HYMEN CLASH
Laurie Cubbison / Alan Sondheim



We were trying to write a collaborative piece about subjectivity and sexuality, illness and masochism. But as we began developing our dialogue through electronic mail, we found ourselves taking up sexualized positions within the discourse, such that our original issues were lost in issues of
control over the text.

We attempted a text dealing with masochism from the double viewpoint of sexuality and chronic pain. Doors unlocked and locked; the resulting masochistic text satisfied no one. It fastens/fascinates.

Laurie Cubbison / Alan Sondheim



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Laurie:
i write about pain because it's a constant in my life. it's always here. there's a song by the judds called "mr. pain". the woman sings about the fact that mr. pain is the only lover who is always there. other men come and go, but mr. pain is a faithful suitor.

Alan:
Then perhaps it is mr. pain you're responding to?

Laurie:
perhaps it is. perhaps that's the problem with this text.

Alan:
I'd say they're probably singing about emotional pain, which is an inroad to the suitor - in other words, it's connected to sexuality, masochism. Desire is a constant in my life; there are others, exhaustion, occasional depression, these texts...

Laurie:
but for me, desire is derailed by pain and exhaustion. i become not sexually passive as a result but passive in the face of sexuality.

Alan:
I understand this; I was commenting on the song.

Laurie:
i suppose i feel fragile in a lot of ways. physically. emotionally. yes, i've survived. i'm over the worst in terms of emotional pain. i'm at a point in my life where a lot of the problems have been resolved, fixed.

Alan:
We all have...

Laurie:
but the problem with fixing anything is that the fix doesn't remove the damage done. it only makes the object functional again. so, yes, i'm functional, but i feel fragile. i wait for the next thing to go wrong and put me in the hospital.

Alan:
But as I've said to you, this is already a suture, foreclosing, on the subject; you've made and closed down the case for yourself. Expecting the worst or interpreting everything in terms of the worst precludes the possibility of other emotional responses.

Laurie:
not completely. there are the surprise, relief, even joy, when the worst is not realized. but expecting the worst, not getting one's hopes up too high, is a defense mechanism. i meet a man. i like him. i start to get my hopes up. bam. he's married. or not interested. or too far away. how long can you expect good things and end up with bad things before it affects your outlook on life? one gets tired of the emotional turmoil, of thinking maybe this time i will be hired, maybe this time i will get laid, and it ends up with a feeling of 'of course, it wasn't going to happen, i was a fool to think it would'.

Alan:
This is a different problem than that of the physical pain, and I'm not sure what to say. I've said you're short-circuiting yourself above; I can't get closer to this. All of us ride the backs of failure.

Laurie:
but the physical pain and the emotional pain reinforce each other, are intertwined.

Alan:
I understand this; I just don't know where to go from here. You've made your point, but your writing doesn't really call for dialog; it closes itself off.

Laurie:
i don't want to close off the dialog though perhaps i am. i'm wanting to convey the effect of illness, wanting you to understand how constrained i feel.

Alan:
But there are two goals here, one between us, which is the conveyance, and the other, our ability to discuss sexuality/masochism/disability and their interactions. And what's happened here is that you feel yourself constrained to emphasize how bad you feel, and that does foreclose. What can I say? I am sorry you feel this way. And I've known you for a long time, so it seems that you "wanting you to understand how constrained I feel" are delivering a different message, that you want to _hammer_ your constraint home, until the text comes to a halt.

Laurie:
but remember, that you are not the only audience here. i am speaking to you but we are also writing this text for publication. can i not include among 'you' the people who don't know me?

i think about prozac, that one of the side effects is the lowering of the libido. and for some people that's an unacceptable side effect. but for me, who loses libido to pain and depression any way, the functioning it brings ends up being more important than any effect it may or may not have on my desire.

Alan:
I can understand this; I also think I have more desire, perhaps addictive desire, than most.

What are you saying in relation to the subject? That depression is masochistic, as well as physical pain, that you're burdened by your entire life, physical and mental? Other than being concerned, I don't know what to say to this...

Laurie:
i think perhaps that is what i am saying.

Alan:
Which is also a way of silencing me, although you don't mean it. My responses here have a repetitive character, as you know.

