Sex, Religion, & Thought-Tracks.

3/15/18

For the last few months, I’ve been keeping up with the daily samatha meditation. I’ve noticed that my mind is back on hyperdrive lately, perhaps an effect of the meditation and the fact that I’ve stopped drinking. Again, I’ve noticed that much as I keep a bare minimum of three folders open at once on my laptop, I keep at least two distinct tracks of thought going on in my mind at once and hop between them. Today my mind’s been bouncing between the subject of religion and the subject of sex.

With respect to the religious track, it has a definite source. Monica came into work last night, though it was her day off. The live-in boyfriend and her had gotten drunk and she left before they got into another fight, and now, clearly inebriated, she sat down in the dining room while I was cleaning and began spilling to me. It didn’t take her long to bring up the subject of a god, though this is not a conversation she’s had with me to any extent before.

Since she can’t believe in people, she explains, she believes in god to get her through life. She just talks to “him” and asks if he’ll help her get through the day. If she didn’t believe in god, she confesses, she wouldn’t be able to take it. She’d kill herself.

Just try it, she tells me. Just wake up and decide to believe.

As I try to explain to her as gently as I’m able, I don’t think I’m wired the same way, because it just doesn’t work for me.

When I realized I didn’t believe in a god back in high school, for a brief time I saw it’s lack of existence as a bad thing — until I subjected it to analysis. Then I realized it just fucking wasn’t. In addition to the fact that there is no convincing evidence suggesting the existence of such a creative, cosmic intelligence, I also see no evidence that believing despite the lack of evidence has any real, practical utility as a coping mechanism — at least for me. I know it makes her and others feel comfortable, fills them with hope, but I was never able to understand why. A totalitarian, cosmic father figure that draws the lines between right and wrong, dangling the carrot of forever-heaven in front of us and hovering the whip of eternal hell just behind — well, it just doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

If such a god did indeed exist, he would, in my humble opinion, be the biggest asshole conceivable. I wouldn’t support him anyway.

Talking to her, though, I leave that part out.

She tells me it doesn’t have to be that, but that I should just “believe in something.” I never understood it when people said that. What do they mean? That we all have to invest uncritical certitude in the notion that a creator of the universe exists? That we all should have blind, unquestioning servitude in some external force? Neither seems necessary to me. Neither seems healthy. Any way you slice it, no god — not even The God of the Infinitely Vague — seems attractive to me.

I tell her I see evidence suggestive of reincarnation and that consciousness is but a resident of the body, that there may be other planes of existence or parallel universes our consciousness can access — that I am an atheistic dualist. But her god, her Jesus, the concept of original sin, the notion of heaven and hell? I can’t, don’t, won’t swallow it. And the notion that this singular book — anthology, really — is a guidebook for life? I don’t see it. That shit just never made sense to me.

I can cherry-pick stories and lines from Dr. Seuss that are as relevant to life. The bible doesn’t stand out as a book, let alone a guidebook, sorry.

I don’t say all of this to her. I like her. And if it keeps her from killing herself, let her have the crutches. I’m thankful something is keeping her alive, even if it’s bullshit. But I can’t stomach it. And my mind and my soul relents as well.

So that religion was on my mind makes sense given last night’s conversation, but the thought-track dealing with sex? That’s another matter. The memories just sprung out at me from nowhere; jumped into my consciousness from the seeming void, unprovoked.

Once, when Claire and I were going out during high school, I was with her at night in the front seat of a large vehicle. It may have been my old Celebrity, my first car, but for some reason, I remember being higher up, as if in the front seat of someone’s truck. In any case, we were parked at night in the dirt lot beside a house just around the block, where her cousin went to practice in his band. I wish I remembered how it started, specifically if I actually had the balls to initiate it, but my hand was down her pants. Fingers worming around. It was warm, moist, wonderful. I was working away as I watched the illuminating expressions wash over her beautiful face. She seemed to be enjoying it, but I was forever uncertain, and I remember getting incredibly nervous, certain that I was doing something wrong, and ended up stopping. I later confessed this to her and she stated the obvious: that if she seemed to be enjoying it I should have just kept the fuck at it.

I never had sex with her. I had better get the chance and take it before I die. At least once. Bare minimum.

