What Was I Thinking? (29 April)

Images used for the posts published on this date in 

2013, 2018, and 2022

 

 

Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I can't think of anything else to write about - it's convenient to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on this date in years gone by; voyeurs, naughty nurses, female nipples, and circus elephants, apparently ... 

 

 

The Voyeur / Ooh Matron!

 

I suspect that way back on 29 April 2013, I was also stuck for new ideas, because both of these posts on Torpedo the Ark were essentially lifted from the queer little book Whores Don't Fuck between the Bed-Sheets: Fragments from an Illicit Lover's Discourse (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

 

I assembled this text after finishing my PhD in 2000, but it has it's origins in work that can be traced back to the the late 1980s, when I first began to collect the cards left by prostitutes in London phone boxes and was concerned with issues to do with sexuality and the subject [1]. 

 

In the first of these fragments, I examined the way in which the imperial male gaze is taken to its erotic conclusion by the voyeur: By watching others fuck, he exercises his power to probe and master bodies, assigning meaning to otherwise insignificant sexual activity.

 

An often solitary figure, the true voyeur crucially has no desire to join in: For his pleasure derives exclusively from the fact that, like a god, he has mastered the art of immaculate perception. In other words, he can look at life and love without his tongue lolling out. 

 

In the second of these fragments, meanwhile, I disussed how the figure of the nurse plays an important role within the pornographic imagination, where she is usually conceived either as a kindly angel who administers some form of erotic relief, or as the cruel representative of strict and punishing authority delighting in needles and cold latex gloves. 

 

For the British, however, reared as they have been within a Carry On culture, the figure of the nurse also plays an important role within the comic imagination and so it's virtually impossible to take the sexual stereotype seriously for long: fetishistic medical fantasies are invariably undermined by fond memories of Hattie Jacques. 

 

 

On the Politics of the Female Nipple 

 

Five years later, and I was now concerned with the female nipple as the site of socially constructed meaning and a politics of desire: 

 

For whilst the male nipple is just as sensitive to certain stimuli and can also be erotically aroused, it isn't subject to the same pornographic fascination or taboo within our culture and so can be freely displayed in a way that the female nipple cannot. 

 

However, if I was sceptical with the Free the Nipple campaign back in 2018, I'm still not on board with it here in 2024. For it seems to me that what I wrote then is still a valid reason for concern now; there's a naivety in this campaign which fails to consider the law of unintended (or unforeseen) consequences:

 

Consider, for example, what happens when famous singers, actresses and models jump on board and start posting images of their perfect breasts and super-perky nipples. It doesn't result in a great leap forward for womankind; it leads, unfortunately, to greater insecurity and a new trend in plastic surgery - so-called designer nipples. 

 

For it turns out that many women don't want to free their nipples; at least not straight away. They want first to have botox fillers injected into their areola so that their nipples might look like those of their favourite celebrities. Only when they have permanently erect-looking and symmetrical on-trend nipples do they feel confident enough to wear sheer dresses or see-through tops and make themselves subject to the world's gaze. 

 

Thus, ironically, an attempt to emancipate women, make them proud of their bodies and further equality, ends in lining the pockets of already very rich and invariably male cosmetic surgeons. Idealism, it seems, always collapses into gross materialism; for such is the evil genius of the world. 

 

 

On D. H. Lawrence and Circus Elephants 

 

There's a number of elephants lumbering throughout Torpedo the Ark, with posts on wild elephants, zoo elephants, ceremonial elephants, and, as in this post from 2022, circus elephants, as poetically imagined by D. H. Lawrence.

 

For Lawrence, it wasn't the clowns, the acrobats, or the showgirls on horseback wearing their sparkling costumes and feathers that most thrilled him when he went with Frieda to the circus in Toulon (France) in December 1928: it was the elephants. 

 

Whilst the magnificent tusker elephants in Kandy certainly left their impression on Lawrence, it was the circus elephants plodding around the ring and performing their tricks that inspired a series of short verses that he termed pansies. 

 

As verses go, they're amusing enough. But I was rather surprised that Lawrence wasn't more sympathetic to these ancient pig-tailed monsters; that he seemed to be of the view that elephants not only look old and worn out, but belong to a prehistoric world or time gone by, as if they were relics or living fossils, who have nothing more to offer than entertainment value (and ivory). 

