The Floor. And What Now?

When I have nothing left in life, which happens every few years or so, revolution cycle occluded from my conscious periphery but ever in place, I walk.

I walk out of my way to pass the time and accumulate sun milk and asphalt pheromones and salute the neighborhood cats, just so I can stimulate the melatonin nestled in the nether folds of my brains, so I can sleep through the night.

A good night's sleep gives me the strength to try and tie again all the tiny, frayed strings that make up the foundation of a life livable. The strings meet in fragile knots that titter under the weight of EXPERIENCE.

It's been a long time since I've walked. Like, really walked. Like, walked to the precipice and stuck a nostril over and took a hard whiff. Every time I wandered out too far these last few months, my (now former) boyfriend would call me back. His deep, backthroat notes cut through the smog and to create an aural trail for me to retrace. Love is a ground, only when you look too close, you see the tiny threads it's thatched from.

Similarly, I haven't written in a long while, though I also write more than ever. As a reporter, I think in pricks and jabs – one sentence paragraphs trimmed of any winter weight. My words don't walk any more, they are hurled from one place to the next.

Hopefully, in the absence of a floor (love), I can learn to walk for length again. And my words can learn to wade. 

Or: per - I - pat(h)etic. 

  

Some Visiting Thoughts

Some visiting thoughts, slid off the brow. Autumn has come on -- I can hear the weary steps, echoing in sighs. Just sleep, sweet lids, let the Santa Anas sing you an arid lullaby.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's just that funny way, when habit comes to preside wholly, laterally.

I've been lying down a long time now, watching the sun set through the window slats.

The world slides out like a silk sheet: royal purple and clotted brown, or something.

Sometimes I think about climbing to the top, collecting the material in a bundle under my arms,

Standing with chin up and chest out and a bundle of dust: the world.

But I open my eyes and it's morning and my morning is 2pm and that means my eyes close again.

I think: is love only a wool blanket? Is life only love?

When I stand up to consider this, the world goes fuzzy and gray.

My mind is fighting de-lateralization.

My sentences are fighting paragraph structures.

They all try to clamor for the punch. They all stride like tiny, proud swords.

I try to gather them in my arm and my bundle breaks loose, dust flowing windwards: the world gone west.

***

Now money comes in.

I write words and a man puts a check on my desk.

He places the paper invoice on my desk upside down so no one can see how many numbers are there.

Sufficient ones, I suppose. I don't really look.

Money subsists on time, I know clearly now. It must be fed like any other organism.

I am less free, which means I have to think less, which means I'm ultimately more content.

Thought feeds on uncertainty, skepticism.

Throw thought and money in the same cage and they will both die of starvation, unable to help one another.

***

Isabella was in the habit of wearing yellow.

At present, she wore her yellow in the kitchen, marble tops beaming at her beauty.

Her facial muscles taut, she looked down to consider her fingers.

The nails were painted the faintest shade of pink.

“Hmmm..” she said.

Everything was in place, like it would last that way for infinity to come.

Her black curls wound around her ears, whispering reassurances.

“You're beautiful,” the biggest ringlet said.

“Yessss, and pert as a bird!” Another added.

A small window gave guise to a small plot of grass, green as day.

As if enchanted, a white bunny hopped by. Clouds streaked slowly across the landscape.

The world had become a snow globe, protected by a thick layer of lucite.

Isabella opened a drawer and took out her pair of stainless steel kitchen scissors.

She slid her slight fingers into her black mass of curls and cut,

Shedding black snow across the marble table top.

We live our life as a one act,

Always the same backdrop,

Cardboard cutout trees and the like.

Well, it's our life and our love, ever fragile, lingers,

Like a styrofoam bird,

Perched on the rafters,

Chirping toxic sing-a-longs,

The audience sits rapt,

Transfixed by the anomaly, the unlikeliness, the absurdity,

“He with...?”

“And her... She...?

They paddle out phrases, ducks in a pond.

