Correction vs. Condescension

"How was your dinner last night?"

"Well, it was okay, but i think there was something wrong with the hummus i bought."

"So, what did you do?"

"I ate the rest, unhappily."

I'd left her alone to tend to herself one evening, while i was out with a friend. This already sounds like my girl is incapable of autonomy, and quite frankly, that is categorically untrue. For many years, she managed her own life, finances, her wardrobe more successfully than most young ladies her age. The level of responsibility she demonstrated shames most folks 20 years her senior.

"You did what?!?"

Her posture drooped. Her face turned from me.

"Go get it out of the fridge." Fetching the leftovers of the pasty garbanzo dip, she handed the container to me. I could tell just by the bulge of the lid that the internal contents were rotten. An acrid hiss sprayed into the air as i lifted the lid, mirroring her diminishing confidence in her decision to soldier through with the slop the night before.

Rather than bore the reader with the seven bars of conversation wherein i demand in demonic perplexities why she would allow herself to eat spoiled food instead of lifting herself off of her keister and marching to the befouling store, i'll fast forward to the lesson learned.

*ahem*

The lesson, that is, that i learned.

She is my girl. My responsibility. Her safety, comfort, behavior, appearance are my responsibility. As mentioned earlier, this is not because she is incapable of handling these responsibilities, but because we have both found that we want this arrangement. I think of my girl as one of the most intelligent individuals i know, and for her to willingly grant me the gift of marshaling over her speaks not only of her trust in me, but her intellectual acuity. However, what i said, and more importantly, how i said it, made her feel stupid.

Instead of feeling corrected, informed, she felt incapable, inept and imbecilic. I did not practice any restraint on my tone or my irritation. I let it fall freely into the air and obtusely onto her chest. It is never my intention to make her feel stupid. That is errantly irresponsible, and not worthy of the very responsibility she delicately places into my hand, everyday, as we walk together to our respective day jobs.

Keats

From Lamia: Part I

...Lycius from death awoke into amaze,
To see her still, and singing so sweet lays;
Then from amaze into delight he fell
To hear her whisper woman's lore so well;
And every word she spake entic'd him on
To unperplex'd delight and pleasure known.
Let the mad poets say whate'er they please
Of the sweets of Fairies, Peris, Goddesses,
There is not such a treat among them all,
Haunters of cavern, lake and waterfall,
As a real woman, lineal indeed
From Pyrrha's pebbles or old Adam's seed.
Thus gentle Lamia judg'd, and judg'd aright,
That Lycius could not love in half a fright,
So threw the goddess off, and won his heart
More pleasantly by playing woman's part,
With no more awe than what her beauty gave,
That, while it smote, still guaranteed to save.

Nature withheld Cassandra in the Skies

Nature withheld Cassandra in the Skies
For meet adornment a full thousand years;
She took their cream of Beauty, fairest dies
And shaped and tinted her above all peers;
Love meanwhile held her dearly with his wings
And underneath their shadow charm'd her eyes
To such a richness, that the cloudy Kings
Of high Olympus uttered slavish sighs -
When i beheld her on the Earth descend
My heart began to burn - and only pains
They were my pleasures - they my sad Life's end -
Love pour'd her Beauty into my warm veins -

From Ode On a Grecian Urn

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.


This is real poetry, the words of John Keats, a man i first read over two decades ago. These three passages, although not the only ones of his, are singlehandedly responsible for honing my approach to the female creation. I remember reading these words and reacting to them as if they were a long lost friend. They completed so many abbreviated thoughts and ideas that swam around in my head. This man, who'd written a century and a half before me, had enunciated my voice.

Recently, i had the wonderful opportunity to visit with a friend who i hadn't seen or spoken to in over three years. She, in the wonderful parallel circumstance of getting to see her again, gave me a surprise gift. I had lent her my well-used paperback copy of Keat's poetry, and she had returned it to me. I'd really missed the book, actually thinking that i'd lost it. He'd aged well, and the dog-eared pages quickly led me to these above poems. Reading them over brought a warm remembrance of the young boy who, when looking for a companion, found one named John.

The bottomless pit

I have a bountiful libido that has provided consistent drive for me to explore the limits, depths and extents of my fleshly desires. I take the pragmatic approach by saying that it hasn't always existed at the current high elevation. Occasionally, the drive for sex resembled an arid and empty desert landscape. But, mostly, it has rushed through my veins with a velocity that thins my blood and makes my head swim.

I masturbate, on average, two to three times a day. Rare are those days that i exceed five orgasmic combustions, but even rarer are those dark days when i don't have any. I anticipate over time that this will wane as my years progress, but that it hasn't at my plum age and, even more shockingly, increased with each passing birthday puzzles me. I'm not offering complaint about my heightened sexual hunger - i'd be foolish to protest about such things, for larger problems loom for others. I simply don't understand what contributes to my growing horniness, especially when conventional wisdom extols that i'd blown by my prime years ago. In the past, i viewed my voraciousness as a by-product of having few interpersonal outlets for my particular sexuality. The longer the lid remained tightened on the pressure cooker, the more kinetic energy that built up in the gathering steam. When i did find a willing partner for exploring my perversions, instead of a reduction of trapped vapor, the devilish synapses of my brain took this as encouragement to boil even more water.

As i tried to further understand the seismic activity of my loin, i theorized that the frenetic activity derived from a preponderance of boredom in the other factors of my life - aka idle hands. Perhaps my social interactions failed to stimulate, and thus, i turned my energy towards carnal contemplation. Maybe a dull turn in my career sent a spike in my fantasy generators? Fine, this is logical enough of an explanation, but what wasn't so logical was the fact that during the most exciting, invigorating, stressful and draining periods of my working life, my sexual radar sent out an even wider and more amplified signal. I was bound to run into one cutie with telegraphic eyelashes, morse-coding her heated vulnerability and uncertainty over to whom she should offer it. All i needed was that perplexed perspiration to bring my otherwise occupied boys to attention.

I don't have an answer to the question of my barometric libido's origins. Mysteries like these may not grace the decipherer with great blessings, so i do not emphatically seek a solution. Instead, i abide, make do, and, mostly endure periods of time (sometimes weeks-long) where my productivity gets short-circuited by the sweaty palms, abbreviated breaths and radiating heat from my groin caused by an overactive sensual fixation.

The impacts on my vocational aspirations aside, such slash and burn habits do not spare everyone. I've been in a few sexually immature and inept relationships, and my high-octane appetite has run rough-shod over my romantic counterpart. At the time, i believed that the dissatisfaction i felt from this dynamic came from my partner's inability to match and keep stride with me. I have also been in incredibly fulfilling, completely spiritual exchanges (as i am now) and yet my auto-erotic habits haven't lessened in any measurable way. I have learned that the existence of my ravenous appetite has little to do with my counterpart, and accepting this has done more service to quell my perfectionist streak than any attempts to fill up my erotic plate ever have.

The desire to fulfill every single one of my interests and niche-specific passions needn't fall on any one person's head. There is something peaceful in remaining just a few bites shy of full, walking away from the table with room for one more morsel. It signals that i understand that my place on this rock doesn't exist solely for me. That's a quiet serenity one can experience in the emptiness of a desert or atop the highest peak.