The days drag by.

I'm choked by food,
by the shit I expel, the words I say.
The daylight that shouts at me
every morning to get up.

The sleep which is only
dreams that chase me.

-- Ingmar Bergman, from The Passion of Anna

The following scene is more calm. There is no trace of slapping oneself in the face and cursing out loud in the empty apartment. Kicking chairs, shaking random obstacles, people, relatives, bloggers, the heat. Counting on the absence of witnesses. On the pages everything I know is written about each vegetable form living out on the terrace. Soil, chemistry, prune and multiply. Something I am mediocre at like most of everything. Flor suggested me a new source and now I can look for more details on the internet for each of them and feeling I know more --the phrases that are useful appear to me as if highlighted on the page. But I don't really know more I am only informed.

Life is minor now. It doesn't matter the rage for the apparent phoniness of everything and the hypocrisy and the malfunction. I think I never had so little respect for myself as I am having now. Although there's no bottom end to that.
From behind comes classical music, probably Bach. The first feeling when trying to focus on the effect of the music on myself is that the music sounds so modern. The superficial consideration leaves me unhappy.

Flor found me on the internet, with little investigation recognized me out here and found the blog and asked me out. The global village. What sense can have a thing like this, we have been briefly together so many years ago and so much has happened since then and now she comes. We were very young and almost totally ignorant of love but this doesn't make that experience more relevant to me. All the contrary. I seem to remember that the sex was especially good. Or that we had fun because we both tended to be outsiders (although I was a professional outsider). But beside such vague feelings it is something dear I can barely relate to now. Life changed me anyway even if I still am an outsider. Folks don't seem to know I want Time to pass and changes to be even when I state that I don't want to get older (because of the failures). Walking around in the bookshop she said, you still matter to me, you always mattered. I didn't know what to say. I felt moved and detached and embarrassed. She seemed uncomfortable and we let the topic fade away. Myself, I stopped thinking about you when masturbating years ago, I thought, which doesn't necessarily mean anything. Our conversation flew easily. We always could talk of everything, and apparently we still do. At moments it even appears interesting. I am out of the world anyway.
Out of the bookshop the city was wet, the dark asphalt glimmering in the late afternoon light and the sopping walls drawing mysterious bodies of smudged films of water, the trees of the park a obscure still mass encircling the left side of Piazza Cavour, trapped behind the tall green fence, nobody around. The last days of quietness of the busy middle class city, skies moving from gray to darker gray, the light coming from the isolated open bar where the men stand against the counter and don't talk nor move.

It was days ago and now it is the past and it doesn't exist anymore. It is still raining above the city, and the sun light is white, the corners are damp and clothes are withdrawn from the balconies--

I understood something recently, that as much as my life can come to be a failure, as much as I keep dropping out, and as all the material means to be and fight for keep passing me by or making me fail or go mad or flee, still nothing really would interest me -- enriching my present moment -- simulacrum of reality -- as much as love life. And I am not strictly talking about my own love life, and the satisfaction of my own desires and longings -- with time my own desires and longings, my suffering and struggling and groping for love seem to become less relevant or less interesting than the general human constant reaching for love and the general wasting or losing love all around.
And as I read a honest book, or hear a true story I notice how my interest doubles or triples as soon as the element of emotion and desire, sex and good willing and wrongdoing for love appears. As soon as "I met a person" is said, "I keep thinking of him" is said. "I miss the bitch" is said. As soon as "I dreamed of you again" is said to oneself. Everything about it matters to me, provided the manifestation of love is stronger than -- I don't know, the other important things suddenly ceasing to be important. It must be that I am not capable of feeling fine in any other realm. Everything matters when it is genuine, the trivial things that keep repeating renovating and consuming themselves through the centuries through the bodies through the rooms and the drawers, and the more unpredictable, scandalous ones-- Morbid affection, violence, betrayal, servitude, mysterious bonds, inverted poles, manias and eclecticisms-- all coming down to my witnessing and participating, my own mixed feeling of stupor and acknowledgment: so this is love too.

