I often find that there are things that I write in e-mails to other people that I want to look back on later, and have as a record of my thoughts and beliefs of that time. So here's a slightly edited version of an e-mail I sent to my friend, The Rambler (a name given with great affection), who lives in Chicago, and who I've yet to meet yet.

I think, myself, that alot of confusing situations become much simpler when I stop trying to understand them. So many things are outside of whatever framework I could imagine, so letting go of the habit of trying to put things into in inadequate framework can make things much easier. I know alot of people have trouble with this, but in my experience, recognizing that there are alot of aspect of a situation that one is simply incapable of understanding can actually bring the aspects that one does understand into clearer, more stable focus, and also bring a deeper level of acceptance and comfort with the situation.

I had one friend who had a big problem with my acceptance of my inherent inability as a human to ever really understand anything, you know, because my sensory equipment is so limited, as is my mental capacities. She thought that I was giving up on life, that the logical conclusion to my statement was that there is no point in trying to understand anything. She's an intellectual-type, and I guess her motivation for continuing to try to understand the world was the idea that someday us humans would reach the end, and understand everything. I don't see how this is even possible, but I also don't see this as any reason to quit thinking and trying to understand the world. So plese don't get me wrong: I'm not trying to suggest that we should all just give up and live in ignorance. What I am saying is that what we don't know and are incapable of knowing is just as important as what we do know when it comes to trying to figure something out; and also that seeing where our knowledge is deficient, and finding out where our limits are, can offer valuable insight into what line of iquiry we could investigate in order to increase what knowledge we can.

Ha Ha. Listen to me go! Yes, I do love arm-chair philosophizing. I have a natural affinty for it, if not any actual skill.

This is something that I also wrote about in a different post, one about doing yoga outside (I can't figure out how to link to it! Help me!), where I pointed out that this uncertainty makes me want to learn more; I have a whole universe to explore, both physically and intellectualy, and even if I only get to see a tiny little fraction of it, I'll still get to experience many amazing and inspiring things.

But in some ways this DOES make me a little complacent: knowing that there is not a final goal, but rather an infinite series of events, each as important as the one before it and after it (or over it, under it, around it, inside it?), makes me feel like there is not much sense of urgency about my life: I'll never get to it all, so I'll just enjoy whatever is in front of me right now. This is good, I think, for overall happiness, but not so much for getting my degree, and getting a good paying job one day.

Bah...too much philosophizing, like too much religion, is going to make me feel strange. I better quit now while I'm ahead.

So far I'm having an easier time becoming sexually sober than other attempts I've made, and I think it's because I've changed my attitude towards sexual feelings. I used to try to negate them when I was trying to get sober, to shut them out. I've learned now that this is not productive. Sex is never going to go away. It's like the air: it all around us, all the time. Usually were not aware of it, but every once in awhile we take a big breath, or we step out into the fresh air from a stuffy room, and air all of sudden takes on importance and meaning. So this is the goal for me: I will accept sex and sexual feelings as something that is always present in one form or another, but place it in the background, not in the center of my focus, unless I've decided that it's time to do so. One way that I'm trying to make this happen, is that when sexual feelings arise, I'm taking the focus off my dick and balls, and redirecting it to my body as a whole, so I can see my sexuality in context, not as the only important thing. It's strange, because when I do this it becomes clear how overly obsessed I am with my genitalia. Focusing on the rest of body, my dick seems disportionately big in regards to importance it has in my mind. The rest of my body seems neglected and unimportant. I want to change this.

This is a very long entry, that is entirely exposition, instead of narrative, so proceed at your own risk!

I haven't been writing much lately, because with the school and the work I don't have alot of time. I have, however, been keeping a handwritten journal, which I originally started to keep track of my feelings, thoughts, and physical reactions in my newest attempt to get sober. You see, about a week ago I had a day where I did nothing but various addictive activities. I woke up, felt good and motivated, had clearly laid out plans to get a variety of things done, and then proceeded to do nothing but act out. First, I spent 6 hours watching little video clips (non-pornographic) on the internet. I missed class because of this, and almost didn't have time to get to work. After I worked for an hour (which was all I was scheduled for), I decided to act out sexually, but first I drank a bunch of caffeine. I spent several dissatisfying hours down by the river either waiting for guys to show up, or actually having sex with men. Then, even though I was exhausted, I went over to a friend's house, smoked pot, and had sex with him.

The weird thing about all of it was that I had absolutely no idea why it was happening. The whole time I knew that I would rather be doing other things, or that other things would make me happier. And there was no pain or emotional distress that I could identify that would have driven me to act out. I thought about it, and thought about it, and the only thing that I could identify was a feeling that if I stopped acting out then something bad would happen. I didn't know what this bad thing was. I still don't know. It was just a feeling. Every time I tried to turn away from the activity I was engaged in, I felt very strongly that to quit was dangerous, and that I better keep doing whatever I was doing, at least for a few more minutes. Somehow a few more minutes took up my entire day, and I was left staring off into space, thinking "what happened?"

