(no subject)
Of Mortality and Sensuality
By Jason Bugg
I can imagine what the phone call or the inevitable conversation is going to be like; she’s dead. She’s dead. I dread the day I find it all out, but I’ve resigned myself to know that it will happen.
The only problem is I don’t know who exactly is dead. I’ve played out the scenario over and over in my head, but I don’t know who it will be. That will be just a detail. The important thing, as far as I’m concerned, is being ready with my reaction. I only have one chance to make it right, and to make it as sincere as possible, so I’d better practice my reaction.
I imagine that the first time that a woman I’ve slept with dies I will be struck with many different emotions. Sure there will be grief, sadness, and the inevitable feelings of my own mortality, but that is the easy stuff. The hardest part about finding out this terrible news will be keeping my mind off of the sex.
Let me back away for a moment and explain myself. My reactions and emotions are ready for finding out about her dying. I’ll drop my jaw a bit; maybe stare at my shoes while wringing my hands out. “She’s dead” I’ll say. “I don’t believe it, she’s too young” at that precise moment, my voice will crack a little bit, like President Clinton’s used to do in a time of national crisis, maybe even a single tear will run down my cheek like a Native American looking at pollution in that old TV ad. I’ll run the gamut of emotions, rage, grief, denial, acceptance; but the one emotion that no one seems to have an answer for is the lust.
I don’t think her death will turn me into a necrophiliac, but I do think I’ll dwell on the good times I’ve shared with her, and in any relationship the sex is some of the best times that you’ll have. A lot of saps will tell you that there are deeper emotions to have, but not really. These are fleeting relationships of my early twenties that are based entirely on sex, and because of that her death, while unfortunate, brings up a few logistical problems that I need to work through.
The first problem is the funeral. Should I go? Is it wise? Would I even be invited to the thing? Do people even get invited to funerals? I suppose it would be okay if I showed up, after all I am on good terms with most of the women I have shared my romantic life with; but how do I tell her loved ones the context in which I knew her?
Do I play it off and say that we were just friends, or do I hint at something deeper? Do I say that we hung out and had a lot of laughs, but mention nothing of the four times we slept together and the numerous make out sessions?
What if she’s married or involved at the time of her death? I suppose it would be easier if I brought my wife, that way I don’t seem so lonely and awful, but that in and of itself presents a problem, because I could never involve my wife in those sordid parts of my past. How do you tell your own spouse the depths of your depravity? How do you tell the spouse about the deceased the screwed up things that we used to do together? I can’t lie to anyone, whether that is my wife or the deceased’s current partner.
Logistics I can work out, conversations I can skirt around, but the real issue is what’s going through my own head during the entire funeral. I know that I’m going to think about it. It could be during an anecdote someone is saying, and I think of the way she used to bat her eyes at me, or the way she’d sigh afterwards, I could be actually looking down at the casket and to see her face one last time, and I could picture her biting her lower lip after we’d kiss, about how she would follow every kiss with a smaller kiss, like a signature at the end of a note. Suppose they’ve sprayed her favorite perfume on her corpse and I remember how I used to reek of the stuff for hours after I stayed the night. These memories and thoughts will inevitably boil to the surface. Is it so wrong to let them?
I don’t look forward to it. I do not want to see her mother crying, shaking in that way that people shake when they’ve completely lost it. I don’t want to see anyone crying with those big breathy sobs that nothing but time will stop. But I know I’m going to have to, and I know that the whole time that it is she is going through that hell, I will be thinking of having unprotected sex in the movie theater with her daughter. I hate having these feelings, but I know that they are going to be there.
How does someone move past that? How does a person cope with a life interrupted? It’s not fair. I don’t deserve to feel like this. But then again no one does. I guess that is the ebb and flow of life. You meet a person, you have sex, they die on you, and you are left with the inner conflict of knowing that a dead girl the one right over there just gave you an erection.
Maybe, in some indirect way, this is what our parents were trying to warn us about; this is why monogamy is so important. They never had to do through this. When a former partner of theirs died, they were allowed to feel all of those feelings; because that was the first and last person they would ever share those moments with. So that is the trade off. They get to feel whatever they’d like at the funeral, and we get all the great debaucherous sex. It’s almost a fair deal.