And yet I am so incapable to love, in a proper reasonable way. I get so easily impatient as well as inert, bored, inept, false, lazy-- because my crave is for the variety, possibly-- is this why I could so little relate to the barely disclosed ambitions of Flor to go to bed with me for old time sake-- like she wanted to come up (Libi being away) and I said just park here and didn't invited her in-- she had her own reasons that had nothing to do with me, and my heart isn't prepared to bend yet. Every morning, every afternoon, every night I have someone in my mind who is far and away-- my heart isn't capable to bend yet--

Across the sleeping city we had passed near the house where I lived back then, with my father's wife and my step-brother. Every time I walk by that place in the bourgeois hell of via Plinio, something that I systematically avoid to do, a mess of bad memories and the bare square weight of past life attacks me, and I can't avoid to lash out my distaste and my disgust for those past days. The huge wooden door, always closed, and the precious shops, the brand new cars parked under the tall old plane milanese trees -- the dog turds and cockroaches in the deli and the still loners waiting at the stop of the 60-- when everything was wrong and all days were wrong and it was wrong my not being able to break out of there. My ridiculous communist so called parents so eager to settle themselves in the bourgeois neighborhoods -- and the fights, my father's yells, the humiliations and the disgust and the unbearable dishonesty of myself and who I was -- And then Flor next to me said, every time I pass in front of this place I have all these nice memories of when we were together, and I came here to visit you in your room-- it was so nice to be with you there, do you know? It was the sex but all the rest too-- With all your rudeness you were pretty welcoming, you know?

It took me so long to come up with a post and I don't know how to end it.

"Mi sono fatto distrarre da ogni cosa possibile, nel tentativo di non focalizzare su il nodo che dovevo sciogliere: minchiate malfunzionanti nel computer, puttanate da scaricare illegalmente, sfondi per il desktop, la caccia dei bruchi attaccati alla pagine inferiore delle foglie delle piante sul terrazzo (è più facile trovarli alla sera tardi), le litigate dei vicini, le notizie merdosissime dei merdossissimi siti di notizie (tanto ormai non credo più a un cazzo di quello che dicono, e se mi dicono di avere paura, ecco che, come magicamente, la paura si solleva dal mio petto e vola via in una risata), ricontrollare la posta, ancora una volta... There are no messages on the server. E sì che mi è costata tanta fatica scriverle. Poi ho capito che il mio problema era così banale, provenire da una vita prevedibile e volere tuffarsi in un mondo oscuro dove almeno qualcosa di inaspettato potesse succedere, ogni giorno, almeno ogni giorno. La prevedibilità non essendo imputabile alla vita tuttavia, come se la vita mi suonasse la musica sbagliata. La prevedibilità l'ho vista galleggiare a mezza via fra la familiarità e la noia, in una area appena al di fuori e appena al di dentro della mia mente bacata." (da uno dei post che cercavano di spiegare, smarritosi poi a spiegare perché non sapevo spiegare.)

