Triggers

Most of us have five senses, the elemental capabilities that form the barriers of our lives and deliver to us the emotional enrichment that takes us past humdrum existence as an amoeba. Some of us lack on of those senses, and compensate by ramping up the other four. A blessed few have a sixth sense, can see or feel into the past or future, perhaps both for better and for worse.

I've long felt that each of us has one sense that is dominant over the others. For subs it might be the sense of touch. For an artist, it's the sense of sight, the ability to translate from what the eye takes in to manual performance. For Her it's the sense of smell, and I can watch Her travel far away when we enter an old apartment building in the city, and we smell the smell of old people. Neither of us knows what that smell is, a pleasant slightly lemony or perhaps talcum powdery odor, and She's gone, instantly transported far way in time and space, back to her grandmother's walkup apartment in the Village, knowing that her grandmother will feed her Arnold bread buttered toast with orange marmalade, and accompanied by tea with milk and sugar. I watch Her stand stock still entranced by the aroma.

Or we'll come home late at night, and the commercial bakery down the block is in full swing, the entire neighborhood awash with the smell of rising yeast and marzipan. Or we'll go into a bar, and suddenly we're both sooo many years younger, overwhelmed by the lingering odor of spilled beer and stale cigarette air, melancholy for the times that were and envious of the smell that's no longer ours.

For me the triggers are auditory. Certain music evokes uncontrollable washes of emotion, overpowering feelings of joy, longing, depair. The emotions don't necessarily follow the content of the music, either the lyrics or the music itself. As I was out and about this morning, doing errands with my Ipod buds stuffed into my ears, I listened to the song Graceland by Paul Simon. I had seen the Graceland tour when it first came around, went to see Paul Simon and friends recreate the concert this past spring at BAM. The music itself, even just the intro, the rhythm setup and the ringing guitar played by one of the African musicians, fills me with uncontrolled joy, and I play it over and over and over. I'm no longer walking in a straight line but swerving back and forth on the sidewalk, an unpardonable sin for a New Yorker.

And there are pieces of music that work in just the opposite direction. I can no longer listen to the Mendelssohn Octet for Strings, because it makes me sad beyond belief and weep uncontrollably. It's not a sad or tragic piece of music, but something in the tonal structure works its way to the core of my soul, fills me with a profound sadness and sense of loss.

I went to a high school that was essentially an experiment in the arts, organized by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia during the Great Depression, where we spent half the classroom time studying either music or art. And so, when we graduated from high school, in Carnegie Hall no less, the processional wasn't Pomp and Circumstance played by the marching band, it was the overture to Die Meistersinger by Richard Wagner, played by the senior orchestra. And I realized during the playing of that piece, sitting in what I now call The Big House, that high school was truly over, that I wouldn't see most of the faces int he future that I had seen for four
years. And so, when I hear the piece, I walk taller, but with an unerring sense of disaster ahead of me.

I'm interested to know about other people's sensory triggers, what sights, sounds, smell, touches, transport you instantly into another space and time. I don't often solicit responses, but if you read this post let me know.

PS-Despite what you might think, there's just a bit more to tell in Playing With Old Friends, but as I told someone earlier today, I have to write it right...and that takes the right mood. Patience, please


Earworm-Graceland, Paul Simon

Just A Few Random Thoughts (#3)

Emma of Mrs. Kelly's Playhouse has written a brilliant post about cuckolding, being a slave, opening up a marriage. Read it at http://mrsemmakelly.blogspot.com/

I recently started to read Paul Theroux's latest book, Ghost Train To The Eastern Star. He's long been a favorite travel writer, albeit wildly opionated and a great generalizer. Some things he says resonate far beyond the book-talking about a motorway in Europe and why it looks dreary and imitative, he says "because it is imitative and looks hackneyed and unstylish and ill fitting, the way no European looks quite right in a baseball cap." And about the local porn in Budapest, "...a country's pornography offers the quckest insight into the culture and inner life of a nation, and especially the male character, I went in and assessed the gooods. It was grubby stuff, which included bestiality (dogs and women), very fat people, very hairy people, a sideline in gay cruelty, and every German perversion."

And like most of the population of the USA, I've been watching the Olympics for the past two weeks...and I'M IN LOVE WITH SUE BIRD. It's so far beyond me how she can look sooo serene running the floor, hair always in place, makeup perfect and unsmeared, great smile, wonderfully full lips.