Even after I lost my virginity at age twenty, after it blew my mind, I didn’t do that again for five years. It seemed to establish a pattern of sorts, one in which I would suffer enduring periods with no sex (I’m on a seven-year-stretch right now, as a matter of fact, and it stands as the longest period of inactivity yet), punctuated by short periods where I make up for lost time. Anne, the complex gal who took my virginity, probably fit the profile of a nymphomaniac, but it always seemed to me that she just liked sex, and there’s nothing wrong with that. During the last time we were together, I remember her telling me that our sex drives were similar, and how, based on that, she didn’t understand how I could go so long not having any sex at all. I reminded her that I was a rather chronic masturbator, but its true, it’s not at all the same thing. So am I a self-denying nympho, then?

I also remembered when Anne came back from Texas, how I had sex for the first time in years, and out of nowhere, in the midst of me doing the ol’ in-out, she spanked me on the ass.

I stopped a moment. She then asked, and I confirmed: Indeed, I like that.

Over time, she was interested in letting me try out new things. I bobbed in the muff for the first time, we had sex while we both watched porn, had sex in a chair until her greyhound tried to cut in.

I thought to myself how I haven’t had sex since I started smoking pot, and given that it makes masturbation infinitely better, I’m really eager to do the real thing in that state of body-mind. I need to find an interesting, pothead girl who wants to stone-bone rather than simply continue to engage in my nightly, solo weed-whacking.

Why has the desire suddenly flared up like this? Is it because I’ve stopped drinking and my sex drive isn’t buried by the haze that it’s been on my mind again lately?

And why am I ping-ponging betwixt sex and the religious issue in my head today, specifically? As I chewed on that for the latter half of my work shift, it struck me again that there’s probably a link between our romantic feelings for a significant other and their religious feelings for a goddess or god. To me, this helps explain why conservative men talk about Jesus in a manner that in any other context would, to their ears if no one else’s, sound blatantly homosexual. It also makes sense out of the hypnodomme thing, as they seem to strive to link sexual, romantic and religious feelings through hypnosis in order to condition some heightened sense of drooling worship and control in their subjects. I’m glad I got out of watching those videos at the same time that I kicked the booze: once I blew the nightly load, and certainly after I sobered, the thought that I was watching those videos made me feel nauseous.

I am more apt to deal with Pagans and Buddhists; their concepts are more attractive to me. Eastern religions in general, and Native American beliefs, they fascinate me. Even Satanism seems to have some merit, at least one form if it. Not that I could be certain I’d ever call them my own.

Maybe I need to have sex with a Pagan stoner with Buddhist leanings or something. Let today’s mental tracks crisscross, let those trains of thought collide.

Monica’s Rut.

2/16/18

As I walk in the door to begin my shift, a young coworker is changing the trash, and as I go to throw away my coffee her eyes meet my own. She tells me she’s upset. Naturally, I ask her why, and she responds by telling me I should just look at Monica’s face.

Monica is a shift manager and a rather unique woman, to say the very least. Though I’ve never been good at judging age, I imagine that she’s in her sixties at best. She has three daughters and a few grandchildren. Her life has been riddled with drug use, criminality and prison time. Currently, she’s a pill-popper (and snorter), often engages in heavy drinking, and on occasion cocaine — which used to be her drug of choice, though, as she has told me on a few occasions, she gave it up long ago.

When I asked her how she managed, she told me, quite blatantly, that she just began using other drugs.

While a hard worker, her work patterns are inherently chaotic; she is a dedicated multitasker who is not at all good at multitasking. She often sings songs at high volume, typically ones she has created on her own, and is known for her dancing. She also has the tendency to mishear what others say, thinking that they said something far more absurd and perverted — which is often amusing, but not when you’re attempting to have a serious conversation with her.

She has a live-in boyfriend, Chuck, who she essentially saved from homelessness years ago. He is still out of work, allegedly because he hurt his back, and he’s addicted to pain pills. She supports him entirely, and as a token of his appreciation he consistently steals money and drugs from her. They’ve also frequently gotten into fist fights that also involve breaking furniture, biting, and pulling each other across the floor by the hair.

So when my coworker told me that I should just look at Monica’s face, that was really all I needed to hear.

