erotics: been there, done that..

It is often said that you shouldn't work on something that you like too much. So lesbians should possibly steer clear of sexuality (and they never do, in fact that’s what they are best at and how most of them get laid, bitchiness excused). And gay men should probably never do work on internet dating cultures, which is why they would do fashion or atleast dream of being an assistant to a diva or starring in Devil wears Prada. So I should probably avoid working on pornography, except I’m not a committed daily junkie. It’s a weird confluence of sex, horniness and loneliness – a peculiar exact mix that brings me to pornography, and at any other time it is either uninspiring or too depressing.

My immediate reaction to pornography is to twist away from it to see if anyone is watching me. The head twist has a history, from the time of writing stories and poems when I was much younger that I didn't want parents to read, to downloading music and watching movies in offices that I didn't want the head honchos to see. Till I found actual pornography - the neck twister extraordinaire. Or actually I first found cyber sex. The guilty thrill of forming actual sentences, grammatically correct and penned erotically, in your head before typing them out. Deliberately corset-ed and trussed up thoughts about what you would do, if only, if only, if only...

If only you were beautiful enough to be the centre of attention, strong enough to do the throw-down with someone else’s frailer body, wealthy enough to wine, dine, fly off to another city and then do it again and powerful enough to be none of the rest, but just to do it anyway. Erotics in pajamas. And sensual, thrilling erotics at that.

But when it slips away, it just does. Somehow the sight of the keyboard, an IM client that bounces and the thrill of removing underwear under the table at your office desk when instructed across oceans to do so, suddenly becomes not so hot anymore. Now I understand all those geeks who are nostalgic for older IRC clients, yahoo messenger smileys and non-ergonomic noisy keyboards. Like in the privacy of a new life I miss the head twist, without which this can be kind of pointless.

So pointless that I look for educational sexual videos on female ejaculation. But then polymorphous perverse porno has its slippery wet way with me and you're suddenly sucked into horror, fascination, intense hot dislike for what you are seeing which to me has always been what porno is about. If you don't actually hate it, then you're never going to be surprised when you check yourself and slip a finger into an unsuspecting pussy.

how do you blog when you have convenient amnesia

Wolverine, Gabriel Dell'otto, The art of marvel comics

Say hello to an unbidden future. I've lost all my music painstakingly collected since 2003. Not all, some random songs have surfaced on a frantic search. Each one had a specific memory embedded in it. And in the careful, and I swear it was very careful, transfer of files from temporary computer to new, it has slipped between the byte and the drive. I wonder if those straggling lonely songs that remain are significant, though now burdened with the memory of eras rather than moments.

There are fortunate losses like Natalie Merchant’s My skin, which was a favourite that descended to a whine, that only was bearable in the piano riff. Or was it the feeling that it always gave of the guilty desire and shockingly good feel of a new lover, while the old one still lives and breathes under your skin. There’s a strange once-again remanant of I’m on fire, cover version by Tori Amos. The only Tori Amos I could live with after the obsession with her through college. (And ofcourse simultaneously the woman who was Tori Amos for me in college, says hello across continents on the networking monster aka facebook). All of Rahman is lost except Fanaa from Yuva, which is the last-few-hours-for-an-article-deadline song. There is no explanation for how an entire Bonobo album, unheard and untested, emerges from nowhere. And all versions of any kind of tainted love, metallic or soft, sorry or twisted have been washed away.

Somehow I don’t feel much about this, there was a time when I would have wept about it and thrown phones around, like over a scratched DVD of Buffy. Is this ennui or numbness or belated adulthood of the 30s. Almost anything is funny, almost anyone is ultimately laughable.

It seems I hide too much these days, all those feelings that used to hang out especially here, are sitting in this room. Embedded in slippery lost songs. In too easily written over fantasies. In slight slight hopes.


All those obsessed with memory:
Wolverine whose healing power is in the fact that he forgets
Memento
Goldfish and elephants
Irreversible
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
Androids in Bladerunner
Mulholland Drive
Jenny in L word
Ralph Fiennes in Strange Days - unforgettable line by angela basset - memories were meant to fade, they were built that way for a reason
Karz (Ghai) - or is memory of reincarnation not counted