Thursday, July 28, 2016

Altered States

 "There is a time as the clones begin to root when it looks like they are dying. At first it weakens them, this transformation. They begin to yellow. The lower leaves drop off. They don't yet know how to be what they are becoming."
-Growgirl, Heather Donahue

Jim and I talked one other time before we had our big talk. 

The pre big talk talk involved Jim calling me from a bathroom stall while he was on a break from his office job. This set up usually leads to a desperate, raspy voiced shame jerk that takes mere minutes and results in a few dollars for me, and a few ounces of viscous bodily fluid filled with rapidly dying reproductive cells for the caller. 

 Jim was a horse of a different wank. He talked to me for an hour in that stall. He didn’t jerk off or even talk much about sex. He seemed completely uninterested. Instead, we talked about relationships, not just romantic, but the nature of relationships between people, and we talked about love, and loss, and jealousy and commitment. And he told me how when he was in college , him and his friends lived in an old warehouse that they rented for cheap, and they built a maze inside it so it was essentially a funhouse run by drunken frat boys. 

I really liked Jim. His voice was identical to late comic Jonathan Winters, and he was just as slyly witty. 

A few weeks later, he called me back, and we had our big talk.

Jim mentioned to me that he met his now ex wife when she was working for the same phone sex line I currently work for. 

I demanded to know the story of their union. He told me that years before, he had called the service and met her, and obviously, they had hit it off. She was a 22 year old former stripper from Kentucky who lived on a farm she had bought in some misguided attempt at achieving happiness through simple living. Her visions of a Zen version of Green Acres was quickly demolished by the crushing, bone shattering, thankless reality that is modern farming. 

Taking a job as a PSO to make money to supplement her income, she met Jim, a 40 year old office drone from Chicago.

After 2 months of talking, he invited her to come visit him , paying for her trip, and suggesting that she stay with him, of course. 

When she arrived, Jim took a shower, and when he came out, she was naked on his couch. 

 She moved in right away. She sold the farm, which included several award winning goats,  and they got married a year later. She got pregnant soon after that.

He paid for her to go to school, though she kept switching majors. She graduated eventually, with what degree, Jim couldn’t remember. She went back to stripping, with a little escorting thrown in. 

They divorced after 9 years. Jim said it was a difficult marriage, with tons of fighting and strife. Regardless, the end was devastating, as endings usually are, no matter the circumstances. They signal the need for a new beginning, which are always uncertain and scary, no matter the circumstances. 

I’m not sure if Jim realized that his ex wife was just a girl who was trapped in a life she had built for herself that she didn’t know how to get out of, and found a ticket out in Jim, and threw herself at him to jump-start her new beginning. Maybe he was all too aware of this.

The divorce was 2 years ago. They are still friends. she’s remarried and works in insurance.

I asked Jim if he had dated since then. He said no, but he wanted to. He seemed reluctant. I asked him what was holding him back. 

“ I have this thing where I totally lose interest in the women I’m with.”

“Sexually, or in other ways?” I asked.

“Every way, really,” he replied.

“Do these women change somehow for you, do you grow apart because they become different people?”

“No, not really.”

“Do they let themselves go, or something?”

“No, not at all. I just…frankly, I get bored of their pussies after a while. To the point where I can’t even get it up.”

“How long does this take to happen?”

“It depends. Some times weeks, sometimes months.”

“Do you ever get tempted then to go outside the relationship?” 

“No, never.”

“Do they, because you won’t fuck them?”

“Oh yeah. I let them. I don’t care.”

“But you don’t indulge ?”

“No.”

“Maybe you need to date a different type of woman, someone you’ve never been with.”

“I feel like I’ve been with so many different types. I don’t even have a type. They’ve all been different ages and races and sizes. None have really been the same.”

“ I don’t know what you should do. Maybe just get back out there, and try, and see where it goes.”

“ I think I need a shock to the system, I think I need a really big change, something I’ve never done before. It doesn’t have to be permanent, it just has to be radical enough.”

“Fuck, I feel that so fucking hard, Jim. You have no idea.”

Maybe some of you reading this have figured out what Jim was driving at, but, I confess, I was a dunce about it. I’ve been smoking pot recently. 

“What should I do?” Jim asked.

“Only you know that answer.”

“Maybe….I dunno….maybe I should….date a man.”

“Do you want that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to have sex with a man?”

“Yeah…yeah, I think I do.” 

“Do you think about having sex with men?”

‘Yeah, I do”

“Would you want to be romantic with a man, like kiss a man, or hold his hand, or cuddle?”

“I would, yes.”

