Anti-Pleasure Dissertation

R.E.C. and I have set this site to ‘private’ for some time now. There are some things I’ve written on it that I’m not proud of. I wasn’t exactly proud of them when I wrote them, either, but I still wanted to write them on the odd, shape-shifting palimpsest that is our Internet. I could have written them on a Word document if I really didn’t want them to become public, and I take full responsibility for that decision, even though it has caused me and people I wrote about pain. There are still people who I hope will never read this site, which I know is unreasonable, like leaving a diary open and saying “but don’t read it!” Nevertheless, I hope.

The reason that I’m making the site public again is because I want anyone who cares, if anyone does, to be able to read my side of the story and form their own conclusions. In the magazine article that Josh wrote about my having written about him on this blog, he made it sound like I had created this site in order to smear his reputation, which he found “creepy.” Well, yeah, that does sound creepy! But I think it would be hard to read all the posts that Ruth and I wrote and conclude that we were doing anything other than writing, for each other and whoever else wanted to know, about what our lives were like in the aftermath of long-term relationships, from manic rebound highs to depressive lows. Josh also made it sound like the impulse to share details of your private life with strangers was completely alien to him — in an article where he shared details of his private life with strangers. I hardly need to point out the irony there, except maybe I do, because it seems to have eluded him.

When you write about things as they’re happening — which is what most people do on blogs — you lose perspective, or rather, your perspective shrinks, so that only a tiny slice of your reality gets recorded. The cumulative impact of several months’ worth of posts can lead to an entirely different conclusion than a few snippets taken out of context. This is the danger of blogging and also its seductive charm. It’s so easy and fun to report on your current state of mind and your opinions, especially when you have strong feelings, and strong feelings are also fun to read about. You hated that movie! You’re in love with that guy! That person’s a douchebag!

Unfettered self-expression has its drawbacks, though. Like: what if you change your mind? What if you learn some things that make you feel entirely differently about that person, that movie, that guy? The version you recorded is still perpetually available, making you seem wishy-washy or, worse, like a liar if you flip-flop now. Your problem now becomes that the most popular result of a Google search becomes “the truth,” even if you’d like it to be otherwise.

Well: You can’t control what people think, and who cares what they think anyway? By now, the only person who really cares about this stuff is you, and maybe Nick Denton because he is, among other things, a pervert who delights in other people’s misfortunes. Josh is busy altering his odd sweaters with the $2K he got for his article and probably doesn’t give a shit about anything but that money, and the fact that the whole little scandal gave Gawker commenters another opportunity to marvel at the musculature of his torso. It’s better to leave well enough alone, take the high road, and just try to forget about the whole thing.

Well, obviously I couldn’t quite do that. But I also won’t go through that article point by point and refute what I think its omissions and inaccuracies are or try to revise history by erasing or altering anything I’ve written here, tempting as it is to do so.

I made some mistakes, it’s true. Writing this may well be another! But I am not going to shut up just because I might regret what I’ve said later. That might be the smart thing to do, and I’ve tried to, but I can’t. It must be because I’m a blogger.

 

Why am I telling you this?

“You think what people say is what matters, an older friend told me long ago. You think it’s all about words. Well, that’s natural, isn’t it? I’m a writer, I can float for hours on a word like “amethyst” or “broom” or the way so many words sound like what they are: “earth” so firm and basic, “air” so light, like a breath. [...] But of course what my friend meant was that I ignored inconvenient subtexts, the meaning behind the meaning: that someone might say he loved you, but what really mattered was the way he let your hand go after he said it. It did not occur to me, either, that somebody might just lie, that there are people who lie for pleasure, for the feeling of superiority and power. And yet it should have.” — Katha Pollitt in that great/crazy Webstalker essay

“You just bleed it out all over the place. Why can’t you keep yourself to yourself?” — my ex-boyfriend

“YOU should be password-protected!” — the dude who’s the reason parts of this blog are now password-protected 

Today I got my ear-holes stretched two sizes bigger. I’ve been slowly stretching them for about 8 months now with no clear idea of why.  At first it was because I thought it looked cool and badass but it turns out no one notices  your earrings except you unless they are giant African tribesperson plugs, and I don’t ever plan to get there, though I actually don’t know how far I’ll go.  The last time I got it done the lady at Sacred asked me how big I ultimately wanted them to be and I said I was “playing it by ear,” har. Now they’re a 6. Stretching one size bigger only twinges for a second but two sizes hurts and right now they are still dully throbbing.  Also today I got very thoroughly bikini-waxed.  In two weeks I’m going to get another big tattoo. I wonder wonder wonder why there’s a part of me that seeks out pain.

It’s not that I enjoy pain!  Pain, you know, fucking hurts. I think it’s more about mastery of pain.  I enjoy pain as long as I am in control of the pain, or I think that I am.  And it’s this maybe-misguided impulse that compels me to do other things besides poke holes in myself and swim until I’m falling-down exhausted and have my hair torn out by the roots. Like, for example: put big chunks of my “personal, private” life on the internet for anyone to see.

Maybe it makes me feel safe to think that I think that if I tell you all my secrets you won’t have any ammo against me that I haven’t given you.  Maybe it’s that I think that my pain and my pleasure are just that fucking important.  Maybe I just like telling.  Part of it, certainly, is that I don’t want to have these thoughts and feelings inside me.  I want to get them out.  But if it’s just about getting them out, why am I not just pouring them into a word document or some flower-printed dear Diary?

Because: I don’t believe that “private” exists anymore, if it ever really did.  Privacy depends and always has depended on pretense.  We politely pretend that the versions of themselves people present to the world are the ones we accept, but behind their backs we whisper. I hate that shit.  For a long time it has been considered unseemly but tacitly acceptable to mock and examine and analyze the personal shortcomings and proclivities of celebrities but now everyone who achieves anything like prominence in any field is accessible to us in a thousand intimate ways online. We’re all “celebrities” now.  It is futile and silly to pretend that we have “private” lives anymore, so why not just let everything hang out?

Well, for one thing, because other people besides me are involved in my secrets, and those people might still want to cling to the fragile little scrap of perceived privacy that is left to them, and might be sad or disappointed or angry to be portrayed in a public confessional.  Also: their own reticence prevents anyone from ever knowing their side of the story.  I can understand how shitty that must feel, which is why I’ve password protected some of the posts on this blog. (You can email me for the password and, quite possibly, I’ll give it to you.)

Here’s another thing, though: I know it is silly to imagine that, by preemptively spilling my secrets, I’ve been successful in controlling the pain.  I might just have been letting the pain control me.  And, perhaps, letting myself in for more pain.  But ultimately, I don’t regret telling you anything.  I’m glad you know.  I’m glad you heard it here first.