And we lay, still as landscapes.

Twisting out shirt tails around our fingers,

Letting our mind roll into knots.   

Poems From Uncomfortable Days

These poems are from the back-hands of days gone and good riddance. Let them steep, without names, in this inky landfill.

((It's just that gutless pang when love comes to visit

That feeling of petals and crocodile skin

When love stoops to whisper

That everything before was a whisper

That all those tender looks before were just the breath between scenes

“Look up,” it exhales into your ears.

Love is really a creeping thing

Moss behind the tree trunk's face

Shading shade like a mother's thigh

Pouring oil into a rosemary salve

Pouring oil across a bare chest

It isn't bricks or a scale off a butterfly's wing

It's a sticky flame that laps behind your lids

While you sleep and think of other things

Look up, and do it truly

To a different kind of condensation

Breathing through your heart)))

= = =

You can't hide in that flesh

Its moldy surface will give way

To the soft Kleenex underneath

It also happens to be my flesh.

Yes, that dirty old bath mat.

That threadbare, musty rug of skin

Can't wear it out,

Because, be honest --

What will the neighbors think?

Little white soft spots give way to bigger tears

Tears that turn to black, fuzzy tears.

Yes, you've tasted them.

On expired English muffins,

Between gymsweated toes.

And, yes, ever in circles on my back.

Growing outward to cave in.

That seems to be the typical pattern of decay:

False linear progression –

An up, up and away type of excitement,

Followed by a hollow inversion,

Feet above nose

Nose above God.

It's just a funny sort of cartwheel.

You must have seen time lapse videos

Of a deer or zebra carcass being consumed by bugs,

Insects and parasites and friends of sorts.

How the abdomen expands

Until it bursts in crescendo

Typical to the symphony at hand.

My deep red cherries,

Molded from without

My cherries,

Breathing plastic

Warm screams

Did you look though?

At all the papers

On the ground

Molded too

Wild memories

Strewn about

Photos and notebooks

Wild abandon

Leering

The past that forgets the past is happy

Or damned

Or nothing

Because the past dreams too

Of the days between

Of dust on the window sill

Of the time when you were very small

And action potential radiated from your fingers

There aren't any people anymore

There are only ways to avoid them

Back alleys and cherry pits

I have no direction anymore

I let the wind spin me until I'm dizzy

And then I walk forward

Cutting the breeze with no intention but my nose

Intentions dream of the past

But the past is sleeping

Intentions curl up in my abdomen

My adipose tissue blossoms into cherries

And: behold! A deep feast for deep mouths

Mouths dream of a dry place

A dry place dreams of making love

Love dreams of a way out

Even dreams dream, of fucking their mothers.

Happy Birthday to Me: An Exercise in Splosh Fiction

It wasn't my birthday. Or was it? It certainly felt like my birthday.

When I awoke, a slat of a sunbeam was shining through my window. It tickled my nose and pulled my irises east – to a bough speckled with festive birds, chirping and laughing. My alarm went off and I sprung out of bed and hopped downstairs, ready to embrace each and every forsaken soul. But first, I thought, I must check the mail.

Lo and behold: a yellow envelope. A letter from a friend bearing an embrace separated by a sea or so. I held the letter close to my breast and threw open my front door to inhale the nascent birthday morn'.

'Yes, it must be my birthday', I thought, perhaps aloud. Blueberry sunshine and nymph breath and iridescent particles. I was with the world and the world was with me. I was with the world and I closed my eyes and thought about poached eggs and fleece throws and other birthday thoughts.

A ring – the telephone.

“Yello?”

“Hello Steven, how are you?”

A thousand tiny pink images flashed shiny in my mind. A call from Melissa. It absolutely truly must be my birthday.

“Oh, I'm grand, Melissa.” The images formed a point and pricked my coccyx. “It's my birthday.”

“Oh Steven! How wonderful! I always thought your birthday was in January!”

“For some reason, people always make that mistake.”

