supplicium post mortem

Last week I was fortunate to visit the Morgan Library and Museum, which has recently reopened after an impressive renovation.

A complex of buildings in the heart of New York City, The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913), one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States…Mr. Morgan’s library, as it was known in his lifetime, was built between 1902 and 1906 adjacent to his New York residence at Madison Avenue and 36th Street.¹

To my knowledge Mr. Morgan is no relation of mine, but I can’t claim to have researched the genealogy. Any anyway, the point is the dyed-in-the-wool sexiness of this museum! The main part of the museum is clean, well-lit, and modern, but you can also walk through a devastatingly sexy trio of rooms in the 36th street building.

Let us begin with Mr. Morgan’s library. When I entered this room, I felt the opening of pores, the hunger, the sigh of breath that come upon me when I enter beautiful, old buildings of an academic and/or ecclesiastical character. The British Museum Library, for instance. The Bodleian, the 42nd street reading room, not to mention any number of churches (recently, for instance, St. Vincent Ferrer, where I went to hear a lecture on the “vices and virtues” of the New Atheism). Readers who share my penchant for libraries will want to acquire this bit of crack: The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World. The guard inside Mr. Morgan’s library was delighted to answer my questions about how one moved between the levels. He pointed out the shelves which were actually secret-compartment doors concealing staircases. Among many other things, the Morgan has quite a collection of Bibles, including a Coverdale Bible. This room so impressed me that I let slip to my companion, an older lady from church, that the room was like porn to me. I’m not sure if the silent look she gave me was sympathy or distress.

Moving around the Rotunda, we enter a scrumptious little room called the Librarian’s Office (click for bigger). It was impossible not to imagine being sent there, a misbehaving young visitor, and made to sit still in that red armchair while the Librarian completed his or her paperwork. Then, I am afraid the red sofa would come into use one way or another. There was more than enough room here to swing a cane, a strap, or any implement the Librarian might keep for such occasions.

Finally, we enter Mr. Morgan’s study (further tour here, which you really must visit if only to see the desk). This room so overcame me that I was forced to sit down and try to regain my equilibrium. Forget photos of scantily clad men. Forget tgi drawings, videos, stories, etc. Nothing–and I mean nothing–could have been sexier to me at that moment than this high-ceilinged, red-wallpapered, book-lined, stain-glass-window-decorated, wooden-furniture filled study. My friend and I rested on an upholstered bench which had been set before the fireplace. I have absolutely no idea what she was thinking about, or could possibly have been thinking about besides what I was thinking about, viz. being summoned to this study and dealt with by Mr. Morgan (uncle? father? grandfather?) in the most traditional manner. Later, I distracted myself by perusing the shelves, which appeared to focus on fiction, including many early (first?) editions of Dickens. The only thought I felt able to share with my friend was a celebration of the 19th century novel. They were long! Very long! As novels ought to be. So there.

Afterwards, my friend and I had a bite to eat and got a little drunk in the cafe. We wound up talking until closing time. She told me that although our church is brilliant in every way, she did not think I was going to find a suitable man there. I agreed heartily, though probably not for the reasons she had in mind. Conversation eventually degenerated into talking about M. It reminded me how very much he is missed, still, by people besides me.

But! The Morgan Library=kinky destination! If I ever have the pleasure of entertaining like-minded kinksters in town, I know where I will take you.

p.s. I realize I forgot to say that Jessica’s post Library Tales got me thinking about this outing and thus inspired the post. Thanks, Jessica!

It’s been a grueling week. First, a close colleague of M’s died suddenly and young, like M did. Same church, same requiem mass, even the same weather. So, last Friday I re-lived my husband’s funeral.

Then, my family came to town for my birthday. I love them. I’m hugely grateful for them and for the way they show up for me. But it all just made me want M and miss him even more. I have so many wonderful friends and kind, loving people in my life, yet I don’t feel any more attached to life than I did a year ago, for the most part.

The sermon on my birthday spoke of many things, but the one that struck me was the Rector’s exegesis on Take up your cross and follow me. Crucifixion is no longer a form of capital punishment, he declared. So what, he asked, is this cross? His answer: the cross is this mortal flesh, this mortal life. We are none of us getting out of this world alive, he said. And yet we are tasked with taking up this mortal life and living it, fully, faithfully, despite every attendant suffering. I want to do that. I want to be capable of doing that. I am always comforted and somehow excited—is that the word?—by the emphasis, at least at my church, that this life we are given is fundamentally and indispensably physical. We are not designed as ethereal, purely spiritual or purely mental beings. (Natty wrote a moving and theologically astute post about this a while back.) So on my forty-first birthday, I heard this instruction: take up your cross, your humanity, your mortality, your body, your sexuality, and your broken, empty, amputated heart, take it all up and follow me. I have ears to hear, at least.

In other news, my father was in a reminiscing mood, and for part of the weekend I was treated to stories of his wild 1950s boarding school days, when he would go with his roommate—Holden-Caulfield-like—down to Greenwich Village on the weekends, stay out all night hearing Beat poets and jazz singers, then repair back to the roommate’s family home in New England to sleep it off before returning to the dorm Sunday night. Needless to say, folks back in the industrial Midwest had no clue about his exploits, nor could they have understood them, probably.