I am learning that Libi is a resourceful person, more than I thought. That her soul is larger and stronger than I thought. That her sexual life, her sexual fantasies matter more for her than I thought (well, Mars moved). How stupid of me to notice these things now. Learning that she can say the strongest things without faltering a bit, like she was talking about going out to buy some milk, only lowering her eyes ("I'd jump into the fire to keep our relationship alive, but it wouldn't do no good, would it") then raising them them up and looking straight at me. Because I told Libi about Martina, and Libi learned about her and my confused feelings, I myself learned of Libi's shades of pain, and how she never looses her bravery and her sense of humor. At first comes at you as a form of denial, but then it becomes a complex and unforeseen expression of sorrow and salvation. I hadn't noticed how strong she was before (I said that already, did I. These are the things you go on saying on and on like in a remix when you know you are causing a lot of pain to someone.)
I listened and answered and explained, this I did. I must be really growing up. I learned that my words aren't good until they are honest. Aren't good until they are straight, I mean. I knew about honesty, which doesn't mean I was willing to use it all the time (this is the kind of joke I learned to use in a conversation with Libi, because to no one like Libi a joke, even the meanest joke, in a dramatic moment does good). We talked about Nina, too, and for the first time Libi told me explicitly how she discovered about Nina and how much she suffered for it. So I learned that too (this was today).
"Why you didn't say anything back then", I asked. Only much later we had talked about it, only in bits. "I felt like an ass and humiliated. Just like now", she said. "That was worse than now, though" she added. "Why is so?" "Because I thought that Nina was disgusting -- as a person, you know. And I hated the idea of you two together. This one I don't know, instead, so my feeling is less precise". She really said so, 'disgusting', and only as she said that I learned how much she had suffered from it, while I didn't know, while I was sleeping or reading or thinking about myself in those stupid days of mine, probably: because she wanted to erase that person away with her stronger words.
I am learning how to bite my lips to keep from coming out words like "more than everything I wish you could wait for me", "don't stop loving me". I am learning (again) that falling in love, struggling in love, makes my heart beat harder everyday, my stomach to jump around and to give that warm weird feeling, everyday. Sounds rhetorical, the classical automatic rhetorical description of love, but it is actually true. My heart does beat harder most of the time these days. Every time I think I might be losing what I so badly wanted; that I might be a step closer to it; that I am causing tears and confusion; that I am distancing someone I love so much from me; that I might be find myself very high and fall down very hard; that I really don't know what I'm wanting --but it's oh so strong. The two dominating body parts of my love life: my heart, my stomach. They express it all, not exhaustively, but clearly. I am not surprised the heart is the metaphor of love, I am surprised I forgot I knew why.
I am learning that prejudices really prevent you from crucial experiences. Now I see people with prejudices as unlucky people, and feel sorry for them, even when I understand their prejudices so well (Nina is not 'disgusting' like Libi said. I know it. But I can't tell her why.) I learned that I want a different life, I want more things to happen around me. I learned that sometimes you are being called egoist and there's nothing you can do about it, but face it, face your egoism. I always hated the indulgence by which most of the people declare their own egoism as affordable, like if the world could cope with it, when in reality with their indulgence and self-spoiling they are making the world a worse place. I think egoism is an hazard and should not be used but in case of emergency... It is a tool that can be used and then disposed of, and because you will need it at a given moment, that moment is the time to use it and face it and accept it, which means accepting to be a smaller person. I know I am.
I am learning that knowing I will regret every single thing I am turning my back to doesn't prevent me to do it anyway. Like if I kept saying to myself, I need this mistake, this crucial mistake, like a inoculation. I am sure I need many other things that are out of reach (...). And I learned many other things, about the surprises of my sexual life, about the pleasure I feel at hearing the word "entonces", about my changing looks (no the nose still creaks but it's all right) and that maybe wanting to live it's all about fearing to die, and maybe that soon all my books will be back into a self-storage box, where they were only two years ago. Two years ago when this blog was born, happy birthday to it.

-- In picture, above, the absurd tangle of cables attached to every light pole in Tegucigalpa. No idea why I am posting this right now.