As I walk behind the counter on the way to clock in, I say hello to Monica and take a look at her face, which is black and blue like rotting fruit, the bill of her cap pulled to the side to hide her shiner in the shadows. I turn away and walk to the touch-screen in the back to clock in. When I go back up front to change trash, I ask her the question I’ve asked two or three times before – needless, I suppose, as I’m always aware of the general answer.

“What the fuck happened?”

Her and Chuck got in another fight, she explains. He ran out of pills, went into withdrawals, borrowed money from a friend, got drunk, beat the shit out of her and subsequently attempted to smother her with a pillow. She tells me all of this in that “shit happens” sort of way that at once blows my mind, enrages me, and plunges me into the depths of depression. This time, though, she refused to fight back, she tells me, as if this is a heavy leaf she’s turning and the clouds are parting now and it’s all rainbows, cheesecake and blow jobs. Ever the skipping fucking record, I tell her that what she needs to do is to get the fuck away from him.

When one of her beautiful daughters — the one out of the three I honestly really like, as she’s an entriguing cocktail: compassionate badass — comes in and goes up to the counter later on in my shift, I beg her to convince her mother to leave. This isn’t the first time I’ve expressed this to her. I more or less said this the last time she came in, which was the last time her face looked like this thanks to Chuck.

In a conversation between the three of us later, as we’re all standing outside in the cold, Ohio rain, Monica proceeds to provide the usual excuses as to why she can’t just up and leave or kick him out. How if he catches her in the process of moving or she tries to kick him out or she calls the police that he’ll start wailing on her again, maybe even kill her.

I feel the pain of her daughter as she says all this. All the hatred. All the fear. All the exhaustion that comes from dealing with this endless cycle of pain. From dealing with and impulsively caring about Monica and her apparently inescapable rut.

I tell Monica she should save up money and buy some muscle to protect her in the process, or get him sent to jail for a day or two as she, with some help, can throw her belongings into a U-Haul and get the bloody fuck out of dodge.

All this falls on deaf ears. Just pissing into the wind. And it arises again in my mind, how fucking lucky I was, how lucky I am. For though I know it appears very unAmerican of me, its true: I was never physically or sexually abused as a child and my parents never divorced. There was no drug use in my family save for the occasional alcohol and my maternal uncle, who used to smoke. Only as I grew older did I discover that what to me was normal was, in fact, rather atypical.

The kind of lives — childhood and adulthood — many if not most of the people I’ve encountered in my life have lived and are living, especially in this cesspool of a town I work in, are depressing and enraging, to say the least. I can’t seem to offer a damn thing but listen to the stories, offer an open, empathic ear and hopefully some comforting words, and try not to fall into the same traps myself — a plaguing, conditioned fear in me despite my blessed lack of those wretched, foundational experiences.

In the end, I face the inevitable. That endlessly fucking frustrating and heart-wrenching fact that I just can’t, just can’t manage to find a way to really truly help them.

I feel like Superman, hopelessly trapped and frustratingly impotent on a planet composed entirely of kryptonite.

You Do It To Yourself.

If you can imagine the voice of Beavis from Beavis and Butthead fame, but make him mumble even more and talk at a speed that makes nearly everything he says utterly incomprehensible, you have a fairly good idea how difficult it is to have a conversation with Monica. To make matters worse, she’s one of those people that never knows when to shut up and tends to trap you in conversation.

Even so, there’s a place in my heart for the woman.

Years ago, she was a manager here in our fast food joint in this hellscape of a town. I assume it’s true that ADHD is over-diagnosed, and this despite the fact that I’ve come to fear I have it myself, but Monica has to be the most obvious and extreme case of it ever to grace the fucking planet. Her work habits were chaotic as hell and she never seemed able to finish a task.

Still, in those days she managed to hold down a job, rent a house, pay bills and buy groceries. Sure, she had a mutually abusive relationship with her boyfriend, sure, she took in far more stray cats than I thought a single state could have, let alone a shit hole town, but in comparison to now, she was amazingly stable.

Now? Now this woman, in her sixties, is homeless by choice and brings in money exclusively through selling stolen items on Facebook. Until she recently went to jail — again — only to find that the abusive boyfriend I’ve been begging her to get away from for years drained her bank account and took off with most of her possessions. On top of all that, she got locked out of her Facebook account, so she can’t sell anything.

