David Wallace - Both Flesh and Not - Essays

— 1996

discalced(adj.) — barefoot or wearing sandals… used to characterize certain religious orders discarnate—having no material body or form: “a discarnate spirit” disciform—flat and rounded in shape; a disciform fungus dished—concave; slanting toward one another at the bottom dishing—liquid sloshing back and forth dispraise(v.) — to express displeasure, censure; (n.) disapproval, censure distemper—a kind of paint-job using watered paint dobby(n.) — geometric figure woven into fabric; fabric with such a figure Dobro—referring to stringed instruments like guitars and banjos docent—tour guide in museum or cathedral doss—a crude or homemade bed; dosshouse is cheap flophouse doyen—senior or oldest man in group; the Alpha dragoman—interpreter in Middle East drape—clingy girlfriend dreidel—Jewish top w/square body dressage—equestrian skill: guiding horse through complex maneuvers w/hands on reins and feet in stirrups dudeen—short-stemmed clay pipe, Scottish duff—organic stuff on forest floor; decayed leaves and branches dulcify—to make sweet or agreeable; to mollify durance—confinement or restraint by force; imprisonment dybbuk—Jewish myth: wandering soul of dead person that enters living body and controls the living body’s behavior ecce homo—depiction of Christ with crown of thorns eccentric—deviating from a circular path, as in anelliptical orbit; (n.) a wheel or disc with its axis of revolution displaced from the center so that it imparts reciprocal motion eccrine—relating to sweat or sweat gland ecdysiast—striptease artist ecdysis—shedding of outer skin, molting ecdysone—hormone that regulates molting behavior ecesis—successful establishment of plant or animal species in a region echinate—prickly, covered with spines th with sp écorché—anatomical representation w/skin removed ecotone—transitional zone between communities containing the characteristic species of each ecru—grayish yellow effloresce—to bloom or blossom effluent—flowing out or forth electuary—mix of drugs w/sugar or honey to make them ingestible, tasty ell—wing of building at right angle to rest; a right-angled bend in pipe or conduit elute—to extract one material from another, usually with a solvent; (n.) “elution” eluviation/eluviate—sinking of dissolved material in soil when rainfall exceeds evaporation embrocate—to moisten or rub body with liniment or lotion embrown—to darken empery—absolute dominion or sovereignty or jurisdiction endive—two kinds, curly and Belgian, used in salads enuresis—uncontrolled discharge of urine epicritic(adj.) — related to nerves w/ability to discern very slight differences in the intensity of stimuli, especially temperature and touch epigraphy—the study of inscriptions epiphenomenalism—mentalstates are epiphenomena of physical neural processes (“epiphenomenal” means following or consequent to something) epistasis—suppression of bodily discharge (coming?) OR a film that develops over a urine specimen escarpment—a steep slope in front of a fortification; “LA lawns on hillsides form a kind of escarpmentish angle”; a steep slope or long erosion cliff that yields two relatively level plains (bottom and top) of different elevations

YOU KNOW THIS LOVE story. A gallant knight espies a fair maiden in the distant window of a forbidding-type castle. Their eyes meet — smokily — across the withered heath. Instant chemistry. And so good Sir Knight comes tear-assing toward the castle, brandishing his lance. Can he just gallop up and carry the fair maiden off? Not quite. First he’s got to get past the dragon. Right? There’s always a particularly nasty dragon guarding the castle, and the knight’s always got to face and slay the dragon if there’s to be any carrying off. But and so, like any loyal knight in the service of passion, the knight battles the dragon, all for the sake of the fair maiden. “Fair maiden” means “good-looking virgin,” by the way. And so let’s not be naive about what the knight’s really fighting for. You can bet he’s going to expect more than a breathy “My hero” from the maiden once that dragon’s slain. In fact, the way the story always goes, good Sir Knight risks life and lance against the dragon not to “rescue” the good-looking virgin, but to “win” her. And any knight, from any era, can tell you what “win” means here.

Some of my own knightly friends see the specter of heterosexual AIDS as nothing less than a sexual Armageddon — a violent end to the casual carnalcopia of the last three decades. Some others, grim but more upbeat, regard HIV as a sort of test of our generation’s sexual mettle; these guys now applaud their own casual sport-fucking as a kind of medical daredevilry that affirms the indomitability of the erotic spirit. I cite, e.g., an upbeat friend’s recent letter on AIDS: “… So now nature has invented another impediment to human relations, and yet the romantic urge lives. It defies all efforts — human, moral, and viral — to extinguish it. And that’s a wonderful thing. It is, in fact, possible to be encouraged by the human will to fuck, which persists despite all sorts of impenceddiments. We shall overcome, so to speak.”

Cavalier sentiments, etc. But I can’t help thinking some of today’s knights still underestimate both AIDS’s dangers and its advantages. They fail to see that HIV could well be the salvation of sexuality in the 1990s. They don’t see it, I think, because they tend to misread the eternal story of what erotic passion’s all about.

The erotic will exists “ despite impediments”? Let’s go back to that knight and fair maiden exchanging lascivious looks. And here comes the knight, galloping castleward, mammoth lance at ready. Except imagine this time that there is no danger, no dragon to fear, face, fight, slay. Imagine the knight’s pursuit of the maiden is wholly unimpeded — there’s no dragon; the castle’s unlocked; the drawbridge even lowers automatically, like a suburban garage door. And here’s the fair maiden inside, wearing a Victoria’s Secret teddy and crooking her finger. Does anyone else here detect a shadow of disappointment in Sir Knight’s face, a slight anticlimactic droop to his lance? Does this version of the story have anything like the other’s passionate, erotic edge?

“The human will to fuck”? Any animal can fuck. But only humans can experience sexual passion, something wholly different from the biological urge to mate. And sexual passion’s endured for millennia as a vital psychic force in human life — not despite impediments but because of them. Plain old coitus becomes erotically charged and spiritually potent at just those points where impediments, conflicts, taboos, and consequences lend it a double-edged character — meaningful sex is both an overcoming and a succumbing, a transcendence and a transgression, triumphant and terrible and ecstatic and sad. Turtles and gnats can mate, but only the human will can defy, transgress, overcome, love: choose .