 

And I was disappointed that he would suggest that performing beasts are having fun:

 

For whilst I'm not an expert in elephant psychology and welfare, I very much doubt they enjoy exposing their vast bellies or find it amusing to balance on a ball or drum. Nor - I imagine - do they want to plod or shuffle around a ring, or crawl on their knees in utmost caution. Does anyone really believe that the strange postures and poses they are forced to take up come naturally? Or that training doesn't involve cruelty and the brutal use of bull-hooks, whips, and electric prods? And let's not even mention the physical and emotional abuse these poor creatures are subjected to when they are not in the spotlight; confined and chained for hours on end, or transported from town to town in the back of trucks and boxcars.  

 

I would conclude now as I concluded two years ago: 

 

Even if Lawrence was writing a hundred years ago and so can't be expected to share a contemporary view of zoos and circuses in terms of so-called animal rights, it's strange that a writer who was acutely sensitive to animals in all their wild otherness or mystery - and who hated the attempt by mankind to impose its will over the natural world - should have not been angered or outraged by the indecent sight of an elephant performing on command. 

 

Notes

 

[1] I reflect on this book - its aims and necessity, etc. - in a post published on 1 October 2018: click here. 

 

 

On the Voyeuristic Comic Potential of X-Ray Vision (With Reference to the Case of Superman and Lois Lane)

 

The voyeuristic comic potential of x-ray vision has long been recognised. 

 

Older readers may recall ads for novelty glasses, such as the one above, which guaranteed that one would not only be able to see bones through flesh, but, more interestingly, what lies beneath the dress of the girl next door (to your amusement and, presumably, her embarrassment). 

 

Who needs to try and sneak-a-peek upskirt or down blouse, when one can actually see through clothing thanks to a pair of X-Ray Spex ...?

 

But, alas, such glasses don't really allow one to possess x-ray vision. In reality, they merely create an ingenious (though not very convincing) optical illusion, that is quite literally a trick of the light and its diffraction [1]. 

 

And so, unless you happen to be Clark Kent, I regret to say you're probably never going to be able to see through solid objects and normally opaque materials. 

 

Speaking of Superman, it's interesting to note with reference to what we have been discussing, that whilst he mostly uses his power for good, even he can't resist perving on Lois Lane and checking out the colour of her underwear on at least one occasion (although to be fair to the Man of Steel, this was at her invitation) [2].      

 

 

Lois Lane invites Superman to demonstrate his x-ray vision 

by asking: What colour underwear am I wearing?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The principle behind the illusion - as well as its use in a pair of spectacles - was first patented (in the United States) in 1906 by George W. Macdonald. But the man behind x-ray glasses as most people know them, was the American mail-order genius and inventor Harold von Braunhut. He was also the man who sold the world Sea-Monkeys and invisible goldfish. 

 

[2] I'm referring here to a scene in Superman (1978), dir. Richard Donner, and starring Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent / Superman and Margot Kidder as Lois Lane: click here. 

      For the record, Miss Lane was wearing pink underwear, which, depending on one's sartorial taste, would either compliment or clash with our hero's favoured red pants (famously worn over his bright blue tights). 

On the Sex Life of the Incredible Shrinking Man 2: Paedophilia

 The Incredible Shrinking Man 10: The Babysitter (2012)

By DrCreep on deviantart.com 

I. Size Matters

 

Predators come in all shapes and sizes: from deadly spiders lurking in the basement, to opportunistic paedophiles searching for young flesh ... And so to the case of Scott Carey once more, protagonist of Richard Matheson's disturbing 1956 novel The Shrinking Man [1] ...

The critical consensus seems to be that the novel is primarily concerned with issues surrounding masculinity in white middle-class suburban America in the early Atomic Age. I'm quite happy to accept that reading as, clearly, Scott is anxious about his status as a man in society - as a husband and father, for example - once he begins to radically shrink in size:

 

"He thought of them [...] the woman and the little girl. His wife and daughter. Were they still that to him? Or had the element of size removed him from their sphere? Could he still be considered a part of their world when he was the size of a bug to them, when even Beth could crush him underfoot and never know it?" [Ch. 2]  

 

Even when he's only slightly smaller, he feels belittled, emasculated, and infantalised. Scott realised that whilst poets and philosophers "could talk all they wanted about a man's being more than fleshly form, about his essential worth, about the immeasurable stature of his soul" this was nonsense - as they'd soon discover if they ever tried to "hold a woman with arms that couldn't reach around her" or stand up to another man and find themselves staring at his belt buckle. [Ch. 5]

 

One day, having showered and shaved, his wife comments on how clean and smooth he looks: "Was it just ego-flattened imagination, or was she actually talking to him as if he were a boy?" [Ch. 5]  

 

It's precisely this boyishness that lands Scott in a potentially sticky situation later in the book, in a controversial scene (not included in the film adaptation) involving a paedophile with whom he accepts a ride, unconcered about stranger danger when, in his mind, he's still an adult male. 

