is where I live. Though I haven’t moved yet, I know. I just know, walking around here and looking - all these people, two lovers embracing in the grass, a girl in pink jumping rope, people working in sketchbooks, people walking their dogs, every style of clothing imaginable. Nothing seems flat, and I’m not afraid of getting lost anymore. I belong here, in a relatively cliched way.

It is beautiful, calm, people are asleep, the breeze is perfect, there are birds and trees, a cross on the top of a building. Orange flowers, cell phones, video cameras (people video other people, just ordinary people walking by, only they are not ordinary at all, and neither am I). They never stop, these people, always moving, changing faces and bodies and sounds. The constant movement is static in itself, and as calming as the ocean, and somehow even still, in in a sort of alternative way, maybe like quantum mechanics, though I can’t say why. Close to me a single squirrel stands on it hind legs, looking around. An old mime gesticulates in a beard and a tuxedo. Some guy in grey looks at me, occasionally. There is a pen for children and a pen for dogs. Benches dotted with backs of all lengths and breadths.

(It occurs to me that I could be fucking you loudly right here in this grass and no one would care at all.)

We could be those two lovers sitting together, lost in their own little world, observing the the walkers in their strange getups as if they were no different than the trees, the purple NYU flags, the yellow cabs, the birds and the breeze.

The squirrel likes me, it is practically in my lap.

I want to be a performance artist, paint myself brick colors and lie still in the path, watch this odd kaleidoscope picture change again and again, as if nothing but a speck apart from it all, an object with eyes.

I think it will rain, and I didn’t bring an umbrella.

I might have so many adventures here. I might have no time left even to think or to write them all down. I’ll just get up one morning and decide today I will -go- somewhere. I could do that again everyday and never run out of places to go, even without leaving the city. Yet something is missing, and I want you here to see this with me, because you’d really SEE it, in the way only you can, and you would understand.

. . .

Home. Not home. In between homes.

Orientation was tiring. I did a lot of walking around Greenwich Village, adventurously. Explored many little stores, some of which had sections one had to be 18 to enter. Met girls with lots of piercings and very little clothing. Talked with Thea from South Carolina (who is also in a large-scope long distance relationship) and Brad with blue hair (future English major and wimp, but has read lots of good stuff, and recommended good ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s). Shocked people with stories of south Georgia at the “diversity workshop.” Went to the largest used book store in the world, which is indeed quite huge, with books on shelves so tall you have to get up on ladders just to read the titles of the ones near the top. Took a biology test. Realized that I’m going to attend the kind of college where the orientation leaders show you the Rocky Horror Picture Show on a big screen in a lecture hall, scream all the call lines, and even dress up and do the floorshow. Got used to telling people that I’m a biology major, and registering their shock. Rode in taxis, alone, didn’t get lost, or raped, or even murdered. Signed up for fall classes:

MONDAY
9:30 -10:45 Calculus I (lecture)
11:00 -12:15 Molecular and Cell Biology I (lecture)
2:00 - 3:15 General Chemistry I (clinic)
3:30 - 4:45 Writing the Essay
TUESDAY
9:30 - 10:45 General Chemistry I (lecture)
1:30 - 6:00 General Chemistry Lab (lab)
WEDNESDAY
9:30 - 10:45 Calculus I (lecture)
11:00 - 12:15 Molecular and Cell Biology I (lecture)
2:00 - 2:50 Calculus I (recitation)
3:30 - 4:45 Writing the Essay
THURSDAY
9:30 - 10:45 General Chemistry I (lecture)
2:00 - 3:15 Molecular and Cell Biology (recitation)
FRIDAY
9:30 - 10:20 General Chemistry Lab (lecture)
11:00 - 12:15 General Chemistry I (recitation)

I’m an academic masochist, though I’m starting to think masochism doesn’t exist.

. . .

Haley: “My two years of biology in high school were the toughest, most magical introduction to any subject I’ve had. I found I was good at humanities, but I was better at science. And I had no idea what I would do with a humanities degree, didn’t want to be an academic, and didn’t want to do business; besides, I was horrible at econ. Most importantly, I found that academia killed the most exciting parts of the humanities for me through its excruciating essay assignments and bombastic academic writing. In contrast, academic science gave me the vocabulary to discuss biological sciences and the tools to answer my billion questions. Even with all it’s systemic problems and personal frustrations, I love science. I found it incredibly exciting and question-provoking. I still do.”

I wish I were more original, but I must admit that I feel almost exactly the same way, especially about how classes often ruin everything I like about the humanities, particularly writing.

I decided, before I left for NYC, that I wanted to make a zine, a little paper collection, highlights from sarasvati and erendira. I am not forgetting about that, it seems important. I want to send one to my AP English teacher. I promised her non-academic writing for a year.

