#beingnaked

First Flash On the Road:

If there’s anything 13 years of Catholic School taught me, its how to dream beyond the fences. At lunchtime I would stare out at the fenced off East River and create vivid realities for myself, all of which included breaking free vigorously and arriving somewhere else. Somewhere worth being. Where I could feel that deeper pulsation I knew existed in the heart of all things worth experiencing.

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I ask Erik to pull over. Can you take a picture of me while I flash this landscape? Our first spontaneous flash on the road. There wasn’t any planning, just a moment and the suspended space before rain.

Very recently my dear friend who bought our first print from us noted how amazing it was that the line where my bra strap would be matches so perfectly with the line of the fence. The symmetry of the manmade as opposed to that which is wild. Subconscious intentions of the photographer undoubtedly, but oh, how this discovery spoke to me.

Highway 285, New Mexico

When I have felt the most naked.

It was not when I hadn't any clothes on or no makeup to mask my face. No, those only reach the physical state. It is when I can't respond to you because I had no idea what to say. When we argued over substance of nothing and it disintegrated any feeling within me. I am left bare as a barren desert grows inside. It's when I can feel your invisible hold on my heart / as it clenches a firm grip around my whole soul / and when the gasp is too far deep that is when I know you have me. The whole me. The naked me. 

It’s 11:44. I have to leave the house at 1:45…means I need to get in the shower at 1:00…I guess I’m not going laundry. I have one hour to finish the first post.

I’m doing this because I can’t afford perfectionism anymore. I just won’t survive it. My secret quest for the perfect has stalled my book, and for a while it cost me my health, twisting my stomach into excruciating contortions that kept me up at night. In trying to carve the perfect self, I’ve shed pounds, watching with surges of sinewy pleasure as my arms thinned and belly flattened.  In trying to make the perfect life, I’ve written endless lists, and divided the days into neat blocks of hours; careful schedules in which I forgot to include time to eat or ride the subway or do laundry or do nothing or do my husband. In trying to be the perfect friend, I’ve thought carefully about which version of myself to be, of what to say when, and when all that became too overwhelming I just stayed home with a cup of tea.

How embarrassing is all this.

Quite embarrassing.

Once, in college, I went to a naked party. It was in winter. When you arrived you walked upstairs through all these naked people standing around in their shoes, drinking beer and whiskey from red keg cups, listening to music and it was a completely normal scene except for the obvious. In  the designated room upstairs you took off all your clothes and bundled them together and put your shoes back on and then emerged back into the party, having to descend a flight of stairs debutante-like as you did so. Anticipating descending the stairs was terrifying; you felt as if the party would stop and all eyes would look up to appraise you, the latest entry. Except of course that no one even noticed, to the degree that it was almost disappointing. This was your nakedness after all, shouldn’t that be a big deal? I remember being surprised to see a girl from Spanish class because in measuring her against me, I’d decided I was more adventurous and interesting and had dismissed her so fast I hadn’t even realized I’d done it until we both appeared naked at the same naked party and I had to reassess. The point of all this being of course that after a very short time of walking around naked none of the fears about it made any sense anymore. It was way easier then being in a bikini. I couldn’t judge my body because there was no set bar to measure it against. Everyone’s bodies had their tufts of funny hair, and their jiggly this, and firm that. One friend of mine went around the party with his dick at half mast, and he just laughed it off, saying he just couldn’t help it, and he was so sweet and endearing and honest about it no one could fault him or be creeped out about it or anything. To this day, it’s the most polite, relaxed, friendly party I’ve ever been to.

And for today there’s one other thing I wanted to talk about…

For those of you who saw Black Swan of course you remember the segment in which she becomes the Black Swan, when she owns the dance, becomes the temptress, when she is dancing…perfectly. But perhaps you have not remembered this one moment in particular—she dances off the stage, her skin gives a ripple, we see a flash of feathers rising and falling along her arm (though it looks almost like scales) and then, once in the wings, she pauses and gives her head a deep roll. And in that head roll, I could see it and I saw it travel down her neck and along her skin and behind her closed eyes and it was her knowing she had become her own perfect self, the ultimate realization and expression of her art and all that she had worked for. And oh my, I have craved just that moment, just that sensation, and even this typing of it turns me on and heats my body. 

(Warning: Kind of a spoiler coming…)

I was frightened the first time I saw the movie because I understood immediately that there was some part of me who felt the trade was worth it. A death not so much to trade for that pleasure; that satisfaction; that head roll.

About Black Swan there’s much more plot analysis that could happen, but for now, I just want to add that in thinking about doing this posting,  I realized I forgot something fundamental about the movie.  Before she could dance the Black Swan, she had to fuck up. She had to fall. She had to drop. In front of an audience. Spot lit. And considering that in the end of the movie she dies, this might sound a bit off in tone, but it’s probably pretty damn important to realize that fucking up is just, in the end, necessary.