This may be the most minimal of our letter challenges, but to me it is the one that inspires the most lascivious thoughts – maybe precisely because it is so minimal. See, that gives my brain the opportunity to make up a story to go along with the pictures. A story that my brain was playing with even as we shot this.
What makes us associate a certain smell, sight, sound or place with sex? Why does something seemingly unrelated to the act arouse us and stimulate our imaginations (and our hormones)? There are so many things about this scene that arouse me, that excite my imagination. The creek bed, the trees and rocks and seeming isolation. The train trestle above. The graffiti and the weeds and the mucky water. It is a place that evokes memories and images of a younger me, and the fears of walking there alone, day after day. The fear and yes, the excitement. Because anything could happen there. What if something did?
And then it does, and there I am, pushed down into the water, my hands being tied behind my back. I am on my knees, the rocks digging into them painfully, the weight of my assailant’s hand pinning me. There is the smell of the water, clear and cold, laced the bitter tang of moss and mud. The feel of the rocks under my shoulder as I am held down.
All the while I stood on the bank, while we decided how to shoot it, I wanted to be pushed down in that water, in the mud, forced to my knees and then face down, held there while I struggled to keep my face above water. It feeds into an abduction fantasy that isn’t much more than a half-formed thought, but it’s one that I am drawn to repeatedly, and have brought up many times when we talk about this kind of scene. I wanted to feel bruised and scratched, wet and dirtied and cold and afraid.
Until I got my face near the water and the muck, and then I was like, “Ew!” And, “There’s bugs in there! And little fishes! Yuck! I’m not putting my face down there!”
Fantasy, meet reality. LMAO
And yet…
Looking at these pictures, I realize I still want it. Maybe that reaction: that “Ew, no, I don’t want it!” is exactly why I do. Because if it ever happens, it won’t be something I secretly want. How twisted is that?
We hold that fine line in our psyche, don’t we? That border between wanting and wanting to run, being yearning and revulsion. We want to reach out and grasp for that which we think we should not, and the turmoil rocks us like a palm tree in a storm.
Maybe you want it, but the logical and sensible portion of yourself knows that you shouldn’t, knows that this urge violates the survival instinct. The discordance leaves you flailing. Struggling. Trapped,
Stay SINful
Mr. AP