(ETC: A story is always hardest to tell for the first time. After that, it can be called to mind fluidly and recited at will. The telling becomes automatic and is much more an exercise in sound and cadence than in fragment reconstruction, mystery restoration, thinking through black holes or keyholes, working from part to whole (what is that called? one of the tropes) or vice versa. That’s why I tend to feel as if I haven’t really finished living a moment in my life until I’ve written it down. )

The starting point is one hotel, crazy mad and all business, save a room in the back where I swim with tricky dolphins in a pool. (This reminds me of Trois Couleurs: Bleu, when Juliette Binoche is floating in the water.) The trainer shows up and exiles me, much to my dismay, but she is strong, muscular in a bright blue bathing suit, and I am only myself in my dress, which isn’t tailored enough to make me look pretty.

In a nicely decorated room with no water at all (and no dolphins, tame or otherwise) stands my grandfather, leaning on a mantelpiece and speaking seriously into the telephone. Upon noticing my entrance, in the pretty but unflattering dress, he cradles the phone against his shoulder and informs me that I must go to China, though I am headed somewhere else. I have never been to China, and I am worried (It’s New York, says J when I tell him this part, and I say I know.)

Briefly I am in an airport, going to or arriving in China, I don’t remember which, but more importantly I am transported to a much more elite hotel that the one in the States (wherever we were, my grandfather and I), and nowhere do I see anyone Chinese. (The lack of Oriental-looking people in China is not an issue in the dream, I don’t think I noticed.)

{ Interruption, the mail man came: Marvelous present from Miriam! I am so excited and wanting to have adventures now, and that’s good because tomorrow I am going to New York City, by myself, with a pretty antique wine-color suitcase with paisley interior, and all my clothes my mother “helped me” choose to take because they all match each other in different combinations so I’ll have some “flexibility” while still traveling light. Anyway, M. sent me a map of Vienna with keys in five languages, and Victorian fish stickers, a wallet-sized “Chart of Iridology” (I think iridology is kindof like phrenology except for the eyes rather than the top of the head), a Magic Tree I can grow in just a few hours, 2 black and white photos (of Pittsburgh, I assume - one has [American] Indian dolls in an antique store window, and the other is a bridge with dinosaurs (??) on it), and a little book she made and illustrated herself called “A Small Story About the Moon” which is so lovely and fairytale and had red ribbons to close it. Also, a soft grey feather. She has pretty handwriting, and it is somewhat similar to mine (I didn’t know this; I’ve been trying to get her to write me a letter for THREE YEARS). I am so wanting to say think you with lots of exclamation points but she is not online and already told me to have fun in NYC so maybe I won’t get to talk to her until Sunday. And that is not even all I got in the mail! I got waving combs from ebay so maybe I can have more flapper-like hair, and that is of course marvelous because no one can feel like crap when they have flapper-like hair. }

In the exclusive hotel (in China) are chandeliers producing the kind of soft pinkish light known to even out even the worst of complexions, and two spider-like women stand at the desk with their noses in the air and skin much too tight on their cheeks. The woman to whom I speak has the utmost contempt for me, but directs me toward a long hall, at the end of which sits a table with a large floral arrangement, silver trays of cookies and different shades of wine. To the right, a large doorway opens into a much larger ballroom, where a dance is going on.

The dancers are women with long dark hair and white dresses with red sashes (these dresses would not look good on me either, and are somewhat similar to what I am wearing in the dream, and now that I think of it, I think my hair was long too, at least in that segment). They all hold hands, flying around in birdlike formations, only more circle and less V. It is like some native ritual, but not at all solemn, they all grin widely and are obviously giddy. I run to join in, laughing and unaware.

The snobbish woman from the desk, emaciated and frowning, leads me to my room, which is more of a suite, expansive and open. She reminds me, with that hateful look in her eyes, that I am in China and alone, knowing no one and unliked by all.

In my room stands a boy from my past. (He is a scruffy guy from my honors math classes in high school, the intelligent but underachiever sort; he’d stay up all night drinking and then come to school dead tired, slept in class from time to time. Many days he just wouldn’t show up at all. We never talked much, but I always got the impression that he was interesting; he liked Woody Allen and took philosophy classes and wanted to go to film school. He had the second highest SAT score.) I have no idea why he is in China, or in my room, but I am so glad to see someone I know, someone who likes me, unlike those dreadfully sharp women from the desk, and all of a sudden his tongue in is my mouth, and we are making out while the coral and lime patterned wall paper swirls around and I try my best to disregard the fact that I am kissing THIS boy in favor of just that I am kissing and not alone. Somehow in all this we wind up having sex, and all along I am criticizing him horribly, and am even MAD that he seems to be completely inept, and I laugh and insult him, pushing him off of me right before he orgasms, and so he comes all over my leg, and it is ORANGE. (The night before the dream I’d accidentally squirted soy sauce all over my shorts; this seems somehow related).

He follows me into a huge bathroom, like a public restroom with multiple sinks and stalls, only it is part of my suite, and he stands there as I continue berating his performance and trying to washing orange semen off of me. He leaves, and that is all I remember of that.

