I Reckon They're All Jealous of the Size of Its Trunk

I'm trying very hard these days to remember what sex is like. I get some clues in some of the details that the guys I (used to) fuck send me on text messages, and, of course, I still have pornography, but it's been an incredibly long time (weeks, maybe) since I've had sex with another person. This drought is all the fault of my recent run in with the flu, of course. I'm pretty much healed, and I have been for a few days, but I have a nagging leftover cough, and I don't really see how I can go around fucking guys when I sound like a consumptive, even if I'm entirely healthy.


Speaking of consumptives, I've never actually fucked one, but I imagine it would be quite an experience. On the one hand, you'd probably be afraid of catching something really nasty. On the other, if you're topping a guy and he laughs or coughs, it feels great. So I guess that if you could manage to plow a consumptive while wearing a hazmat suit, you might end up having a pretty good time.


Anyway, I estimate that the coughing fits (which, I'm told, are normal and harmless) will subside in a few more days, and then I suspect things will pick up. Until then, at least I have consolations of art. This past Saturday evening, b&c and I made the long trek to the Kennedy Center to hear an all French program at the NSO. Perhaps as an acknowledgment of the recent inauguration, before they got into the program, they played the national anthem. B&c had mentioned, on the drive down, that they'd been starting all the concerts this week that way, and I had wondered whether the instrumentalists stand while they're playing. Everyone except the cellists, who just sit there with their legs spread. My kind of guys.


The program itself was entirely unremarkable, but I did notice that the bass players were looking a little more butch than usual. Also, the acting first oboe is very cute. He was sitting next to the associate flute principal during the first piece, and I couldn't help thinking that the two of them, in any combination, would make excellent choices for the meat and bottom crust of a sandwich. Then again, I've always heard that players of double-reed instruments are annoying, so perhaps the flutist and I would be better stuffing Mr. Oboe from either end. Every once in a while I worry that the orchestra members are not as attractive up close and unclothed as they are in white tie and from the second balcony, but I hold firm to my belief that their breath control and/or fine motor skills would more than compensate. Besides, I'd have my glasses off.


Yesterday morning, I took YFU to church. Normally I only show up when I'm singing with the choir, but she wanted to go. The service was nominally about freedom, and it included, along with several uninspired and uninspiring hymns, three different congregants giving their personal reflections on freedom. This is the sort of service that we have when the minister isn't preaching, and I generally figure that the benefits, such as they are, of such services tend to accrue more to the people speaking than to the people listening. The desire to be heard appears to be universal. But one of the speakers yesterday actually had something moderately interesting to say.


He was talking about a book called The Happiness Hypothesis, which claims, perhaps among other things, that people have a misguided notion about how much power they can actually exercise over their inner natures. Plato gave us the charioteer metaphor, where the soul is powered by two horses of very different natures and guided by the intellect, i.e., the charioteer. The author of THH prefers another metaphor (I don't think it's his own), where our human nature is an elephant, and the intellect/will/whatever is the driver. You can't really wrestle the elephant into submission, so you have to train it and learn to guide it. There are, so the claim goes, three main tools for training your elephant: meditation, cognitive therapy, and Prozac. It wasn't clear to me exactly how all of this related to freedom, and I'm inherently skeptical of metaphors; on the other hand, I've always wanted to ride an elephant.


The guy at church explained the theory pretty well, and he did so very concisely. And, how and why we regulate our behavior is something that interests me, but I couldn't help sitting their thinking, "Dude, it's an elephant. Just let it go wherever the fuck it wants. At best, it's only pretending to let you control it because it's lazy." Maybe other people's elephants (No, seriously, did I just type "other people's elephants"? Pop psychology: just say no!) aren't as benign as mine, but I don't think my personal pachyderm is doing a lot of trampling. I get that you can't always give in to your desires and appetites, but mastering them is so much work, and for what? As long as the elephant doesn't run off a cliff, you're probably going to have a lot more fun if you just hang on tight and laugh. Maybe offer it a peanut from time to time.