Ah, the secrets we keep, the longings and desires we hide. We are afraid to be honest with others (and sometimes, rightly so); tragically, we are scared to be honest with ourselves. If you dare, play a game with me.
Look, in your mind, at this photograph. Is it of a nude (or would “naked” be more provocative?) woman? No: a female, girl, lady. Do you see? The photograph is the same whether we describe the subject as a girl, lady, woman, or female.
Let’s play some more. The photo stays the same, but you are going to change. For I tell you: she is a movie star, a prostitute, the farmer’s daughter, your neighbor’s daughter, your neighbor, unmarried, married, divorced, American, French, Spanish, Asian, eighteen, twenty-eight, a farm girl, a city girl, five feet two with eyes of blue, six foot two with a size 12 shoe, the breasts are real (how about the shift that comes with our changing “the breasts” to “her breasts”; and what if we say “boobs,” or “tits”), that her breasts were augmented by a plastic surgeon.
She is your sister, daughter, wife, mother. She is married to the President—of the United States, of FOX News, the university (which one?), Tesla, the California Chamber Symphony Society. She is a student, a cheerleader, an airline stewardess with an OnlyFans account, a mud wrestler. She is lesbian, straight, bisexual, oversexed, nymphomaniacal but frigid.
In fact, none of these are true. The reason her hand is hiding her genitals is not to simulate modesty but because she is an unoperated transexual male. No, that was a trick, or was it?
And who are you, who is playing this game with me? Male, female, boy, girl, man, woman, straight, gay, binary, transgender, researcher, pornographer, born-again, pastor, philosopher, Floridian?
Suppose, instead of this pose—she, he, they were nude (naked) but wearing high heels, a rearview, a side view, walking, sitting on the toilet (and doing what?), wearing underwear—silk or cotton? Legs spread, crossed?
Who was the photographer? Would it have been better to use color or black-and-white filters? Hi-res or low-res? Was the picture photoshopped or altered to remove “imperfections?” Was it a real person or AI-generated?
It’s all in the interpretation, and as everyone knows, interpretations vary. In other words, styles and tastes are made, not born. Every detail counts. And there will be as many varied photographs imagined as readers of these words.
Did this playful exercise generate erotic excitement? Did it make you think? Did it catch you unawares? Did it shock you? Confuse you?
We all have different erotic scripts in our pornographies of everyday life, the principal purpose of which is to undo childhood traumas, conflicts, and frustrations by converting these painful experiences into sexual fantasies—to triumphs. To build these fantasies, we make use of mystery, secrets, risk-running, revenge, and dehumanizing (fetishizing) of our objects. It is typical erotic excitement. It is what injects excitement into boredom.
Individual erotic excitement can be seen as a tangled, compacted mass of scripts made up of impulses, desires, defenses, falsifications, truths avoided, and memories of past events, erotic and non-erotic, going back to infancy—a piece of theatre whose story seems genuine because of the truth of the body’s sensations.
Though the moment feels spontaneous, it is actually the result of years of working over the scripts to ensure they function efficiently, that is, to ensure they produce excitement, which leads to gratification.
Ah yes, no wonder we are afraid to face our deepest fantasies and longings, our hidden secrets. And worse, many of us were programmed to deny them and to repress them. And indeed, most of us would not dare say anything out loud, even to our sexual partners.
So, here in this space, my courageous reader, I will dare to write, paint, and create hidden things that people dare not face or say. Hidden things fester and wound; conversely, repressed things, when expressed, can be hidden treasures. Admitting the truth about oneself and being truthful to oneself can set one free.
The playful exercise was created by the late Dr. Robert Stoller and written in his book Observing the Erotic Imagination. He was a professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine and has many books on human sexuality. His writings have had a profound influence on me. Please note that I took the liberty to paraphrase some words and examples that forty years have rendered archaic.
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