Then today I hear from my brother that Dad had been reminiscing an entirely different chapter to my sister. This chapter plainly titillated and appalled the siblings, the gist of it being that my maternal grandmother apparently gave herself daily enemas for most of her adult life. The revelation that prim-and-proper grandma was perhaps a closet klismaphiliac caused quite a stir amongst my un-kinky sibs. I asked, bulb or bag? Bro didn’t really know the difference. They looked things up on the internet. I’m thinking, Yeah, I know that site but there are better ones I’d recommend…

And if that wasn’t enough, apparently grandma also gave enemas to her children (ahem, our mom) at times, and our late aunt was supposed to have done some paintings on the subject, including one of grandma self-administering. I’m thinking, Where the hell are these paintings?! but I say, That might be too much information, lucky they’re lost. Sis informs us that the DSM has Things To Say about giving children enemas. It can be a form of sexual abuse, she says. Anal violation. One track of my 8-track mind is thinking, Anal violation? Yes, please! Track 2 is thinking: What a big fucking deal social workers make of a simple home remedy. Track 3: Oh, bless grandma. That’s where I get it from. Track 4: You guys had better not look too far into the bathroom cupboards upstairs. Track 5: Maybe the DSM is right because it’s fucking hot. Track 6: Oh, but it can also be very calming, I can attest. Track 7: Have either of you ever had anything in your ass? Track 8: You really do not know me at all, do you?

My interest in That Thing was adult onset. It was not employed in our house, except once (not to me) on doctor’s orders. I had scarcely heard of it in those years when my mind was glomming onto spanking and then to English schoolboys getting the cane. I must have been corrupted when I found the internet; on second thought, I think it could have been Anne Rice’s Beauty series. I believe that series is also what introduced me to the idea of anal play generally. I’m glad she didn’t return to the church before she finished writing those. Not—NB!—that a return to the church should necessarily preclude writing such awesome erotica, but in her case, I think it probably would have.

I am dying to know more about my grandmother. How did she self-administer That Thing? Was it really every day? Why? Did she enjoy it? How much did she take? What started her out? Unfortunately, I think it would be way too embarrassing for me to ask either of my parents for elaboration. I do know from my grandmother’s diaries (which I possess) that she had a very sensitive digestion and often had trouble eating. If she was having That Thing daily, though, I’m not surprised. That can’t be good for you. I do wonder if there is a genetic component, though. I am positive that there is one for spanking. Anyway, amazing what you can hear if you listen when family are feeling loquacious.

You sat beside me yesterday at the Requiem Mass. You were tallish, your voice vaguely English, your shorts blue camo, white tshirt, sandals without socks. I was the young widow wearing black. We were only six in the Resurrection chapel; you took Communion grazing my elbow but never spoke. You seemed like a tourist, arriving late and dashing away after, but you knew the words to the creed (rite I) and to everything else except the special bits in the leaflet I held, trembling, to share with you.

You smelled nice – understated, classy aftershave – your voice a comforting baritone. Standing beside you, I imagined for the first time that there could be someone else for me, someone my age, fit, groomed but not fussy, who would drop into such an old-fashioned church and join such a service of a sunny Saturday noon. Was it chance, or were you mourning someone, too? A parent, a friend?

You had the air of ex-public school prefect, since deepened, opened, and made more humble by life. I’d like to see you in linen trousers, an open-necked shirt with the sleeves rolled up below the elbow, waiting on the porch, prepared to interview a tomboy in khaki shorts & scraped shins about where it is she’s been all day. Afterwards, we could concoct something in the kitchen with the strawberries that wanted eating.

Come back tomorrow for Mass at 11. Let me show you around town, and introduce you to…a couple of people.

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Come write your own missed connection – real or fantasy, who will know? Post the link today (Wednesday) here or on Twitter (@caseydamnmorgan).  What is Midweek Missed Connections?

Check out other missed connections this week:

• Travis
• Frenchie
• PapaTomLA

About a month ago, just after I started blogging, I had an unusual experience while taking communion. I was thinking of Graham Greene’s protagonist in The Heart of the Matter, who saw communion as taking God in his mouth. When I got back to the pew, my mouth felt peculiar, like there was a mild and subtle chemical reaction going on inside it. I thought, Hey, something is happening in my mouth; maybe something will happen inside all of me. Presently, I had an unfocused, intuitive feeling that God was in fact moving pieces around in the world, working to redeem my life. I couldn’t see it yet, and maybe I wouldn’t be able to see it for a long time, but at that moment, my mouth throbbing, I felt the tremors of it and sensed a vague, undefined hope, however wispy.

Why should I have felt that? Was it some projected wish generated by the increased casey activity? It was an event to start blogging, to get readers, and to find myself remembered and welcomed back by “assville.” It was an odd species of resurrection to think and write about all that again – like 14 years ago, but so severely different. I’m remembering and grieving the past (grieving the fact that it is past), and yet, in the act of writing for readers, I seem somehow also to be looking outward and forward for other connections.

That day, kneeling in the side chapel where M’s ashes are, I felt, in addition to the usual near-suicidal grief and crushing tears, a longing to have a purpose, like M had in his job; to do concrete good, and to be contained by a benevolent organization like he had been. And I was overwhelmed with tears for MW (the protagonist of my current novel), and prayed that I could fully realize him, this boy with such an over-bursting heart, and I sobbed with the pain of love for him, as for M.