So I've decided to keep a little journal, where I could write about what was going on. And I've decided that I'm going to use all my strength to stop myself from acting out for as long as possible, because I believe that if I take my addictive behaviors away, then the reasons I do them will become a lot more clear. That's all I'm trying to do right now: figure out the reasons for my behavior. I think I knew at one point, but I've been acting out for so long that I don't remember them anymore; I just remember that there is some reason, and it's a very good reason, so I better just keep acting out.

It's only been a few days of me keeping the journal, but it has quickly morphed into a catalogue of sexual feelings, dreams, and my experience with the voices in my head. Most anyone that knows me well will not be surprised when I say that I hear voices in my head. They come and go, but they almost always occur right when I'm falling asleep or right when I wake up. These times of falling asleep and waking up are also two rather tempting times for me to act out. A casual glance may make it appear that the two are conected, but I don't believe so, because my habit of mastrabating directly before sleeping or right after waking up has been with me since the age of 12, long before I heard voices. In fact, at that time I had a friend who did actually hear voices, and I was a little envious, because it seemed to me like a badge of coolness, of being interesting, special.

So when I wake up in the morning, I'm generally kind of horny. Alot of guys feel this way, with the "morning wood" and what-have-you. It's biological. Maybe when the body is doing its nightly repairs and stuff, it's also making alot of semen, which wants to be released right when we wake up. In the morning I also feel less in control of my actions, so a desire to mastrabate is more likely to be acted upon, even if I'm trying to limit that activity. But the most important reason that I want to mastrabate immediately upon awakening is because I have such a difficult time waking up, and mastrabation helps get my blood flowing, my heart pumping, my mind activated, so I can start my day. It's really very useful for that. However, afterwards I feel a little drained, so I feel like my day gets off to a dragging start.

To counteract this, I'm keeping some nicotine gum next to my bed, which also increases the heart-rate and stimulates the mind. I pop some in my mouth right when I'm awake enough to think of it, and then I go and write in order to explore how I'm feeling sexually, how I feel about that feeling, what I'm thinking, what I think about what I'm thinking, what I think about what I'm feeling, and what I feel about what I'm thinking. You know the drill. But because I do this right in the morning, all the other things I'm typically thinking about in the morning also get put in the journal; and what I'm typically thinking about are the voices in my head and my dreams.

These also go together, because lately I've been worried that the voices are getting louder and more insistent than they were before. I know that they tend to get alot stronger if I've been drinking or doing drugs, so I try to minimize ingesting such things. But I was thinking the other day that the way I use sex to alter my mood is very drug-like, putting me into an altered state. And I was thinking that maybe being high on sex all the time is feeding into this somewhat distrubing part of myself. So one reason that I'm trying to get a little bit of sobriety right now is to see how it affects the voices in my head, like if they get weaker or stronger as I get more sober. And the dreams...well, I just like to think about my dreams.

I don't really expect to get any real, lasting sobriety right now. I'm considering this more to be like a fact-finding mission, so that when I'm ready at some point to take my sobriety seriously I'll have more good information at my disposal.

Also, when I have time I'll post my hand-written journal entries on this blog, so that those who are curious can have a look. This will be a good excercise for me as well; it'll be a good chance for me to take a review of my progress, and see if I can find any patterns.

Ugh! Ow! What is this sharp stabbing pain in my temples and forehead? This emotional and psychological numbness taking over me? Oh, I get it: It's writers block. Ow.

Tiger

My first sexual experience was painful. I'm not circumsized, so the head of my penis is incredibly sensitive. Not so much now as it used to be, because over the years I've pulled back the foreskin frequently, and exposed the tender head to stimulation, the same sort of stimulation that circumsized guys get all thier lives from the moment they get cut as helpless babies. But at the time, at the age of 14, I hadn't really ever pulled the foreskin back, though I had played with it alot. I would stick my finger beneath it and swirl it around, which was not really erotic, but more like a habit of distraction, like twirling my long hair or drumming my fingers on a table-top. Or I would position my foreskin just right so it would look like a mouth, making my erect penis look remarkably like the head of the Alien from the movie Alien, H.R. Giger style, which always amused me. I would also fill my foreskin up with air by creating suction, and make little farting noises by pushing the air out, something I still do to this day. In fact, sometimes when I'm getting it on with some guy, I'll be adjusting my foreskin, just for comfort, and the air trapped beneath it will squeeze out, making very un-sexy noises, through no intention of my own. This is a little embarrassing.

