The Ishmael Gradsdovic Papers, part thirty-four


Part thirty-four of the Ishmael Gradsdovic papers is very confusing...


4 October 1994:

I'm reminded of the Griffin & Sabine books. I read the first one. They're sappy romances with a twist, but I really like them anyway just because of how they're put together. They're pop-up books for grown-ups. Each page has a post-card or an envelope (which you can open to take out the letters to read). A cool idea. Anyway, what reminded me of this is that I got a postcard today from B-----'s roommate up in Santa Cruz. I've heard, through B-----, that she's got a crush on me, so it wasn't one of these total enigmatic surprise things, but still cool. The card had neat stuff on it, and groovy handwriting, and the message "Shh! (Something inside me is buzzing, it is my inner ear, a synapse zapping across some brief expanse in my brain, it is a fluttering of organs and so I am writing you little notes... (tee hee little notes!)" (clear your pending parenthesis pointers now... well, except for this one: )

But back to San Luis Obispo for a bit. Okay, fade in all wriggly-like, Young Ones style:

I'm sitting in the hot tub over at The Inferno (that's a house, not a metaphor), all by my lonesome, alternately hoping that C----- will come out to join me and hoping that I'll stop hoping this. C-----'s the woman who prompted all that safe sex angst a few months back if you don't remember. Last night is the first time I've seen her since, oh, early July, and I'm delighted to see her unswollen by the human reproductive process. Still, I'd be very happy if she'd come out to the hot tub and watch the clouds and feel the rain with me, and who knows?

D----- comes out instead and joins me for a bit, playing with his five- foot-long keychain and discussing the curiosities of the human multilemma, but opting to stay dry. No spare towels in the house, and none of us brought any, which might explain why I'm the only wet one. The clouds are passing overhead in two distinct layers, each moving at a different speed, so that the overall look is artificial, like the scrolling layered backgrounds of a video game. "Wow, it looks 3D," D----- says, with deliberate irony. The fast layer is moving so fast that the leading edge of one cloud seems to chase a shooting star, but the rain never gets really powerful while I'm out there.

C----- volunteered to help me out and be a co-Frank. I forget if I mentioned it, but somehow, a week or two ago at Spikes, while under the influence of F----- in sexy garb, G----- in short fur coat, and H----- in a salmon toga and fishnet stockings, not to mention a large Old Foghorn barleywine, was volunteered to play the part of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (a scientist) in the sub-screen Rocky Horror Picture Show. That's why I'm at The Inferno tonight. Practicing. C----- was in a cast up North somewhere, and is well-practiced in Frankness. She'll help me get the hip- gyrations and facial expressions down.

I've been talking to D----- about human sexuality, using my own as an example, and he's asking a lot of questions, seeming concerned and interested. How nice. Usually I have to rely on a captive audience like NerdNosh or letters to J----- when I want to be an emotional exhibitionist. I'm telling him how I felt overwhelmed at Spikes that night because at one point I was surrounded by no fewer than five women I'd been intimate with (K-----, C-----, G-----, J----- & C-----) and I wasn't sure what the proper etiquette of the situation was ("Janet!" "Doctor Scott!" "Janet!" "Brad!" "Rocky!" "Unh!"). All of them seemed to want my attention at once, and there was a sort of implicit cashing in of chips (or maybe it was all in my head) where I felt that anything less than my complete attention would be seen as a slight. What to do?

(And further adding to my bafflement, with C----- on my left was a voice from my right saying "Ishmael, have you been itching lately?" It was G-----. Go figure. No itching so far...)

And I wonder to myself, am I bragging? Is this some ego thing? Am I trying to impress D----- with how many women I've slept with? (Am I trying to impress you?) How disgusting. Mostly I'm just trying to convey this weird feeling I was having at Spikes, but I see from some of the give-and- take that there's some sort of fish story thing going on here. And I realize just as quickly that I am bragging a little bit, that I do feel proud of myself and like I'm made better by virtue of bedding these women. Nothing to feel too ashamed off, though. Mostly harmless. Only makes me look silly and immature. I'm not naming names or anything, well, not too many. It's a phase. We all have our quirks.

