MY FACELESS SADIST:

I get the feeling that this was your plan all along: To sit behind the screen with your whip and mask, making my anticipation grow until it felt like it would rip me in two. And then, a calculated number of days later, you let me feel it all in a rush, releasing me from its treacherous bonds. If it was anyone except you, I might retaliate,

(because how dare they turn the tables)

but because it’s you, lover, I must admit that I have pleasure—thank you.

I like the baby picture kick that you’re on. Some personality theorists in the first half of the twentieth century speculated about the significance of the childhood memories that we choose to retrieve and rehearse and revive. So in order to get a glimpse into the current state of someone’s psyche, they would ask: “Tell me about your earliest childhood memory.”

And some might say: “I remember being in my crib. I don’t know how old I was, but I was in a crib. I remember lying there in the semi-dark, and studying the cobwebs on the ceiling being gently blown by the air conditioning.”

Or, “I remember being on my back under a Christmas tree, and looking up at the lights twinkling through the plastic branches. There was a distinct feeling associated with it—so tangible that it was almost a smell: the scent of anticipation.”

Or even, “I remember riding a go-cart with my oldest brother. I was too small to drive, so he put me in his lap as we rode around our field. I felt safe, and so proud to be included in this activity with him.”

Ostensibly, each of these memories would give some crucial insight into the current state of mind of the speaker: “The speaker is infatuated with isolation; is infatuated with sensation-seeking; is infatuated with those perceived as superior.” Though I can’t endorse this method scientifically, or claim that it is diagnostically useful, I do like the implication that memories are at once the product of what has passed, and also what is present. They are not snapshots of our lives as they were, but instead paintings of our past selves, the subject and brushstrokes guided by our present selves. (Paintings that made it worth it to leave the garden.)

It’s only slightly different from the magic of looking at baby pictures. Though the photos are in one sense objective, aren’t your careful evaluations of the image, the details you deem significant, in some sense more revealing about your current self than your 1 or 2 or 3 year old self? “There,” you say, “Look how happy I was.” “I was a chubby-assed little baby.” “I really loved that shirt (and of course the implications of that are obvious).” “I was still me—even then, I was me.”

Of course, you weren’t really. You haven’t been that particular you for a long time—both psychologically and biologically, you have sloughed off many selves since that picture. But it’s reassuring, the comparison. It’s reassuring to know that you existed then, and that you were so similar to your current conception of yourself. Reassuring to see hints of this emerging identity, or that emerging preference. We need those photos, those reassurances that certain things remain constant. Just as we need holidays: it’s comforting to know that at least one day a year, we know that we will, eternally, be doing the same, pleasurable things with (hopefully) the same pleasurable people. That is one aspect of our lives that we will always have, no matter how ridiculously, rapidly, relentlessly our lives change.

~ The Masochist Who Cares (For The Face Behind The Mask)

My darling confidant,

I apologize for my expected tardiness in responding. Just imagine the usual path of the Pony Express was delayed a bit longer because of the recent hoopla of the holidays. Norman was perhaps a bit too far off the beaten, snow-shoveled path; they just decided to wait an extra week or so. They figured it would do the inhabitants good to wait a while, for once. Think of it that way, and it seems rather sweet. Perhaps you needed a reminder of how good it felt to be surprised, just when you thought things were beginning to fizzle. This one’s too good to go flat, though I’m pleased to report.

While things are finally beginning to settle from all the festive goings-on, I’m less ready than ever for this break to end. The colorful bulbs of Christmas are finally being strung up and tucked away into a cold, dark storage unit and I’ve never been more ready to see them go. It was the best winter I can remember in recent memory and it couldn’t possibly last long enough. The icy chill was easy enough to shrug off, but more joints and muscles are sore from sitting awkwardly hunched over in front of the monitor, waiting for my life to start happening.

This year’s winter was perhaps even better than those innocent childhood mornings when Santa was even more mysterious and mythical than my current sex life. However, it feels damn good to know the truth after the fall, even if we were kicked out of the garden...  God’s ain’t got nothin’ on what’s growin’ in our minds.

 

Typing like a madman, my thoughts are in a frenzy when I really get going: something that doesn’t happen enough. It’s all fits and starts and constantly referring back to your comments and feeling ultimately like there’s nothing I can add to what you’ve already said, so flawlessly. You say everything just as I’d love to be able to, with a voice so familiar and steady, it’s hard to believe it’s not my own. Your words always edify and intoxicate me.

I’m very much relieved you’ve decided to break out of your impersonal shell.                     

It distracted me from the real point of these coded correspondences: essentially just for us, individually and together, to make sense of our uncannily poignant and indisputably stirring mutual perception of the world. I can’t imagine our secret sessions ever being any less than wholly soul-fulfilling.

 

Inevitably, I doubt you will ever realize the wonders you work that never cease to humble me.  

You constantly remind me of who I am and who I most aspire to be. 

You know I have more reverence for you than any living person I’ve ever known.

And if you didn’t, you certainly should.

I long for your diction like babies long to be held.

You know, we never got those promise rings we talked about.

In an equally random and distracted end-note, keeping with my current and oft utilized stream-of-consciousness approach: I so love the exciting prospect of a new relationship that blossoms out of meeting new and interesting people. It serves to renew my faith in the ability of other people to be unexpectedly and pleasantly engrossing. It reminds me that I cannot consistently expect the worst from people, even though perhaps I should. Instead, I’m always thinking that this time, things will be different. I see new people in my life as the ideals of what I would hope they could be... and as we both know too well, that is almost always grounds for disappointment. I need to fine-tune my ability to be pleased with what is concretely there in others, without any of that other pointless waiting, hoping and wishing.  What else is the internet for but to maximize our longing?

 

-Your envious admirer,

consistently ed·i·fied (ěd'ə-fī'd)

1. to build up, establish, or strengthen a person, institution, etc.; to uplift

2. to instruct or benefit; to inform or enlighten intellectually or spiritually

Etymology:

Latin aedes 'building' + -ficare 'to make'