Satisfaction @ MindSay 
orgasm
"Man," said Dr. Richards, as he stared into the video screen. "She's pretty!"
“She’s beautiful,” Jim agreed, though he worked very hard to intone his voice just so it wouldn’t suggest any hidden meaning. For there truly is none, he reminded himself.
“What’s her name?” The doctor inquired.
“Lea,” Jim answered. Chuckling nervously, he added, “I won’t tell you how hard I had to work to get her to act for this. She’s very camera shy, as much because she doesn’t know how beautiful she is, as anything else.”
“Damn shame,” Richards swore. “Have you told her?”
“How pretty she is? She doesn’t believe me. At best she believes that I think so under a delusion,”
“Damn shame,” the doctor repeated, his eyes still glued to the artistically monochrome video feed.
They talked of other things, pointless things, things not worth talking about on paid time, even for a reasonable rate for a therapist of Richards’ reputation. Jim still felt that it was ridiculous he was being made to see a therapist. This was the one place he was afraid he might not be in control of his feelings.
The screen faded to black, and Richards turned to face Jim, exposing to him his disgustingly unkempt round face and gnarled hair, both peppered prematurely with short, dead, white-grey hairs.
“So tell me more about Lea,” Richards offered.
Ah hell! He’s starting to fish for it. Jim cleared his throat nervously and said, “What do you want to know?”
“Just tell me about her, all about her.” The way he had said it had something inexplicably creepy about it.
That clears everything up.
“How did you meet her? What’s she like? Anything.”
Productive use of a rather expensive hour.
“She’s amazing,” He finally threw out. “She and I were in the same school when we were a lot younger, and got along pretty well, but we’ve only really been friends for a few years.”
Richards sat, massaging his ugly face, as if contemplating some deep mystery in Jim’s previous statement, seemingly unaware that the texture of that unkempt face would remind any sane person of an old, fleshy carpet. “Have you ever had any…deeper feelings for her?”
Well, at least he didn’t beat around the bush any longer. That particular wabe was becoming rather trodden-down.
“I don’t let myself.” Jim answered, truthfully.
Richards gave that skeptical laugh – you know the one I mean – the one with the know-it-all smile, with the eyebrow raised to insulting elevations, the one that sounds more like a forced exhalation, or the sneeze of a housecat. The laugh only served to remind Jim of his pedophiliac High School vice principal that was always on his case, which, in turn, as Jim would later explain, “pushed me over the edge from infuriated to just plain pissed off.”
Still, Jim wore a feigned smile as Richards compounded his condescending chuckle with an equally condescending and rhetorical question. Which are usually very condescending anyway, he thought.
“What do you mean, you won’t let yourself?” he asked with that same smile. “Either you feel that way about her or you don’t.”
“Feel what way?” Jim waffled.
“Feel attracted to her, feel like you want to be with her, hold her; you don’t need me to tell you.”
“Alright,” he admitted, in a much softer tone than he had intended. “She’s attractive; that’s no secret. I’ll admit, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings to be with her…all the time.”
He had said it with a Forest Gump-like innocence, and immediately fallowing the remark, Jim found himself hopeing that the liberal-minded doctor, who worked primarily with group-home rejects, had interpreted the statement with the appropriate level of innocence with which it was intended. Long shot, at best.
“Now he levels with me,” Richards said with an infuriating, self-righteous, “I knew it” – smile. “And let me guess,” he continued with that same, condescending smirk. “She doesn’t want anything to do with it.” Sensing Jim was sucking back tears, he added, “That hurts, man. That hurts like hell.”
That wouldn’t piss me off so much if he wasn’t right.
“I don’t blame her one bit for that.” Jim rebutted, the sting of the situation, and the frustration of having the issue raised at all, both leaking into his voice. The doctor just sat there, awaiting further clarification, so Jim continued. “I mean, neither do I. We’re only sixteen.”
Unable to comprehend the significance of the aforementioned age, Richards went on, “So…let me get this strait…even if she reciprocated your feelings, completely, you’d tell her, ‘sorry babe, I’ve been hurt, and so I don’t do relationships anymore.”
