Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Apr 10, 2008
There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.
-King George
Conventional wisdom tells us it is unwise to discuss politics on a date, but then again conventional wisdom elevated a dunce to the White House, so perhaps the concept is overrated.
My date (well, technically Leslie’s date), a tall, leggy surfer-girl with a taut, athletic frame, charmed me with her wit, each of her punchlines punctuated by a wry smile. She liked to tell dirty jokes. She didn’t take any shit.
And yet just when I began to daydream about offering her our spare bedroom she shattered my reverie with an offhand remark about the Iraq war. At the time, our Middle Eastern misadventure was but a gleam in every Neocon’s eye. It was, however, already a touchy subject for me.
“Excuse me,” I responded, hoping against hope that I may have simply misunderstood, “did you really just say you support this… folly in Iraq?”
She nodded, flashing me that wry smile again. A long argument ensued, neither of us gaining or giving ground.
“The pendulum swings both ways my dear,” I told her after we had exhausted our talking points. “This war — and you people will probably get your way — this war is going to be your undoing.”
Her knee bumped against mine. “I won’t hold it against you for being completely wrong if you don’t hold it against me for being completely right.”
Two weeks later she showed up at my birthday party wearing a form-fitting dress. When she settled next to me she laid a hand upon my inner thigh. She was such a sweet girl in all the ways that mattered. How could I possibly regret waking up next to her in the morning?
We never did discuss politics again. It was probably for the best. In our little cold war of words, we had reached a sexy detente.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Oct 04, 2007
I couldn’t tell the difference between laughing and throwing up but I wasn’t throwing up so I must have been laughing.
***
“You really should have some,” Leslie said to me hours earlier, quaffing the last of her mushroom tea from a cheap plastic cup.
“I don’t know… shouldn’t I be the responsible one tonight?”
Les took in our surroundings. The guests at this sparsely attended affair danced, or sat talking with friends, or else laid about in what must have been a shroom-induced state of torpor. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
***
I was disappointed thus far. Not only was the chunky, bitter brew disgusting, but I wasn’t feeling anything. “You feelin’ it?” I asked Les, “Cause I’m not.”
“Me neither.”
A papier mache head of a troll, as tall as a man, stood in a nook by the chill-out room. It began to sort of, well, rock back and forth and for a moment I let myself believe my moment of revelation had arrived. That is, until the people around me confirmed that the head was indeed rocking rhythmically to and fro. A friend of ours crept up to the troll head, bending down and opening the fully articulated jaw. She spun around and giggled. “Oh my gawd… two people are fucking in there!”
Word of the mystery couple’s doings spread around our little encampment and soon everyone erupted into fits of laughter. Occasionally a random party-goer would wander through our area, do a double take, and approach the head to investigate. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” someone would say, or else, “If the head is a rockin’ don’t come a knockin’!”
What a mind-fuck it all was.
The rhythmic motion ceased abruptly. “We just witnessed a pivotal event in the history of the West,” I told someone. “I am certain that hundreds of years from now scholars will look back upon whatever just happened here and say this was the moment everything came to a head.”
When the man laughed I noticed dazzling seventies-style floral prints creeping in at the periphery of my vision. The patterns soon overtook every object in the room, making it seem as if everything in my field of view was crawling with life. And yet faced with this undeniable proof of the fallibility of my senses, all I could think was: This is such a cliché. I closed my eyes, and upon opening them again the scene was recast in glowing pixels, as if I were standing with my nose pressed up against a plasma monitor.
Post-millennial visuals for a post-millennial trip… I was satisfied.
***
Oh, I get it.
The music, the decorations, the tents, the floor-to-ceiling columns of light — they all finally made sense to me. I stepped out onto the roof to take a leak. My piss ran in rainbow colors, as did the chain link fence, as did the brightening sky.
Oh, I get it.
Wandering around, I found Leslie and took her hand. “This is much more agreeable than acid,” I said to her. “I still know where I am, I still know who I am, but I’ll be damned if I’m not tripping my ass off. For example, I know that’s just my friend Jim standing over there but right now the simple fact that he exists blows my mind.”
