Recapitulation

D sometimes recaps one of our times together; more rarely, I do so myself. These recaps are not part of the sex that they recap, but nor are they apart from it. The sex is a capitulation; fucking, we each capitulate to the other. The recap is a recapitulation, just as its name says.

Capitulation to each other in sex is physically mediated. It is done in, with, and through the body. I give my body to you, and you take it. I give it because you want it, and because I want you to take it. You give your body to me, and I take it. I take it because I want it, and because you want me to take it. The expression, 'give and take' ought to be useful here, but it is not. It means flexibility, balance, equipoise - not at all the same thing as giving everything that you have, and taking everything that you can get.

[What about sex that is not physically mediated? 'Phone sex? Chatfucking? These complicate the picture. They are ways of having sex that are quite new, so there may be little that is sensible and stable to say about them yet.]

Without bodies to mediate capitulation, we must fall back on recapitulation - on sex remembered, reflected. Memories are fine recapitulants, but memory is partial and needs help. Mementos work wonderfully as recapitulants - secretions and stains, things borrowed or given, and best of all, marks on the body itself. But mementos are mostly denied to me; I am a liar, cheat, and adulterer. My recapitulants cannot be physical things. Returning from LCA-land, I must be found in the same condition in which I left, clothed in the same way, carrying nothing inexplicable, smelling just the way I should smell.

Hence, words as recapitulants. Words are not in any ordinary sense physical things, but words must be recorded if they are to persist. For most of human history this meant either committing the words to memory, or writing the words down. Writing the words down produces a physical record: a journal, say, or a bundle of love-letters. And these, like mementos, must be hidden. If well-hidden, they are very hard to find, and things that are hard to find are almost always hard to get. This makes the words themselves hard to read - locked away in a safe-deposit box, or stored high up in a closet, or stashed out in the woodshed, they are well-hidden, but no longer ready to hand.

Now, though, it is possible to hide the words well and yet have them ready to hand. Words can be easily hidden in a place where they are very hard to find, and from which they are easily recovered to do their recapitulary work. They can be hidden where no-one else can find them, or read them.

Why, then, are they here, rather than hidden? How come you are reading them?

The proper response to the second question is, 'You aren't.' This blog gets fewer than fifty hits each day. The words are not here because you are reading them but because I am writing them and not hiding them. Why I am writing them, I am not sure. Nor do I know why I am not hiding them.