On Fellatios
Answer truly, if only for a moment and to yourself: how are you in the home of your body?
Have you missed asking yourself that question? I know, it has been a while.
Against the thoughts of some of you who wrote to me, there was no glitch, the letter was not lost in transit, I simply did not write to you. And the answer to why is another letter in itself. If I were to write that letter, it would begin by telling you my mind was not at its finest. Or I would quote Paige Lewis, “I feel / as if I’m on the moon listening to the air hiss / out of my / spacesuit, and I can’t find the hole. I’m / the vice president of panic, and the president is / missing.”
However, I am here now.
So much has happened in the home of my body in the last month and I will walk you through quickly. You might see bright lights and dark ends and rooms slightly open with thoughts whirling inside them, but I will ask you to not follow the many siren songs. Stay with me. The rooms are pulsing and the walls are tender. Which is to say, if you do not stay with me, you could lose your way in this home, and as it ends with all siren songs, drown.
By this window, I was writing to you, wishing you a lovely Valentines’. I shared lovely moments with several persons, sending readings of poetry. They were received so kindly. In that same spirit, a friend was so gracious to have me read love poems alongside her on her podcast.
In that corner, where two chairs are facing each other, a friend asked me a question that I have been thinking about over and over again. They asked me “when was the last time you were kissed?” and even though I could simply answer, “a world ago”. I kept thinking, not about the answer, but the moment before it. How in an attempt to answer that question you cannot escape tenderness. How the question distinguishes itself and spirals into others. The question is not the same as “when was the last time you had sex?” But is close to “when was the last time your body was known?” The question is not the same as “when was the last time you spoke?” But is close to “when was the last time you said something that made silence impossible / when was the last time you said something that made speech impossible? Now, what did you say?”
On that road, with the moonlight as a lamp unto my feet, I ran into a snake. I realized moments later that it was asleep. My overzealous childhood hours with Encarta Kids and National Geographic programs lets me know that snakes do not have eyelids; but of course, they sleep. Yet, until the snake slithered away from me—its dark scales sheening in the light above us into the predawn dark—I had not actively considered what their sleeping must be like.
On top of that cream coloured shelf, I placed a speaker on an early morning and played songs dripping with nostalgia. On that cold tile, under the lull of music, I sat remembering. Remembering. Remembering. On the edge of that duvet, I edited and reimagined the memories I had recalled.
Look in those mirrors. There is a picture of what nostalgia could look like.
At that desk, I read the last words of Pet, satisfying my desire to read all of Akwaeke’s work—at least until Dear Senthuran’s publication day. And I hope that counts for something when I submit my application for a citizenship in Lucille.
In that moon diluted darkness, I watched a heated dialogue unravel between the Duchess and the Duke of Hastings beginning with and peaking into the declaration, I burn for you.
Duchess: You… burn for me?
Duke: Why do you think I followed you into that garden?
Duchess: Why do you think I went into that garden?
[…]
Duchess: It is you I cannot sacrifice. I burn… for you.
Then later, Malcolm and Marie. And what a beautiful movie it was. If I begin gushing, we may never leave this darkness and I have something else to show you. But I must say, for all the shortcomings and emotional obtuseness of the characters, there is a case to be made for their—especially Marie’s—self and emotional awareness, even though it is occasionally wielded in manipulation. Also, a line could be drawn between the sheer discomfort some viewers got from the movie to the discomfort many feel in conversations.
Someone asked, “but he said sorry. Why won’t she just let it go?” An answer to that question is another question, “was there a difference between the first set of apologies and the very last one before the movie descends into silence? If yes, why?”
If you would like to return here, write to me and we will return to sit here or anywhere else, lingering on the movie’s beautiful monochrome moments.
In that open air, I sat dreaming about Icarus. Reimagining tales and the character of Ijapa and Yanibo and moonlight. I made something out of that. I will show you soon.
I am resisting the temptation to keep spiralling despite all that I have to tell you, to show you. Come with me, there is one last thing.
On Fellatios and other positions
X
“The other thing that we get quite wrong in our culture is the whole business of what sex actually is, because we’ve come from a Freudian world. Freud has told us that there’s a lot more going on in sex than we want to believe and that a lot of it is quite weird, and darker than we’d ever want to imagine, and that sex is everywhere in life, even in places where we don’t think it is or perhaps should be.
But, in a way, I’ve got a sort of different view of this. I think that it’s not so much that sex is everywhere, it’s that psychological dynamics are everywhere, even in sex”.
—Alain de Botton
"How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved."
—Sigmund Freud
For a number of reasons, Sigmund Freud has always been a personality that has both interested and amused me.
Once, I was reading a psychosexual study of his on Leonardo da Vinci which aimed to explore the genius’ infantile reminiscence. Because in the understanding of Freud, da Vinci’s homosexual tendencies or sexuality—there are debates on this but to the limit of my knowledge he was homosexual, and in a way that was very unlike Michelangelo, who repressed and struggled with his sexuality by virtue of his connection with the Church—was a deficiency or illness that needed examination.
