Cycle I: Coming on Strong
The Hidden Voice
The Record · RFI Four (v2.00)
THE HOUSE OF ZAN — Zan
VOICE ADVISORY: The speaking voice is reflective, intimate, and romantically nostalgic. Contains themes of dominance and submission, sexual desire, jealousy, missed connection, memory, and emotional loss.
It’s not you.
It’s me.
Really.
I’m sure if it were you living in this particular state of being, it would be the same.
Then again, aren’t we all living in some state of being?
Can we even afford not to think about our own needs and wants?
From the beginning of our lives, we are shown the paths other people have followed and told, directly or otherwise, that one of them should probably be the logically acceptable path for whoever the hell we are supposed to become.
Someone beside us as a partner, of sorts.
Maybe there is something deeply human in that expectation.
Caring about people beyond our immediate survival does not fit neatly into the simplest version of survival of the fittest.
Assuming you subscribe to that theory.
Isolation can be useful.
It can help develop a sense of self without somebody else constantly standing nearby telling you what that self should look like.
But what good is knowing yourself in this world if you can never share any of it with someone?
A person who craves domination in a human connection is probably looking for something they cannot completely create alone.
A person who craves submission is doing something similar from the other direction.
They are not simply giving control away.
They are choosing where to place it.
If either person could get exactly what they wanted without involving another human being, would they?
If the purest form of orgasm came entirely from masturbation and procreation was somehow handled elsewhere, would everybody just watch porn and avoid trying to make a life work with somebody else?
Why bother with all the uncertainty?
The emotional pain?
The compromises?
The spectacular loss of control that comes from voluntarily allowing another human being to matter?
Going it alone would certainly be easier.
But apparently easier isn’t enough.
You probably wouldn’t believe me, considering what I’ve told you so far, but I’m more romantic than I’ve let on.
I value things that the people involved with me have probably forgotten ten times over by now, but I remember them.
Because of course I do.
I remember listening to her play a rough version of Aries on her guitar over a phone connection that was costing long-distance money, even though she was only one county over from me.
We understood each other.
We had pet names for each other.
We had feelings for each other.
I didn’t move things forward with her the way maybe I should have.
I didn’t tell her I wanted her the way that I did.
There was friction from her friends and family.
I didn’t want to push her away from them by making her orbit me more than she already was.
I thought I was doing the right thing.
I wanted her sexually, but she was more to me than that.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.
Being young and restless, it wasn’t long before someone else came along and gave her a different kind of attention.
This other person made a move quickly.
Like, within a weekend.
I remember it because it ruined my Monday at the time.
I didn’t ask for details, but I knew enough from what she said to understand that she allowed herself to give in to someone who wanted her sexually and wasn’t all that shy about making that clear.
When she had a friend tell me that she wanted to talk to me, I was naive enough to think it meant we were going to become something more than we were.
Despite my jealousy, she became a mirror for me at the time.
She showed me that I was weak in my ability to be assertive about what I wanted.
We still talked and spent time together afterward, but it wasn’t the same.
She drifted.
So did I.
I happened to see pictures of her years later.
Thanks, social networking.
She didn’t look like the same person I knew back then.
She looked happy.
Very different, but happy.
I miss her, just like I miss everyone else who revealed some part of myself to me.
I miss how I used to feel around her.
A feeling that was just for her and somehow still remains after all these years.
I miss how I used to be when I didn’t know what I know now.
The ignorance was so damn blissful.
The pain of that time was so damn real.
As time slips along, we are always somewhere we’ve been, no matter where we are now.
It’s not possible for me to remember every time I was sexually intimate with someone.
But I remember the last time I hugged her.
It was the first time.
It was the last time.
It’s about more than curbing loneliness.
It’s about purpose.
It’s about needing not only to be heard, but to be seen by somebody else.
Our relationships become one of the ways we understand ourselves.
Who chooses us matters.
Who we choose matters.
Sometimes another person becomes a reflection of something we want to feel alive inside ourselves.
Not an exact reflection.
That would probably be terrifying.
But something recognizable.
Something that makes us feel closer to the person we understand ourselves to be, or perhaps the person we are still trying to become.
Maybe that is part of what love is.
Not finding a perfect copy.
Finding another person whose existence somehow makes your own feel more recognizable.
Sometimes holding another person’s hand and knowing they want you to feel loved by them is enough.
You do not need to know everything about someone to love them.
Maybe you never can.
Someone can remain partially hidden and still make enough of themselves known for something real to happen between you.
They can make you feel enough of yourself that loving them begins changing the way you feel about yourself.
That is where another person becomes more than company.
Interaction turns identity into something that has consequences outside our own head.
I can call myself anything I want while I’m alone.
Eventually another person has to show up and respond to it.
Lover.
Friend.
Asshole.
Whatever.
The title is considerably less interesting than what happens when another person gets close enough to decide whether it fits.
That is probably why control by itself has never been enough.
Absolute control would eliminate the very thing that makes another person valuable.
The difference between being kept and choosing to remain.
The ability to reach over and take my hand because they chose, in that moment, to remind me they were still there.
Somewhere between our selfish desires, maybe we create something neither of us could have produced alone.
Happiness.
Companion Track: “Happy?” — Mudvayne
VOICE FEEDBACK: Proof of Reciprocity — Makemake Detected