The Phantom's Wail

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). Each eroticism is followed by Bergner telling the individual story of a person who has the feelings of each person almost as if he is a reporter for each situation. The story that I found most interesting in Bergner's work was the first chapter, titled "The Phantom of the Opera", which tells the story of a man named Jacob Miller and his silent torment of living with his foot fetish. The sad story depicts Jacob as mortified and disgusted with his own sexual fantasies because he knew they were not considered normal in society and made him feel like an outcast, therefore he decided to hide and repress these feelings as much as he could throughout his entire life.

However, Jacob finds it too hard to repress these feelings because it is who he was and how he always felt, even as a little kid when he recalls his first foot fetish experience in second grade. Jacob can recall that at this time, one of his classmates was taking his snow boots off and his socks accidentally slipped off. The intensity of Jacob's foot fetish grew so much that he would nearly be at the point of orgasm just by hearing the words related to a large shoe or simply seeing someones feet. With his first love, Jacob stayed celibate with his girlfriend, but would silenty go in the bathroom to ejaculate after fooling around with her at the sight of her feet. Here it is important to note that Jacob knew he had this fetish and knew it was considered to be abnormal by society, thus he tried to hide and repress it.

Jacob eventually married another woman after he and his first love grew apart. However, Jacob still kept his secret all to himself. His desire of feet was so hard to repress with his wife, yet he did not want his wife to know anything about it for fear of embarrassment. Therefore, Jacob began to go to prostitutes simply to play with their feet. After Jacob was fulfilled he then became overwhelmed with feelings of guilt for using the woman's body to accomplish his desires. However, this feeling of guilt was not greater than the feeling of desire to continue his actions. As a result of these mixed feelings, Jacob saw no other choice but to go to therapy. At this point in the story I was very intrigued because Bergner's style of writing is very intense and graphic, especially with sexual descriptions. This is quite vivid and definitely makes for a more thrilling read than your routine book.

Many of these types of sexual desires can be related to our genetics and our senses, which for example may explain why individuals differ in the types of things they find attractive and can get aroused from. Others believe that these fetishes change with the culture and its interests at the time. For example, rubber fetishes minimized after the era of rubber training pants ended. I believe the latter is a better explanation as to why certain fetishes occur because the culture in which we live has a huge effect on our actions.When thinking about culture's effect on certain things in my own life, it seems to be that whatever is the trend seems to be my train of thought for me at that time as well.

This passage sheds new light on these sexual fetishes by looking upon them as disorders that are biological. I have never thought about sexual desires in this way, yet it does indeed make sense as a possibility. Berlin, a famous sex therapist in the United States, sees sexual fetishes that are not considered to be normal in our society this way and believes the best way to treat this is with medicine biologically. If anti-androgen's are given to remove sexual arousal from the person, perhaps this person can now curb their unusual sexual desire and focus on being themselves in a different capacity. What happened to Jacob in effect was a curbed sexual desire of feet, but it also made him more repressed and he resented himself even more, so much so to the point where he no longer could have sex with his wife. It turned out that Jacob could still not even confess to his wife what he was going through and in a way it made things more worse for him.

Bergner believes that the issue was that Jacob's therapist Berlin was just as inclined as Jacob to not accept his foot fetish as acceptable behavior. However, perhaps treating Jacob's fetish as acceptable may in fact could have led to his cure. The complete transformation of desire is unlikely because this is in Jacob's nature, however peace of mind and acceptance is more of something that would be acceptable. I definitely agree with this point by Bergner because Jacob had been engaging in harmless behavior; its not as though he was killing his sexual victims or harming anyone in anyway. Throughout Jacob's story, I could not help but feel more and more sorry for him as the pages went on because of his silent suffering and loneliness. He is the phantom of the opera in his own right; where is he is the man hiding behind his own desires, "denied the pleasures of life" (45). Perhaps in a world where the majority of people had a foot fetish, Jacob would have no issues with the desires in his life and would feel free in displaying them to others.