***
A wave of euphoria washed over me as the black car ferried us back into Manhattan. I thought about the odd series of events that conspired to make the weekend what it was, how I couldn’t have made it up if I tried and certainly never could have engineered it. And I’m pretty sure I laughed, even if it felt a little bit like throwing up.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Apr 29, 2007
Generally, the initial reaction of a thwarted animal is to try harder to attain its goal. A starving chicken (Gallus domesticus) prevented from reaching its food by a wire fence will make increasingly frantic efforts to get through it. Gradually, however, this behavior is replaced by another which has no obvious purpose. When unable to find food, for example, pigeons (Columbia livia) will frequently peck the ground even if nothing there is edible. Not only will they peck indiscriminately, but they start to preen their feathers; such inappropriate behavior, frequently observed in situations of frustration or conflict, is known as displacement activity. Early in 1986, just after he turned thirty, Bruno began to write.
-Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles
Karl Marx observed, with some humor, that on the eve of the storming of the Bastille, French intellectuals were still preoccupied with balancing the Estates, oblivious to the great transformation that was already well under way. Today we might refer to such behavior as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Examples abound. The much-hyped political upheaval of November 2006, to name but one, brings to mind another of Marx’s witty asides about history repeating itself — the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.
But I don’t intend to drone on about politics; I long ago developed Cassandra syndrome, having learned everything I need to know about the future from the yellowed pages of Orwell, Dick, Burgess, Huxley, Gibson and Stephenson.
You see, during the winter months I found myself struggling to balance my own Estates. In Mexico I birthed all sorts of new ideas, and though I carried them around with me, largely unexamined, in the weeks that followed, I had by Halloween succumbed to postpartum depression. I’ve heard this is not uncommon, the return to reality being a jarring experience to freshly tanned and fucked swingers. I suppose this is why resorts like Desire get so much repeat business, why some people even make biannual pilgrimages. However, I am a stubborn, serious-minded hedonist. Banishment to a sex-positive ghetto, no matter how well appointed, is not for me.
I knew I had to move forward, to make some changes in my own life and, perhaps, inspire others (if I were more ethically flexible I might establish a cult or religion). But I was at a loss. I felt alone. Sure, Leslie and I made the rounds, sharing wondrous tales of enlightenment. And I would sit at my desk filing reports, sipping from a glass of straight gin, drawing out the process as long as possible, clinging to the memory of that feeling that came over me for a few days in late September. I, however, couldn’t be certain anyone understood me. Indeed, I’m not even sure I understood myself. “The problem is that we haven’t taught women — or men — how to say ‘no’,” I told someone at a cocktail party, “nor have we taught them how to say ‘yes’.”
People disappointed me. I fell back on old habits yet I couldn’t help but compare every experience to Mexico. Leslie confessed to me that our project felt like more trouble than it was worth; I agreed with her. I remember fooling around with an ex, aware that we were both too deeply embedded in our own narratives to truly let go. Now I realize no one was ever at fault. The conditions weren’t right. People can only join us when they are ready.
But as surely as a long winter must end, so must our confusion. It dawned on me I had been surrounded by people who understood me all along, that we sexual revolutionaries squandered so much energy emphasizing our differences we’d neglected to celebrate our commonalities. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who felt this way: it was as if we’d all woken up one morning with the same idea… and the resolve to do something about it.
By the time the last patches of dirty snow melted my Estates didn’t matter anymore. A new feeling came over me nearly overnight. No wall was torn down, no statues came tumbling to the ground, but it was a revolution nonetheless.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Apr 10, 2007
“I just want to love everyone — and be loved by everyone.”
It’s not what she said but how she said it, choking back tears, her voice quavering, her expression a mixture of joy and sorrow. We were at Viviane’s apartment. Leslie was sitting on the floor, legs crossed, and someone — I think it was Rachel — was comforting her. This was the most… authentic thing I’d heard anyone say in ages. Here, at last, a moment of truth, of genuine vulnerability.
We were in the right place: if anyone would understand, it would be our fellow perverts. And yet it’s funny how even those of us who live on the fringe find it difficult to express our hopes, our fears, our doubts. Maybe it’s the boundless energy of the city. We all try to be bigger than ourselves.
She wore a sheer evening gown, under which she wore only pasties and a thong. Resort wear. We were still processing what happened during that magic week. We were still adjusting to the quotidian flow of life in the civilian world. Our minds struggled with the dialectic: freedom versus restraint, pleasure versus obligation. I should have known emotions would run high.
