Emotional Pornography

It's the little things in life that become emotional pornography when you're single. Maybe not just when you're single, but when you're not getting it.

2 hours of dancing on top of a 5 hour car trip had me whimpering mentally by the time I was heading home tonight. Leaning over a marble bannister, unable to even make it to my car without trying to stretch out my back, I found myself having an intense fantasy moment where all I had to do was make it home, and there would be someone there waiting whose only main concern would be whether they'd rub my feet or my back first. The backrub would be especially welcome, since it would likely involve lotion and I've had this chronic itch on my right shoulder blade for the last few months that has me contorting like a cross between a mental patient and a dog with fleas to reach it on a daily basis. This itch has been with me for years, but was one of the many little things that my partner did for me that made a warm squishy place in my heart, even if he insisted upon teasing me about it. "will you scratch. . ." "your right shoulder blade" he would finish with what I always hoped was amusement and not resentment. He didn't have any hard to reach chronically itchy places, so I never got to return the favor.

I figured this would be the place on my hide that wouldn't allow me to go "Between". He thought it was from my tattoo, I think it was because he didn't care for me properly when he grew me, and that was a weak spot on my skin :)

These fantasies combined with memories happen a lot anymore. I find myself sighing at the idea of curling up on the couch by myself to watch tv, and dreading forcing myself to actually cook when I'm by myself. I miss being felt up while I'm doing the dishes, and putting my cold hands in his warm places when I come in from outside and don't have enough sense to put on gloves. Laughing and joking around with another adult who you're intimate with is something that isn't the same with close friends. A lot of things aren't the same with close friends, mostly because they have their own lives and share their own little moment of life with someone else.

My step-brother and his wife are visiting my family right now. I just came from there today. They've been married a long time. I sort of vaguely remember them getting married, but I was pretty young and not paying much attention to that kind of thing. Or maybe, they got married just before my mom and step-dad got together. In any case, they've always been together in my mind. They almost split up a few years ago. I don't know exactly what the problem was, but it sounded like it was the same basic problem most couples who've been together for a while (especially those who got together young) face. They just got bored.

Those little moments that are so important to me now, important enough that thinking about them brings on some kind of weird horniness, an emotional horniness seeking out consumation on the plane of intimacy instead of the playing field of the physical connection, are things that it's easy to forget are important. It's simple to see how green the grass is somewhere else for no other reason than the sheer novelty of the unknown being more interesting than what you already know in and out. They got bored. They felt the other one didn't hear them, didn't appreciate them, didn't even know who they were anymore.

They got past it, somehow. I'm not sure how they did that either. But now they're comfortable with each other. They like each other. Somewhere, they realized that maybe those little moments meant more than they seemed, maybe they weren't so little. They know each other really well, better than anyone else does. That counts for a lot, when you really think about it. In Shall we Dance? the Sarandan character says this about marriage, "We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness."

Not especially romantic, but it's that witness I miss the most. The participation in my life by someone else who gives a shit about it. I spent 12 hours making a roof over someone's head. I'm so fucking impressed by that. The only other human being in the world who can truly understand how impressive the amount of work I did was, isn't here anymore to care. The only person who has a complete picture of my history, of where I came from, what I fought through to get here, took his attention away and left a hole in the documentary. The *context* of my accomplishments has been removed.

I don't need a person in my life. I am content with myself most of the time. I can support myself, take care of my kids, keep myself entertained, get laid (theoretically), develop my self/art/skills/intellect, and happily sleep by myself taking up a surprising amount of the king sized bed. I find myself wondering, what exactly is a partner good for? I'm so competant in my own life, it's almost scary, what do I need in someone else?

I realized I don't *need* someone else, but I want company. I want a companion who is interested in me, who is interesting themselves, and who is simply *there*. Being present in my life, witnessing it and sharing it. While I do seem to get more *done* by myself, I miss killing time. I *want* to just hang out with someone whose company is so enjoyable, that we just talk to each other about whatever, and suddenly we're late for where we were supposed to go, or not going to get enough sleep for the next day, or didn't get the project done we swore we were going to do. People are interesting enough, but individuals are fascinating. I love and miss digging into a particular person, a unique person, and spending *years* understanding their layers and plumbing their depths. I like working on that kind of time scale. I miss forever, I long for the knowledge that there's plenty of time ahead. Emotional pornography is the decadent luxury of the forseeable future laid out in front of you, available for slow and deliberate exploration, deeper and harder, increasingly subtle and sensitive probes based on shared history and the unique language of intimacy that every close pairing develops.