BLISTERLOVE SORESEX

By Shawn Thompson

Hello Vertigo,

I am lost and I don’t know where I am going. Something has broken loose in my head, a long time ago. Is it consciousness? I can hear it bump against my cranium wall when I bow my head or turn too quickly. It makes me shaky and unsettled, like a broken toy. I’m on the brink of something I’m not quite sure yet, and I soon become the brink, the edge, this fine line standing between everything, between words, between thoughts, between you and me. Is this the in-between? I start seeing everything Red. This is passion. But is it love or anger? Is it a bloody murder or a winged creature? Butterfly wings flapping wet on a finger, before the fall or the fly. Sometimes I think about insanity and let my mind wanders into its own meanders. But not too far, not too deep. I’m afraid I’ll never see it again. I’m walking the steel wire like a sleepwalker, I lay the thread as I go, not knowing if I’m leaving or arriving, never knowing if it’s fear or wisdom that keeps me going, I bend my knees and stretch my arms out, it feels like what I’m looking for is just outside my reach, my hands over the edge, they are gasping for air, something is burning, I hope it’s not the bridge, It might be dreams, It might be fears, It might be me.

Everyone has coping mechanisms. “Coping up with what?” you might ask. I guess nobody really knows. I could answer: “Life” or “stuff” or “you in the world” but we’re still navigating in total darkness. Oh, maybe that’s a more precise answer, maybe that’s what we’re all trying to cop up with: Darkness, our very own dark and obscure little place inside that acts out every once in a while and makes us shake our heads the morning after we have fallen down and out, and down, and out. Or maybe this darkness is what makes us “cop up with,” maybe it’s how it expresses itself, maybe this is what makes our arm stretch until our hand finds itself encircling a bottle of gin or unfolding eagerly to accept a promising sketchy-looking capsule. I don’t know. But if I was to be a soul-less evil business woman, I would totally tap into humanity’s despair and helplessness and I would invent things like television and democracy.

I was still a child when I chose to be conscious. I don’t know if it was really a choice. It’s like my gayness. I always knew my liking for girls was going beyond some kind of “what it’s suppose to be like.” Anyway, I had just experienced the joy of menstruation when I understood that “happiness” was only possible for dumb people. I was feeling way too many things, I had way too much questions and not enough answers to be content with life, with me, with everything I saw. Yes, I was seeing “too much.” I couldn’t turn a blind eye on what was going on around me, in me, in others, between me and others… There t0o, I knew I wasn’t doing like everybody else, I wasn’t looking at things the way “they’re supposed to be.” I wanted to see them the way they were. And I quickly realized it wasn’t the deal for most people… but it was there, in me, alongside my untameable desire to be close to girls, they smelled so damn nice. So I figured it would be better for me to just go with it all rather than struggle to muzzle it for the rest of my life. But life is never enough for people who want to be alive and live life living. I try everything I can, I take risks and amass as much as  lived experiences I possibly can. I want to taste everything, I want to learn everything, know everything, understand everything,  and I want it all. I have this lifelong thirst for absolute I need to quench. I need to believe it’s possible, that everything I’ve been told is possible, that everything I can dream of is possible, that life is limitless, and that I can just live off Freedom and Love, real Love, Unconditional, Absolute in a sense. Don’t roll your eyes here, I’ve been rolling them forever and I realized that this Love is basically all I’m fundamentally looking for. I just want to be able to live it, to feel it, to know it’s possible, that it does exist and that it can exists for me. It’s a great achievement for the consciousness to come to that realization, as simple as it is. Going back to simplicity is a very complicated road.

So yes. Love… I recently had been “coping up” with sex. It’s another fine escapism. It makes you feel desired, it makes you feel loved, appreciated and cared for. You become Someone because someone else is there to validate you, since when you do it to yourself it’s never enough, right? But sex can be a disease too. A bliss-full of love turns into a blisterlove in the midst of what becomes soresex. I realized I had lost my consciousness. I had forgotten the sacredness of sex, the “sexmagick” for those familiar with this pagan concept. Lovesex is a work of art, it’s fantastic, dramatic, complex, joyful and sad, it’s survival, it is Life in the very making, creation and destruction, in all its splendour and obscurity. Sex is so much like Life that it’s just as fragile. It’s a house of cards. You know, It takes a lot of patience to build one. And if you bring your fears along, your shaky hands will make everything crumble and you’ll remain alonetogether.