Moon Memo: The Broken Toothed Eunuch
Good morning from the Foster-Powell Triangle.
I slept for 10 hours last night. Maybe 11. Overwhelmed by this week, I welcomed the long sleep. I'd still be there if it wasn't for the earbuds falling out. (In the night, I sometimes wake because of my bladder, or the general sense that I am wasting my life. I get up, and pee, and put in ear buds, and lie back down. I try to drown out the anxiety with music or podcasts, three guys talking about something they love. Usually it lets me sleep a little longer.).
A classic bad week. Suicide training. Depression. Work systems breaking, or not mattering. A dental appointment that lead to a pulled tooth. My mouth doesn't throb anymore, but my tongue keeps searching for the missing resident.
I have to remind myself that it is January, and that January means depression. This is not a failure. This is brain chemistry and shitty weather. This month feels like a loss. Except that I'm writing poems. 33 so far this month. The most of any month since I was in high school. Writing is a solace, and escape. It's the life's work. But you all know that.
Saw my friend Alana yesterday. Ate hummus and falafel. Talked about her adventures on the other coast, driving through Pennsylvania, tangles with a girl she traveled for. The waiters were extremely kind to us, hoped us gals were having a good time. She's a treasure, this fairly newly minted girl, a little older than me. We have similar stories. I hope we can be friends forever.
But I don't know what that even means anymore. I'm starting to build walls around my heart, choose my small group and hope to keep them. Fellow travelers in this difficult land. Lost lakes and last chance mountains.
New note tools. New writing tools. A place to organize the 1900 individual notes from books and websites. Push a button and a random note appears. Push one now, and a note about the eros of eunuchs appears:
"We also know that young boys were castrated (or had their testicles crushed) to preserve or at least extend their youthful beardless beauty and render them especially apt objects of homosexual...desire (an accepted and sometimes idealized norm in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds), and that this “feminization” made them, at least in the popular mind, particularly appropriate for “passive” or “feminine” sexual inclina- tions. Eunuch could thus function as a virtual synonym in Greek and Roman culture for any male who preferred passive homosexual sex. Indeed, the conflation of eunuch and passive homosexual goes back at least as far as As- syrian law (1300–1100 BCE), and probably much earlier.29 Eunuchs, more- over, were also well known as male prostitutes, and their sexual prowess was often legendary. Contrary to popular belief, castration (which removes only the testicles) did not necessarily prevent them from sexual activity. Rather, it rendered them conveniently infertile and so “safe” sexual part- ners. Thus, as Gary Taylor observes, “[e]unuchs are in fact not impotent, but powerful; they are often sexually active, and capable of erections; castration does not so much suppress eros as redirect and in some ways liberate it.”30
From Jeffrey Kripal The Serpent's Gift
A third gender. A transformative gender. This could have been written about girls in the molly houses of the 19th century, about the transgender sex workers that I know. We are a history. We are history.
While I was talking about this tool with Jade, they asked me how much I've spent on digital tools last year, trying to find the perfect writing tools. I don't want to answer. I am a fool for tools. This one was free. I wish I had found it sooner.
The world has melted. I have lunch with Elodie in a couple of hours. I want to be alone, but I'm tired of being alone. January thoughts.
Love and stuff,
Misha Lynn Moon