The recluse
I am struggling with feelings of overexposure. Like — obviously. Have you read my writing, lately?
I keep deleting and undeleting places where people might access this page, while growing a list in my phone of topics that are off-limits to my .net readership. The hope is: perhaps by clarifying my off-limits topics and/or self-imposed publication bans, that I might find it more comfortable to critique urban development, and you might feel comfortable subscribing, instead of hitting refresh or whatever is happening. There are a lot of people reading these posts — like, a lot. I am struck by the impact of my little .net project, compared to academic work, where it takes me sometimes years to see my ideas in print. So, I thought I might save some of you time, too, by being clear about what I do and don’t, or will and won’t, be writing about here on norainbows.net
This is a post about trauma. First a short fragment, and then a list.
Today, to start the morning, “I wake alone in a woman’s room I hardly know,” — I’m getting so old. I wanted this, I thought. Instead: Immediately, I hate myself. I get dressed quietly, and prepare to step into the dimly lit February air. Expertly—and in a way that feels really gender-congruent—I fold my belt into my open jacket pocket, planning to put it on once safely out of earshot. I don’t want to forget my belt. Seems I need it to keep my pants on. That’s something I’d actually quite like to do. But more pressingly: it’s a really loud belt buckle. Because I don’t know how you’d react to the noise (and because belt noise carries social and/or traumatic connotations), I now have to leave even faster. I’m not going to wait around, beltless, for you to wake up. I have time for coffee (lots, actually; I don’t drink coffee, but that isn’t the point) — I am leery of the connection. We did a basic consent check, no personal trauma history. I have to do it the other way around: connect, before I wake up in your bed. Perhaps even connect in your bed. I am filled with a rush of something uncomfortable and confusing. You’d have to tie me in place for that to happen, I laugh quietly to myself. Thankfully there is always humour to salve my gross discomfort with intimacy.
For the first time in my life, I realize my sense of urgency is manufactured. I want to stay, but now, don’t know the sequence. I do know that I have to do things differently next time, if there ever is one. I have to slow down, but people don’t want to be microdosed until I to crawl inside their ribs and make a true home.
The cold air hurts, but the morning sun is hitting the still-up big moon in the nicest way as she makes her exit.
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I say aloud, feeling ashamed and disgusted with myself. Rounding the corner, I try to pick up speed, but my movement feels constricted, my body sore from good sex without connection, but stiff from a short sleep. I suck — even sober. In some ways, it’s nice to sort out that it’s me who is the problem, at least in part. I might never go out again.
I think I get it now: I don’t want to be “demiromantic” but I am. It sucks for me, and the lovely human still sleeping with her door unlocked, or any number of people who could be her. I wish them no harm. I don’t want to be like this — I wish I could rewind and settle down. Instead, I am walking across the city of Halifax looking saddle sore. This feels more like a disability, than an identity.
Desperate not to let my cold, constricted movement collapse into stillness, I remember that Berlant and Edelman said:
“Sex, though subject to the pressures of legal sanction, social judgment, unconscious drives, and contradictory desires, holds out the prospect of discovering new ways of being and of being in the world.” (2014, vii-viii)
I need to learn to slow it down and grey it out in a world that seems to demand meeting and marrying — or at least, that’s how it feels — and has felt. I feel left out from something as significant as love. My writing attends to sex as a mode of social relation, because I attend to sex as a mode of social relation. I write about sex, and sometimes even have sex, to avoid writing and/or thinking about a great number of things.
Walking home to reclaim my virginity again, I realize that it has claimed me. I need to close the gap on sex and attachment. For some, my writing will be unbearably proximate, or unbelievably academic — too personal, too intimate. To me, it’s not nearly personal enough.
Meanwhile, there are some things I can’t or won’t write about. What’s a trauma history?
#MeToo type details.
The content of my nightmares.
My group home tattoo experience.
Things that could be subject to actual publication bans, like: specifics of my involvement in ongoing sexual assault trial(s) and/or investigation(s).
Details about my ongoing participation in complaints processes, including human rights, professional, or otherwise.
The process through which my ex became wanted on a warrant in Nova Scotia despite having never visited the province.
The degree of unsafety I live with.
My hopes for the future (if any).
Generally, how boring I find topping; and now also, unfortunately, frightening bottoming.
Like my wavelength, this off-limits list is in progress. And, it overlaps with my wavelength.
We know more than we did last week.
