Babblings about Rats, Bobcats & Celibacy

I saw a beautiful bobcat on my hike a few days ago and forgot to tell a soul. This is how I have been feeling. Lonely in a crusty, dementia way. Horny in the ugly “Everything Is Gonna Be Alright, Rock-a-bye” Shawn Mullins kinda way. And just downright starved for something I can’t name, but it tastes like townie carnival funnel cake and it has sex with you behind a bowling alley in their Nissan Altima and its freezing outside and your phones are dead and you can only listen to shitty radio and hump and you’re slightly repulsed by them the whole time in a hot way.

The bobcat was fluffy and a significant size, but it didn’t want to approach me, though I gave it my all. I got close to the ground and stalked toward it. It was sorta meandering like someone desperately trying to find a Wendys to shit in. When it finally took off, I felt pretty high from the experience like my hearing was sharper- the flapping of a hawks wings whipped past my head and the wind hurtled through the trees as if to send a warning to other trees that my stupid ass was gonna be passing by. This quarter of loneliness feels barren and unsexy so I’m allowing nature to swallow me as much as possible because my compass for human interaction feels wonkier than ever.

”Be careful, I have rats” is not a phrase you like to hear after your neighbor (who you’ve never met) invites you in to try on some of her clothes she just knows you’d like, but the leaky void in me made me do it. I even took a velvet dress 4 times my size home with me. If I were allowed to use my fireplace it would be in there right now. My neighbor is sweet and kind, as far as I can tell, and I am in the mood to put myself into situations that make me feel uncomfortable and filthy. The surprise of long staring at a rat the size of my 5 month old niece inside a clothes closet was a shock to my system I am grateful for. This is where I can see myself getting into trouble where getting mauled by a bobcat sounds chill and the threat of possibly getting slain in a strangers closet, while being stared at by a rat sounds dope has hell. I blame my celibacy.

I have been sexless for almost a year. The lack of sexual intimacy has been channeled through some horny, I suppose, art. But I feel a bit horrified of letting anyone in in a romantic or physical sense. I think what I’m doing in some stuff I’m making is merely displaying how gross I’ve been feeling about physical intimacy, mocking the scorched earth of two straight people going at it, at this point in time. No offense.

There seems to possibly be a ramp up of horned up energy for the orgy summer of 2021, while at the same time we’re grappling with continued devastation, mass shootings, white supremacy, documentaries like Allen vs. Farrow, and the mental unwellness of a really divided collective that was traumatized by this last year. We’re all experiencing or denying some ego deaths around things we previously felt were ok or chose not to see. I have this “never again” feeling about sex- it can never be casual or flippant or via technology. I envy people who can still seem to get WAP through a completely cyber experience. My phone feels too heavy with each daily horrorshow to compartmentalize it and J off with Jake from State Farm.

Yet, while waltzing into Target the other night to score some ether, I heard Bizarre Love Triangle playing and I thought “ Jeez, it would be so nice to be in falling in love right now.” How much better would it feel to hear Bizarre Love Triangle while in love?? It’s the best. Imagine the serotonin, the desire to impress, and nurture someone. Fuck!

Alas, I do not think it’s my time. I am busy in the wilderness and growing farther away from any sort of impressive pitch of who I am. My personality is remote. Nothing is sturdy. I am in awe of people with crushes right now. Are you just watching someone’s mask fall off? Isn’t that what’s happening to everyone? An endless identity regurgitation until we finally die to all the personality decoration and become the cutie patootie balls of light we came in here as? Is that the plot of Bosch or The Good Wife? I remember my friend describing his grandfather in his final decade just slowly turning into pure love and I’ve never forgotten that. That’s the goal.

I have felt pretty dry in the well of what I’d like to write about and wondering if there is something wrong with this state of celibacy. Perhaps, staying closed to physical intimacy or romantic partnership is switching some inspiration valves off. The longer I’m in it, the harder it feels it’ll be to come out of it and a way more robust set of scissors will be needed to groom myself. But as a former relationship jumper, I think I’m ripe to be somewhat broken hearted and lonely and allow it to penetrate whatever hiding spots some part of my heart lives in. I’m used to eye-ing someone on the sidelines (ex: Pesci, Turturro, etc.) post a relationship ending to help numb with the loss. Last year was the first time I didn’t have the life boat of something else, I just had the My Octopus Teacher documentary.

On a podcast I hosted during the first part of quarantine, with my friend Kelly, I said I was masturbating to snow, which was true. While living in Maine, I just would simply look at nature. Naked porn bodies seemed like characters walking around Disneyland. Too much! Our sexual selves have become cartoonishly large and in charge due to a lot of collective repression. Just like we’re feeling everything else, the stifling of sexual freedom is also bobbing to the surface to be healed. I’m not sure where I land on the spectrum of being sexually liberated, but I have never been consciously celibate like I am doing now and it isn’t yet helpful. I am mostly trying to hug bobcats.

Though I believe in the benefit of adding a different layer of algae to your ecosystem (being in a relationship), there has to be something beautiful and clarifying in clearing the channel and seeing what’s really yours. I hope to find out if that’s true and learn more about ecosystems: Tundras, Freshwaters, Grasslands etc.