Melissa laughed a distinguished string of pearls into the receiver. “Oh Steven, please! You don't have to try to spare me from embarrassment – I am used to it. I am always thinking mixed things.

Well then, very much a happy birthday to you. We must celebrate”

“Thank you. But really, I'm not the celebrating kind.”

“We really must. We just must.”

“Well, the kettle is boiling.”

“Goodbye Steven. Ring me soon and let's celebrate in high style.”

“Of course, Melissa.”

The phone clicked and I clung to the tips of her straight black hair that I'm sure was crushed against the receiver. Then I turned my mind. The room was still glistening. There was only one thing to do – bake a cake.

Everything in the bowl and two yellow yolks smiling back at me. I was wearing trousers and a sports coat. Birthdays are fancy. I used my forearm to stir the mixture happy. It yellowed until it glowed in the absence of its egg eyes. Life is easier when you don't see things coming. I pulled up my sock. It was grey with a green stripe. Birthdays are times for unexpected socks. I took a pinch of cinnamon and spread it on my forearm. But it was Melissa's forearm. I was aroused and the head of my penis pressed against my zipper. For some reason I laughed. Birthdays make me giddy.

350 degrees kissed my brow as I put my cake in the oven to coagulate. In the meantime, I set to mixing up some caramel toffee frosting. Brown sugar and eggs and milk wept into a curdle; This was going to be a sticky affair.

As often happens on charmed days, days of grand beginnings and infinite action potential, things were falling into place like there was One Way. A Goofy Movie was practically fingering the DVD player. In it went. Onto to the plush recliner I went, toffee frosting in hand. Off of my body my pants were. My smile was, as it were, irrevocably wide and ever planted. If a few drops of sticky toffee gooey caramel sludge drippled on to my half-hard cock, who could fault me on this blessed day? The viscous substance inched too slowly around the circumference of my cock. So slow that it invited interruption –

A knock – a guest.

“Hello? Steven? Hellllo!” – Melissa.

My pants were up and at 'em. I felt the sweet goo spread against and into the cotton fiber of my underwear. As reliable as dawn itself, the first birthday mess.

“Steven? Helllo! You must be in there somewhere.”

“Yes, Melissa, I'm here. One moment.”

An open door – Melissa.

“Really, you shouldn't have come. I never celebrate –”

“Exactly. That's why I came. Because you wouldn't have.”

A ring – the timer.

Involuntarily – “My cake!”

“Oh, how nice.” She said, dark purple aura dripping, staining my carpet.

* * *

She set the table while I busied myself over the frosting. The back of my knife grazed the top of the cake – her inner thigh – and created a flat golden plane. My mother taught me how to bake. She raised me in the kitchen.

“It looks lovely, Steven, almost professional. Did you go to culinary school?”

“No, I had a mother.”

Melissa didn't laugh. She didn't even look like she thought about laughing out of courtesy.

“Steven?”

“Yes, Melissa?”

“Where is the restroom?”

“Just down the hall and to the left.”

“Thank you. Excuse me.” She eyed the cake, squinting into saccharine. “Exquisite.” And padded off to the bathroom to fix her lipstick.

It was done, in that birthday way. Two tiers and light brown, the cake shone like the birds on the morning bough. A man of my age can't dally in petit fours or sugar statue accoutrements. I edged the top and bottom circumferences with a modest white buttercream piping. Melissa was lingering in her gone. I wondered if she was contemplating the prospect of sleeping with me out of a mixture of pity and birthday-induced affection.

I put the cake on her seat. The impending moment was born the minute I opened my eye to the slanted radiance of false rebirth. I could see her dress billowing out as her pale buttocks made gentle contact with my cake. I could see it in perfect birthday clarity.

Melissa padded back, lips curled into cat whiskers. She didn't even look down, She looked up at me with down eyelids as she bent her body and descended in a formal pivot. Then her eyes widened into a scream and I felt the sticky frosting insinuate itself into all of her feminine crevices, catching black hairs and moist. I felt my cock harden and my hand felt my cock harden. Watching spongy chunks fly laterally like a symphony, I came hard in sympathetic crescendo.

