Another rain day. Maybe not a bad thing. I will have to exit the property for beer and rations, but otherwise this could be another day in which I do not leave the apartment ever, not once. Save that little bit of wear and tear on the door, right?
I had a day off recently where I was up at 5:30am. I spent the early hours of that day accumulating. Moving huge amounts of files around, downloading more, adding to the infinite bottomless silo of pouring content made by others into a random playback vessel. Greek pop tunes could interact with Chaminade piano trifles which in turn brush up against sounds from the shortwave numbers channels. It’s all in there, or so I think, until I look for something specific. I never downloaded the complete works of Tcherepnin, did I? Oh, but I got the complete Cranberries discography, except for that one album I heard someone talking about this week. When will my art of accumulation ever reach its goal, its nadir, whereby every recording and every movie and every television and radio program ever produced is easily and painlessly at my beck and call?
My ambitious-seeming plan for today involved Highbridge Park. I have no memory of ever entering that park, and it looks interesting. It doesn’t look like the bridge is pedestrian accessible. But the rain makes a stramble through a new-to-me park seem ill-advised. I discovered on Friday just how helpless a feeling it is to be standing in the Great Lawn (or wherever the hell I was) when unexpected rain starts coming down. No one expected the rain, and I was caught up in an army of school kids who were evacuated from the park because of the rain. Their organizers expected clear skies, which did in fact emerge later in the day.
So I’ll save Highbridge for another day. At the moment, in between typing these words, I rest my eyes on a live-streaming pornographer. I once again have found a doppelgänger for one of my exes. This one could not be more different than a previous instance, where the woman looked like a younger version of Mimi Rogers, her perfect face marred only by occasional application of lipstick and makeup. Her resemblance to one of my exes was so clear it was scary. I felt like I should look away, because for all that beauty the woman I dated was a mean, aggressive, angry drunk. As for the doppelgänger I never figured much out about her personality. As with the ex her beauty quickly wore thin to me.
Today’s doppelgänger is different. Like the ex she resembles, and unlike the previous performer, she’s more natural, not waif-thin, with a beautiful puffy mouth, natural breasts, a lovely big ass, and hair that looks unwashed. She has an inquisitive, searching look in her eyes and she smiles more than most who do this sort of thing. “This sort of thing” is laying your body out for anyone in the world to watch you masturbate. She’s more of a tease, it seems, only showing herself in flashes or for big tippers.
She is set up in what looks like a real apartment, but that could just be a ruse. Most of these performers are set up in hotels or motels, or some kind of professionally managed studio space where an off-camera dude is patrolling the proceedings, doing what exactly I do not know. Sometimes the performers are heard talking to that offstage person, though usually those conversations are muted. The fantasy, of course, is that you are watching a “real” woman doing this at home, for the love of it, like in the old days of camwhores. But that’s almost never the case anymore. Like everything else online camming has become professionalized.
That’s not to say they are doing this involuntarily or not having fun with it, for as long as that lasts. Everyone I pay attention to at least seems happy to be there. On the other hand I’ve seen a few occasions where the performer appeared to be in some kind of duress, and doing this out of something like desperation. Those are troubling and I turn them off.
Maybe I’m not as at peace with all this as I think. Maybe there’s some latent misogyny stirring within. I’m supposed to talk to a shrink this week, on the phone. I’ve tried broaching the subject of masturbation and pornographers who do it but things always seem to get uncomfortable, and responses from the therapists become formulaic.
Some of the performers appear to be in their own homes but most are not. Wherever they are the décor is often consistent: Christmas-tree lights, a large photo of some exotic place, a flower vase, and a generally pristine seeming environment. Rarely are there windows, but it’s most interesting when there are. One woman I followed had a view from high over Tokyo that was unusual, if it was even real. Another couple had a view to their suburban front yard that was a hilarious antidote to the all-day fucking and sex-talking that went on in that room. You’d see people walking their dogs and having neighborly conversations on the sidewalk while these two lovers went at it full force for hours and hours every day. Sometimes you’d see and hear an ice cream truck jingle past while the fucking and sucking rumbled on and on.
Visually this is not a bad sort of work environment, with the pornographic default of my mind constantly fed with live video. I know it’s a waste of everything. Nothing defines masturbation, which includes the consumption of it as performed by others, nothing defines masturbation more definitively than “Waste.” But this is how I spend my rain days now. If I’m not at the office on a rain or snow day I’ll be here, or at the piano.
