The trajectory of this blog has been aimed confidently towards the perverse: namely, what stood outside the conventions of typical behavior. For a long time, I think, my own story has made me reject those mores merely because of the complications and the failures that I have seen. I have rejected morality out of hand. But morality has a ghosting effect: it always returns.
What I have wanted to voice here, but which has no longer any truck with the musings of the past, are the vicissitudes that do not linger over sexual titillations. The pathos of immorality (named conscience, perhaps poorly). I need condemnation more than adulation. And yet, I provide that for myself. In short, crisis seems imminent. My own consciousness of it is merely an intuition of its concrete expression. Which is not to suggest that there is anything unconcrete about the consciousness. Especially when this sadness seems to color each and every single part of experience.
But the sadness, really, just started today. There were other incidents, like an encounter with Adrienne and her refusal afterwards, which prompted this. Then I realized how manipulative my behavior has been. How much I had pursued my own desires without any regard for those of others, especially those with whom I am so close. My friends. My fiancée.
Why this self-destructive behavior? After my session with the doctor today I walked home but also looked up "sexual addiction" on the phone-computer. The Wikipedia entry is surprisingly thorough. There is no DSM entry for this pathology. And so there are questions about its legitimacy. Considering the unique status of sexuality in our culture, pace Foucault's comments in the History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, it is difficult to make judgment on this issue.
I guess I have been thinking about my friends and their responses to the incident with the heartland girl. The most troubling, is from my friend James, who on hearing it writes me off, claiming that it is too exhausting and too consistently pathetic. The upshot is that a person that cannot control these urges is simply to be forgotten about. What do we do by alcoholics and drug addicts. I have known in my life. The drug addicts have killed close friends, ended marriages, lost property. The alcoholics ... well, not as many. But they have not faired well, as far as I can tell. My friends say, we are sorry that you have done this, but we still love you. But the truth is, I think, that they are saying that we will love you until your problem affects our relationship with you. At that point, this love will reach its limits.
We intervene with addicts. Why don't they tell me that I must get help?
God, I am experiencing the most profound vertigo right now. Actually, it is always the same. I am falling over backwards. Like I did years ago, down cement steps, to the bottom of the steps.
