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Stairwell | Feb 04 2004

Cramps, if you really must know, are painful. They hurt, like the lining of a major organ was ripping away and this tissue and the associated blood was being forced out of your body through various narrow apertures. No one wraps this combo up in airbags. No one at Cornell wraps some gauze around a human skull and drops it down a towering stairwell*. No, it’s not that easy. The only relief is when a man’s hand is placed flat on the lower belly just above the pubes. Or during pregnancy when this doesn’t take place at all, but a host of other complications do (see Bounce). This cramps thing is more than just the pain, but let’s not get into that either. Every 28 days or so it begins again. The first day, not so bad. Day two and three very bad, then a cessation, a resumption, and the trickle. This has been going on for more than 30 years in my body. And strangely enough it’s going on right now, like in a blue moon, twice in this calendar month: Spirit arrived January 1st; Opportunity the 26th. Yes, it’s day three.

*Fog of War reference (not very well incorporated)

—Alisa

So many curses to discuss.

I gave a reading Sunday which felt like the opposite: a blessing. I love these readings more than anything, save for really great sex. My list of favorite things would go:

  1. Really great sex
  2. Reading my stories before an audience
  3. Everything else

I’m sure you understand what I’m talking about because you’re an actor and have probably experienced it hundreds of times. Yesterday while reading, everything slowed down and I knew I could bring the audience to the exact place I wanted. It’s an extraordinary feeling of freedom and in a sense obliteration. The usual me—the me who is writing to you now—is gone. Gone, I mean, but not missing. It’s like he never was.

The more I think about it, the more this seems like really great sex.

So that eliminates favorite thing #2.

But back to curses. I appreciate your account of cramps. I’ve always wondered what they are like, and will wonder forever. I told my girlfriend yesterday that I wished we could switch genitals once in a while, just for fun. She agreed. Naturally I realize that men can be penetrated, but what I really want is a vagina. In particular I want her vagina, and I want her to have my penis.

The other idea would be to really be her, and have her be me. But that’s weird because if I were her, would I be her or would I be me inside her?

You see, what I want is to feel what she feels, but how I can feel that without actually being her? And if I’m her, where am I in the experience? It doesn’t seem like I’m there.