I would have killed for a sexual thought as I stood in the shower depilating my pubus. The shower was drenching me in cold water, and the window was open to air out the smell of Magic Shave. It was probably under thirty degrees out there, with a cold wind blowing. I tugged my flaccid penis in each direction, trying to do an even job of shaving. What ran through my head was random imaginary conversations with people that could never take place, things I would write later, whether I would get a girlfriend by Valentine's and what she would think of this. Analyses of other people's feelings and beliefs about sexuality, as dry and loveless as possible. I stood there coldly calculating in the cold.
When I watch pornography, I end up dissecting it. My brain talks my boner down sometimes within minutes. If it's a picture, then I think about the composition, the pose, the look in the model's eyes. So many times that look doesn't seem to belong to someone who wants to be there. If it's a video, maybe I think about how much people are like animals. Not just the way you may be picturing when I say that, not in the old sense of being mindless and amoral. So much behavior reminds me of cats, or dogs, or monkeys. A certain look in their eyes, a certain movement, a grunt or moan.
A lot of times, I'll be considering how watching this relates back to me. How close is any of this to my personal fantasy? Do I even have one anymore? I'm not sure I do, and I think that is the problem. There is only a physical need now, and even that comes and goes. And most of the time I don't care. I'm even happier for it. But sometimes I wonder how I can get along with someone, intimately, with all this going on in my head. I worry about it extensively. And when I don't feel like getting anything creative done, this all comes back. When it's February, and no one can shut up about it, I have to wonder. My psychic friend said I was going to meet someone back in December. Turns out it's not a precise science, chronologically speaking. May take until April. Fuck. But I'm doing what I can short of growing social skills.