By Jason Bugg
I can imagine what the phone call or the inevitable conversation is going to be like; she’s dead. She’s dead. I dread the day I find it all out, but I’ve resigned myself to know that it will happen.
The only problem is I don’t know who exactly is dead. I’ve played out the scenario over and over in my head, but I don’t know who it will be. That will be just a detail. The important thing, as far as I’m concerned, is being ready with my reaction. I only have one chance to make it right, and to make it as sincere as possible, so I’d better practice my reaction.
I imagine that the first time that a woman I’ve slept with dies I will be struck with many different emotions. Sure there will be grief, sadness, and the inevitable feelings of my own mortality, but that is the easy stuff. The hardest part about finding out this terrible news will be keeping my mind off of the sex.
Let me back away for a moment and explain myself. My reactions and emotions are ready for finding out about her dying. I’ll drop my jaw a bit; maybe stare at my shoes while wringing my hands out. “She’s dead” I’ll say. “I don’t believe it, she’s too young” at that precise moment, my voice will crack a little bit, like President Clinton’s used to do in a time of national crisis, maybe even a single tear will run down my cheek like a Native American looking at pollution in that old TV ad. I’ll run the gamut of emotions, rage, grief, denial, acceptance; but the one emotion that no one seems to have an answer for is the lust.
I don’t think her death will turn me into a necrophiliac, but I do think I’ll dwell on the good times I’ve shared with her, and in any relationship the sex is some of the best times that you’ll have. A lot of saps will tell you that there are deeper emotions to have, but not really. These are fleeting relationships of my early twenties that are based entirely on sex, and because of that her death, while unfortunate, brings up a few logistical problems that I need to work through.
The first problem is the funeral. Should I go? Is it wise? Would I even be invited to the thing? Do people even get invited to funerals? I suppose it would be okay if I showed up, after all I am on good terms with most of the women I have shared my romantic life with; but how do I tell her loved ones the context in which I knew her?
Do I play it off and say that we were just friends, or do I hint at something deeper? Do I say that we hung out and had a lot of laughs, but mention nothing of the four times we slept together and the numerous make out sessions?
What if she’s married or involved at the time of her death? I suppose it would be easier if I brought my wife, that way I don’t seem so lonely and awful, but that in and of itself presents a problem, because I could never involve my wife in those sordid parts of my past. How do you tell your own spouse the depths of your depravity? How do you tell the spouse about the deceased the screwed up things that we used to do together? I can’t lie to anyone, whether that is my wife or the deceased’s current partner.
Logistics I can work out, conversations I can skirt around, but the real issue is what’s going through my own head during the entire funeral. I know that I’m going to think about it. It could be during an anecdote someone is saying, and I think of the way she used to bat her eyes at me, or the way she’d sigh afterwards, I could be actually looking down at the casket and to see her face one last time, and I could picture her biting her lower lip after we’d kiss, about how she would follow every kiss with a smaller kiss, like a signature at the end of a note. Suppose they’ve sprayed her favorite perfume on her corpse and I remember how I used to reek of the stuff for hours after I stayed the night. These memories and thoughts will inevitably boil to the surface. Is it so wrong to let them?
I don’t look forward to it. I do not want to see her mother crying, shaking in that way that people shake when they’ve completely lost it. I don’t want to see anyone crying with those big breathy sobs that nothing but time will stop. But I know I’m going to have to, and I know that the whole time that it is she is going through that hell, I will be thinking of having unprotected sex in the movie theater with her daughter. I hate having these feelings, but I know that they are going to be there.
How does someone move past that? How does a person cope with a life interrupted? It’s not fair. I don’t deserve to feel like this. But then again no one does. I guess that is the ebb and flow of life. You meet a person, you have sex, they die on you, and you are left with the inner conflict of knowing that a dead girl the one right over there just gave you an erection.
Maybe, in some indirect way, this is what our parents were trying to warn us about; this is why monogamy is so important. They never had to do through this. When a former partner of theirs died, they were allowed to feel all of those feelings; because that was the first and last person they would ever share those moments with. So that is the trade off. They get to feel whatever they’d like at the funeral, and we get all the great debaucherous sex. It’s almost a fair deal.