MOMMY DEAREST

"what does the fetish represent in the final analysis? it is an object that fills the constitutive lack in the OTHER, the empty place of 'primary repression', the place where the signifier must of necessity be lacking in order for the signifying network to articulate itself..." slavoj zizek

mike asked. i mean, if someone asks, i assume they want to hear the answer. don't ask if you don't want to hear it, that's my thinking. i do have to admit i don't think he had any idea what he was going to get when he asked. i don't think he'd have asked if he had any idea where it would go. in fact, i think he said as much.

initially, i was general. not particularly vague but general in a kind of academic way. ok, well, "fetish". let's see. unfortunately, mike was laboring under a simple notion of the whole concept. he visibly winced when i spoke about the freudian metonymic aspect, that a shoe or panties were the last thing seen BEFORE the revelation of sexual difference, that the trauma of sexual difference is such that it cannot be faced directly but needed to be processed psychically one of two ways, sublimation or repression. sublimation glosses over the signified w/a loose signifier. repression forces the signified to exist psychically w/o signification & therefore w/o the means of expression. sublimation is the healthy way to go here; repression, not so much.



i didn't want to go into the cast of characters this concept drags along. binet(he originated it), kraft-ebbing(for gods sake!), freud, winnicott(amazingly). but mike wasn't specifically asking about shoes or panties. he was trying to get a clarification about whether WOMEN could be or are fetishists. again, & i'm not knocking him here, he was simply trying to substitute the kind of fetishism he knew about(men's)w/a female version. so maybe ed's thing about shoes or pat's about panties fit w/eka's or ann's shoe collection. i emphatically tried to nip that one in the bud.

suddenly, i remembered an episode from my own life that i felt would crystalize the crucial differences in gendered fetishism. i was seeing a woman during the outrigger years who, no matter what, could not produce ANY vaginal lubrication. this wasn't just during our time together. it was the case w/all her former male lovers. we used countless tubes of ky jelly to facilitate the simplest sex acts. spontaneity did not exist. of course, the initial take here would be that she wasn't experiencing sexual excitement. that was my first take too. however, she experienced wrenching orgasms, always from oral(sometimes taking up to an hour & a half) or manual stimulation. during the orgasms, not one DROP of lubrication was produced. nada.

rather than being frustrated, i was intrigued. i introduced her to vibrators & they definitely helped her achieve faster(tho still dry)orgasms. same w/anal sex. but i couldn't figure out a way to get the dam to break. she told a story about showering w/her father as a very very young girl. at one point, she noticed his cock & asked what it was. that was the end of that. no more showers w/daddy. at around the same time, good vibrations out here in sf had started really promoting dildos w/harnasses for lesbian couples who felt compelled to go that way(& they were & are lots who do). this was also the beginning of the femdom era, where the women were the dominant sexual figure in the male/female relationship. for us at the time, that just meant that she got to play w/whoever she wanted to & i didn't. i had more than one guy come to me after a session w/her, their male-egos crushed, asking about the arid nature of her sexual response. of course, i also thought about including women in the mix. in fact, that seemed to be the way to go.



prior to that, i bought her a silcon dildo & harness from good vibrations. amazingly, there were several break-throughs w/this device. intially, she insisted that i wear it for sex. i'd no longer penetrate her w/my cock but the one i'd bought for her, her cock. once that etiquette was established, she became as wet as a florida swamp. the sex was astonishing. she became multi-orgasmic. eventually, she wanted to wear it herself, "claim" her cock(as she put it)& use it. i had no problem w/this. i'd always enjoyed that sort of thing. i remember after our first time, she said she finally understood how men were the way they were during sex since she could imagine now orgasm being predicated on the primacy of penetration & thrusting. she said if her orgasm depended on that, she'd be the same way. once, during an especially passionate moment, she started to demand my allegiance to the "mommy cock." as hot as it was, she seemed nearly deranged. i wondered if men seemed that way to women. i suspect we do.

eventually, she wanted to include a woman in the situation. i have to stress here that she wasn't looking to include me in the deal, no mff 3some. she just wanted to fuck another woman w/the "mommy cock." she did too. at this point, i'll go on & say that the dildo had become a fetish object for her. during all of it i was totally happy, tho not for obvious reasons. yes, we had a multi-dimensional sex life which included another beautiful woman. for me, it was figuring out & then solving the problem of a less than multi-dimensional sex life. this bliss didn't last long. i do think it opened her eyes to some issues. she's happy now, i think, still multi-dimensional.

the first time i told anyone that story was last year. i told nancy, my old new college buddy(who's engaged in some multi-dimensional moments herself). i remember seeing in her eyes revulsion & disbelief. while mike's not mr. multi-dimensional, he's known me a long long time. "fuck," he muttered, " eka derides me for not following up on things people say. jeez, who wants to know things like that?"

i don't know. i certainly thought i'd answered his question. i thought that's why he asked.