Erotic Nightmares and Sensual Daydreams: The Raw Power of Rocky Horror

"Give yourself over to absolute pleasure/Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh
Erotic nightmares beyond any measure/And sensual daydreams to treasure forever
Can't you just see it. Whoa ho ho!/Don't dream it, be it."

     When I was young; only a precocious first grader, I was snooping around, as children tend to do, and I found this small vinyl-lined Playboy calendar in my father's old metal desk, in the back office of his restaurant.  Most likely some promotional item that would come free with a subscription to the magazine.  I somehow inherently knew it was wrong to look at it; like it just wasn't something good little girls do and that I would get in trouble for snooping around, but I also couldn't resist turning to every page and studying each one of those glamorous women.  They captivated me with their beauty and this look of innocence and purity on each of their faces, that somehow didn't seem to quite fit with their sensually naked forms.  I didn't even quite know what it was I was seeing, but it drew me in, yet not without an overwhelming sense of impurity.  But it didn't stop me from peeking at that calendar and those beguiling women every chance I could.  That is the first step I can vividly remember into my rabbit hole of sexual discovery.

 "Now all I want to know/Is how to go/I've tasted blood and I want more."

    I had terrible nightmares as a kid, still do truth be told, but as a child they were harrowing to experience.  I would run into my parent's room each night after a nightmare, and sleep on the floor in front of their TV.  So, I think in an effort to help me, and regain their privacy, the same year I discovered that Playboy calendar, they bought me a small TV for my bedroom that Christmas.  Every night, I would watch TV until I fell asleep, and when I had a nightmare, I could just turn on my own TV to soothe my mind back into some semblance of reality.  That also meant, I could watch whatever I wanted, unsupervised and unencumbered.

 "The darkness must go/Down the river of night's dreaming/Flow morphia slow
Let the sun and light come streaming/Into my life, into my life."

    It was the following Halloween night, I was in second grade by then, and I was hopped up on candy and the excitement of the high holiday.  I wasn't close to tired, but I could stay up all night and watch TV if I wanted.  So, it had to have been after midnight, and I was flipping through the limited channels, and I came upon the strangest sight.  It was this movie, clearly some kind of horror flick in honor of Halloween, but it was different somehow.  There were all these strange people and strange costumes, put together in a way I had never seen before in other movies.  And there was music, loud, fast, rock 'n roll tinged music; I was rapt.  But there was something else even, some inexplicable sensation, that at the time I didn't know had a name, but I could feel it in every bantam corner of my body.  I could feel it vibrate these electrical impulses as they danced down my back, and coursed straight through to between my skinny thighs.  Later, I would deduce that the feeling that rocked my little 8 year old mind and body to the core was sexiness. That's what this movie dripped; oozed, was sexiness.  And again, it felt innately wrong, somehow.  Which made me desire it all the more.

“It’s beyond me/Help me, Mommy/I’ll be good, you’ll see/Take this dream away
What’s this, let’s see/I feel sexy/What’s come over me?/Woo! Here it comes again.”

And in addition to the sexiness that I saw onscreen, and the sexiness that I felt, there was more still.  There was this bizarreness to it, this level of depravity and acceptance of that depravity, that differed wildly from that Playboy calendar that allured me so, the previous year.  There wasn't this posed innocence.  Hell, there wasn't any posing at all; it was nothing but the loss of innocence.  These grotesque, lust-fueled, outre freaks writhing around the screen, recklessly indulging in their perversion to create this otherworldly cocktail of pleasure laced with defiance.  It was like a Universal gift, wrapped up and broadcast just for me.  I could barely comprehend what it was I was seeing, but I just knew it was me. "It's so dreamy/Oh, fantasy free me/So you can't see me/No, not at all  In another dimension/With voyeuristic intention/Well secluded, I see all With a bit of a mind flip/You're into the time slip/And nothing can ever be the same."      It also introduced me to a concept I was wholly unfamiliar with, the idea of androgyny, and not juts as a device or an affectation, but androgyny as desirable; androgyny as highly sexual.  Something I would later go on to explore, not only through glam and punk rock, but in my own sexual experiences, within in my lovers, and of course, within myself; the philosophical nature of what it is to be male or female, and how those lines are made to be blurred.  To say that late-night movie, which I would only come to find out later was The Rocky Horror Picture Show, changed me wouldn't be quite accurate.  It was like it unlocked, or rather, unleashed something in me, something that had already been bubbling up since conception; this nascent sexuality and burgeoning lust for sex tinged with the peculiar.  I didn't realize then of course, but I was a born fetishist.  It would take me years to fully embrace my own perversions; the sadomasochism, the domination and submission; the idea of sex as fuel, as food, and sex as power, but this was one hell of a fucking start. "Oh, we're trapped!/It's something you'll get used to/A mental mind-fuck can be nice."     Rocky Horror would foment my love affair with the bizarre, the carnal, the obscene; the forbidden.   From that time on, any nightmare I had, I could then sexualize, in this lascivious lucid dreaming technique my young brain concocted, to not only diminish its power, but give me a modicum of control and even a jolt of pleasure.  And the movie was at least partially responsible for forever entangling sex, rock 'n roll and kink in my impressionable mind.  I've never really stopped delighting and indulging in the filthiness and power of sex from that time on.  In myriad ways, sex has not only pushed me to the brink, but saved me from going over the edge.  For this little Creature of the Night, Rocky Horror allowed me to slip several rungs deeper into the seedy underbelly of the prurient and the arcane; the salacious depths.  It was a thrilling leap into my subconscious hedonistic desires and into the pure decadence of orgiastic smut.
"Now the only thing I've come to trust/Is an orgasmic rush of lust                           Rose tints my world/And keeps me safe from my trouble and pain."

