Demand Us To Your Measure

 My simple (once secret) ‘nefarious’ plan:
to place me, all of me, the center your hand,
to hold you tight – until you’re all right,
until you understand that you may take me now,
take us now, demand us to your measure
for I seek to see (beauty to me)
your center self in pleasure.
~ OH, 025 need

As every poem gets its day, this is today’s – and I think the first thing to say about it is that though it’s one of my favorites, in retrospect I might have picked a different title. I will admit however that ‘emotional needs’ and ‘uxorious neediness’ are topics on my radar and will someday get an essay all their own (with a healthy dose of real and percieved consequences).

Fortunately the issue of ’needs’ aside, this poem is ultimately about love, about my uxorious erotic truth,yes but also about how it’s true even when not erotic, how it’s the reason I seek to see her beauty, seek to see her fire that is her, that is the essence behind all my uxory.

My reference to a ‘secret nefarious plan’ isn’t about once trying to keep my erotic truth under wraps (as in some sort of ‘stealth submission’), which I didn’t do for very long. Indeed, by the irony that I’ve let my wife in on my ‘secret’ it can no longer be secret anymore, so also I likewise intend to allay her fears over its questionable nature (see again my story) or that I have some other trick revelation up my sleeve (I don’t) – - the plan isn’t nefarious, the plan is love.

And moreover it doesn’t remain “my plan” either – the poem is about making it clear that my purpose is to make myself available to my wife, to be an extension of her, as I am able in any plan of hers to make herself happier. And though once again the symbolism here contains ideas of force (demand), I think the undergirding purpose continues to rest most firmly on pleasure, hers and so therefore mine and thusly ours.

I feel compelled to point out the poetry I wrote yesterday (enthralled) bears remarkable similarity (I choose, she takes –me) though it was done without realization. I suppose perhaps going around the same circles as much as I do I’m bound to see my own tail once in a while. Indeed, for more curiousity over compact control (dominance, enthrallment, force, uxory, offers for ‘taking’ and general ‘takery’) compare either one of them to the story Forty Years with its ”I am going to take you now“.

Interestingly just yesterday I found myself reaffirming my essential self truth (i.e. an ‘erotic truth even when not erotic‘) to my wife this past weekend. The setup is that we are both agnostics – or at least I think of ourselves as both agnostics; beliefs about such matters are usually more complicated than labels (as is true about a great many things in life). But where I tend to the ‘spiritual but not religious’ end of the agnostic spectrum, my wife is quick to offer the atheistic label and only careful conversation reveals her thoughts that belief can be subjectively useful, the actual existence of a divinity is not something any one can know, and most importantly to the current point that religion doesn’t have the greatest social history of openness and freedom.

So it was that while I was generally irritated over our house being a bit of a mess from various sorts of reorganization, she gets off the phone, turns to me and says, “I’m going to translate for a co-worker’s program at his church”. Well, I was more than a little surprised, and this evident surprise earned me the honest remark, “Oh, do you think I shouldn’t?” Well, I had a quite a time explaining that my surprise dealt only with the church location (wasn’t actually a church event), my irritation only with house disorganization.

I would have been happy if she had said, “I am going to a church event with my co-worker and I’ll be gone all day (period) Here’s some instructions for the children and a cleaning list.” —> demand me, you-me, us -to your measure.

And the reason why I’d have been happy is that what I wanted, even passionately desired in this case as in all cases, was that she, that I, that we, do exactly as she pleases - because doing what she wants is the best bead I have on making her fire burn bright and hot. —> her center self in pleasure.