Miami says to me the same things places like Las Vegas or Saint Tropez say. Solitude, unhappiness, dominance of the appearance, weakness, boredom, excessive loud music everywhere, hard drinks, everything under a blanket of lies and money that keeps it all together. There's nothing into it and nothing I can do here.
There's many many very sexy women around on sunday night, and their unapproachability or even their easy reachability it's not something I am able to use. I long for the sex but everything that surrounds the sex keeps me away.
Walking down the streets at night I am solicited by prostitutes posing as tourists or students, and all their professional questions and attitudes make me depressed and withdrawn into myself. Soliciting is illegal, which means, like with all the illegal things, that just a little more lies and precautions are needed to access certain pleasures.
Ishtar, or whatever invented name she is using, approaches me in front of some big hotel on Ocean drive and we walk together the some twelve blocks down to the Mango club. I haven't invited or asked her anything, I only smiled at her the way I got accustomed to do here. But she wants to ask all her uninterested questions and tell her story and I let her. She's cute, but it is not a real conversation.
From Lithuania, studies in New York, all of a sudden has to pay the term to the school and hasn't the money, she is also a professional masseuse, 21, etc. I try to tell her that I am not the right target for her, that she is wasting her time. I feel more and more naive and stupid talking to her like that. I tell her that I never paid for sex and I am not going to start now. She pretends it is different if I just give her money for the school. I kind of laugh at this. Say no again. I try not to sound judgmental or anything, it's just the way it is. She doesn't seem to want to listen. Finally we part in front of the club, she goes in. She'll probably find one of the many lonesome men in there, those standing there watching at the half-naked bar girls dancing on the counter of the bar, their phallic bottles of beer in hand.
As I walk away, I think of the things I would have wanted to tell her. Those occur to me always when it's too late.
"Ishtar", I would have said, "did it ever happened to you to feel so lonesome and apart from everyone else and impossible to reach and trapped in your solitude, exactly when someone, maybe many, were desperately trying to have you, or have something from you?"
Ishtar would jump into the window opened by the word 'solitude' and say something like, "I can take care of your solitude, you know", but I wouldn't mind the interruption. "What you're doing to me right now, Ishtar, it's exactly that. You are making me feel lonesome and unreachable and trapped in my solitude. You are showing me how wrong it is for me to be here, or how wrong I seem to be for this world. I know that this enhanced feeling of solitude in some weird way is supposed to work in your favor... but I am not like that. I want the real thing, even for one night I need to know that someone is there actually desiring me or finding me attractive or interesting."
"I am just offering you some fun, if you don't want that..." she would say at that point, giving her hopes away. "I am sure the sex would be 'fun' as you say", I would answer. "But I dread the moment when the money is given, the sex is done, and nothing at all is left, not even a bit of regret. I am scared of that moment and of its consequences on my mood." Because I don't want to use the world 'spirit' or similar imprecise tools.

I walk away wondering what Ishtar would have said then. If at my words she would have wandered outside of all the prepared speeches full of details and the well known answers and the well known careful questions. I don't know. It's pretty frustrating and idiot to invent conversations like that anyway. I slowly go back to the hostel, walking under the palms and the neon lights, carefully trying not to smile at the pretty girls again, but there will be more prostitutes to dodge before I am safe in bed, horny and in a bad, bad mood.

Libi does everything... Sometimes I look at her and get excited only to think that I can order her to do anything that comes to my mind-- the only obstacle being my mind itself, so often hazy of bad thoughts and worries and obsessions--

It was shortly after we met that I learned how Libi's heroines were maids and waitress and servants. Back then she was preparing her last exam writing a dissertation about an old italian movie... the movie revolved around the self-immolation of a maid of all-work, and her descending path from dignity to subjection. She thought she had picked that subject out of her feminist sympathies.
I remember one afternoon, she was reading and writing in bed and telling me about the movie and how the story tragically went and I said, "that's obviously your sexual fantasy."
She looked away for a second. Outside was a clear day, the white clouds upon the roofs--at that time we used to get out in the city quite often and we probably had to get together with someone else that day. She was asking for help to normalcy and friends, out of the window and in the city where her self was at bay from anything so obviously deep in and pushing-- I don't know what she was thinking--

"No, what do you mean", she said. Blushed. We swallowed (or maybe that was later). I said You Know What I Mean, and she said No I don't.
"I mean that's your fantasy, to be a servant and to be humiliated and obey and all the rest."
Libi looked at me, I said, "hey, you know that's fine by me. That's actually what i want, so-- there's no problem."

