Total Pageviews

Monday, October 25, 2010

The Girl in the Magazine

Photo taken from blogspot.com
By: Chris Valletta
In Daniel Bergner's book The Other Side of Desire, he focuses on four areas of sexual eroticism: foot fetishism, pedophilia, sadomasochism, and acrotomophilia (pleasure towards an amputee). The final chapter of the book is called "The Devotee" and revolves around the story of two unlikely people whose lives come into contact with one another as a result of a acrotomophilia. Laura was a married, 25-year-old woman with a son who was involved in a car accident one day. The next day, she no longer had her legs. 


On the other hand there was Ron, a New York City boy who grew up in the exact opposite type of environment that Laura had. Ron knew something about him was different because of his strange tendencies to admire people with disabilities, particularly involving amputees. Ron described what he had as the "Godzilla Syndrome" (pg.168) because he believed that some form of radiation had messed up his psyche. As he dated normal people, he imagined that they were missing a limb. He later married a normal-bodied woman but they soon divorced because there was absolutely nothing between them in the bedroom. 


As for Laura, she went through a terrible time trying to re-cooperate from her accident, as she could not even bare the thought or sight of no longer having her legs. Back at home, she did have sex with her husband but there was not much of it, because both of them could not seem to stand to perform it with each other anymore. After Ron's divorce he bounced around the city from one disabled woman to the next. One theme between these women was their incredible loneliness and desire to commit suicide. This is ironic since the premise of the book is about sexual desire, yet such an emphasis is on the desire to end life. No one had ever given them this sort of attention as Ron had. It took some time, but eventually Ron was able to admit to himself and others his desire for the disabled. Prior to this time, he was ashamed of who he was, just as the disabled women. He then married Elizabeth, a Columbia law student who was very bold and un-revealing about her amputated legs after Ron made her feel good about herself, yet others shuttered in disgust.


Laura soon divorced husband after the accident because they were both unable to deal with what happened. Living with her son and looking for work, she discovered a website looking for models for men who found women amputees attractive. This certainly intrigued Laura and made her feel hope again. Ron happened to discover Laura modeling on one of these websites and fell in love with her, wanting to meet her as soon as possible since his marriage with Elizabeth was failing. Eventually, they hit it off becoming great friends, and then falling in love. After six years they were engaged and their lives were working in tandem, each being the dream person of the other. As Ron put it, "Like the cherry on the sundae she's a double amputee, which brings me such happiness and pleasure and joy" (pg.203). But I can't help but wonder, why Ron would feel this way. Its so interesting to hear something normally not pleasurable for most people to be described as the cherry on top of the ice cream (something assumed to be pleasurable for most other people). 


Bergner did an excellent job in this chapter to convey the story of how these two unlikely and unrelated people were able to connect based off of one man's unusual desire for amputees. Laura never would have imagined that after her accident she could find someone to love her for who she was and what she looked like, but she was wrong. The pleasure and desire between the two had brought them together, no matter how different their pasts were. However, after all they had been through to find each other, Laura still had the desire to see if she was able to have a normal man who did not have a devotee's mindset. This fact makes me wonder if our desire's ever truly end, for when you think you may have everything you wanted, you suddenly want more and are never satisfied. This was an interesting twist to this fairy tale ended and shows that the human psyche of pleasure and desire never sleeps. 

No comments:

Post a Comment