“Happy birthday to me.” I whispered.    

My Friend, Tony

Tony lives in a tree top, surrounded by old movie posters. They are tacked to the leaves with vinyl adhesive. They shine like Pyrite.

From up there it's hard to tell he's so short. 5'2 but square and sturdy. It always looks like he's about to spring up and take your nose between his forefinger and middle finger. Of course he would never do that – Tony's a nice guy.

Tony's the perfect wash-up. He transitioned from bit actor to experimental film maker to video clerk to my new best friend. In other words, from glitter to stone to corner to turquoise.

We are sitting in his living room, getting high: he on the weed, me on the sauce. He's mostly quiet and I fill the gaping silences with chatter. The room becomes me as I talk about me. Sometimes he talks about himself, but the room is still me, my conversation 10 minutes ago.

“I'm going to fuck you,” he says, clear blue eyes eyes lowered. “You don't think so. I know it. That's what the other girls said; but you will.”

Tony and I walk, while I talk. The street becomes me as the familiars give me their regards.

“I fucked that guy.” I say.

“Who?” Tony asks, eyes lowered again.

“The valet guy. The Afghani guy, I fucked him. It was just a one-time thing. I used to bike by all of the time and he would chat with me. I knew from the first few meetings or so that we were going to fuck. He kept asking me to come over and one day I said yes. On the car ride over he told me about his two kids.”

“You're so fucking dirty,” he says. Eyes as low as ever.

We walk and I talk and we laugh. I like that he thinks he's going to fuck me. It makes me feel sexy even though I know I won't do it. He's short and a stoner and 46 – all of the things that don't get my socks around my ankles, if you know what I mean.

“You know, all of this talk... about this shit. Fucking that guy. The fetish, the BDS stuff. It just turns me on more. The more you talk about it, the more turned on I get.”

Tony blinks a lot. He blinks hard, and lets blue crystals flash for seconds at a time.

In a parallel universe, I might fuck Tony. I might have fucked him in this universe, but now I can't. Now that he put a bounty on my cunt.

                                                                                  * * *

We are swinging from the tree tops but really we are both sinking into the couch. The Twilight Zone plays in the background while he talks about his bout with cancer and I talk about the STDs I've had and dodged. I eat his crackers, while he hits his pipe every 20 minutes or so – as if I'm the stoned one. He lowers his eyes at me – as if I'm the only freak in the room.   

My Valentine's Day: I Fucked My Bitch on the Kitchen Floor of the Dungeon and Then I Ate an Omelette.

I feel like the title pretty much says it all, but I'll expound for my own rumination's sake. Nobody asked me out on Valentine's Day. I waited and waited for my main squeeze-of-the-moment-- lo and behold, an ex-client from the dungeon-- to muster the guff to suggest something or other. But, nothing. Hung up, but held at bay by excessive pride, I wanted to work and spend the day fabricating meaning with the sick, sad souls of the BDSM romantixx. My boss sent word about a noon-time session with one of my regulars: I willed the work and there it was.

On the off-chance a sexy encounter emerged from the ether, I made sure to dress for sex. Thigh-high lace tights and one green velvet dress later, I was out the door and cruising south down the metro towards Hollywood. My session went as well as possible-- we watched Brazilian scat videos, he dressed up in a slinky black dress, and I fucked him with my massive black strap-on. Whilst soulfully pegging him, my dear slave looked lovingly up at me: “You look so cute while you're fucking.” I've never felt so emasculated.