Libi does what I want. Sometimes I complain that she isn't horny enough, that she doesn't throw herself at me.
"That's not my role", she says. I'm an object. She's right I guess. I am probably the one who's not entirely up to his role.

I always envied sexual victims and preys (consensual, doh) because I always felt that their vision and their bravery were clearer and stronger than mine-- They knew what they wanted and how and possibly even why. I always turned to them with the hope to find in that certainty, in that vocation a hint of what possessed me but I could never find it. I can understand someone else's craving for humiliation or punishment but what about me? Do I really want to hurt or humiliate these persons? I love them-- I don't despise women at all-- why I get so excited at the sheer idea of having no limits or respect -- no interactions outside the one of the voice that gives the order?

all I could think of was that the disposition to master or humiliate was due to some feeling of insecurity toward sex that I had. That kind of ruined it for a while (still does, off and on). I also thought about the loads of S/M porno magazines I used to find in my mother's room when I was a kid --and how that conditioned my fantasies-- but the truth is that I discarded those that i didn't like. Already then I immediately went for where my fantasies were--
So I don't know. I guess I am still searching.

It’s weird, then again it’s not. I’m not a celibacy advocate, in the way some people are, who view it as a type of 'self love' or whatever other label they'd like to attach to it, but I can't deny that I've essentially lived a celibate life for the past two years. It's something I don't write about, something I don't complain about because I think to whine about that makes for unoriginal writing and I can't whine about it because I don't see it as a problem, for myself, not when I keep my finger on that clitoral trigger and that, by and large, is sufficient because I'm currently more interested in orgasmic release rather than entwining my psyche with the psyche of another in the course of my daily life.

-- from: Anastasia's Sexualité

I regret that those who have the ease to talk about their sex life --not to make "porn" (which is fine) but to open the window on another secluded slice of the mystery-- are often labeled or label themselves as "writers of sex", which is so obviously a limitation, and an error, because the mystery is attainable only if we don't separate the parts artificially.
Anyway Anastasia, sometimes is definitively adorable. If I can use the Stendhalian adjective.

There's something else, therefore, at the origins of pain, which isn't at all the brutal game of an instrument indifferent to life and for each the same. In truth, this instrument is tighten in a well different way for any of us. And we will never know what in reality is physical pain if we ignore what makes the individual, in a system morphologically identical for all.

(RENÉ LERICHE, La Chirurgie de la Douleur - 1938. Quoted today by Guido Ceronetti on lastampa.it)

At first Libi wasn't ready for it-- she had never tried, she had tried once, it was unbearable pain-- This is why now, when I ass-fuck her, I direct her with orders like keep quiet stay still hold it now shut.
Once trying to-- I said something like that, in a brusque way, and her body suddenly relaxed and welcomed me. She became silent-- swallowed-- I smiled and thought: women. My mother would kill me for that smile-- but that's how it went.
I couldn't see her face and I wondered what was going on with the pain-- I pulled her shoulder, her hair but nothing happened. She was resting her cheek against the pillow-- her eyes undetectable in a haze of hair and lashes-- 't was like she was buried in a book-- I am a selfish lover and went on.

Does this instinctive masochism have something to do with not feeling guilty and letting go-- because-- for a second, the body is convinced that there is no way out, no escape from it?
Orders and rough manners, that's for her-- how the pain is suddenly bearable, tidying the room for the arrival of pleasure.
Sometimes I wish I could feel the same when I have sex-- not having a way out. The recurring forwarding of moments of exit from the moment --taking decisions-- can estrange you-- It is more about being an individual than being a male.

So mistreat her, call her names. I know it is like a comment --to the solitude of the bodies that are having sex-- tangled together but isolated-- like nearby teeth in a mysterious mouth.
The mouth is chewing our feelings putting them together-- but the manducating tooth above doesn't know the first thing of the wave of pain or pleasure passing through --the tooth below.

--In picture, above: when she reads, by italyisfalling.com, 2006