“No! Nobody’s hurt me! I don’t do relationships anyway!” Jim insisted.
“Well, maybe not for now, but you’ll get back out there eventually. There’s plenty of fish in the sea. You’re a master fisherman, and expert baiter, though I wouldn’t want to call you a master baiter.”
Jim wasn’t amused. “I will not be getting ‘back out there’” Jim said through his teeth, his eyes glowing with fire.
How can I make this certified unethical prick understand? They’re all alike! They say they won’t judge anybody, when what they really mean is that they won’t admit the faults of the criminal, the shameless, or their fellow unethical pricks, while mercilessly condemning anybody with any decent kind of chivalrous moral code.
“You’re honestly telling me,” Richards went on. “That if she called you up tomorrow and told you, ‘Jim, I think you’re a delicious babe; I totally want to jump your bones,’ that you would…”
That was it. Jim had heard many, many times more than enough. In a flash that can only be mimicked by a trained fighter caught up in a fury of chivalrous vengeance, Jim had his meaty hand around Richard’s throat, dragging him right out of his ratty, leather chair, and up against the wall. Now, Richard had worked with tough kids, from off the streets of any major metropolitan area in the western United States, and he knew how to handle any of them if they got rough, but nothing, not even a cutthroat, switchblade-wielding gang member from downtown L.A. could have prepared him for an angry country boy with eight years of combat training under his belt. Richard struggled, more successfully than Jim had anticipated, but still had to give up the moment the enraged teen opened his mouth.
“Now, you listen to me you son of a bitch!” Jim demanded, in worse language than I’m willing to repeat. “Nobody talks that way about Lea Miller around me. Now you may think you’ve got me all figured out, but that bogus degree don’t mean shit to me, faggot. You have no idea how I feel about that girl. But…” he continued, tightening his grip around the shrink’s throat. “I’m willing to bet you’ll learn pretty quick just how much I care about her.”
“Loook,” Richards gagged weakly. “That was inappropriate, I admit, but…”
WHAM!
“Jim’s free hand, rolled into a tight fist, collided at inconceivable speeds with the psyche’s jawbone, breaking it, and sending his round, crumpled mass careening to the floor, unconscious.
“Inappropriate? Peh. Send me your bill, asshole. I’m done here.”
As Jim tested his fingers to be sure none of them were broken, he was sure, as he would later tell, that he could hear the sound of a bell ringing, and an angel getting her wings back.
after watching my husband take weeks to create a pond I was inspired to make a tiny water hole with dripping water, rocks from the yard, black rubber, an ebay pump and scavenged plants all over the yard. I am thrilled. Now when you open the front door you are greeting by my own little "water feature".
It still needs a bamboo spout instead of a straw but i couldn't wait to test the effect.
Leaving Jordan today, I had two main feelings: disbelief and satisfaction. Disbelief that this semester flew by so quickly. Disbelief that I actually made it through this study abroad period. Having lived in Amman for three and a half months I am definitely ready to leave. I have learned so much about this region and culture, but I feel that if I stayed here any longer I would not be gaining a lot in terms of learning new things about the culture or region. To learn more I would have to move to either a neighborhood in the poorer section East Amman or to another Arab city such as Damascus for a more comparative analysis of the city.
Throughout most of the day I have also been expectedly reviewing the experiences that I have had over the past semester. Thankfully, I really have no regrets. Reading a letter I wrote to myself at the beginning of the semester, I realized that I had achieved all of the goals I set for this semester. I have certainly improved my Arabic as I am now conversational and able to read the language. I was able to see the “other” perspective.
By doing things such staying with a Bedouin and having interviews at the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, I took chances and advantage of the various opportunities that being in this region can only offer.
For all going abroad next semester, this last weekend of your stay is what you all should have in mind. There will be tough points; however, thinking about the amazing feeling of satisfaction that comes at the end of the year from realizing you have made the most your study abroad experience helps you get through the tough and trying times. This was certainly the case for me, for as I leave Jordan, I feel completely satisfied.
