My longest-running sexual fantasy is to be Vultured.
Vulturing requires two people; a “me” and a “you.” I will be the one to play dead, you can be the bird. Dress yourself in feathers and squat-walk awkwardly around my body; hovering and observing.
I am the fresh meat to your beak.
I am your shock and flee.
You lack a voice box, as vultures do, so you are quiet; just like I like.
I am newly not of this earth, yet undecayed; just like you like.
If my eyes were open, they’d beg you to pick at me - nothing but tongue and talon.
A brush of feather on my breast.
A clutch of claw at my thigh.
How deep inside my body will you dive your vulture head to gorge out your emptiness?
How still will I stay?
And for how long?
Before you drench my belly in frozen petroleum?
The longer this fantasy goes unfulfilled the more I wonder if it is even sexual at all. I’ve never been naked in my dreams of being Vultured. Nudity isn’t required when the imagined feel of a beak confidently breaking the barrier of my skirt brings me to climax.
When we forget to separate sex from the body, we become so sexualized that we are terrified of our own corpoREALITY.
The anuses take the brunt of this sexual tethering.
Two examples from the past week:
My girlfriend who is overwhelmed with anxiety at the idea of shitting on vacation with the guy she is fucking.
And
My friend who after a week of covid-induced constipation refused to even entertain the perineal massage I suggested. He chose to drink a gallon of coffee instead.
Why is the relaxation and release of sex allowed, but the relaxation and release of shitting or taint massage is something to avoid?
Maybe being Vultured is more about vulnerability. The ability to stay prey as someone sees you, smells you, learns you. That is some scary shit. I am as afraid of you seeing me as most people are afraid of their anuses.
But wait, in one fell descent to earth, it occurs to me. . . . what if the reason no one has ever agreed to Vulture me is because it IS sexual!? Maybe the blend of sex and death is even more detested than the combination of sex and animals, and Vulturing requires both. Have I been the obstacle to the satisfactions of my own curiosity?
I was a darting bird of passerine origin searching for someone to see me.
Vultures don’t break the morning like robins. They communicate through carrion. You cannot call, you cannot tell, your Wake will sniff me on your breath as I lie here still with the anticipatience of being Vultured.
Embroidered vulture of innertubes made by me
Seems like a weird line to takeaway from this, but
"I am newly not of this earth, yet undecayed; just like you like."
wouldn't being fresh carrion in some way mean newly of the earth, rather not of the earth? Or to say, both living and death are of the earth, but of different parts off it: consuming of it, and being consumed by it.
There's a Stanislaw Lev novel called "Fiasco" where the main character, an astronaut, at one point observes mineral structures on the face of a planet far more complex and dynamic than anything seen on earth, including the human mind. He realizes within that complexity that even 'consciousness' may not be that special or rare of an outcome of chemical complexity, and the planet may have a consciousness that extends far beyond the aeons of human existence.
The interesting thing about consuming, and procreation, is that they're both a drive to keep the chemical reaction that compose biological life going. But somehow we consider us consuming the resources of the earth to be living, but the earth consuming the resources of us to be death.
It occurred to me in the process of reading and rereading this exquisite piece silently to myself...
Is the play between the reader and your waiting body of work an incarnation of Vulturing-being Vultured? It's certainly an exercise in vulnerability. The words are let out from the living contingent of your breath inside you to be stumbled over by eyes in want of fill, and in quiet dance the corpus acquires new life and gifts it as well.
"But wait, in one fell descent to earth, it occurs to me. . . . what if the reason no one has ever agreed to Vulture me is because it IS sexual!?"
This observation puts me in mind of the Watchers, fallen angels who came down and began to lust for human mates. No obvious connection. Does it take something supernatural to overcome the conditioning of our corpoREALITY?
Wonderful art to ponder. I enjoyed it. I do feel to "like" is to profane the body of words (and, if the analogy tracks, spoil its un-decay for future Vultures), but alas, what can we do?