The amateur psychoanalyst in my head kicks in. It's a self-esteem thing, isn't it? You have deep feelings of worthlessness and distrust of the affection of your friends, but when someone new sleeps with you you think, "well, I guess I'm not all that bad." It's quite a trap. You feel like scum, so you sleep around to feel better, which makes you feel even lower in the end, so you talk about it or post to the 'nosh to get a vicarious charge from the episode again, but you recognize this as just another symptom of your pathetic needs and feel yet lower. Or maybe not. Maybe you just love sex, love having it, love sharing it, love talking about it. Nothing wrong with that.

Jello Biafra has a sketch called "The Lost Orgasm" in which he observes that it's much more socially acceptable to talk about getting your appendix out or crashing on your bike, or the terrible headache you got at work today than it is to discuss the wonderful orgasm you had, or the delicious food you had for lunch, or the beautiful cloud that went by your window.

I tell D----- that I've just never gotten over the idea of sex as being a magic thing. I can't treat it like L----- treats it, as the equivalent of a good massage mixed with a vigorous tennis match mixed with a deep philosophical conversation. There's a magic spell that's been cast on me and the person I make love with, sealed by the sweat and screams of climax, that binds us together on some rarely-visited plane. It's not emotional, necessarily, but there's some psychic bind there that keeps me in their orbit.

M----- is heading up the Rocky thing, as she does every year. Sounds like a real terror, doesn't it? We can't stand each other, but she's playing dictatorial director and I'm playing tempermental star. Yeah, but although we've come to no formal reconciliation we're acting friendly. She even brought a gift for me at Spikes. A beautiful shirt, sort of a combination tie-dye/batik/print in a bunch of bright colors. 100% rayon. It's gorgeous. I'm wearing it right now.

N----- comes out to soak, but I'm getting all pruny in the digits and decide to duck back inside. Sure 'nuff, no towels. I dry myself on R----- instead. R----- is about six foot twenty-three in heels and is a cross between an extremely tall and macho blonde cheerleader and an extremely tall and macho dominatrix. Then I fondle G-----'s buttocks for a few minutes and discuss dichloromethane with P----- before going home (would've stayed, gladly, but G----- was attacked by the muse and wanted to spend the night writing instead...)

I'm excited. Things are falling into place. I think I've mentioned (oh, a few times) that I'm trying to get light and get out of the rat race. I've ditched a lot of stuff, but have quite a bit to go. I've picked up a good jacket cheap at a thrift store, a sturdy backpack and sleeping bag.

A couple of days ago I awoke from an afternoon nap to the smiling face of S-----, the most perforated of my friends (two tongue piercings, a lip piercing, several eyebrow-rings, a clitoral hood piercing and probably more where I have not inquired, heard about or seen). "I'm moving in!" she says. So that's half the rent I can keep. The next day Q----- calls and says she wants to move in when I move out so as to be closer to her man. Cool. So I call up the landlord and explain things, and it looks like I'll be out of the lease any time now.

On the other hand, you sit at home tonight, having driven home intoxicated against your own best advice to sit and listen to Tom Waits alone and the rain outside feeling a little confused like one of his Rain Dogs sniffing around wet nosed and thinking a little bit or even a lot about ------ and wondering if you could go over there or she could go over here and yes even that hivey little cooz seems a warm and comfy holme. You'd do it, wouldn't you? First time's reckless; second time's stupid. Contrive a prophylactic apparatus of Saran Wrap, a condom and duct tape, I see the gears turning inside. Man, you know it's not your move it's her move now. She's sunbathing on the lawn in front of the Ivy League building with tweed professors walking by and you're in your fourth-floor room and she's listening to the dark-suited black fraternity up on the roof singing an a-cappella, jazzed-up Amazing Grace, and you climb out the window onto the roof to watch them from behind, but although they're standing there fearlessly, effortlessly, even the blind one swaying to the music as if there wasn't a perilous drop, you're holding on to the side of the wall adjacent to the roof, slipping on roof tiles, and eventually deciding to go back inside. Later you hear one of them fell, maybe the blind one. The young ladies come in from the lawn, and you meet them downstairs and congratulate them, but they act like they don't know you well.




email Ishmael