 

 

II. Chapter Seven

 

Driving home one day, Scott has a blowout and is forced to trudge along the roadside in his little-boy clothes. After a while, a car cruises passes and pulls up. Then a queer figure sticks his head out of the open door and asks: "'You alone, my boy?'" Somewhat reluctanty, Scott naively decides to ask for a lift from the cigar-smoking stranger: "Maybe it was all right; the man thought he was a boy."

The stranger eagerly agrees - "'Certainly, my boy, certainly'" - and Scott decides to keep up the pretence of being a child. Jumping in to the passenger seat, he finds himself sitting on the stranger's hand which has been accidently on purpose left there. "The man drew it away, held it before his eyes. 'You have injured the member, my boy,' he said, and chuckled."

 

Obviously, Scott should have realised there and then that the man with bushy eyebrows over darkly glittering eyes and a thick-lipped mouth was a nonce, and quickly got out of the car whilst he still had the chance. But he didn't. Instead, he just smiled nervously as the stale smelling vehicle pulled away. He noticed the man was drunk and rather wished he was as well (I suppose if you're about to be touched up or sodomised, then alcohol always helps). 

 

The stranger tells him of a lost love, Vincent; lost to matrimony and the accursed female sex. Scott is bored. And tired. He longs for his bed and to forget who he is and what's happening to him. The stranger peers at Scott, ironically sizing him up, and trying to guess his age. He plumps for twelve: "An age of pristine possibility [... and] untrammelled hope", and clamps a fat hand on Scott's leg, giving it a little squeeze. 

 

Then, looking directy at him, he asks Scott if likes girls: 

 

"The question caught Scott off guard. He hadn't really been paying attention to the drift of the man's monologue. He looked over at the man. Suddenly the man seemed bigger; as if, with the questions, he had gained measurable bulk." 

 

For the first time, Scott starts to feel a little nervous. His heartbeat quickened as he felt the heat of the man's heavy hand on his leg once more. The stranger offers an invitation back to his place for ice cream, cake, and "a bit of bawdy badinage". The hand now gripped with a certain menace and Scott orders him to remove it: "The man looked startled at the adult anger in Scott's voice, the lowering of pitch, the authority." 

 

Scott repeatedly asks the stranger to stop the car and let him out. Frustrated, the man suddenly drops his lame attempts to be witty and charming and resorts to violence to get his way, smashing his hand hard aganist the side of Scott's head, forcing the latter to realise with a burst of panic, just how vulnerable he was.   

  

Matheson concludes this disturbing scene thusly:

 

"'Dear boy, I apologize [...] Did I hurt you?' 

      'I live down the next road,' Scott said tensely. 'Stop here, please.' The man plucked out his cigar and threw it on the floor. 

      'I offend you, boy,' he said, sounding as if he were about to cry. 'I offend you with distasteful words. Please. Please. Look behind the words, behind the peeling mask of jollity. For there is utter sadness, there is utter loneliness. Can you understand that, dear boy? Can you, in your tender years, know my - ' 

      'Mister, I want to get out,' Scott said. His voice was that of a boy, half angry, half frightened. And the horror of it was that he wasn't sure if there was more of acting or of actuality in his voice. Abruptly the man pulled over to the side of the highway. 

      'Leave me, leave me, then,' he said bitterly. 'You're no different from the rest, no, not at all.' Scott shoved open the door with trembling hands. 

      'Good night, sweet prince,' said the heavy man, fumbling for Scott's hand. 'Good night and dreams of plenteous goodness bless thy repose.' A wheezy hiccup jarred his curtain speech. 'I go on, empty, empty ... empty. Will you kiss me once? For good-bye, for - ' 

      But Scott was already out of the car and running, headlong toward the service station they had just passed. The man turned his heavy head and watched youth racing away from him."

 

 

III. Chapter Eleven (Part 1)

 

Despite this experience, it doesn't stop Scott from later perving on Catherine, the teenager hired by his wife, Louise, to look after their daughter, Beth, whilst she's out at work at the local grocery store; he being incapable of so-doing - "barely reaching the height of Beth's chest" - and, moreover, unwilling to try.

 

At first, he hears only the babysitter's voice, but that's enough to trigger a detailed fantasy of what she might look like as he sits in his cellar hideaway:

 

"He listened to the rise and fall of Catherine's voice, wondering what she was saying and what she looked like. Bemused, he put the indistinct voice to distinct form. She was five feet six, slim waisted and long-legged, with young, up tilted breasts nudging out her blouse. Fresh young face, reddish-blonde hair, white teeth. [...] He sighed and stirred uncomfortably on the chair. The girl stretched to the urging of his fancy, and her breasts, like firm-skinned oranges, forced out their silken sheathing." 