So the first thing this guy did, this 14 year old boy who we called Tiger, mixed black and white, who later developed some sort of physical disorder that required him to walk with a cane, which led him to become a lonely and serious scholar when he went away to college, was to yank the foreskin striaght down. He then proceeded to assault my poor little head with his mouth, in what I assume he thought was a most erotic manner. It hurt. I didn't like it at all. I quickly changed what we were doing, taking control, so I was mostly doing things to him, intentionally not giving him the chance to do very much to me. He came while I was going down on him, which I swallowed, tasting it's salty wateryness , not sure how I felt about it. I was satisfied with the experience, and considered that we were done, but unfortunately he was a very conscientious lover, and had decided that I should be getting off as well. He immediatly began his attack on my dick again, which hurt just as much before, and was really starting to annoy me. Luckily, I was 14, and my erection was not going anywhere, no matter what tortures it endured, so I grabbed it from him immediatly and wanked myself off as quick as I could, which, also because I was 14, happened within seconds.

When we left the bedroom and went out to the living room, our friend Hiedi was listening to Led Zepplin, and crying. It was pretty much agreed by all of us that Hiedi was an attention seeker, who lied, so we didn't pay her antics much mind, and instead we all went down to the park. Tiger played on the jungle gym, while me and Hiedi sat on the swings. I didn't look at Tiger, other than a few glances. He didn't seem to be paying much attention to me either. I don't believe we said more than a few words to each other. But that was normal for us: we didn't really have much in common, save our interest in touching each other, and anyway I wasn't really much of a conversationalist with anyone at that time. My interest in touching him had less to do with me being attracted to him, and more to do with the novelty of it. Eventually we all convened again, trying to decide what we should do, now that the park was proving to be boring. It felt so uncomfortable to be close to him, to be standing in a circle with him, looking at him face to face, that I decided to just go home.

On the way home I knew that I had been rude. That a more mature person would have hung out and talk. I guess I just didn't know what I was supposed to do. My interest in touching him had less to do with actual physical attraction, and more to do with the novelty of it. Now that the novelty was gone, my desire to touch him had gone too, and seeing as I didn't even really like him that much, why make the pretense of wanting to hang out? It was something we did, that was very interesting, but I didn't want to do again. I walked to the bus-stop, feeling out of place in that strage part of town, and feeling very strong and new. The streets, trees, and houses were pale and hazy with bright summer sunshine, and I felt the same. I replayed the events over and over again, not really thinking about them, just marveling, in my serious, unemotional way, that I had done them at all. I wouldn't say I was happy so much as impressed. Not impressed with myself, just with the fact that such things happened at all, not just in my father's pornographic magazines and videos, but in real life. In fact, it seemed to happen rather easily.

I didn't see him for several years after that, and I made no attempt to get in contact with him or find out anything about him. When mutual friends would mention him, I would listen with abstracted interest, but simply shrug in response to any questions about what we had done. The only thing I remember being said about him now was that he had made out with a mousy, mannish girl that was the daughter of the ugliest teacher at our school. I thought it strange. Was he gay, or was he Bi? How could a self-respecting gay man do something so disgusting?

When I did finally see him again, at the age of 19 on a bus heading downtown, he was warm and pleasant, but distant. I don't remember what we spoke of, but I remember actually being interested in what he had to say, and getting the impression that I had made a mistake by ignoring him, and not making the effort to get to know him better. When he got off the bus before me, I was sad, in that wistful, nostalgic way. I was not so much sad to see him go, but more sad at my own dysfunctional way of dealing with people.

I saw him once more, for the last time, at the age of 21. I was at a free concert of Sonic Youth and Stereolab, which seemed to attract every young hipster in the Minneapolis metropolitan area. He was sitting far away from the crowd, dressed all in black, his little dredlocks flopped down on his head, his eyes wide and interested. He leaned his bent back against a brick wall, because he truly needed the support, and balanced his cane between his legs. Again, we talked. He was studying at St. Cloud Univesity, a few hours north of Minneapolis, though I don't remember what. I avoiding mentioning his cane, or his obvious physical disability, although I found it intensely interesting. And again, I don't remember much of what he said, but do remember walking away with the impression that I had screwed up somehow; that an adolescence with him would have been preferable to the adolescene I had actually led, wasting my time losing my mind with a bunch of alcoholic, pot-headed, high-school drop-outs. I wasn't sad this time though. I was happy that my first time was with someone so respectable, and it was interesting for me to think about how mistaken my impressions of someone can be, and how much people can change over the years.

I guess I could draw some sort of moral from this story, but I prefer to just let it be what it was. I didn't really understand it then, nor do I now. The person I was then, 13 years ago, is not the same person I am now either, so any lesson wouldn't really apply to me anyway.