what i’m reading
I have recently developed a deep and almost obsessive love for the words of the writer Ocean Vuong, as must be obvious to any of you following my weekly musings.
I needed more of him and his words after putting down Time is a Mother (which I wrote about two weeks ago), and so turned to his novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
The novel is framed as a series of letters to his mother, who hardly speaks English or reads. This tension—this contraction—sits at the center of the narrative. Indeed, the book opens with the following line:
“Let me begin again.
Dear Ma,
I am writing to reach you—even if each word I put down is one word further from where you are.”
Vuong writes to bridge the cultural, linguistic, and generational distance between himself and his mother, and the effort he puts into trying to explain himself in all of his complexity—particularly given his queer identity—offers deep and rich insight into the human experience.
The reader is taken on a journey through his life and his family’s history, and we are given the opportunity to piece together what it means to be an immigrant in America, to straddle worlds: languages, cultures, socioeconomic classes, generational and historical traumas. And importantly, what it means to be gay within this context.
In great detail, he narrates his first sexual experiences with the boy that he fell in love with as a teen. In a line that arrested me, he says, “And what do you do to a boy like that but turn yourself into a doorway, a place he can go through again and again, each time entering the same room?”
While I am not a gay teenager trying to make sense of my newly emerging sexual desires, I am a woman with submissive leanings who experiences erotic love most deeply when giving my body over to the other.
I intensely long to have my body opened and filled, I desire to create a space within myself that can become a home for my lovers; a space they want to enter again and again.
There is something about this metaphor of the body as a doorway—leading to interior corporeal rooms—that feels deeply resonant. What’s more, it reminds me that there is always something a little sad about the emptiness of those rooms after a lover’s withdrawal.
what I’m thinking about
I am thinking about bodies—my body in particular—and what it means to invite another to enter it. I am thinking about the pleasure of being filled by another; that is to say, I am thinking about what it means to be a receptive sexual partner, to turn yourself into a space for another to occupy.
This porous relationship between self and other is more frequently experienced between lovers, but the bond between mother and child is also worthy of our attention. That these letters are to Vuong’s mother is important. Indeed, he says, “I am writing to you from inside of a body that used to be yours. Which is to say, I am writing as a son.”
I am thinking about the ways that offering my body as a home or a refuge for another can be intensely satisfying and pleasurable, but also vulnerable, scary, and at times, painful. I am also feeling gratitude for those who have made me feel whole by finding themselves at home in my body.
At this point, all I can say is that I am thinking about these themes of body, longing, inarticulability, and belonging. I do not know what to say about them yet, save that I often feel these intense and immediate desires well up inside of me—cravings to be filled, to be whole. I do not know what it means for my body to need with the intensity that it does. And yet, I keep wildly wanting.
what I’m excited for
Perhaps I am most excited about the fact that I have returned to a regular writing routine. It is not an exaggeration to say that when I am writing about my life, when I am processing my experiences deliberately in the form of writing, I am also living in a heightened state of reality. I always feel more in touch with myself, and discover truths about my experience that I can’t access without the sustained attention to my own thoughts that writing requires.
availability & booking
I’m making a quick road trip up to Buffalo this weekend, and after that my next big trip is to Washington DC (August 3-8). Between those two trips, I’ll be mostly in Pittsburgh, though I try to sneak away and stay on Lake Erie as often as possible in the summer months.
Make sure to check out my travel schedule on my website, and to remember that you’re more likely to have a good experience with me if you pre-book and give us both time to prepare for an experience we are both unlikely to forget!