Louise is an ordinary name for an ordinary girl, and rain is ordinary water, falls, is still. Or is there a difference between this kind of love, this stable, predictable flood, and the blood-red love that burns as a fire and vanishes? Or is one real and the other unreal? Or if both are real, are we left wanting, asking, Is that all there is to a fire? (Michael Smith, "Is that all there is?") And if it is only a vision, can the vision become so real to us that it becomes us? If I dream I have you, I have you. (John Donne, "The Dream") Can this deepen so much that to you become a stranger to even yourself? you become a third entity, a stand-in, a mannequin, separate...alone. Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place. (Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna") In other words, can we become anything other than our constant desires?
Is it simply the conflict created, a dichotomy of self, returning to socialized expectation, of what we need versus what we want, or is it a case of what is there and what is not? Whether or not it exists, that fire-branding love will always be that exotic haunt, that phantom call we thought we heard, and perhaps forgot. It is that call we are seeking desperately to recall, buried somewhere in the vaults of our memory, and wish, innately, for someone else to hear it in sync. It is what I meant when I prayed along with this song that I wanted you to hear me sing, to sit beside me, and simply exist there, next to me, belonging. It is what Dylan means by his Arabian drums. I think you heard and understood.
When Ruthie says come see her
In her honky-tonk lagoon,
Where I can watch her waltz for free
'Neath her Panamanian moon.
An' I say, "Aw come on now,
You must know about my debutante."
An' she says, "Your debutante just knows what you need
But I know what you want."
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again?
(Bob Dylan, "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again")
Can this really be the end? Is that all there is to a fire? Must I be stuck in washboard Mobile and wanting the steel guitar Memphis? Must I need my white-dressed debutante while I want a dancing dark Chicana?
We have expectations of enduring love, of conquering love, a love that always rises at the horizon, a silver warrior love that defeats all sadness and solitude. This is a socialized expectation. it is a frame set in our mind. innately i desire intimate understanding and the requited company of a person with my same desires. but the understanding ends at the inevitability that all things are not perpetual, or paradoxically, not inevitable. that is the seat of desire in itself, that things are not perpetual. i have said before that the most important word in that song is the word "again" and it is true. the want comes again and again. it is perpetuus itself.
Yet is it a case of survival versus transcendence? Is it a case of feeding the want again and again for survival, or curing yourself of the "addiction"? It could be argued either way, for to survive I need the common, still water, but to transcend I need a rising, yet disappearing flame. I know I drink because I need to, yet I smoke because I want to. I need the water, and I will clutch the canteen 'til my dying day. I need stable love like a tick needs blood. Do I feed, selfishly, without regard for my true desire, or the pain it deals my host, feeding only because I need it, and it is there, and succulent? "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him." (Bob Dylan, "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again") If one did not feed from what they needed they would be starving.
Or is it rather that we simply want what we need to survive? For survival is simply being, and to simply be, we may want the coexistence of a person who knows, and is, and that is all that may be in actuality, no fire, no light. It is only seems exotic because of the expectations that have framed the idea; it only seems beyond us because such pairings are not usual in society because no one simply is, they do, they produce. In order to sustain a working system, are pairings of love made in need of sustaining one another, as husband sustains wife, and vice versa, as mechanical as a gear, productive in roles, even emotional ones? Or is love knowing and even being one another, as you become the desire for the other one?
I believe in a world without society, in a world where perhaps people wandered like animals, that burning, self-annihilating love would not be so foreign. We would not all be struggling with the expectations, for love and other things, money, work, and social role, that block us from simply existing together.
