Photo: Nomadic Lass
Silence
devours time,
covering me like
a thick numbing blanket
of pristine snow.
I slumber
beneath.
Cold
creeps in,
the infectious disease
of a dead heart.
like frost spreading
across glass
blind.
Words
protect us,
inoculation from the
paralyzing vacuum of doubt.
Tell me you
love me
still
Or let me sleep.
Today I have been thinking a lot about Sir Richard Burton. Born in 1821, Burton was in some ways very typical of the adventurous explorers of his time. He started off as a captain in the army of the East India Company, serving in both India and the Crimea. After this, he led expeditions funded by the National Geographic Society to Mecca and the East Coast of Africa.
But what intrigues me more about Burton, considering the time in which he lived, was his startlingly open views on sex. Looking at his childhood gives us no hint as to why he was so extraordinarily open-minded for his time period, but what is clear is that he deplored the prevailing attitudes on the subject and, when he finally returned and settled in Britain, he was responsible for acquainting the West with some of the world’s most famous erotic texts: The Kama Sutra, 1001 Arabian Nights, and The Perfumed Garden.
What haunts my mind tonight is the image of his widow standing in the garden of his house, burning what she considered to be his ’sinful’ texts, including his translation of The Perfumed Garden.
I remember the first time I ever heard the story of this; how the anger it triggered took me by surprise. And still, today, when I think of that woman, caught up in her self-righteous fervor, consigning this man’s works to the flames and insisting that it was the ghost of her husband who was exhorting her to do it, I get absolutely fucking livid.
Admittedly, an earlier and less concise version of many of those texts survive because he’d sent them to his life-long friend, Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot, but his final translation, with its last chapter was lost forever.
I find it bitterly ironic that people who seek to suppress or destroy works they find personally offensive for the sake of ‘public good’, never stop to consider the injury they do by denying others access to those works. So sure are they that they are saving us all from ourselves, they have and continue to impoverish us in a selfish act of fanning the flames of their own petty moral indignations.
The last chapter of The Perfumed Garden – the one that is now gone forever – was on the subject of pederasty. Not really my cup of tea, personally. But the fact that I now no longer have the choice of whether to read it or not – the fact that this choice has been taken away from me by someone in a fit of self-righteousness – this will never, ever cease to anger me.
And so tonight, 120 years after that destructive act, I’m going to bed angry.
Material on Sir Richard Francis Burton on the web:
Burtoniana: A collection of his books and articles
U Penn: A list of all his translations available online
An earlier translation of The Perfumed Garden
A Channel 4 Documentary Burton available for download through Veoh.
An excerpt of a twitter interchange I had recently:
Him: There comes a time when wrinkly women should cut their hair, the woman on Wright Stuff has missed it by 10 years.
Me: I’m so relieved I’ve already cut mine. I wouldn’t want to try and pass myself off for hirsute lamb in old bag clothing.
Him: But ya know what I mean! I’m 47, I don’t wear skinny jeans and sport a Mohican! For fucks sake!
Me: Shall we talk truth, Sweetie? Statements like that make women of my age feel like we should lock ourselves in a closet and never come out. Ultimately, if some middle-aged woman doesn’t turn your crank, exactly how does it hurt you whether her hair is long or short? I mean, you still wouldn’t fancy her. She’s still a dried up old cunt, her tits still sag, so how the fuck does it matter which way she cuts her hair?
Him: This is not a gender based opinion, this is simple aesthetics. If long grey hair is ugly, don’t wear it & ‘Sweetie’ could be incredibly patronising, & only a woman would use it! However I’ve chosen to ignore it(sic)
Me: Aesthetics is always culturally biased, and we live in a culture that worships youth. And you are no freer of hegemonic influence than anyone else.
Him: what is visibly unattractive is not culturally based, it’s based simply on natural instinct. Hegemony is in the eye of the beholder! Your bitterness is founded on your opinion of yourself, not my view of you
Me: GOD… listen to how fucking ignorant that is. Attractiveness is either a) based on fertility. (And since she is unfertile and not impregnable, who gives a fuck if her hair is long or short. Or b) culturally based on social concepts of ‘appropriate’
Him: I do! I like looking at attractive women. Most women (not all) who are over 50 look better with short hair.
Me: Says YOU. How dare you turn women into nuns and unsex them just because YOU don’t want to fuck them anymore
Him: Yes I do care. Look at Sharon Stone, she is fully aware of what shape her face took on as she hit 50! She cut her hair
Me: Oh, for fucks sake. Sharon Stone isn’t REAL! Sharon Stone is a media construct.
Him: teri hatcher! in Superman I didn’t even notice her; 20 years later, at 47, she’s beautiful. Ok, so you think that 50 year old men in skinny jeans, wiv pony tails & a bald patch look sexy! Fuck off.
Me: Truthfully, if he has a mind like a sewer, I don’t give a fuck what he’s wearing, or how he cuts his hair. But I would never deny a man the right to dress in a way that HE felt was attractive, just because I didn’t think he was sexually attractive.
Him: You’re talking shit for argument’s sake. being ‘correct’ cos women are so suppressed is bollocks.
Me: No. That is wear you read me totally wrong. I’m not feminist, I’m anti-ageist. I hate the fact that our society neuters people and attempts to turn them into sexless, ‘appropriate’ sheep at the age of 50. Which, by the way, I’m not.