In Time and Blood: The Endless Variations of A Thousand Kisses Deep & Deciphering the Mystery of the Mystery Man

A Thousand Kisses Deep by the legendary Leonard Cohen: the gut-wrenching verses.

You came to me this morning
And you handled me like meat
You’d have to be a man to know
How good that feels, how sweet
My mirrored twin, my next of kin
I’d know you in my sleep
And who but you would take me in
A thousand kisses deep

I loved you when you opened
Like a lily to the heat
You see I'm just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet
But you don’t need to hear me now
And every word I speak
It counts against me anyhow
A thousand kisses deep

I know you had to lie to me
I know you had to cheat
To pose all hot and hide behind
The veils of sheer deceit
Our perfect porn aristocrat
So elegant and cheap
I’m old but I’m still into that
A thousand kisses deep

I know you had to lie to me,
I know you had to cheat.
But the Means no longer guarantee
The Virtue in Deceit.
That truth is bent, that beauty spent,
That style is obsolete -
Ever since the Holy Spirit went
A thousand kisses deep.

(So what about this Inner Light
That's boundless and unique?
I'm slouching through another night
A thousand kisses deep.)

The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat.
You win a while, and then it's done -
Your little winning streak.
And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it's real
A thousand kisses deep.

(And sometimes when the night is slow

The wretched and the meek
We gather up our hearts and go
A thousand kisses deep)

I'm turning tricks; I'm getting fixed,
I'm back on Boogie Street.
I tried to quit the business -
Hey, I'm lazy and I'm weak.
But sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go
A thousand kisses deep.

(And fragrant is the thought of you,
The file on you complete -
Except what we forgot to do
A thousand kisses deep.)

I'm turning tricks, I'm getting fixed

I'm back on boogie street
You lose your grip and then you slip
Into the masterpiece
And maybe I had miles to drive
And promises to keep
You ditch it all to stay alive
A thousand kisses deep

All soaked in sex, and pressed against
The limits of the sea:
I saw there were no oceans left
For scavengers like me.
We made it to the forward deck
I blessed our remnant fleet -
And then consented to be wrecked
A thousand kisses deep.

I’m good at love, I’m good at hate
It's in between I freeze
Been working out, but its too late
It’s been too late for years
But you look good, you really do
They love you on the street,
Somebody must have died for you
A thousand kisses deep

And I'm still working with the wine
Still dancing cheek to cheek
The band is playing Auld Lang Syne
But the heart will not retreat
I ran with Diz and Dante
I never had their sweep
But once or twice they let me play
A thousand kisses deep

The autumn moved across your skin
Got something in my eye
A light that doesn’t need to live
And doesn’t need to die
A riddle in the book of love
Obscure and obsolete
Until witnessed here in time and blood
A thousand kisses deep

(Well that's my story and I admit,
It's broken and it's bleak
But all the twisted pieces fit
A thousand kisses deep)


Deciphering the Mystery of the Mystery Man 

     So often my gnarled, tarred soul longs for the romance and desire to revive it back to its white hot lightening state of being.  So often, disappointment reigns as it distills into bitter jade.  So many attempts, so many hopes, so much failure and ruination.  How does one cull the courage to get back astride the horse, after it's thrown you off so many times before?  After madness, and near madness, anger, pain, and bloodlust.  What could possibly be left for the sad-sack losers and lonely hearts, laying broken in the street?  Kicked and knocked around, all sense curb-stomped and drained long ago.

     So what does it take for the heart to rise, the hope and colour to return?  The sex to come flooding back as the blood runs south? Some magician's elixir; a bourbon-scented alchemy to storm the gates of regret and fear.  What or who does it take to let go, one more time; to take one last swing? A magnetic hypnotist, an enigmatic conjurer, that can simultaneously secure and disarm, ignite and comfort; love and lust. A rakish and refined closet pervert, yet tender and sweet, to unite the severed halves and disparate compartments galvanized by time and betrayal.  An arcane man, who always was, lurking in the shadows, just out of reach.  A marquis from another time, dominant, but unassuming; who would know?  The Holy Grail, there all while, left unclaimed, waiting there for me to find.  To entrance me with his gilded blaze, to make me talk, to make me kiss, to make me want, once more.

The empathy he exhales, dissolves the old sentries; the carnality he dances around, floods my senses. I expose my delicate, alabaster neck, "Go ahead Daddy, clamp the choke-collar around me, once more."  And I can't get enough.