Posted by Ryan on September 6, 2005, 9:38 am, in reply to "Part 16: Slough of Despond" Day after day, I carried on through life, devastated. One lonely day I went to the store and bought some wine, then took it home and that evening drank myself to sleep. Morning I woke up, groaning and saying to myself, 'Why get up? There’s nothing to get up to....’ Often I would go for long walks. I would go strolling along beside the water, just thinking about what was... and the way things would have been, if they had stayed the way they were. I would pass through the bowling alley where we used to go and enjoy ourselves and each other’s company all the time. I would plunk tokens into the video games and pinball machines that were there, and try to let the brief moments of excitement and adrenaline rush while the game was going on make me forget the misery I was living in. Then, “Game Over.” Then no more tokens, or, place closed. I was leery of the danger of letting some bout of depression get you hooked on alcohol, but I found during that time that I was consuming more beer and wine than the normal minimal social sipping I used to do otherwise. I would go sometimes to some of the cleaner bars that were found in restaurants, with better-dressed people, trying to avoid the seedy places that emanated the lowlife-type atmosphere. The cold, fresh beers in all the different varieties, from gold to dark, while sitting at the mahogany bar, had an appeal to me like they never had before. Then after a while when I realized how much money I was spending on them, I would just go to the supermarket instead to buy them, take them home and drink them up there. Wicked Ale got me started on dark beers. Then I found others I liked: Samuel Adams’ Boston Lager, Newcastle from England, Negra Modelo from Mexico, Sapporo from Japan, Warsteiner from Germany (not dark, but serious and non-sweet anyway). But I was in anguish. Everything—everything in life, I had lost it all. I was feeling pain—loneliness, despair. Any little temporary pleasure, mental or physical, might anesthetize the torment, at least for the moment. Video games, bowling alone at the bowling alley, movies, TV, alcohol.... I found myself getting a morbid thrill from reading Edgar Allan Poe stories. Bleh. Creepy. But I was enjoying them, for reasons unknown. I remember one, Ligeia, how it told of an old decaying city by the Rhine, creating a contrast to the beauty of a woman who came from there: It made me remember the surroundings in the country where I had been. Old, decaying, squalid—but then when you saw those beautiful girls who lived there and walked around through the city streets... mmmm, it just made the squalid surroundings seem somehow pleasant and beautiful, like the background surrounding them, the way the little bit of decaying background on the Mona Lisa painting is made to look pleasant just because of that black-haired, brown-eyed beauty being there in the foreground (even if it is a male transvestite disguised as a woman—if you can put that out of your mind for a moment). Sexaholics Anonymous was now a long-lost cause for me. I fell back into regular masturbation again—and lots of it—and I would have been embarrassed to go back there among them in that state. Uncontrollable. Four times a day, five times sometimes, one time I remember counting eight times—all in one day. I found myself buying pornographic magazines, taking them home, reading about the girls inviting you to party and have a great time with them, gazing at the glossy color photographs, the looks in the girls’ eyes, their lovely skin, breasts, torsos, bottoms, pubic areas.... I started using lotion on my hands to simulate the smooth, slippery feeling vaginal lubrication fluid would have. Finish once, and then not a minute or two later, and there it was erect again and ready to go. It just didn’t stop sometimes. One night I came home at about 11:00 or 12:00 midnight and I was feeling sexually aroused when I walked into the yard—I had been all the way home that night. I came around to the back door where I go in. It was a bright moonlit night. I walked serenely across the grass to the back wall. I had to pee, and at the same time, it was partially erect from having been in the state of arousal. My landlords were away on a trip. Memories were running through my mind, visual images of back when I was away overseas. Walks I had taken. Impoverished, decaying neighborhoods. Beautiful girls. Mmmm. I remembered the time when I took the walk and had the close call. I remembered the two girls sitting on the steps, one of them looking my way with that half-smile expression on her beautiful face. I imagined myself being there now. The moonlit wood-board back wall of the place was the wall beside their house. The back lawn was the dirt road. In my mind’s eye the two girls were sitting right there, on the little staircase of two or three steps, deep in conversation about whatever they were talking about, and there I was. ‘In the United States you don’t pee outside,’ came the words in my mind, ‘you pee in toilets inside bathrooms.’ ‘I know,’ I responded to my own thoughts. ‘But when you’re outside somewhere and you’re feeling this at the same time... and you’re remembering being there... dang!’ Feeling sexual arousal and urinating are two completely different functions. It isn’t any kinky thing about urine; it’s just the taking out of the penis and the imagining of females being present when you do—and having to pee is just your excuse for having to take the thing out, that’s all. Remembering that incident, I was saying to myself, ‘I could have.’ I had been only a micrometer from it. At one point the only thing blocking it from her view had been my hand covering it up. I shook my head. ‘Dang. I COULD have!’ Why was I flipping out that night? Was it just the depression? No, there are other factors involved too. It was a night of a full moon. When the moon, in its orbit, swings close to the earth and the sight of it reaches us in such a way that it appears to be full, it has an effect on the earth’s gravity. When this happens, the pressure and other measurements in the air tighten and put more tension on the brains and emotions of humans and animals. People who suffer from any kinds of mental or emotional disorders are at their weakest during that time. And if an emotional disorder is connected to a psychosexual dysfunction, and if the person who suffers from the dysfunction finds himself to be sexually aroused at a time that coincides with the time of the full moon, then in some cases it may cause the condition to flare up right then. It’s not just silly medieval legends about wolfmen. There is some amount of scientifically documented fact about the phenomenon, corroborated by police statistics, to be able to conclude that some kinds of mental and emotional deviant behaviors sometimes do surface and become intensified during—and due to—the presence of the full moon. Imagining the two girls sitting there, with one of them looking my way, I unzipped my pants, pulled it right out, pointed it against the wall and started going. What a feeling. It was stiff and hard in my hand with the image in my mind of them sitting there watching—all the while bearing in mind that this was a realistic fantasy, that it COULD have really happened, and it would have been just like that: erect. Dang! As wicked a thought as it was, I couldn’t help thinking how fun it would be to be back there now and... mmm! Oh brother, what a field day I would have, I couldn’t help thinking, if I were there sometime when I was on one of these down-and-out trip-outs. And at that moment, there wasn’t so much motivation to be trying to straighten my thoughts all out. (Now don’t take that to mean that at every full moon every flasher flashes; don’t be so over-simplistic in your understanding of human and animal behavior. Don’t blame it ALL on the moon. Part of it wells up from within the individual’s emotions and feral instincts. IF it occurs during a time that coincides with a full moon, SOMETIMES it may intensify the condition; IF the sex drive happens to burn right then; IF the emotional rush surges up right then; IF the endorphins flow onto the brain right then—and IF it all, or any substantial portion of it, happens to coincide at the same time as the full moon.) Link: Post a response
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(Originally posted November 7, 2003, 7:03 pm)
I began collecting my meager unemployment checks, but I wasn’t succeeding at finding another job. I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering... the character of my beloved... her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low musical language made their way into my heart.... I believe that I met her first and most frequently in some large, old, decaying city near the Rhine....
