Bump

Driving home from a place tonight I was thinking about writing on a certain topical subject for my fabulous blog, Forbidden Porpoises™. Perhaps you've heard of it? It's really good. I'm brilliant. But then all of a sudden I veered into something else. My thinking, not my driving. Why would you make that mistake? If I had any friends, and if they drank, and if I was with them when they did, and if they needed to go home, I'd be the designated driver. I'm an excellent driver. I started thinking about sex. Why would I do that? Oh yeah, I remember.

I tend to keep things pretty general here at Forged Passports™, for all that it sounds personal. Yeah, I had foster kids. Yes, some horrible things happened, that filled me with pain. Yes, I have a son whom I love. But these are generalities, and may very well be interchangeable with the generalities of your own life. You have loved. You have pain. One of the great things about Shakespeare is that he gave wisdom even to his villains. Claudius said, "Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father: But, you must know, your father lost a father; That father lost, lost his..." No pain comes to us, but what is common to all men.

I don't know how to deal with the specific theme I have in mind, though, without being specific. That's not just sounding personal. It is personal. Not my comfort zone. I find comfort in anonymity, and where there is no anonymity, in discretion. Sex. If you don't want to hear it, stop now.

I give some evidence of having been sexually abused as a small child. I have no memory of such a thing. No nightmares. No paraphilias. But I was a sexualized little boy. I mean little boy. Four, five, six years old. That is just not normal. Freud with his latency does not hit the nail on the head. Children are not latent in their sexual interest. But interest is not energy. I had the energy. I remember raging tumescences, and I remember little neighborhood girls. Enough on that, then.

Scattered throughout these pages may be found allusions to my ideas on sexuality. I take a psychodynamic approach, seeing the great issues of emotional life in terms of the flowing of energies. A useful metaphor, as all good theories must be. Little children, little boys should not be troubled with such matters. The flow of that energy should not start its surge before the proper channel of hormones charts the course.

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. I charge you, o daughters of Jerusalem, by the deer and the gazelles of the fields, do not waken my love until my love desires to awake."

Someone, my theory goes, interfered with me. Some fair one came away after having wakened my love. Not cool. Little boys should be left to sleep. Not fair at all. Unfair. Worse. Ugly. Vile. Evil. So my theory goes. There are monsters in the night, too dark even to see in dreams. We see, in daylight, not even their shadows. Only a footprint, an outline that might be the product of blind chance, as the infinite complexity of life itself is the mere outworking of mere and random mere evolutionary forces. Yup. If we think we hear some echoed step, perhaps behind us, we turn and see nothing. If we think we feel some touch at our back, we turn and see no one. There are no monsters in daylight. And daylight is where we live.

I, of course, stay up all night. Is it a vigil? Am I standing guard? What helpless one could I be protecting now, with my family gone? What child remains for me to defend?

That's my theory. It works to explain my passion for protecting, for cherishing and nurturing kids. I've always known this. It works to explain my social withdrawal, my extreme reserve, my need for anonymity, and most, my effectively pathological distrust of the world. Don't notice me. I'm not really here. It's an ugly theory, because it requires a villain, and I cannot cast anyone in such a role. The ogre of my folktale must remain legendary.

There are vampires, though. They come in the night and steal your life, and infect you with their curse. Fortunately, the curse takes more than one form. Some embrace the infection and spread evil like black and acrid smoke. Others fold themselves around their pain and their weakness and resolve by every holy thing to bleed into themselves, to sustain themselves on their own wounds if need be, rather than cause some other to bleed. Thus the fabled love of the stork, symbol of familial devotion, which was said to pluck open its own breast that its hatchlings might sustain themselves on its blood. Let us plant ourselves in this latter camp, of devotion and self-sacrifice. There is no happiness there, but there is righteousness.

How few are ever healed? I don't know. I'm just telling a story, unwinding a theory as a mix of specifics and generalities. You have an opinion? Can't say that I'm interested. It might feel too much like intimacy, your sharing it with me, and I've had enough sharing for a while.


J