Laurie:
but they're serving the purpose i'd hope they would, to draw out of me an articulation of my feelings in this area.

Alan:
But then the dialog is a monolog with commentary...

Laurie:
i suppose that i am in a state of ongoing abjection. always unstable, between states. shifting toward frustration, depression and despair. a small wing back to hope and contentment every once in a while. i suppose i am too wrapped up in myself, in my own pain and fear, though i'm not so bad as i used to be. i read that last clause and give a sour chuckle. the badness attached to myself.

Alan:
Even "sour chuckle" reverts to depressive attitudes; these paragraphs are signifiers of collapse themselves. I can't see desire emerging here; whatever my interpretation of masochism might be, deliberate loss of control, release, splaying/opening, flooding of desire, ecstasis and momentary annihilation, maternal chora, babbling, shitting, pissing - it's not found here, in your text, nor is there a space/site for it. "Wrapped up" in yourself is a mummy-metaphor, death and detumescence already foregone, completed. In other words, I can't find a way through this into my own stance or "take"; there's no place for jouissance, and instead I tend towards thinking about resources for overcoming depression.

Laurie:
and that i think is why i'm uncomfortable with masochism.

Alan:
Because I express concern for you? What I find is a thicket of emotional and physical pain that you present; I can't think clearly through this. It sounds in fact that your uncomfortableness is with everything. I still don't see masochism as necessarily intersecting with the states you describe; if anything, it can be an aid in overcoming them. But in your texts, the cotton-thickness is dense enough to preclude that.

Laurie:
No, not because you express concern for me but because i can't see a connection or a release in it for me.

Alan:
But there's no reason it should necessarily work for you at all. And "being uncomfortable" with masochism can mean either you're not personally interested, which is fine, or that it's not of interest to you, i.e.
other masochists make you uncomfortable.

Laurie:
i'm not sure that that's how i'm feeling. I won't say it doesn't 'interest' me but that i don't see a place for me in it. i don't want to be a masochist. i feel that i live that life already in my own body, but neither
do i want to be a dominatrix.

Alan:
But no one is asking you to take one or another position; discussing something doesn't mean you're identifying as a participant.

Laurie:
but don't you know me well enough by now that i always discuss by identifying with the experience? by playing with it? do i want to position myself in that way or this? what would i do if that were my position? it is by considering issues through experiential positions that i think through issues.

but i don't see how it could be an aid in overcoming the pain. please explain.
Alan:
Because it can be a way of controlling one's body, releasing it to another, returning from that control.

Laurie:
i would have to experiment to know if that would work, but of course there aren't any lab partners available.

Alan:
No, and I doubt it would work for you, since it would return your body and your pain to you, and you've talked already about being uncomfortable with that.

Laurie:
i'm not a masochist, even though i'm passive. i don't want to be controlled. i feel that i've always already been controlled against my will, by my mother, by my body. but i don't have the energy to be controlling, nor the desire. i don't know what kind of lover that makes me.

Alan:
But you are already controlling yourself through intense negations that don't let up. Your writing introjects control, suffocates other possibilities. Masochism is simultaneously about control and the conditions of the boundary - first, the temporarily violated boundary of the body, and second, the release into and release out of the masochistic state/session/etc. - these boundaries of recovery enunciating the theatrics
of everyday life and their overcoming.

Laurie:
well, if i'm controlling myself, then at least no one else is. but what do you mean by the temporarily violated boundary of the body?

Alan:
The masochist session, or time, the body returning to itself. As far as controlling, aren't you also, in a way, controlling this text? This is the anger perhaps at the core of depression? I can't see a way in.

Laurie:
i suppose i am controlling the text. perhaps i see text as the thing i can
control.

Alan:
Then this is "your" text, reflecting your concerns...

Laurie:
well, that is what i was hoping for, to have something that would reflect my concerns.

Alan:
Again, this becomes monologic --

Laurie:
but my concerns are very seldom reflected in the theories of the body and sexuality. that was why i wanted to write this text to begin with. even though *you* know my constraints, my concerns ad nauseam, they are not theorized, not recognized.