I found a piano at a lower Manhattan public space that is free for anyone to play. In my experience pianos in such places are restricted to the hired professionals who have keys to unlock and lock the instrument. That had always seemed sensible to me, given the aural havoc that could reign should some jackass who thinks they can play get hold of the instrument. The space is big enough, and possessed of enough din and sonic overhead, that it would be hard to dominate the soundspace with that piano. That said I was there yesterday but decided not to play. There were two people sitting right next to the piano and I did not want to disturb their conversation.
I’d been playing Philip Glass and Bach, mostly. The muscles are weak, as I expected, from almost a year of barely touching the piano. Muscle memory is real, though. I’ll get it all back if I can find the desire. I’ve never regretted not having a full-bore concert pianist career, but that’s not to say the muse does not tempt me at times. The time commitment needed to get something done to respectable quality is daunting, at least it seems to be unless I focus on trifles and light pieces. But even there I encounter the secret of easy pieces: They’re not really all that easy. Getting them right, getting them “definitive” is not a slam dunk. I think it was Horowitz who said the most difficult part of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto was the opening, where the melody is played bare, before the pianist rips into what is probably the most difficult of the standard piano concerti.
So I turned off the porn. She is beautiful and seems intelligent but that’s no reason to spend all day with her. We interacted a little bit. She seems to think I’m safe. Which I am. I read once that attention to the opposite sex is what ruins a man. Cut them out of your life for a year and you will improve as a person. It was some old school, controversial kind of philosophy about the drainage of creative energies. I can attest to a lot of creative energies expended on women, but was it all wasted? If there is nothing to show for it in the end then the answer may well be yes. By “nothing to show” I mean what is there to show from making a woman happy, making her miserable, making her sexually insatiable? What stays on public record or informs the general wellness of society when no book is written, no notes taken, only memories left behind to sort out and manipulate to our individual likings.
…
I just spent about an hour at the piano, thinking in terms of rebuilding muscle memory. Godowsky’s “Bromo Volcano” was not a bad choice for that, nor is the Volodos arrangement of the slow movement from Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata, which I’ve been messing around with for years. The Rachmaninoff is too beautiful for words but the real attraction to me is how it feels in my hands, and arms, and body. It is very rewarding, while the “Volcano” feels a bit contrived and pompous. Godowsky could be that way, but at least he’s fun to bombardier through. The chordal clusters seem daunting but they’re really quite understandable.
I re-tuned in to my latest porn doppelgänger and unfortunately found her spanking herself. I hate when people do that. Any kind of physical assault, however minor or kink-intentioned, makes me wince. It’s been a deal-breaker for me in a number of relationships.
I think I’ll make it outside for a spell. Have to get food and it even looks like the sun is coming out.
…
Back from the grocery store, learning I’ll likely need to head outside again to pick up the dreaded Lorazapam prescription that always seems to go wrong. I get nervous about it because sometimes doctors and pharmacies get all high and holy about doling out controlled substances. A previous doctor is to blame for making me feel like a fucking criminal for taking these meds in the first place. But I’ve ranted and crazed about that good and plenty.
…
OK, that’s it for outdoor time today. Went out thermos hunting again, finding a respectable looking Uniware for $10, reminding me that I probably still have an old Uniware sitting around somewhere. I procured it long ago from one of those silly coffee clubs I used to find so unavoidable. I’m trying to stop spending $20+ a week on afternoon coffee at work, and I tried already but the effort ended in failure. An old Thermos-brand thermos crapped out on me. How does a thermos crap out on you? It was the spigot, I guess it’s called? The thing you press down to pour. It just got old and fell to pieces, leaking coffee into the outer lid and fortunately not leaking into the bag or anywhere else.
It was not from the old decrepit thermos but I did spill some coffee onto the floor at my desk, revealing something I would not have expected. The janitorial crew really took care of that coffee stain. It was not pronounced or obvious, even to I, its Creator. But they spotted it and the next day it was gone. Nice.
Back from the pharmacy I now have what would have been, under circumstances of my previous life, a very long-term supply of anxiety meds. In this current life it should be good for about 3 months, maybe longer.
Oh wow, I’ve got the porn back on the big screen and I’m kinda laughing at this one woman. I would never say anything but she looks absurd. Her chatroom is filled with fawning fans whose praise makes her feel like a sex goddess of the western hemisphere but to me she is clumsy, unnatural, and in this for the money. Or rather tokens. I wouldn’t know the mechanics of how tokens convert to cash but that’s always the end game and the only game with professional masturbators.
So far the promised rain has not materialized but I’m blacking out the outside world for now, maybe checking in later via my always-on Astoria Queens Live Webcam.