I realize all these thoughts are also simply unrealistic but if we were in fact feral animals it would not be so far-fetched. But perhaps it is simply a case of animalia versus humanity--an animalistic id versus a human conscience. The id wants to be, to eat when hungry, to fuck when lustful, to sleep when tired, to go where we want to go, to write when we want to write, to draw what we want to draw, to simply be in the company of another. These are all self-desires. We fight for our own survival. There is no proving ourself to others nor recognition of others except in mutual fulfillment of company and understanding. It is simply living without regret. Out here in the fields I fought for my meals. I get my back into my living. I don't need to fight to prove I'm right. I don't need to be forgiven. (The Who, "Baba O'Reilly") There is no production or work except for self-fulfillment. In essence it is wasteland of self-indulgence. The ultimate focus on the self and perception of wasted time is adolescence--"Teenage Wasteland." Or is it a wasteland, for it procures the self? One could call this selfish, unrealistic, hedonistic. It is probably all these things, but is also animal, simple, being. However, human conscience and its complex system of actual regard for others and mock-regard for others because it looks better to regard other' needs, or at least, to pretend to, have caused the creation of nearly arbitrary institutions that have come to govern our lives and become obstacles to fulfillment of these basic, selfish desires. Whether this is good or not, I cannoy say definitively, but by frustrating our natural inclination, it creates a perpetual dissatisfaction and a constant struggle to replace these desires with the fulfillment of other, societal ones--creating false desires to obtain--through the consolation of money, status, or a consoling church.
But perhaps even the idea that society is a hindrance is created from society itself. Can one still simply exist as they want in society? Probably. Society is not necessarily an oppressor. It was formed so that every man was not for himself. The paragon of self-sacrifice for others, in opposition to a "savage" self-servitude, became the societal expectation and ideal. Christ gave himself. So should you. Is that what true love has been defined as, giving oneself to another? Should it not be keeping yourself for yourself, and having partnership with someone you regard as having the same understanding, same heart, and in fact, an equal of yourself? Is self-servitude really worse than self-sacrifice? Or is it actually that self-servitude can, in the end, come to serve others?
I am not proposing anarchy, because if someone's desires interfere with another person's life or desire, they should not be able to be fulfilled. And sometimes we should do things for others because they want us to, not because we want to. But now it has become that almost all we do is because others want us to, or because we have been socialized to believe it is what is expected of us. i have to go back to the example of the artist and the complacent. if the artist struggles, is miserable, and society "helps" them to return to satisfaction with life through medication and therapy, is it not just making the artist happy in a way that he is expected to be, in place of actually fulfilling the desires that make him miserable? therefore, even if the artist is miserable, he is more satisfied in misery than in sedation. he simply is as he is, and if he yearns to do what he believes is beyond what society expects--that is, art--and he does so, then he is satisfied even in misery. yet the idea that he must reach beyond society comes from society itself, and so his satisfaction may have come from a self-deluded idea that he has transcended something. however, even if he has reached satisfaction through delusion, is it not still satisfaction?
yet the complacent also simply is, lazy or not, and if he aspires only to the expectations of which he knows, he is just as satisfied as the former. yet is there anyone actually like this person, who does not want what they cannot have? i doubt it. no matter what course we take, we will have wished we took another. so the person who does for themselves, and not for expectation, however unrealistic or not, is probably more satisfied. my point is that even this person's desires are molded by expectation, so expectation is mostly inescapable. yet if one can fulfill basic impulsive desires, they will be the most satisfied.
i am starting to sound like ayn rand, and i am also starting to be dissatisfied with myself, and lately i have found that i am dissatisfied with societal answers to my dissatisfaction and sadness, such as medicine and therapy, as making me only as they would expect me to be happy, and not actually making me happy. and lately, i have felt this way about these kind of self-promoting treatises and art:
So I've been hanging out down by the train's depot.
No, I don't ride.
I just sit and watch the people there.
They remind me of wind up cars in motion.
The way they spin and turn and jockey for positions.
And I want to scream out that it is all nonsense.
All your lives one track,
can't they see it's pointless?
But just then, my knees
give under me.
My head feels weak
and suddenly
it's clear to see
it's not them but me,
who has lost my self-identity.
As I hide behind
these books I read,
while scribbling
my poetry,
like art could save a wretch like me,
with some ideal ideology
that no one can hope to achieve.
And I am never real;
it is just a sketch in me.
And everything I made is trite
and cheap
and a waste
of paint,
of tape,
of time.
(Bright Eyes, "Waste of Paint")
Who am I to delegate what life is lived correctly or is the most fulfilling?
And is art even fulfilling? Only the in the sense that it may temporarily fulfill my own expectations of self, quickly to retort itself later.
The key to insight, in fact, is desire and misery and dissatisfaction, anyhow.
I cannot write anymore.
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