Being able to remember things is good. For example, remembering that sticking one's dick in mashed potatoes fresh out of the oven hurts really bad is what is supposed to prevent us from doing that particular thing again. Remembering feelings, however, sucks my nutsack. Remembering feelings is what leads us to drop trou and give it another shot, for even though we remember the pain we felt when we did it the first time, we also remember what we felt leading up to the pain - hope leading from the promise of warm, squishy joy.
Keep up with me here for a minute if you can, I'm trying to take this analogy to where I need it to go and it's not exactly working but I'm feeling particularly stubborn this evening.
The memory of hope, this is what we use to convince ourselves that maybe this time it might not be as hot, it won't burn us, it won't hurt as much. We've all done this, maybe not with mashed potatoes, but we've all done it.
Over, and over, and over again.
Of course it hurts again, even more so the second time. Because then we've got some other feelings to remember along with the pain, like embarassment that we were so stupid to try the same thing twice expecting different results. The mark of insanity, some might say. The mark of a mark or of someone who is way too trusting and really wants to believe that something is good, I might say.
What makes things worse is that there are people out there in this cruel, harsh world of ours that so callously encourage others to stick their dicks places that dicks don't belong, giving those people hope that the result will be beautiful and wonderful, all the while knowing that it won't end well, maybe even with blisters and pain. Lots of pain.
Fuck those people.
I don't know if they have had to deal with their own memories and hurt for so long that they just become indifferent to it, or if they are just unfeeling automatons bent on savaging the rest of humanity for their own selfish pleasure, or if they get some sort of vindication from seeing others hurt in the same way that they've been hurt in the past. Maybe it's a bit of all three, or something else entirely. I have no idea, I'm not one of those people. Either way, they prey on those of us who hope, who trust in others to not lead us astray, they are like the pasty-faced hackers in their mother's basements sending out e-mails on behalf of fictitous African princes in order to milk grandmothers of their copay savings.
There are times when I wish that I had one of those flashy thingies from Men In Black so I could erase my own memory when shit goes down that I'd rather not be able to remember. How joyous would life be if we could instantly forget the hurt and embarassment we've endured and only remember the times we spent with mashed potatoes that had been out of the oven long enough to give us joy and happiness without the rest of it?
But then, I suppose, we wouldn't know enough to be more careful where we stick our man bits, and that, after all, is what hurt and embarassment are for. They are warnings from our minds not to be stupid or too impulsive, to test something with the tip of our finger or to let things cool down before ramming more sensitive body parts right into them, just like a sunburn is a reminder to wear sunblock.
Sunblock, waiting for things to cool down, making sure that you can really trust someone before you decide to place your unending faith in them not to burn you where it hurts the most; these are all things that are prudent and wise and we learn as we get older. Unfortunately, they all take away a bit of the magic from those of us who grew up wanting to believe that princesses and fairies existed, chasing butterflies in bright flowery meadows. So we keep forgetting to do them, not learning that maybe we should have spent a bit more effort ahead of time listening to that nagging voice in our head telling us to turn around, to walk away, to zip back up and wait for something a little less harsh to intercourse with.
It's hard to give up hope that magic is real, but test it enough and get the same answer each time and you will inevitably arrive at the forgone conclusion that it is what it is, this is as good as it gets, and there's no princess waiting for you in some magic land with rainbows and unicorns.
Anyway, how can you be sure that you can really trust someone until you give them a chance to deceive you while simultaneously mistrusting them enough to go looking to see for sure whether they're lying or not? Inherent in the definitions of both faith and trust is that they are both untestable, which just seems naive to me. Then again, faith is something I've never been very good at when it comes to religion, and trust is something I'm generally way too eager to engage in when it comes to people. Maybe I should rethink all of that. After all, God can't let you down, He's always beyond reproach even when purging the Earth of entire crops of newborn babies. And people always let you down. Every. Time. And they never seem to have the decency to apologize or explain themselves after the fact, they just laugh and point and tell you how stupid you were for trusting them in the first place, or worse, try to make you feel like you did something wrong.
I sure as shit don't have any answers here, this is a rant blog and I'm just bitching. If you want some absolutes or solutions, go see a priest. Or a prostitute, at least they tell you up front that they are just using you for money and don't actually care at all about you or your stupid feelings. That's a level of honesty you just don't get from anyone else.
The good news is that I can tell you un-equivocally that using food as a sex substitute is fine, as long as there are no ovens or microwaves involved.