The week before Christmas, she visits work to tell me about it and to ask if her daughter was working. She was not.

Monica has three daughters: the twins and Beth, who has been one of the assistant managers here for years. Its amazing how stable she turned out, but the fact that her mother was in jail for the bulk of her young life probably had something to do with it.

Though she’s an empathic person, Beth seems just as annoyed with her mother as I often am. Her mother frequently asks her if she can crash at her place, bum a ride, borrow some money. To me it seems like a role reversal, where her mother is the child and she is the parent.

Some time ago I began a tradition: if I see Monica in the store or hanging around outside, I’ll Facebook message Beth and give her the heads up, occasionally trying to be comical when I write about my encounter with her. This was precisely what I did when I saw her mother the week before Christmas. I told her that this coked-up looking elf had dropped by and asked about her, and I think she wanted money, so to be on the lookout.

That weekend, a day or two before Christmas, I get a message on my phone. It’s Beth — or rather, a message from Monica, who it turns out had borrowed Beth’s phone and decided to read my messages to her.

Immediately, I felt that sinking feeling coupled with a surge of adrenine. I felt like an asshole, particularly that she read that during the holidays, but at the same time, I felt pissed off that she had read messages that were not intended for her.

It’s not that I don’t care for her, but she generates a lot of her own problems. She brings it on herself, and often enough, not even in a roundabout way, but goddamn directly. She elected to be homeless, to rely upon crime to generate income, to take the hard drugs that landed her in jail, to run in the sketchy circles she does, to stay with the abusive partner who had consistently fucked her over. Eventually, anyone would run low on empathy for a person who generates their own chaos like that, especially when they don’t take responsibility for it.

I’m far from fucking perfect, and I’m no stranger to self-sabotage and generating my own issues, but I realize it, acknowledge it, and don’t try and rely on others any more than is absolutely necessary. It’s not fair, and my guilt surges when it comes to that.

And Beth? She shouldn’t have to play the role of the parent to her own mother.

Having said that, I’m still left feeling like an asshole.

Shifts With the Collapsing Kid.

Back arched, head down, ball cap pulled almost down to his eyebrows. To call him quiet would be to make a mole hill out of a goddamn mountain.

He almost hugs the wall when you walk passed him, won’t make eye contact when you try and speak to him, and any loud noise or sudden movement startles him to a nearly shit-the-pants level.

I happen to be next to him in the kitchen and I have to ask. “Be honest: is any of this getting any easier for you?”

Eyes still fixed on the table before him, he shakes his head up and down only slightly, and then gives me a brief side-eye.

“Yes,” he lies.

I keep asking Gus, who trained the kid, if he seems to be relaxing a bit more, if he seems to be getting better.

“No,” he tells me. “He’s getting worse.”

Even Gus feels bad for the kid, and he isn’t typically the kind of guy that gives people a chance. He won’t get halfway through a shift with a new employee and he’ll inform me with blazing confidence that they’re not going to work out, that they’re idiots, and he’s often cold, bitter, and sharp with them. I’m rather proud of him in this circumstance, for while he complains that the kid is a slow worker, he’s shown some uncharacteristic empathy with him.

He asked me what could make a person be like that. He assumed trauma, and I told him that for some people, it would indeed take a lot of trauma. Others, they may just be hypersensitive and even a little trauma could send them collapsing in terror for a goddamn lifetime.

This is probably more akin to a case of psychological projection than it is empathy, but I constantly find myself wanting to ease his anxiety. Suggest medication. Daily mindfulness meditation. A little CBD.

A joint. A beer.

Wanting so much to help when its really none of my goddamn buisness, it so often inspires a rather hopeless feeling and a fear that I’m being emotionally intrusive.

Still, I suppose it’s better than being a fucking psychopath.

Lucidity, Missiles, & UFOs (12/14/22 Dream).

I called off work, mostly because I was so damn tired. After falling back asleep, I fell into lucidity in my dreams at least twice, from what I can recall. In the midst of a dream I cannot remember, I got the burning desire to check on something in my living room (which doesn’t really exist) and recalled instantly being there, walking towards and climbing over — or perhaps it’d be more accurate to say rolling over — the back of the couch in the dark.

