The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Today on Nerve's TV blog: We got an idea for the L Word spinoff! Plus: Who Would You Rather? The Closer or Saving Grace?
PERSONAL ESSAYS
posted 1/8/2002
I usually
do my best to clamp my jaw shut when I'm getting some, but one
particularly sultry afternoon last summer in my girlfriend's East
Village apartment, my vocal chords got the better of me. "SHUT
THE FUCK UP!" bellowed a disgruntled neighbor, shattering my
moment. The same guy talked to the building supervisor the next day,
and somehow a complaint
about noisy sex turned into a complaint about our being gay. The super
reassured my horrified girlfriend that "as far as I'm concerned
what you do in your bedroom is your business" — a
well-intentioned cliché I'm afraid I'll never hear quite the same way
promotion
again. I avoided eye contact with all her neighbors for weeks
afterward, and kept a pillow over my face at night to stifle any
untoward sound.
Recovering from this incident, my girlfriend
and I were alone at my parents' house in practically-rural
Massachusetts. I thought, now I really can make all the noise I want,
but my lover was still so wigged out that she stopped just when I was
really enjoying myself, flatly refusing to continue. Talk about a
behaviorist strategy — I muzzled myself for some time after that.
It can be hard for us loud ones to empathize
with people who really hate hearing noise — probably because we tend
to be voyeurs, and can't imagine not wanting to know what goes
on behind closed doors. I've enjoyed the times I've overheard other
people having sex. It gives me a perspective on them I wouldn't
otherwise have had. Once, to my fascination, I heard a friend
blatantly faking it. What did this say about her, I wondered. Was she
desperate for approval? Terminally polite? Or was she showing off to
mislead outside listeners about the quality of her dalliance? Eight
years later, she still cringes at any allusion to her feigning.
I once had a boyfriend who lived three blocks
away from me, but would hardly ever sleep over. This was partly
because my shower had an unpleasant cold drip, but it was mostly
because I live with roommates, and the walls in my old brownstone
apartment are thin. One rare night in my bed, I was just about to
come, when we suddenly stopped — my roommates were giggling in
the next room and pounding on the wall. Needless to say, this didn't
help my cause.
Some noisemakers go to tremendous lengths to
avoid being overheard. I used to share my apartment with a woman who
bribed me to vacate it every Friday afternoon (not exactly convenient
since I worked at home), the appointed time of her weekly S/M sex
date. "I'll work downstairs," I'd protest. "But it will
be really loud," she'd insist, and every week she'd buy me
a sandwich in exchange for my absurd compliance.
Noise makes the fact that you actually have
sex distressingly concrete, and in a society where the word
"private" is synonymous with sex (private life, private
parts and so on), your sex life is supposed to remain abstract to
everyone who hasn't slept with you. This is especially true if you
have sex that is somehow stigmatized, like my girlfriend and I, or my
sandwich-bearing, discreetly Sadean roommate. Indeed, noisemaking
pretty much puts an end to our sincere hope that our friends and
family don't have sex, and that they haven't figured out that we do;
perhaps this is why our families bring out our worst noise anxieties.
My friend Jane has sometimes found her thirteen-year-old stepson's
door open after she and her husband have been going at it. She
shudders just thinking about this. "I think he can hear us if his
door is open. Now that's creepy."
Horrifying as it is to be overheard, the
possibility can also be a turn-on. I think of myself as a modest, even
private person, nothing like Jane, an obvious exhibitionist who
sometimes distresses acquaintances by flinging off her shirt in a
crowded living room, or smelling her armpits theatrically. Yet I have
to admit I'm an exhibitionist too in my own way. Just don't suggest,
like one old roommate did, that I want you to hear me. It's
nothing personal: I'm always trying to see how public I can make my
private life. I talk about body hair with people I've never met
before. I like to make out with my girl on the street and in bars (oh,
and I, uh, write for Nerve° magazine).
So making noise, though it often feels like
an involuntary physiological response, might be an act we put on for
our own benefit. (This is underscored by the fact that often when we
really have to be quiet, we can and do manage it). Sometimes if I'm
not feeling all that much, just making a little noise excites me. And
when something feels really good, the sound of my own noise can make
me come harder (rather than vice versa), like a pavlovian
dog fiercely ringing its own bell. Other times I've had orgasms trail
off in the middle because I was suppressing my moans, and if I
couldn't hear it, I couldn't feel it. This performative aspect of
noisemaking makes it an easy target for mockery. I've been ribbed for
the vocabulary of my noisemaking — for my Oh baby's and my Fuck
me now's, but in bed, being original isn't always the point. Noise
can be like handcuffs or black lace — more desirable precisely
because it's familiar (or part of our common lexicon), and thus all
the sexier to perform.
Noisemakers are no more sexual than quiet
people, nor do we enjoy sex more; we just have an alarmingly inclusive
eroticism. As much distress and chaos as we noisemakers seem to cause
ourselves and others, I can't help feeling that our lovers must like
it, at least under the right circumstances. When you're having sex
with a noisemaker, you know when you're doing something right. Noise
is a housing liability, an assault on perfectly reasonable social
boundaries, and a form of exhibitionism, but it's also a pretty sound
way to communicate with a lover. A full-throated moan can say far more
emphatically than any words: Yes.
the next room and pounding on the wall. Needless to say, this didn't
help my cause.
dog fiercely ringing its own bell. Other times I've had orgasms trail
off in the middle because I was suppressing my moans, and if I
couldn't hear it, I couldn't feel it. This performative aspect of
noisemaking makes it an easy target for mockery. I've been ribbed for
the vocabulary of my noisemaking — for my Oh baby's and my Fuck
me now's, but in bed, being original isn't always the point. Noise
can be like handcuffs or black lace — more desirable precisely
because it's familiar (or part of our common lexicon), and thus all
the sexier to perform.