My own moment of truth wouldn’t arrive until months later at a downtown orgy. But that night, at Viviane’s, all I could do was gaze upon my fiancée, thinking she’s too kind, too gentle, too good-natured for this world. I was afraid. People out here, in the world beyond the gates, go about their business with teeth bared and knives drawn.
The evening hours found us at a lounge on the Upper East Side, in the company of a Latin girl and a friend of hers. I wasn’t hot for the Latin girl but all was well. I rather enjoy spending time with friendly Homo sapiens. People cast sidelong glances at Les. We laughed. A bouncer approached: “Yo man, your girl’s gotta cover up.” We canceled our order and left, but not before Les mooned the establishment, her gesture evoking memories of our encounter with that stripper in Vegas. (“You want to see an asshole?” our companion had said to the middle-aged man who’d insulted her. “I’ll show you an asshole!” She made good on her threat, flashing the rooftop of the Palms.)
“Civilians,” I said, shaking my head. “You were the most exciting thing to happen to that place all year.” The previous night’s party notwithstanding, our efforts at bringing some of our newfound freedoms home with us had yielded mixed results. For one, there was too much commuting involved. And my swingdar was anything but reliable. I’d never been less enthused about being back in New York.
We found an agreeable place on the wiggity West Side, where Leslie’s outfit drew compliments rather than complaints, and after awhile people seemed to forget there was anything unusual about us at all. This is how it ought to be, I thought.
Perhaps there was hope for us yet.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Mar 31, 2007
I get the news I need on the weather report
Oh, I can gather all the news I need on the weather report
Hey, I’ve got nothing to do today but smile
And here I am
The only living boy in New York
-Simon and Garfunkel, “The Only Living Boy in New York”
The morning is bright and beautiful, the sky spattered with benign white clouds. Les and I climb the stairs to the rooftop, where we snap nude portraits of each other. An employee is kind enough to take a few shots of the two of us together. My girl giggles. We won’t be naked again for a long time — at least not like this.
We swim in the ocean and then take our last tour of the grounds, happening upon the Oklahomans by the pool. I tell them I’m surprised they didn’t sleep in after last night’s drunken debauchery. We say our goodbyes. Before turning away, I leave them with a final thought: “It’s up to you to keep things interesting around here.”
***
I step out of the hired car, tossing an empty beer can into the trash and squinting at my surroundings — this is our first contact with the civilian world in eight days. Only now, at the airport, do I appreciate the state of preternatural relaxation that came over me that first night in the jacuzzi and never left. I don’t bother putting my shoes back on after walking through the metal detector. Instead I stand in the terminal and smile as a Mariachi band plays.
I cannot get over the feeling that people must be able to sense there is something different about us. As we meander toward our gate Leslie and I play a little game, picking attractive couples out of the crowd and imagining how they’d fare if they spent a night or two in paradise.
I wonder whether there is such a thing as gaydar for swingers.
***
Overhead, multiple LCD screens unfold, the servomotors emitting a high-pitched mechanical whir. I am strapped in, unable to escape. This is unfair: I’ve felt so much better since I went on a media diet. A music video plays. Porn lite. It is a sad reminder that I am returning to a nation of voyeurs — to a land of people who are obsessed with sex and repulsed by it in equal measure.
***
New York. You can’t come home again — I never thought about what this meant until now. We may as well be returning from Mars, and if that Mexico feeling stays with us I’m quite sure we’ll frighten the natives. Drifting over the Triborough, my eyes fixed upon the gleaming lights of Spaceship Manhattan, I almost feel ashamed, as if I’ve cheated on my first love and the day of reckoning is upon me.
***
No sooner do we step over the threshold than my fiancée asks, “Do you want to get a drink?”
“Mos def,” is my reply.
A yellow cab takes us to Morningside Heights, where we claim a couple of stools at one of our regular bars. We run into a few people we know and regale them with tales of our adventures in paradise. I hear my own words tumble out and I barely believe them. Standing here, in a small watering hole in Manhattan, it is hard for me to believe a place like Desire even exists.
Overhearing us, a comely young woman approaches. When she smiles I see that she has lopsided dimples. The three of us talk for awhile. “Here, let me give you my number,” she insists.
I turn to Leslie. “The more things change the more they stay the same, eh?”
“Yeah. Too bad there’s no jacuzzi here.”