Him: I am simply talking about what I have been conditioned to find attractive. You have decided that my conditioning is wrong!
Me: And if you aren’t smart enough to ever interrogate your conditioning, then… well… sad for you.
Him: I don’t edit Vogue, my penis stopped me getting the job. I don’t edit Cosmo, see above! My conditioning is from you
Me: You? Who, me the advertising agencies? Me the cosmetic companies who make millions of making everyone feel ugly and old? Women don’t edit Cosmo or Vogue. MONEY edits Cosmo and Vogue. Advertisers.
Him: Do you think that at the age of 47, i’m NOT anti ageist! I have a natural aversion to cellulite, & women that can spell it
Me: Thank you. You’ve made my point for me.
Him: Now you’re getting bitter & twisted.
Me: So, being that the grey-long-haired woman in question is unattractive to you, under any circumstances. Why does it matter how she wears her hair?
I never got an answer, and to be fair, perhaps it is a hard question to answer. I got the feeling that he simply didn’t really understand the question, but I think it is a legitimate one and the answer or possible answers might be interesting.
Taking it from a purely Darwinian perspective, a woman past the age of reproduction is a useless thing. She takes up resources, but does very little to further the species. The most she could be said to do is care for young offspring whose mothers are busy elsewhere, but that is tenuous.
From the point of view of the vast majority of modern society, we may pay lip-service to how valuable our elderly are – how much we gain from their experience and insight – but let’s be honest: that’s bullshit. We would like to hide them away, and we have a very great desire to control the way they portray themselves and what they do. Things are changing, as the huge bulge of the babyboom goes into their retirement years. But for the most part, middle aged women are still represented to us in the media as bitter, twisted, scheming, manipulative, mothers-in-law, domineering bosses, dried up librarians, or hysterical feminists. (You’ll recognize some of the language in the twitter interchange actually echos this). Unless of course, we want to sell them something – in which case they’re regal and benign and tenderly wistful about their lost youth. The last is especially true when we’re trying to sell them cosmetics to make them appear younger.
My twitter correspondent was just being very honest. He doesn’t want a woman for whom he has no sexual desire to ‘pretend’ to be desirable. And you only have to look at both Orthodox Jewish and Muslim cultures to see how much long hair and sexual attractiveness are perceived to be co-relational. From the perspective of social power dynamics, it is understandable that he might want to control an object of his sexual desire, but why does he care so much about a woman who, for all intents and purposes, is of no use to him anyway?
The vehemence of his insistence started me thinking about other social circumstances under which men get so adamant, even though they don’t care for the person in question. It occurred to me that I had seen a similar reaction to Katooey (Ladyboys) in Bangkok. If you want to see a certain type of man become VERY upset, just watch them in the presence of transgendered men.
Now, say that you are a heterosexual man who has, by some mistake, taken a transgendered man back to your hotel thinking they were a woman. Most men are familiar enough with physiognomy that it will soon become obvious that he isn’t with a female. And when that happens, why – instead of simply saying ‘Oh, sorry. I really have no desire to have sex with you. Please go.’ – do they often beat the shit out of the transgendered person?
What causes this level of reaction?
Fear.
Fear of what?
Deception. Of being deceived. Of being duped into having sexual congress with someone who the man doesn’t deem worthy, useful, productive or appropriate.
Both middle-aged women and katooeys have things in common. Both can masquerade as something other than what they are. A middle-aged woman can appear younger. A transgendered man can appear female. Both are valued lower in society than younger, women capable of sexual reproduction.
Perhaps this is why there is a strong undercurrent in our society which seeks to visually ‘neuter’ older women and socially ostracize transgendered males. Because that way, they aren’t as likely to be able to deceive us into thinking they still matter, they’re still sexually viable, valued members of society.
Interestingly enough, there is an incidence of this in the natural world: Goby fish. If your interested, read about ‘Sneakers’ at National Geographic.
I’m thinking that these are interesting themes to pursue in erotic fiction: deception and the fear of being deceived. Ooh, lovely meaty stuff.
What do you think?
My bright Penny.
My word warrior.
My cherry thrice taken.
Why mourn the loss of youth and innocence?
What did they ever do for any of us?
You wear years like a library.
You wear scars like an itinerary.
You wear experience like a map.
All that wealth has been earned:
none borrowed or stolen or found lying around.
You, my friend, have authority.
The smart ones will know it for what it is.
The others simply don’t matter.
If you’re in London tonight, please do yourself a favour and go listen to my friend, Penny,
read tonight, February 4th, 6:00 PM, at Rough Trade
Old Truman Brewery
91 Brick Lane
London
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 For thousands of years, man has sought experience of the divine. He has found strange and sometimes shocking ways to achieve it. Dolores Gutierrez has had visions since early childhood. Convinced that God is calling her to holy orders, she has modeled herself on Teresa of Avila, a medieval saint. But it is pain, not prayer, that brings her visions.
Acutely aware of the dark history of his own religion, Father Steven, the sensible priest of her parish, is certain that Dolores is far more in need of psychiatric care than a nun’s habit. He seeks the help of a colleague, Brother Simon, to assess the disturbed Dolores. Uniquely qualified to counsel the young woman because of his own struggles with self-immolation, Simon takes on the task only reluctantly; he is not convinces his own demons have been put to rest. Is God really speaking to Dolores, or is it something else? |