“Really? Have you ever done any of that before with a guy?”

“No, never. But, I’ve thought about it. I jerk off to gay porn. I’m hard right now, thinking about sucking a man off.”

This was particularly surprising, since Jim had never once mentioned getting hard or jerking off. 

There was a long pause before Jim spoke again.

"Okay, I lied. I have sucked a guy off before. My best friend in high school. I sucked him off all the time. I loved it."

"Why did you stop sucking off guys after that?"

"I guess..I thought it was wrong. You know, society thinks it's weird or wrong, and all that. I couldn't tell anyone."

"Times have changed though."

"Yeah, I don't know. Have you ever been with a guy who sucked dick?"

"Yes, I've been with a few."

" And, what did you think about it?"

"I thought it was really hot. I love seeing guys get it on with each other."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. I mean, I've been with girls, and that's hot, so guys with guys is hot too, I think."

"I want to suck a guy off....I wanna suck a guy off and make him cum really hard, and then I want to hold him tight until we both fall asleep."

"That's hot, Jim."

"What does that make me, if I want to do that?"

"Bisexual, I guess. Maybe bi-curious. Nothing to be worried about."

When Jim talked about sucking a guy off his voice changed. It became dreamy, and strained with what I can only describe as yearning. When he asked me what sucking a guy off made him, his voice changed again, one filled with fear and hesitancy.

"I don't know how to do this," he said.

"Why don't you try a dating site, be honest though, about what you want and where you are at. Or, maybe, you can go to a gay bar, and just order a drink and sit. You don't have to talk to anyone, just sit and see. Maybe someone will talk to you. The worst that will happen is you had a drink at a bar, and nothing happened."

"Yeah...maybe I can try that. I don't know what I am. What does this make me?"

" I told you, bisexual. Maybe. It doesn't matter. There's nothing wrong with you."

"I wish I came home and there was a man just waiting for me, to ask me how my day was." 

"Who says that can't happen?"

I must confess, I'm not entirely sure of my sexual orientation either. I've had sex with, and dated women, but, I've mostly been with men. I love men, but, I'm attracted to women too. I suppose that makes me bisexual, but, I'm not always so sure. Maybe I'm pansexual.  Maybe I'm straight, and I've had some gay experiences. Maybe I'm gay and I've had a lot of straight experiences. I don't really know, and I don't really care. I really don't think anyone is 100 percent anything, whether it's gay or straight. I've known plenty of straight men who jerk off to gay porn, or fantasize about being with a man, but, they wouldn't actually fuck a man. The mind is a place of its own, and the imagination is meant to be used.

I feel for Jim though. He's in his 50's, and I can't imagine how daunting it must seem to finally venture out and explore that side of his sexuality after suppressing it for so long. It must seem so scary, and so thrilling, and so many things all at once.

I have a routine of Buddhist chanting and meditation that I do almost everyday, (no one is 100 percent anything, remember?) the idea of the chanting is that you are striving to break the cycle of samsara, which is the endless cycle of birth and death that we are all forced to go through in our lifetimes until, with diligence, we reach moksha, or release, and are finally free and enlightened. 

I see the concept of samsara as a way for the ancient sutras to describe the universal trial of all humans to repeat our mistakes, to endlessly torture ourselves until we find our own versions of moksha, until we break our own patterns, and release ourselves from our own private hell. Like Nietzsche's idea of the eternal return, or the definition of insanity, we are all sentenced to a lifetime of the same fucking bullshit until we can't take it and do something about it.

There is a theory that evolution happens one of two ways: incrementally, or catastrophically. Catastrophic, as in 'involving a sudden or large scale alteration in state", as defined by Websters. Most don't know about that definition and instead associate catastrophe with "involving or causing sudden great damage or suffering." Ironically, a large scale alteration in state can often times resemble disaster, and great changes often bring great suffering. It's hard to become something new, no matter how bad you might want it. It hurts to die, and it hurts to be born, thats why we all cry when we come into this world, and we keep reentering this world, brand new, over and over again, until we leave forever. 

Find yourself a doorway, and hold on, baby, 'cause the quaking won't last forever. And you never know what you'll find, when you sift through the rubble....    

" So bring it on, I've been bruised. Don't want a love that's clean and smooth. I'm ready for the rougher stuff. No sweet romance, I've had enough."
-I Want Love, Elton John.

"And if you've got to sleep
A moment on the road,
I will steer for you
And if you want to work the street alone,
I'll disappear for you
If you want a father for your child,
Or only want to walk with me a while
Across the sand
I'm your man"
- I'm your Man, Leonard Cohen.