Afterwards, I walked about town and contemplated my solitary situation. Up to Whole Foods and down to Starbucks, I thought about the meaning of initiative and monolithic commercialism. After all, I am a Starbucks to the dear slaves who curl up at my calves. A house of unshakeable bigness, security, and consistent quality to the littleons looking for a vinyl teet and a violent caress. My boss warned me that in order to get an inch with a truly submissive man, I would have to use that oft-occluded power of Female initiative. A force frequently regarded as the pathetic wile of weathered cougars. No matter; I gave in. The truth was, I was at the dungeon, and my slave lives but a few blocks away. In the name of proximal bitches and the power to enact, I summoned him.

And come he did. While I was lounging on a leather divan, drinking too much cheap wine and trying to read Marquis De Sade, but only stringing together one sentence per minute. I had willed work and now I had willed this amorous gallivant; I finally understood the real ire of manhood, the nature of conquest over the cagey and effervescent. His self-imposed restraint had been driving me mad for weeks, keeping me up at night, making me touch myself at the idea of overpowering and penetrating the dusk that shrouded him. And then suddenly he was there, ready and willing to unfurl.

In order to mitigate my fury at being cornered into initiative (though I was deep in it and enjoying it), I made plans to go out with some friends in the evening and leave only a small window for condensed romance, or whatever one would call this insanity. We chatted, and I chattered inanities as I tend to do when I really feel electrified by another. Somehow we drifted to the kitchen, still exchanging pure emptiness while positioned close, traction ensured by the red, unimaginably sullied shag carpet under our feet. I distinctly remembered thinking, as I reached over to press play on the CD player, that the soft granite wall I erected around out intimacy would not be broken tonight. But then I was on the carpet, under a body much longer than mine, and surrounded by the ghosts of all the souls I had beat mercilessly right where I lay.

It was simple, as sex tends to be. Even all dressed up in latex and Japanese candle wax, intercourse is a rather frank act. One minute we had never had sex, and, several minutes later, we had. I could already feel all of the pent up madness I had born for the last few weeks ebb and subside. The saga of us isn't over, but my conquest had been fulfilled. Running an hour late for my other evening plans, I cuddled on the quick and hustled him out.

When I was driving towards Mel's Diner in search of the cheesiest, meanest omelette I could find-- to replenish my pallor from fucking my bitch-- I realized that I hadn't witnessed Valentine's Day in LA for about 5 years. A strange palpable passion hung muskily over the streets; drama haunted every corner. I saw people crying, embracing more tightly than normal. Bitches were snapping their fingers (presumably at the rude idea of love). At Mel's a big, ugly Latino man was draped on a gaunt blonde: love was in their eyes. In fact, for the first time ever, love was laying heavy in Los Angeles.

I made it home at 3:30am, feeling glutted and victorious. The omelette wasn't amazing, but it was mean. I couldn't say my bitch was securely in my pocket, but I could say that I had wanted something and taken it-- roughly. When I opened my computer, one of my Indian employers (I've been doing some content writing, yee haw!) immediately g chatted me:

“happy vday dear”

“happy valentine's day to you, too”

“can you write about cheap car insurance”

“sure thing. It's 4am here but i'll get on it first thing tomorrow”

“yeah, u are up very early. do you have an exam or something?”

“something like that”

“can we skype dear? I want to see ur face. ur very prety mam. ”

And that's how my night ended, with $15 more in my Paypal account and a creepy transcontinental cyber chat invitation. I politely declined the latter.   

The Sessions, a Review: Optometrist Recommended, FDR Approved.

Most of my optometrists have been somber folk, wizened over time, I assume, by traumatic exposure to eye goop, cornea tears, and severe tear duct malfunctions. Dr. Wax was different.

After arriving late to my original appointment, I was given to Dr. Wax. Dr. Wax was a different sort, of man and of optometrist. His voice was full of wonder, he "waxed" on about pop findings that affected him, like a recent History channel special about how state borders are decreed.

He asked, "I mean, do you have any idea how state borders are decided??"

I wanted to engage with Dr. Wax, with his overflowing earnestness, "By natural geological formations?"

"Wow. You have no idea how these borders are formed. Just fascinating! You have to watch this show!"

