Existentially Pathetic
plus: Jibz Cameron! Care! A pee video!
Patheticness
For the last couple months I’ve been tunneling around underground doing research on patheticness. There is a fear of being pathetic (not creatively, but in relationships) that has grown large in the shadows; I fear it runs the show. (I just described this to a friend and she did not see it at all, “I see you as having a lot of confidence and humor in relationships and your partners sometimes being pathetic,” she said. Love that, but this patheticness is just very private, secret, and 98 percent internal.) In any case, I’ve come at it every which way1 and it’s been an interesting and painful inquiry.
I think my hope, from childhood, was that someone would take pity on me — some authority would come in and say Look at this poor child! What bad shape she is in! Let’s drop everything and rush to take care of her. I was taught this technique by a real master and it worked very well for them but it’s never worked for me. I mean literally: never. I wonder if my teacher feels the same way, that it’s never really worked to their satisfaction, despite how it looked to me from the outside.
I suppose if it works in childhood — if someone comes and comforts you with appropriate attention and care — then you don’t need to keep doing it as an adult. You know you’re fundamentally ok so you can just say Hey, can you be with me? Like, really be with me? If you ask they might say no. If you ask for care, you open yourself up to this dissappointment but if you’re a person who asks then you know you can survive it. Only a person who feels they won’t be able to survive the dissappointment (percieved as a total rejection) does not ask directly, does not give the other person the chance to choose but rather self-isolates and then ambushes with such patheticness that the other person is forced to care — even if they have zero capacity for it. This is the moment when a carer or paramour will often just dissapear, go silent. I’ve been on both sides of this. Everyone is very intimately (if unconsciously) aware of their own capacity to care and so no one really gives more than they can give. If they are in a situation where they must give and give beyond their capacity then they will absent themselves in other ways, detach from reality or stage some sort of quiet rebellion (usually against themselves.) In any case, if you are routinely ambushing with patheticness as an adult, then you probably feel that no one is ever adequetely responding to your cry; I imagine my teacher felt this.
Jibz
One of the last great people, Jibz Cameron — aka Dynasty Handbag, aka host of Wierdo Night, has written a memoir called Hell In A Handbag and she’s going on tour. I just snickered while reading the introduction:
I wonder what Jibz’s existential kink is? (a per my footnote below.) When someone is so good at embodying all the things that most of us are embarassed by, you have to wonder what is in their shadow? Normal stuff? Stuff that’s easier for other people? Sometimes it’s inverse like that. I bet it’s all in the book, which comes out May 5th so: it’s pre-order time.
Our Beloved Lisal Hananadoll
Speaking of forthcoming books, last night and today I’ve not been able to put down the galley of Lisa Hanawalt’s new (comic) book. I will not say anything else about it since I can tell it’s early days from the fact that it’s a color xerox held together by a bulldog paperclip but let’s avoid a future where you are reading it in a bookstore and thinking why the fuck didn’t I throw my hat in the ring when all I want is to squeeze that big butt and and those thick thighs and meet her horse! The road to her inbox will go away in about a week and I’m currently checking my DMs for the next, masc, Beguiler.
Custom Content
There are a couple people who routinely write to ask me if I make custom content, i.e, sexual content just for them. It’s not completely outside the realm of possibility or totally unlike other things I’ve done in my life. I look on these queries with bemusement, but when a stranger writes asks if I will call to wish their wife a happy birthday a wave of fury passes over me — do you really think I have nothing better to do? Do I look like a happy birthday machine? And does she really want that or are you just having trouble thinking of a gift and so you’re outsourcing it to me? But I’ve been rude in this direction before and have regretted it (I don’t know why it brings out my fighting spirit?!) In any case, at the end of this post is a video of me peeing into an empty Whole Foods Organic Almonds bag in my car. It was a half-day at my child’s school and the drive is too long to go home and back again, so I just loitered in the neighborhood, did zoom therapy in the car, had to pee, etc. Is this the custom content you had in mind? In not wanting to engage privately with these people will I just keep guessing and posting the videos publicly? (Is this the custom content ? Me taking a bath naked with a dog? How about this video of me trying to climb a hill in high heels? Am I getting closer?)
Care
I do recognize now that some people are trying to care for themselves — not by being as amazing as possible and hoping love swoops them up as a result — but by actually caring for themselves. [More on this, plus pee, after the paywall]