Alan:
But again this is a single-author text you're referencing here. The other question is, beyond the jostling of power here, where is the theory? What theory are you referencing? What phenomenology?

Laurie:
if i had world enough and time.... i would like to be referencing merleau-ponty, but i've barely had an opportunity to dip into him having finally discovered him. i'm writing now, before i've done the reading i wanted to do because you were eager to get something written on this and you asked me to start first. i'm feeling very frustrated with this whole thing.

trying to negotiate the writing of this text with you has been odd. very odd. i'm closed off, you say. there isn't an opening for your writing in the text i've written. as i was showering this morning, i think it was this morning rather than last night, i thought what a suggestive sexual image is contained in this. it's so virginal, so hymeneal, this image of a closed discourse that tries to dialogue. i suppose it's an accurate metaphor.

Pain and depression form my hymen that keeps you from entering my discourse, that protects my innermost.

the question is: how to deflower this discourse? does it even need to be?
Alan:
No it doesn't need to be. But there are two things, _this_ discourse, and discourse in general, and _this_ discourse to the extent it remains sutured, is, if not monologic, at least developing around a singularity.

Laurie:
what frustrates me is that you see my physical pain and emotional depression, but you don't see the rhetoric as rhetoric. you see it as me reminding you yet again what bad shape i'm in. you don't see me trying to say something about sexuality and illness.

Alan:
If I did, what difference would that make? Because I'm not saying anything at all in a way, just appearing as interstitial? And I can't see it as rhetoric when you ground it so intensely in autobiographical or first-person statements...

Laurie:
it's called ethos, establishing the legitimacy, my right to speak. i was talking to H about this text this afternoon. i didn't have it with me so i didn't show it to her, but i was telling her about this impasse we're having writing this. and i realized how our different writing styles are reflected in our frustration.

i theorize out of experience. you seem to start with theory first. and i don't think you see that the experience i've tried to describe in this text is the basis for my theorizing, the foundation on which i build my thinking, that even though we are in dialogue, you are not my sole audience, that the lived experience that causes you to pity me is a given for me from which i form my thinking.

Alan:
I just don't separate theory/experience at all. A lot of the Jennifer work comes out of my sexuality, and then perhaps or simultaneously out of theory.

Laurie:
but you seem to be starting from a different point than i am with relation to this topic. i start from experience and try to understand it.

Alan:
I may not be your sole audience - I hope not - but I _am_ supposed to be an equal here. I am beginning to find all of this very aggressive - now you're attacking me, I feel, because I'm missing that your foundation is pure pain... I'm locked out of that. I repeat myself.

Laurie:
i'm not saying that my foundation is pure pain. i'm saying that experience is the foundation on which i'm trying to build my theorizing. the fact is that pain dominates my experiences in many ways.

and i find it ironic that you say i am attacking you, since you keep telling me i need assertiveness training, but that's really beside the point. and you are an equal here. being an audience does not reduce you or
distance you. it's a rhetorical term.

Alan:
The very fact you call me "audience" at all in the paragraph above is indicative of your perception of me in relation to this writing...

Laurie:
i think you're missing my point. i call you audience because you are the primary reader at this time for whom i am writing.

i'm coming out of an immersion in rhetorical theory at the moment, so when i think about this text, i think about the fact that it is also for publication, and so i raise the question of audience,. but if you don't like the stuff about audience we can take it out. i'm feeling confused because it comes across as though you hate it but you still want to submit it. if i'm attacking you, which i don't think i am, it's because i'm feeling frustrated that you're not understanding what i'm trying to do with this text.

Alan:
I don't - nor could I - describe the "foundation of my thinking" to you in a single text, because I don't believe in such foundations for myself, nor do I think foundational thinking is unary...

Laurie:
and neither could i. what i'm trying to say is when i use the phrase 'foundation of my thinking' is that when i start to think though an issue like sexuality, like masochism, like chronic illness, is that i start with my lived experience, in the way that a builder starts building a house by laying the foundation. it's how i *start* thinking.

Alan:
I would say this, that this text, qua text, is a symptom of something, and should be submitted as is; it remains hymen, immobilized, and has a certain fascination..

Laurie:
so you don't really like it but you're fascinated by it? or do you not like it? i'm frustrated.


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