It's good for me that the summer is almost over. I spend a fair amount of time sitting on the beach with the same group of people day after day on vacation, and weekend after weekend. I'm in the very small cultural minority, and they all sometimes forget that I am what I am, and out come the biggoted remarks. They're all old friends who usually control themselves, and I usually try to zone out when something gets said. But it's getting closer and closer to my saying something, and so Labor Day can't come soon enough.

Earworm-RL Burnside, Everything is Broken

Hair Down There

Last week I went to the theatre with viviane, and on the subway home, as I glanced out the window I saw an ad for a product called Betty Beauty, promising to dye your "hair down there" to almost any color you'd like. Inasmuch as we were speeding out of the station, I could only get a quick glimpse.
Is this a new product? Is this a new practice? Was I napping when this hit the markets?
Can someone enlighten me?

Promises, Promises

At long last I've done what I've been promising to do for months---UPDATED MY BLOGROLL.

I've deleted all the inactive or closed blogs that I've said goodbye to over the past months, and I hope I've included all the bloggers that I promised to include. If I've left you off the list for any reason, let me know in some format, and I'll mend my ways (and real quick too), now that I've figured out that I won't break something if I fool around with it.

Playing With Old Friends-V

Franny and I had long ago settled into married sex, into the you know where to touch me and I know where to touch you kind of sex, not the mindblowing fuck your brains and and don't give a damn kind of sex, and I had felt for some time that we were just going through the motions of it, getting off and getting each other off. But the earth had long since ceased to move for her, and I knew that I was giving her what she needed, but not what she wanted. And so I had kept hidden the notion of her having rampant sex with another man, kept silent the thought of watching her get fucked silly, until she was weak in the knees and couldn't walk straight. And now, somehow, this woman with the suckable nipples knew, and she knew it all. And she was pushing me towards it, towards that precipice, towards the edge from which there could never be a return.

She took my hand and pulled me back down the hallway towards the kitchen, which was now strangely dark and shrouded in shadows. We stopped in the doorway, and I realized that all the shades had been drawn, and the light entering the kitchen was only refracted sunlight from the west facing window, the light coming through the trees as the sun began to set. Tommy had grabbed a low stool from the corner of the kitchen that we normally used as a spare dining room chair when we had lots of company. He'd sat on it in the center of the room, his legs stretched out before him, low enough so that he could position Franny straddling him and still standing. I watched as she reached down between her legs and grabbed his penis at the base, steering it towards her opening, slowly starting to crouch down to put it into herself, her cunt and thighs awash and glistening with wetness.

I saw her slowly and carefully manuever the head to her opening, posing still as she became accustomed to the huge head entering her, his hands reaching forward to her waist on either side. He leaned back just a bit for balance, and began to pull her down on his cock, her eyes opening wider still, her breath escaping from her mouth along with a wordless moan which continued on and on until she reached the base. Her eyes glazed over, their focus long gone, her gaze far in the distance, as she rested, her jaw still dropped and her mouth still open in a silent o, her feet barely touching the floor. I reached my hand down and started to masturbate, knowing that I was longer and harder than I had been for a long time, more aroused by seeing Franny gone far away, her reason deserting her in search of pure pleasure. Slowly she began to rock her hips back and forth, her torso leaning back, her head flung back, her eyes now closed, her mouth still hung open as tongue protruded slightly. Tommy also leaned back ever so slightly, so that her feet could gain greater purchase on the floor. She began to grunt in rhythm to the thrusts her pelvis was making, exhaling every time she pushed forward, the grunts becoming louder as she intensified her thrusting. Tommy looked over at us, I slowly stroking my cock for fear of cumming on the kitchen floor in 30 seconds, Gayle frozen in space watching her childhood friend hammering her husband's dick with her pubic bone.

"Gayle, could you shut this bitch up? She's gonna wake up the whole neighborhood if she keeps this up." And with that, Gayle left my side, leaving me alone to watch as the couple devoured Franny, chasing all rationale from her mind. Gayle crossed behind, allowing her to lean back further from Tommy and against Gayle, her cunt now thrust forward by the extremity of the position. Gayle grabbed her head and turned it just enough to the right to plant her voracious mouth on it, and I could see her plunging her tongue in Franny's mouth as if it were another dick, swirling and twirling around her lips, taking the upper one between her teeth and pulling it slightly, snaking her hands underneath Franny's arms to grab her breasts and tweak her nipples, moving her hands in small circles, her thumbs and forefingers holding the very nipple tips and moving them in opposing circles. I continued to slowly move my hand up and down my cock, so moved by the spectacle before me, the astonishing picture of my gentle wife being eaten alive by her own sexuality and the lust of others.