In this entry I will attempt to skew things up a little and rewrite circumstances rooted deep in ink and paper to foster my creativity. It is the very essence of exploring oneself in many ways anyway- to resurrect, to refresh, to revive, remodel that which has been sealed with a particular finality by history. But imagination can be so vast, manipulative and powerful that yes we can indeed rework things to our own accord.
I have deviated from the actual gist of my train of thought in the attempt to sound philosophical and sophisticated but what I really wanted to indicate is that without the interjecting notion of love into the circumstance i want to illustrate, why is there a certain appeal to the younger individual- a younger man, a younger woman in an illicit affair? There will be no specifics because I have axes to grind or people involved have axes to grind haha but yes why oh why do we at one point gravitate towards a young persona when we feel the need to alleviate an itch?
Now with reference to the first paragraph, I attempt to recreate a fictional circumstance involving one of my most beloved characters in literature - Miss Havisham of Dickensian fame, "Great Expectations" if you please. I know she may have been a lot lot older than the object of her cynicism and condescension, the main character of the novel, Pip, but was it possible that there could have been an erotic attraction towards the younger man? The Dickens novel tells us that she was vengeful and cynical towards the male persona because she was left in the wedding altar years ago by her fiance, so she wanted to create a plot of her own where she was in control of the finale. By manipulating Pip's feelings, pitting him constantly with her adopted daughter, the irresistibly beautiful Estella, she obviously felt an inner gratification out of seeing Pip's dejection because of her younger protege's rejection of his advances. Estella was obviously a conduit for her feelings- a marionette in a game where she always ended up winner. Or was this her perverse way of displaying love for the younger man, Pip? Playing the emotional "sword of Damocles" game with him through Estella? Pushing him into emotional oblivion so that her approval, no matter how elusive, would prove to increase in essence over time?
Do we love the younger creature because he or she offers us a refreshing perspective of life? Away from the cynical pedestals we have perched ourselves in, in an attempt to appear cool, experienced and well in control of ourselves? What other forms of satisfaction could we possibly obtain from affairs with the younger person aside from the obvious physical sensation? Do they have variables to contribute to our own personal equation that we thought and deemed constant because of experience and balance?
Of course the answer is yes. We encounter many a mid life crisis, the grind of life bludgeons us into the submission of routine and rhyme. The carefree spirit as well as his novel approach to things that have worn us reminds us that we have been there once and we reminisce and we revel in the nostalgia and we enthuse ourselves as a result, hopefully revitalize and make us feel new again. The attraction to things more youthful lies in this essence. We relive a chapter in our lives by immersing in the interesting-ness of it all...
One thing is for sure. The young will always have more vigor, energy, and more vitality to them. They will have fewer rings to their stalks but the question is to what extent can one play teacher? We must love playing teacher, contributor that we choose to attach to them noh? And MORE IMPORTANTLY, the more vital question is...do they return the favor too? NOOOOOO returning a favor is too cruel a phrase! To euphemize: do they love the company as much too? We would like to think so. I do not know which side I am on but I think I would also enjoy it if I thoroughly partook of a younger or older individual's company knowing I enjoy to enjoy! He wants to learn, I want to learn, we have new things to teach each other. On one side, the inexperience, the naivete and the fresh pulp of innocence he or she possesses as well as his or her individual qualities borne out of trauma, happinesses of her/his journey in life, opposite the worldliness and wisdom, cynicism (it can be positive you know) of the older entity and his own qualities as well. Let's say it is a fusion rather than fission.
There is also the added spice of taboo. It doesn't sit well with the traditionalists and believe me there is an infinite number of them, that a young woman or man liaisons with someone older. But everything desirable in life seems to be forbidden or to some extent impermissible. But not IMPOSSIBLE, we would like to believe. We who are free-spirited and anti-bourgeois! We who love the experience of clandestine affairs with the younger person because we love the different experience and abhor the mediocre. We don't want to be limited to the boxes supplied us by a questionnaire. We want to believe that we can create our own experiences, be more anecdotal even and one of those is the affair with the young, the dark curtains to define the parameters of normalcy versus the interesting and erotic, the free flow of conversation and wine - with no barometer to measure how lewd or how civil the exchange of words may get, the caresses and smiles that turn into various states of physical intimacy. Those I believe are the boxes we want to see- begging to be ticked but not present at all in the mediocrity of our more than normal lives!
(PS if anyone has an old wornout copy of the book above, it would be nice if you share that piece of literatura with me! Thank you! hehehehehe )
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