Tuesday 11 November 2014

Revenge and the Absent God

Argh. I find myself giving over to the clipped lexicon of grindr. I've never described myself as a 'relaxed, chill guy' before but find it increasingly necessary as a precursor to a certain kind of hookup. Funny how reliably indicative a guys profile ends up being, adhered to the bandied colloquialisms pregnant with specific meaning. Chill, I've discovered, generally foretells a hookup in brief, strictly no staying over and more often than not excluding anal (stink). Funny to think fellatio a kind of greeting, and any kind of ass-play the opposite of 'chill' (apparently), either too arduous (for reasons of personal pain thresholds, hygiene etcetera) or otherwise signifying commitment. Like it needs to be earned.  
I also suspect for the younger guys with the word 'chill' in their profiles, often paired with 'masc' or 'discreet', it describes either lack of sexual experience or the bizarrely held notion they're less 'gay' if they don't do anal. Like ass play is the master signifier of gayness, not attraction to the same sex. 

Hooked up with a guy who'd seen me around first and then found me through grindr. Flattered much. Anyway the interest was mutual, which got me to appreciating grindr as a way of salvaging missed connection. We drove out to the burbs and the conversation took an interesting turn. His parents were religious, and remain members of a cult-seeming church whose media fuelled notoriety has dropped recently, but are otherwise the subject of frenzied polarisations. This church (which I won't name fully for anonymity's sake, even though my florid skirting should make it obvious) has a totalitarian-like infrastructure, where one man (with the mediation of no one) decides on the direction of tithe, targeting different charitable organisations or events or even direct purchases justified with charitable ends, such as computers for (certain, hardly public/secular) schools. 
At this unadulterated (and thus anti-democratic) decision making, their (high profile) leader sends a collective message, and the collective acts accordingly, fulfilling His wishes with few-to-no questions asked. And he takes a cut for Himself. Members of the congregation are figures of revenue, raw materials for the actualisation of one mans vision for a better world. 
So this guy argued the church does good, while I asked can you blame the media for scrutinising their infrastructure which is blatantly authoritarian, and is any lasting good achievable when it's foundation is an aspirant empire? Their legacy of 'good' is theologically contaminated, exacted by a cynical anti-democratic model, not merely democracy's absence but a radical condescension regarding the public's ability to self govern or even discern for themselves a better trajectory for society. 
He also told me they had successful realtors in the congregation who'd basically established districts around their biggest churches, selling exclusively to fellow members. I imagine their own gated subdivision is phase two. 

We fucked at his parents house, in their living room floor so as not to leave any bed with tell-tale signs. Eliding more personal details regarding this boys upbringing, which he generously shared with me, we'd basically enacted a revenge fantasy of his against his mother and father. A conspiracy of two, what John Berger likes to call (referring to the value of erotic desire in and of itself) 'a locus of exemption from the liability of pain', a sexual synthesis of old wounds staged where those wounds themselves were garnered. The family home. 

I hope I helped reconcile this guy to the sins of the father.