“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
— Albert Camus
This has, apparently, required 90% or more of my focus, every single day, since at least the time I last wrote anything here (much less anywhere else).
I have no idea how my brain works. I was doing sort of okay for a while, doing some philosophical deep diving…until something unhealthy caught my imagination and didn’t let go of it during almost every waking moment when I wasn’t trying to just do basic survival.
The only joke I can make is to wonder if I’m half Vulcan..or if in coming up with that Star Trek species, Gene Roddenberry maybe had a mind like mine…
Every so often, and sometimes sparked out of the blue, I get obsessed with sex.
Men are, in general, afraid to talk about this subject, and I do feel an innate trepidation about writing this, but the relative (for now) anonymity here is helping counter that.
Everyone has heard the old trope, that men think about sex every 2.X minutes or something. Judging by where my fellow gender tend to be looking most of the time in mixed company, that’s probably not too much of an exaggeration. Despite my weight, I suppose you could say that I had a relatively lucky sex life in my 20s (although it has been 100% nonexistent for the last 7+ years). I didn’t have sex for the first time until after high school, but being a hopeless romantic for most of my life, I was okay with that, too. I never wanted it to feel forced, rushed, and especially never with any alcohol or other substances involved. I have, in fact, turned down sex on multiple occasions when my potential partner was drinking, despite one of them having expressed their desire prior to that particular evening (I might just hate drunk people, but that’s another topic for another day).
I mention Vulcans because, in Star Trek, they are extremely logical beings who have cast off their innate emotions…except for once every 7 years or so when they are seized by an uncontrollable lust that has to be sated. Unfortunately for me, it has no regular schedule, and it’s never been even half that long between “episides” – also, I don’t not think about sex and love the rest of the time. In spite of my physical limitations, I enjoy the hell out of sex, especially in bringing pleasure to my partner and seeing that on her face and hearing it on her lips.
I would have sex every day, given the opportunity and a mutually agreeable partner. But these “episodes” are something else… Normally, it takes me (and most of the male population, according to biology) a little bit of time to “recover” after the “little good death” as it were…but when I’m in the throes of one of these…moods?…I might need to “take care of” myself a dozen times or more in the span of a few hours. I’ll be distracted and unable to focus on anything else. I’ve done some rather risky things (for me, at least) while under the influence of this “condition” to the point of almost spending money I cannot afford to spend on encounters that our puritanical western society deems “wrong” (and thus highly illegal to the greater detriment and risk of those who choose to practice the “oldest profession”).
I do not understand why this sort of thing comes over me like this. Every now and again I think I have an inkling as to what sparked it, but each subsequent occurrence dashes the previous hypothesis to the rocks.
I recently made the mistake of opening up my old sarahah account a few days ago, wistfully remembering that three people left me anonymous notes essentially hinting at old and/or distant crushes unfulfilled.
… I caught myself daydreaming, just before deciding to write here today, that one of the women for whom I have found myself at one time or another wistfully thinking about, who actually wanted me in return, would find this journal and discern my identity just from my writing style and subject matter, and reach out to me, proclaiming intimate interest (anywhere along the friendly-cuddling to dating to sex axis/line), and thus this aspect of my life (one of the few that literally cannot be solved on one’s own, unless you happen to be Ace/Demisexual) could find new purchase again (which would in turn be a damned fine impetus to deal with increased back and leg pain to deal with other things in my life that I often let slide on account of “it doesn’t matter anyway”).
Why do I refer to this as unhealthy? Well, combine all of the above with trying to pretend that I’m not needing extra painkillers lately for my back and leg, while also having 0 luck finding anyone to train to replace me in my volunteer roles, while also making sure that I’m a rock/there for some good friends of mine who are in a lot of pain right now who reached out to me for help, while also watching my window of opportunity to get my writing project done start to slip away…if I wasn’t so frustrated at myself, I would almost be impressed by how good a job I’m doing at convincing everybody around me that everything is “Normal”
Living Undead 