 

He tries to dismiss the image from his mind, but the girl "had half taken off her blouse before he shut the curtain on her forcibly imposed indelicacy" and the bubbling of desire continued no matter what he did to contain or deny it. And so, when the opportunity arises to sneak-a-peek at Catherine in the yard he takes it, peering through a cobwebbed window. Her actual appearance is rather different from his fantasy of her:

 

"Five feet six had become five feet three. The slim waist and legs had become chunky muscle and fat; the young, up-tilted breasts had vanished in the loose folds of a long-sleeved sweat shirt. The fresh young face lurked behind grossness and blemishes, the reddish-blonde hair had been dyed to a lackluster chestnut. [...] The colour of her eyes he couldn't see. 

      He watched Catherine move around the yard, her broad buttocks cased in faded dungarees, her bare feet stuck in loafers."

 

Still, that doesn't stop him wondering how old she is - just as the paedo in chapter seven had wondered how old he was; one wonders if the concern is whether the object of one's desire is under or over the age of consent? Later, he gazes at her as she plays catch with his daughter wearing a pale blue two-piece swimsuit, admiring the round swell of her breasts. 

 

Matheson writes:

 

"Scott crouched on top of the boxes, watching Catherine as she caught the red ball and threw it back to Beth. It wasn't until he'd been there five minutes that he realized he was rigidly tensed, waiting for Catherine to drop the ball and bend over to pick it up. When he realized that, he slid off the boxes with a disturbed clumsiness and went back to the chair. 

      He sat there breathing harshly, trying not to think about it. What in God's name was happening to him? The girl was fourteen, maybe fifteen, short and chubby, and yet he'd been staring at her almost hungrily." 

 

As George Costanza might ask: Is that wrong? Should he not have done that? But what is a man supposed to do when shrinking inch-by-inch and spending most of the day in a cellar worried about a spider? And besides, even if she was only fifteen, "she was an awfully advanced fifteen" ... 

 

Returning to the window so that he may further admire her body in fetishistic detail, Scott is tempted to shout out: "'Come down, down here, pretty girl!'" Resisting the urge to do so, he continues lusting after her in secret, sick vicariousness:

 

"She'd loosened her halter while she'd been lying in the sun, and it hung down almost off her breasts as she leaned over. Even in the dim light, he could see the distinct line of demarcation where tanned flesh became milk-white. No, he heard someone begging in his mind. No, get back. She'll see you. Catherine leaned over a little more, reaching for a ball, and the halter slipped. 'Oops,' said Catherine, putting things to order. Scott's head fell back against the wall. It was damply cool in there, but wings of heat were buffeting his cheeks [...] He stood there feeling as if every joint and muscle were swollen and hot. 'I can't,' he muttered, shaking his head slowly. 'I can't. I can't.' He didn't know what he meant exactly, but he knew it was something important. 

      'How old's that girl?' he asked [his wife] that evening, not even glancing up from his book, as though the question had just, idly and unimportantly, occurred to him. 

      'Sixteen, I think,' Lou answered. 

      'Oh,' he said, as if he had already forgotten why he asked. Sixteen. Age of pristine possibility. Where had he heard that phrase?" 

 

Does this mean that victims of sexual assault or abuse are themselves likely to commit such? Or does it show that no one is innocent and that, given the chance, we are all capable of perverse acts, or, at the very least, thinking obscene thoughts? I don't know. What it does demonstrate for certain is that the novel is a far more troubling proposition than the film. 

  

IV. Chapter Eleven (Part 2)

 

For those who might be worried, Scott never does attempt to actually assault Catherine, even if he obsessively continues his open-mouthed voyeurism - one day peeping on her, for example, as she comes out of the shower holding a yellow bath towel in front of her naked body:

 

"His gaze moved slowly down the smooth concavity of her back, the indentation of her spine a thin shadow that ran down and was lost between the muscular half-moons of her white buttocks. He couldn't take his eyes from her. His hands shook at his sides." 

 

Conviently for him, Catherine drops the towel: 

 

"She put her hands behind her head and drank in a heavy breath. Scott saw her left breast swing up and stand out tautly, the nipple like a dark spear point. Her arms moved out. She stretched and writhed. When she turned he was still in the same tense, muscle quivering pose. [...] He saw her bend over and pick up the towel, her breasts hanging down, white and heavy. She stood up and walked out of the room. He sank down on his heels and had to clutch at the railing to keep his legs from going limp beneath him."