In his study of da Vinci, he established interesting links between his dreams—their cultural interpretations and symbolisms—his childhood—the position he held within the family as an illegitimate son, the relationship he had with his father and the one he longed for with his mother—and other factors, as a basis for the resulting illness of the genius.
Although this is an interesting subject, another thing that remained with me from his study was his brief exposition on the sexual act of the fellatio. Sigmund Freud wrote:
"The desire to take the male member into the mouth and suck it, which is considered as one of the most disgusting of sexual perversions, is nevertheless a frequent occurrence among the women of our time—and as shown in old sculptures was the same in earlier times—and in the state of being in love seems to lose entirely its disgusting character. The physician encounters phantasies based on this desire, even in women who did not come to the knowledge of the possibility of such sexual gratification by reading V. Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis or through other information. It seems that it is quite easy for the women themselves to produce such wish-phantasies. Investigation then teaches us that this situation, so forcibly condemned by custom, may be traced to the most harmless origin. It is nothing but the elaboration of another situation in which we all once felt comfort, namely, when we were in the suckling-age (“when I was still in the cradle”) and took the nipple of our mother’s or wet-nurse’s breast into our mouth to suck it. The organic impression of this first pleasure in our lives surely remains indelibly impregnated; when the child later learns to know the udder of the cow, which in function is a breast-nipple, but in shape and in position on the abdomen resembles the penis, it obtains the primary basis for the later formation of that disgusting sexual phantasy."
Amusing, is it not?
Although the brilliance and influence of Freud cannot be denied, a number of his theories and associations in their pseudo-scientific links and medicalized fears, when they do not cause me to disagree, leave me amused. For the sake of my own amusement, I wondered what his psychoanalysis of the Duke of Hastings’ character would have been.
There was a scene from Bridgerton, moments after the one above, where the Duke of Hastings asked his newly wedded Duchess, in the middle of a building passion and tension; "did you touch yourself?”
Duke: Did you touch yourself… like we talked about? Show me.
Duchess: I… I cannot.
Duke: Tell me what you thought about when you were alone.
Duchess: I thought about… Simon, I need you closer.
[…]
Duchess: I thought about you. When I touch myself, I always think about you.
Duke: How do you feel?
Duchess: I feel… I feel… wonderful.
Now, if you’ve seen this scene, you know what I’m talking about; of course she feels wonderful. But beyond the tension in the scene and my intrigue at the dialogue and the characters, I just kept muttering, he’s good, he’s really good. He gets it. Because that—how he handled the scene—is largely what sex is about. Because as much as feeling wonderful is a physical act, a climax is built on the foundations of imagination. Stimulation remains so much an act of the mind. And to have watched in that scene; the Duke reminding the Duchess of a presence before this presence, of an ache, of a stirring of desire before the touch, was simply...wonderful.
I digress. Blame excitement.
If Freud were to analyse the Duke of Hastings, he would mention a number of reasonable associations. The rakish nature of the duke, for instance, will not be unassociated with the absence of his mother and the cruelty of his father. And he would be right to make this connection: that the cruelty and emotional distance he was afflicted with, in the longest and most vulnerable years of his life, surfaces in his romantic involvements. He could also make a connection to the character's definition of love, how there must be some scheming, or secrecy or hurt, even if such hurt is self-inflicted; because that is what he has always known.
But he would go further. He could say that the refusal of the Duke to sire an heir went beyond his oath to his dying father but was a reflection of his refusal to endure, to give completely anything. Because of the absence of his mother in his life, he could not complete the act of sexual intercourse. Because to complete it would be to grant his child a possibility he never enjoyed and watch a bond he lacked grow. Or because of the absence of his mother, his resentment of his father is not adequately formed. The absence of his mother meant he could not develop his inherent oedipal complex. Or, something like that.
Although I can afford to disagree with Freud or be amused by him, many others during and after his career’s peak did not enjoy such benefits. His theories shaped new advancements in clinical psychology, psychoanalysis, psychosexuality, philosophy, medicine among others; for better for worse. His influence is such that it is not by chance that Alain de Botton even in disagreement remarks, “we’ve come from a Freudian world.”
An example of this influence is clear in the relationship that developed between Freud and Princess Marie Bonaparte.
“She wrote of Freud in 1937, ‘The greatest happiness of my life is to have met you, to have been your contemporary.’ ”
—Marie Bonaparte, a Life by Célia Bertin
Princess Marie Bonaparte as the name reveals, was a great-grandniece of Napoleon who was notable for a number of things including her establishment of Freudian psychoanalysis in France, the use of her vast means in bringing to light the Psychoanalytic Publishing House and helping Freud and a couple hundred other Jews escape the Nazis in the late ’30s. However, case in point here is her extensive research on the female orgasm and her norm-breaking interest in the clitoris which unfortunately inched into obsession.