Sadly, the lucidity was brief, but I feel certain it happened again. Though I can’t remember the circumstance, I vaguely recall the rush of lucidity followed by the immedeate attempt to fly upward — and accomplishing this with surprising ease. Usually flying in my dreams is less controlled and more akin to swimming through the air, but here, I launched upward like a goddamn rocket.

The dream that followed is fuzzy in the beginning, but I end up at my parents house, intending to take a nap there. I may have accomplished that for a short time, for I recall suddenly confused to find myself in an entirely dark house with no one else around.

Looking out a second-story window, I see an old-looking car (maybe from the thirties) trying to back up along a fence where there were trash cans and a large puddle. It backs into the trash cans, fire shoots out from its exhaust, and it goes forward a bit before attempting to back up again, this time falling backwards into a puddle. The car then goes vertical and sinks into the puddle entirely, disappearing below the surface of the water. Fearing my sister, Eve, may have been the one driving, and that she might now be trapped and drowning, I rush downstairs.

On my way out the front door, I see my parents in the driveway. I’m about to tell them about the car, but my father says something to me I couldn’t make out, but I thought I caught him saying something about missiles. I try to ask him to speak louder, to clarify, but either my mother or father interrupt and indicate I should look up.

Turning my attention skyward, I see countless slender, rectangular shadows soaring, rushing by above the thick, gray cloud cover, all headed in the same direction. It was a frightening scene. I try to get them to confirm they were indeed missiles and not something else, with that something else being UFOs, but I can’t seem to articulate my question clearly. At some point my mother Chimes in.

“If Aunt Natty were here,” she says, of an Aunt I don’t really have, “she’d tell you…”

Damn Fabric Magick.

Usually, I’m pretty good at turning it off, at burying it. No matter how attractive a woman is, if she’s with a guy, particularly one I respect, or she happens to be a lesbian, I can force myself, out of my respect for her, not to think of her that way.

Not to gawk or even give her a passing glance with the high-beam, hungry eyes broadcasting the dirty mind hardly hiding behind.

Sometimes, however, she wears a particular item from her wardrobe — a pair of pants; a shirt, perhaps — that hugs the body in that concealing-yet-revealing fashion so expertly, accentuating the figure so lusciously, bringing out the inherent sexiness so goddamn perfectly, that it’s like some wicked fucking fabric magick summoning the most primal part of my being.

So then I have to fight to avert my eyes, to push down the building charge in me, and my little moments of inevitable fucking failure leave me spending the rest of the day wracked with guilt stacked upon intense sexual frustration.

It’s times like these that make me thankful humans aren’t an advanced, telepathic species…

The World, Against Me (12/2/22 Dream).

I can’t recall the exact circumstances, but it seemed as if everyone had turned against me, hated me, and I felt hurt and betrayed. I was also enraged at what they had done and had the overwhelming urge to do something horrible, to show them that they couldn’t cross me without dire consequences, though I talked myself down and never did.

At the end of it all, I went into my bedroom, which looked like my bedroom back when I still lived with my parents, and sat at my desk, on which there was a tall glass of beer. Leaning back in my chair, I looked out the window to my left and into the nighttime sky. Despite everything, I suddenly felt at peace.

In the wake of that dream scene — which was the only one I recalled with any clarity — I stayed in bed in a twilight state of consciousness, trying to go back into the dream. I wanted there to be a resolution to those circumstances before waking up despite the fact that the dream had met what was apparently its natural ending. I finally relented and got out of bed when I looked at the clock and found it was passed 3 PM.

In reflection, I think the point of the dream was that you can’t expect anyone to like you. You can’t control their reactions, and really, it would be unethical to do so. You can only control yourself, and that can’t happen when your sense of self is rooted in their perspectives of you, when you have that external locus of control.

I’ve always enjoyed my time alone, and having my own apartment, my own private space, is often the only thing that gets me through the day. I can sit at my desk and write or draw, read or watch videos on things that I actually find interesting, explore subjects I’m actually passionate about.

This dream reminded me that it’s important to be anchored within and go my own way, and that it doesn’t pay to get so wound in the emotional webwork of so many others.

Frogs, Books, Lilly & a UFO (Four Dreams).