 

Soon, it is almost impossible for him to think of anything else but the girl; he might be able to read a book for an hour or two, "but ultimately the vision of Catherine would flit across his mind" and he would have to go spy on her, jerk off, or down a bottle of whisky: "Life had become one unending morbid adventure." Even sleep brought him no respite, turgid as it was with dreams of Catherine "in which she grew progressively more alluring". 

 

Still, all things - good, bad, or indecent - come to an end sooner or later ... And in this case the end came with shocking suddenness, when Catherine became aware of him spying on her as she did the ironing in a state of semi-undress. Scared stiff at having given himself away, Scott runs back to hide in the cellar. He felt sick at the thought of what his wife would say when she found out. 

 

It seems, then, that not only intelligence but also guilt exists on an infinite scale or continuum; that just because a man shrinks in size - even if it be to a molecular level where he becomes-imperceptible - he can still feel ashamed ... 

   

 

Notes

 

[1] Again, as in the first post in this series [click here], it's important to note that I'm discussing the book and not the film based on the book, The Incredible Shrinking Man (dir. Jack Arnold, 1957), which, brilliant as it was, mostly ignored the sexually troubling aspects of the novel, including the paedophilia, or, technically speaking, one instance of (pseudo or mistaken) hebephilia in which Scott Carey is the victim, and one case of voyeuristic ephebophilia in which he is the offender (see chapters seven and eleven respectively, as discussed in the post). I'm aware that some people refuse to make such distinctions and think them clinically irrelevant. It seems to me, however, that there is a significant difference between desiring adolescents and having an erotic fixation with pre-pubescent children. The latter may very well be pathological, but experiencing attraction to a teen who has passed puberty is, from a biological perspective, a perfectly valid form of reproductive behaviour. Of course, that doesn't excuse abuse and readers are reminded that sexual activity with a minor is illegal in all instances.  

 

To read part three of this series - on the Incredible Shrinking Man and agalmatophilia, click here.

 

 

Paradise is in the Palm of Your Hand: Notes on Wank Clubs

Illustration by Simon Abranowicz 
 GQ (Feb 26, 2019)

I wrote - jokingly - in a recent post that if they ever open an academy of masturbation then the following line from D. H. Lawrence (in Latin) would make an excellent motto above the main entrance and on the school crest: Paradise is in the palm of your hand.

Now someone writes to tell me that whilst they don't know of any such academies, there are, in fact, a growing number of wank clubs springing up in cities here in the UK and in the US. And to provide textual support for his claim, he has kindly provided the following link to a recent article in GQ magazine on why heterosexual males are increasingly forming and/or joining circle jerk societies or masturbation networks: click here. 

Unsurprisingly, the article is framed within all the usual touchy-feely language; group wanking is said to be powerfully liberating; transforming a traditionally solitary and shameful vice into an affirmative expression of masculinity and a communal bonding experience that allows men to explore their sexual orientation and identity in a safe and supportive space. 

Maybe it is: maybe it does. Or maybe that's over-egging the pudding somewhat and the simple fact is that perversions give pleasure. Whatever the case, one wonders why the individuals who join such clubs can't simply take up some other hobby, sport, or pastime in the company of other men - like fishing, for example (and no, that's not a typing error).

For homosociality needn't involve getting your cock out and masturbating, watching others masturbate, or engaging in mutual masturbation with strangers - although, note, I'm not saying it shouldn't and nor am I judging anyone who likes to engage in sexual games involving exhibitionism, voyeurism, onanistic fantasy, and/or bi-curiosity.

If you like that kind of thing - or even enjoy giving brojobs - then that's fine with me; but please, cut the crap surrounding such activities; wanking doesn't empower, set free, or provide a transgressive and healing form of transcendental fulfilment. These are as much myths as the stories that Victorians liked to tell themselves about masturbation causing madness, blindness, or hairy palms.      

That said, wank clubs do, I suppose, accelerate the queering of culture, counter homophobia, and increase the sale of lube ...

The Voyeur

 Illustration by Joe Shuster

The voyeur takes the imperial gaze to its erotic conclusion. By watching lovers fuck, he exercises his power to probe and master bodies and assign meaning to otherwise insignificant sexual activity. 

The voyeur is always a solitary figure, watching in private and unbeknown to at least one of the parties observed. Crucially, he has no desire to join in. For his pleasure derives exclusively from the fact that, like a god, he has learnt the art of what Nietzsche terms immaculate perception.

For the voyeur, the greatest thing is to look at life without desire and not stare, as a dog does, with its tongue hanging out.