During the time when Marie was conducting her research, measuring the contours of 243 women’s genitals then arguing that the distance between the clitoris and the vaginal opening might account for the trouble some women experienced with climaxing via penetration alone; she was doing so both in resistance to and under the influence of Freudian theories that maintained that clitoral stimulation and masturbation were immature, and that any woman interested in anything but vaginal penetration needed psychological help. Much of Marie’s curiosity and eventual obsession with the clitoris stemmed from her belief in her own clinical frigidity; one she believed to be true because of her inability to attain orgasms solely through vaginal stimulation as against clitoral stimulation.
Even though Freud’s work would later cast a shadow over hers, Bonaparte openly broke with Freud in the 1920s, seeking physical, not psychological causes of her so-called frigidity and refusing to dismiss the clitoris as irrelevant or immature. Unfortunately, she took her research too far and in crossing many lines, developed a surgical procedure alongside Austrian gynaecologist Josef Halban, known as the Halban-Narjani procedure—which severed the suspensory ligaments around the external clitoris and pulled it closer to the vaginal opening. After subjecting herself to the procedure—previously only performed on cadavers—Bonaparte found herself still frigid—possibly as a consequence of scarring around her clitoris and a resulting lack of sensitivity.
Despite going many inches too far regarding the clitoris, her 1924 paper and its arguments have been confirmed in the various researches and datasets conducted by Kim Wallen and Elisabeth A. Lloyd. Their papers; Female sexual arousal: Genital anatomy and orgasm in intercourse (2011) and Clitoral variability compared with penile variability supports nonadaptation of female orgasm (2008), to mention a few, confirm the association between the distance between the clitoris and the vaginal opening playing a role in arousal and orgasms.
How different would the story have played out if the influences of Freud had been different? What successes would the Princess’ efforts have attained? How differently would we conceive of female pleasure?
As a side note: of the many stimulating—pardon me—interesting facts about the clitoris, one of them are the variety of words used to describe it in ancient Sanskrit. My personal favourite of them is smara-chatra which translates to umbrella of the love god.
Poet's Dictionary Entry
Tenderness [noun]
\ ˈten-dər-nəs \
Definitions of tenderness
1a : depends on how little the world touches you.
1b : [paraphrased] proof of ruin.
Etymology: English word tenderness; from Ocean Vuong’s book On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
Readings
For a while I have been thinking about 'emotional signatures' as the unique set of emotions an artist can effect on a reader or viewer or audience; and among many writers, Eloghosa Osunde came to mind.
A feeling that is recurrent in her works, and I look forward to in her debut novel VAGABONDS!; is one where the reader is—in brilliantly subtle ways—assured that they are being told a secret. Her writing begins as a delicious whisper and then she progresses, reaching into the character with such knowledge, with such pace, saying the most delightful things and leaving the reader to ask themselves, can you believe this?; and in a hurry to return to the stream of narrative, answer themselves, yes. Yes, tell me another.
Only Eloghosa Osunde can deliver this touch. Feel for yourself in her stories Good boy and Rain.
Enjoy.
Playlist
Because I had quite the nostalgic month, I listened to songs from a different time. If you would like, you could also listen to old songs, or simply songs or movies that have a nostalgic quality for you. As a gift, here is a performance by Whitney Houston. Although her performances are always phenomenal, in this particular one, watch out for the passionate saxophone solo by Kirk Whalum. His performance moves me to say, whatever your instrument or medium is—be it your hands or lens or the people you manage or the start-up you run or your pen or your voice or your body—it has to mean that much to you. If you are not—or will not be—that invested, that resolved about it and dissolved into it. Don’t bother.
Another gift is a live performance of Quadron's Pressure—the track Drake sampled on Lemon Pepper Freestyle. It is fitting to say the singer and the performance ended on a high note.
Also, Drake released a continuation to his Scary Hours EP with Scary Hours II. And I could sense the sarcasm in his line from the first track What’s Next where he raps; “Well summer, all I did was rest, okay?”
Even though it is all from a distance, you can learn from Drake’s trajectory and niched success how resting is rare and hardly ever what it seems. You can hear how his tracks—when they are not longing or reminiscing—aspire and declare like vision statements. How ambition and desire are palpable. How, if you have flames within you, he fans them.
So to him resting, we say, hell yeah, hell yeah, hell yeah, fucking right.
I am patiently waiting to enjoy the work he put into Certified Lover Boy.
Enjoy listening to Ego Ogbaro on her Lagbaja featured tracks Skentele, Skotolo, Konko below and Far Away, Tinashe’s Remember When, Drake ft Jhene Aiko’s From Time, Drake ft Rick Ross’s Lemon Pepper Freestlye—where Drake and Ross had more bars than the legal profession—and Whitney Houston’s I Have Nothing and Run to you.
You can tell I have missed writing to you.
I wish you a blissful fortnight. I hope to read from you soon.
Love,
Ọbáfẹ́mi