Nosferatu and The Real Monster

 Katherine J. Chen's In “Nosferatu,” The Monster That Needs Feeding Is Female Desire (Electric Lit) hits the nail on the head. Odd, no else seems to have noticed this.

This has been sitting in my drafts since January 27, but still I have seen nothing about the female desire put on display in this essay.

Sometimes I wonder if men are not scared of female sexual desire. Other times I wonder if we do not fear any kind of desire. KH and I talked last week about some of the ideas coming up in my group therapy, such as cognitive disorders. Mind you, only two of the group members committed anything violent. They seem the most repentant of all. Obsession has not been mentioned as a cognitive disorder, and when combined with sexual desire it has a long history - Samson for Delilah, David for Bathsheba, Antony for Cleopatra, Krazy Kat for Ignatz. History and literature are full of examples. The stories do not always end well; they provide a cautionary morality lesson. But oh what a way to go! In the madness that is passion. What better way to defy an uncaring universe than to be caught up in an all-consuming passion. KH and I noted how many women we knew were looking for the same kind of passion; he agreed with my remark about living through a Neo-Victorian period. Ours is a highly sexualized culture without any passion. Not even the passion of rebellion. Maybe too much Freud with his linking everything to sex? Passion's danger is being selfish, as noted in the essay above. That can be as true of religious passion as of fleshy passions. They can be disruptive - which is neither good for capitalist nor Marxist-Leninist economic models. But what else keeps us alive, keeps us feeling alive, in the face of death?

I do not feel any such passion nowadays. Old age, poor health, a feeling of ungainliness are my usual excuses. Other times, I say it is this feeling of lucidity I have slipped into after the failure of my self-destructiveness, and I have had enough craziness and women and crazy women in my life. My PO may also inspire my dampened passions; I have never met a grown man so obsessed with sex, he douses fires with his tawdry single-mindedness. What I try to say less of nowadays is the passing of Joni R in 2015 left me reconsidering what good I did the women I knew. Better to just have memories than chance causing more pain.

Sex is a mechanical act, an inadequate tool for passion, but so are all the others, except maybe music. 

sch 2/10