Then the conversation turned; it became more personal.

"So, what are you doing with your life? Do you work? Do you study? Do you study and wish you worked?" He asked, while shining a thin beam of light over the curvature of my lens. The questions and the light penetrated beyond the retinal ganglion.

"I'm studying for my GREs. For, uh, psychology. Yes, for psychology. I want to do clinical work."

"Ahhhh!" A chord in Dr. Wax's harp-strung soul was struck. "Psychology is a most magnificent field! Have you seen The Sessions?"

I hadn't.

"Oh, you really must see it! I just read an article about the woman they interviewed for the movie-- a sex.. surrogate-- who they based Helen Hunt's character on. You know, to figure out how the character really ticks."

Anyways, a long conversation about The Sessions, sex surrogates, and various strings of letters in different sizes ensued. I wanted a piece of his wonder because I'm tired of my own tired wonder. So I dragged my jaded-on-recent-movies ass to the theatre, alone on a Friday night, RE The Lovelessness of my previous entry, and watched The Sessions with no context (no trailer, plot summary, review, etc.), save the awe of Dr. Wax.

The good news is that my eyes improved, from -2.50 to -2.25! Oh, and The Sessions was a brilliant film.

***

Well, while I can imagine some of my friends criticizing the movie for its many uber dramatic plot developments-- it is a movie about a Devout Catholic cripple trying to lose his virginity to a sex surrogate/therapist (Helen Hunt), after all. Yet, I felt I wasn't crying enough for the first half of the movie, given the melodramatic premise. And that I was laughing far too much. Yes, laughing aloud and alone with free abandon!

But, oh mama, the tears eventually did come, and, so I left overwhelmingly satisfied (agenda fulfilled**). Logically, the waterworks started later in the movie, when the characters had been developed and I had grown fond of their company. The Sessions really is a movie of excellent development, artful crescendo, and masterful acting.

The flick opens with an odd scene, where the protagonist, Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes) graduates from Berkeley in (I think) the late 70's. The only thing is, O'Brien is confined to a gurney, and glides across the graduation stage with ghostlike expediency, draped in a black gown. His cap is hanging off the post of his reclining motorized hospital bed. It is like the worst David Foster Wallace nightmare coming true, and I grimaced imagining impending sexual scenes that would involve this pancake of a man.

Boy did I misjudge the sexy-potential of an iron-lung lifer, albeit played by a Hollywood actor! When we get to know O'Brien, a poet and journalist by trade, he is charming and shameless in just that way that people who have lived lives like A Series of Unfortunate Events seem to often adopt. The Sessions deserves a watch just for the jarring realism of O'Brien's performance, who kind of reminded me of a Catholic Woody Allen. Of course, I must also tip my hat to Ben Lewin (writer/director), who was able to capture the voice of the real Mark O'Brien (whose life the movie is based on) and his written words, without creating an insufferable pretentious atmosphere that is so common in movies created under the guise of an author's work.  

And, of course, O'Brien's mild kinkiness also helped endear the movie to me ;) Although, for being a movie framed entirely by The Catholic Church, represented rather one-dimensionally by Father Brendan (William H. Macy), there is little to do about Jesus-related sex hang ups.

Cheryl, the sex surrogate/therapist at one point makes an audio note that O'Brien has masochistic fantasies, probably related to his strong faith, and guilt stemming from the negative effect of his disabled condition on others. Fair. But this brief audio note is really all we hear or see pertaining to these masochistic fantasies. O'Brien's enthusiasm and insistence that Cheryl achieve orgasm during their therapy sessions seems to stem from his sensitivity rather than suppressed submissive side.

At one point, O'Brien describes part of a session with Cheryl to Father Brendan, his main confidante, loosely along these lines, "She either forgot to close the door or didn't care to. The sound of urine and ripping of toilet paper was so arousing. It was so intimate. By the time she came back to bed, my penis was so hard." However, it is clear that O'Brien isn't lusting after a golden shower, he just really can and does appreciate the closeness of cohabitation that most people, people who have seen many women come and go from their lavatories, take for granted.