11/23/22

For years now, since I started balding, I’ve shaved my head. Looking in the mirror, I decide to just let my hair go, and as it grows, I find that I’m not balding as I had thought. Soon, I have a full head of hair — but not dark brown as it used to be, nor salt-and-pepper, but blond. I’m disturbed to find that my face also changes.

I go on to have another dream.

As I’m sitting at a booth in a restaraunt, I see, out of the corner of my eye, something small fall from the ceiling and bounce off the floor to my side. I’m confused for a brief moment, but then my friend from across the table directs my attention towards the ceiling. There, perched on a beam high above, sits a tiny frog. I watch as the little creature opens its huge mouth, turns a bit into the dark area behind him, and turns back with a bright, green grape between his chompers, which he then quite intentionally drops to the floor below.

“Apparently, he doesn’t like grapes,” I explain to my friend — just as my alarm goes off.

Why does my sleeping brain burp up these strange things?

11/25/22

For some reason, I’ve sold or given up many of the books from my collection to a bookstore or a library that appears to be a wing off of the building where I work. I went into bookstore to look for other books while holding onto one of the books I hadn’t sold, but I lost the book, so spent the bulk of the dream looking around for it while constantly coming across other books I wanted to buy. At one point I see a group of paperbacks on a low shelf — I think they were of the horror genre — and said aloud that these books weren’t for kids as I hid them in a box. Ultimately, unable to find the book I had, I elected to buy a new one as well as a Snickers bar at the counter. Shortly thereafter, someone in the area where I work was trying to shut off something in the store using the fuse box but ended up shutting off the lights and everything else in the store and bookstore.

After I awaken, I grab the only book out of the countless books I have that was at the very least shaped like the book I’d lost in the dream. It was Mel Ash’s 1996 book, Shaving the Inside of Your Skull. Later, while grocery shopping, I go on my impulse to buy a Snickers bar as well.

11/26/22

Leaning back, watching the night sky, I see a distant but bright meteor flare up and leave a short but brilliant green tail to the right of my field of vision, though it only lasts for a a second or two. Where the meteor flared up, however, I see what at first looks like a faint star, but then it effortlessly flies across to the other end of my field of vision, and then continues going back and fourth in arcs across the sky. I suddenly feel the compulsion to get a video of it with my phone, but my screen won’t put the sky in view, and I’m confused as I frantically fiddle with it, though I never get it to work.

11/27/22

Though there was a girl in the dream that was “kind of” my friend, Lilly, this was incredibly different from a very vivid, yet very brief dream scene I had just before my alarm awoke me. This was undoubtedly her.

I’m walking down these broad stone steps, and she’s walking her way up, and we stop when we meet each other face to face. She’s wearing a yellow blouse and she wears a huge smile and has wide, pleasant, happy eyes. I feel so much joy just seeing her, especially like this. She looks so bright and happy. We just look at each other for a brief moment, saying nothing, and then I awaken.

Cliffnotes for Christianity.

A long time ago, in a universe evidently created just for them, two naked people in a garden ate fruit from the cosmic creator’s no-no tree at the suggestion of a walking, talking serpent, and so as a consequence they and all their progeny were forever in debt to him — and so they were apparently doomed to hellfire.

Then, many generations later, he had a change of heart one day. He decided that since humanity could never repay him, as no earthly sacrifice could cover the value of that no-no fruit, he’d have to create a loophole, because for some reason, he couldn’t just forgive the debt.

Anyway, so the creator ghost-banged a human virgin so he could incarnate into human flesh as her child. As he was now god-incarnate, and surely cover the cost of the no-no produce, they could sacrifice him — to himself, mind you — thereby paying off their debt to him.

It’d be like if you owed me twenty dollars and you didn’t have twenty dollars to pay off your debt to me so I gave you the twenty dollars so you could do so.

Anyway, so now instead of owing the creator-as-himself, humanity was in debt to the creator-as-his-son. Which is apparently different somehow. And this time, the debt is paid off by saying sorry to the creator-as-his-son, observing certain rituals and ceremonies, and sacrificing your reason in at least this particular area. In exchange, you recieve an eternal reward — though conveniently after you become worm food — and avoid the forever owie barbecue place.

Now, I left a lot out, granted, but those are the cliffnotes to what appears to be the central story that animates Christianity, and I hope articulates part of the reason I find this particular flavor of religion quite bonkers.