have to. I can just watch, and there's something almost spiritual about that. Something that feels like what Simone Weil probably meant when she talked about attention as prayer or whatever, except she definitely wasn't talking about watching two guys suck each other off on a shitty pleather couch.
Code name: Homeboy.AKA, my first real boyfriend, the one who wore those terrible cargo pants but had a great sense of humor. (He quite literally laughed me out of my panties) I used to lie in bed after sex and imagine him with his best friend, who was definitely straight but had these delicate wrists and this way of touching Homeboy's shoulder when they talked that made me insane with possibility. I would construct elaborate scenarios
And in my fantasy, I was there but not there. Perhaps watchingfrom a doorway. A ghost of pure desire. A consciousness without a body. How could I tell him? "Hey, I love you, but also I want to watch you get fucked by your bestie"? That's not pillow talk. Thats not even therapy talk. That's the kind of thing you're
supposed to keep locked in the basement of your psyche, along with all the other wants that don’t fit into the narrative of who you're supposed to be.
Code Name: “Mr. I” boyfriend number three. With him, the
fantasies got more elaborate. I would imagine him discovering something about himself that had nothing to do with me, and somehow, in my imagination, this discovery would make him more mine. As if by watching him
become someone else, I could finally possess him completely. Is that fucked up? It's definitely fucked up. But it's also true, and probably indicative of some deep psychological wound that I should address in therapy, but won't because my therapistis on maternity leave.
The porn itself is almost beside the point. I mean... yes, I watch it. Yes, I have my preferred sites and my preferred scenarios. Maybe what I want or what I've always wanted is to see the men I love become pure desire. And to watch them stripped of all the performance of heterosexuality, all the ways they have to be for me, and all the emotional labor of being someone's boyfriend.
No one knows about any of this. They must think I'm normal or normalish. They must think my sexual imagination begins and ends with a neat, folded bow.
The laptop is open. It’s 2 AM again.