So, where's the kink? you ask. Well, besides the fact that one of the last scenes does feature O'Brien offhandedly relating his slightly off-center sexual relations with his latest and last love and lover, Susan (Robin Weigert) to Father Brendan, "Oh yeah, she adores me. Let's me do anything I want, and I can get kinda kinky", the real kink is the sexualization of O'Brien himself.

O'Brien/Hawkes' body is startlingly erotic. All of the women in the movie (except maybe his first love interest, Amanda) seem genuinely emotionally and sexually attracted to him. It would be easy to attribute this to the fact that John Hawkes is just a studly, limbful guy playing a gimp, but I don't think that's it. In fact, I don't even really think Hakwes is all that objectively hawt. There is something about the fearless sexuality of O'Brien's character, his fixation on women and love, despite (Note to self: reviewing The Sessions requires a lot of italics) his physical lot, that kind of turned me on.

Supine on a gurney, sucking air periodically from a portable tank, hands contorted, and sporting a paisley button-down, it is hard to initially consider O'Brien a sex object. And yet, throughout the movie, he becomes one. By the end of the film, when he's hitting on Susan, a volunteer at a hospital he is taken to after a near-death experience, he's almost a ladies man. She asks him if he wants her to come visit him, to which he snarkily replies, "Do you have a boyfriend? Do you have a husband? Do you have a significant other whom you are devoted to?" When she answers in the negative to all, he completes his suave play, "Then please come visit me as much as you can."

I don't think the positive sexualization of handicapped people was intentional (or maybe it was?), but it certainly made me question my own sexual attitude toward the disabled. Before last night, my only interaction with the idea of crippled sex was making fun of paraplegic porn. In fact, right before the movie I was texting with a friend about the existence of dating sites for gimps. Looking at the way Cheryl looked at O'Brien-- and I know it's just a movie-- made me wonder if I could get off on someone who couldn't get up (but could get it up :) ) I found myself uncontrollably intrigued by the deep curve of O'Brien/Hawkes' rip cage...

Anyway, this is leading into my final point. The true triumph of The Sessions, in my opinion, is that it allows a handicapped protagonist to live with love as his primary motivation, rather than running a marathon or saving the world. Many marginalized groups have had their sexual/romantic rights vindicated in films, but I have yet to see a good portrayal of such for the severely disabled.

It has always seemed to me that there is an expectation of the disabled, particularly physically disabled/mentally sound, like O'Brien, to operate entirely altruistically. In The Sessions, it is all about O'Brien (even though he is sexually attuned to his lovers' needs). He is a bit self-centered, needy, demanding-- all of his conversations with Father Brendan are about him and his sexual quest-- and I think that's pretty cool.

FDR would be proud.


**(((I should add that, in addition to fulfilling the will of Dr. Wax, I had my own agenda. Unlike many movie-goers who trot on to the theaters to laugh off the gray dust they accumulated on their shoulders and souls during the week, I go to the movies to cry. Seriously, to shed tears, not just "feel emotional".


My working theory is that because I graduated with honors from The School of Hard Knocks, I've learned to take things in stride; I very rarely lose control of my emotions in the midst of a real-life situations. Cinema is my locus for catharsis, where I let all my stifled "FUCKKKKS!!" seep out, liquified and compartmentalized in the womb of the theatre. But only when I'm alone. In company, my back stays straight and the "FUCKKKKS!!" remained broiled in my gut.

With my menstrual cycle in full swing and my mind consumed by worry over applications and job interviews, my agenda was bolded. In fact, I pretearjaculated during a terrible-looking preview for a movie from the makers of The Pursuit of Happyness. So, the fact that The Sessions is so emotional and heart felt works in its favor for the likes of me, while it might turn off mushier, diasffected folk. Okokokikowtimeforthereview)))