Jump to the next day, and J arrives and I am leaning against him on a couch, crying, trying to explain the whole story to him. He is upset, disappointed, and I can’t seem to get out what I’m trying to say. I am feeling guilty, because though I wasn’t enjoying myself through the whole mess I was certainly WANTING to enjoy myself, and was a willing participant. At one point J gets up and closes some blinds on a window, and it is horrible, the whole dream was extremely unpleasant, save the dance scene, and I wake up very glad the realize none of it had really happened.

He loves me, and writes “she sees the value both in sadness and in happiness, and revels in intensity and loss of control.”

At this time I am unable to make a statement in full, I cannot offer a definition. I realize, however, that the way I view control is a very central, if not falsely basic, element in what makes me round and unstatic. I gain all power, all pleasure, from my ability to give myself over to things. A measure of trust, I said, and that is not all. Yet it is somehow so very simple, and below intellectual description, how I feel that be giving up the surface control I am gaining something so much more valuable. This is neither physical nor emotional control, but both and neither at the same time, on different levels, contradiction, and at some central point it all makes perfect sense. Simply said, I am a receiver, yet in receiving whatever action or confession or glossy little pearl is thrown at me, I seem to add as much to the meaning of the gift as the giver. In a way, I am giving a gift as well, and therefore do indeed have control, only the control I gain is not the most obvious, it hides under blankets and behind opaque screens. I am an extreme, I am yin.

The issue is not so much that I find being held down, trapped, enfolded, devoured, to be among the most blaring of my sexual wants. I become only more aware that I have always been aware that power dynamics get me off. My earliest memories of masturbation center on rape fantasies, and I’ve had those dreams as long as I can remember. I can still see even early ones vividly: myself stripped in an empty parking lot, tied to a lamp post, and they came up to me in sequence and touched me (I touched myself), and then they fucked me, one by one, and I feel the concrete, it is cool, and the lighting is such that the ones not having their turn could stand outside a certain circle and barely be seen. (I will, of course, note that I am well aware of the many, many differences between what I would call rape fantasy and actual rape. I’m immensely glad that I have never really been forced into intercourse against my will.) All the same, I have a long-standing fetish, and I will always prefer the term “fuck” to “make love,” if simply because, like in French, the term is much closer to “rape.” I do not like the idea of consent, it seems false.

I discovered S&M in my early teens. I read everything I could find. I went to chatrooms. I visited pornographic websites. I don’t recall feeling guilty about it. At 15, I wanted a job as a model for bondage photography. (Seriously.) I was silly, very young, but I saw clearly I had a strong interest, was ever so intrigued. Still, it didn’t really click with me that my interest could be “real.” Honestly, at 15, I thought most everything about me was part of some false-personality I had created for myself, I thought my life was nothing but a continuum of fabricated stages, based on ideas of who I wished I could be, rather than who I was. For example, throughout the saddest periods of my life, I believed that I was not depressed, but rather that I was somehow playing the role of a depressed person, because I bought into the idea that sadness somehow created beauty.

It took me a long time to realize and admit that my fascination with domination and submission wasn’t just part of one of my goofy teenage personas, and to separate what it was that appealed to me from the blaring image of overly made-up women in black leather bodysuits posing provocatively under captions reading “Spank Me!” in bright pink letters. I never wanted the show. I never wanted the affectedness or the game. I’m really not after some token kink to make me feel like a radical.

Rather, I’d like to be fully comfortable with the reality that my natural inclination is to want to be dominated, that it’s perfectly alright if I find the idea of being tied up as part of sex play exciting (Extremely exciting), that D/s can be a beautiful thing, not necessarily plastic or pornographic or overly done, but simple, very real, unaffected, and satisfying.

{ Insert rant, with apology: It seems like almost anyone who’s anyone in feminism would be inclined to think I’m seriously fucked up. That I’m buying into some damaging stereotype of what a woman’s role is, that I’ve been somehow suckered into an outdated way of thinking that everyone’s been trying so hard to eradicate. My god, since when does the Revolution or whatever the hell it’s called these days cite as one of its goals to dictate how each and every member of the female sex must behave herself in bed in order to qualify as liberated? It’s completely ridiculous, and quite contradictory to everything -I- believe about feminism. But I’m no theorist, and I haven’t read much of anything on feminist theory, or queer theory, or any theory in general, so forgive me if I have no idea what I’m talking about. But I think it’s extremely strange that a movement which supposedly works to end persecution of women (sexual, economic, or otherwise) would do something so blatantly idiotic as to support the idea that women who CHOOSE to lead sexual lives contrary to a very strict set of I-won’t-blow-you-unless-you-eat-me-first standards somehow -deserve- to be persecuted. So I don’t understand the anti-porn movement, and I certainly don’t see why prostitution should be illegal, or why girls who like to be fucked are any less capable of standing up for women’s rights. }

I guess, getting back to what I’ve been TRYING to say…