TABLES TABLES TABLES
Grindr, the sex/desire machine- a letter to Henry.
Look Henry,
You’re here the same reason I’m here, but before you show me your cock, I want you to think. Does it line up with your/our anarchist/leftist principles?
Consider a forty-year-old who still remembers the first brick through his window. Try not to consider him as concept or function, for both of our sakes, do not consider him metaphor. Most likely he has talked to you, or more likely, he has spoken to you- you have not replied. I am guilty of the same non-action, the same passivity feeding his constant (let’s say proactive) nature.
No face, no (real) name. A command, or request as signifier instead. Verbiage replacing a proper-noun and the signified itself is also obscured. The empty portrait, the group identity that his signifier points to. Itself another layer of abstraction. This produces your/our non-differentiation to this: Subject: Person: A forty-year-old who still remembers the first brick through his window.
None of these are names. We are not given the tools to produce names. Also, we do not bother to produce a name. “Each organ-machine interprets the entire world from the perspective of its own flux”, for me and you is this the thumb, the brain, the cock, or the eye?
Your cock doesn’t bother to name him I bet. It is, at least, this organ-machine through which the others flow for the purposes of operating this desire/sex-machine.
He is a table to you. I am a table you. You are clearly tables to me. Of course, table here may be replaced by dildo. Table is, however, less confrontational and dildo may be confused as it is a metaphor which stands too directly close to its subject matter.
Henry, your/our anarchist/leftist principles will have noticed what I am saying to you. I’m burying the lead to produce distance, but regardless you know what I’m saying. We’ve talked politics, then (obviously) you have shown me your cock. We have bemoaned the state of the left, and then (doubtlessly) you have asked to fuck me. You expressed your fears of fascism; we picked out places for all the right bricks. Then (par for the course) you wanted my cock in your mouth.
Consider the forty-year-old who still remembers the first brick through his window. He would also like to fuck us. Maybe at the same time, one of us (alternatively) could watch and masturbate in the corner. Neither of us will, not you nor I desire it. We however desire each-other. The organ-machine through which this flows, sees only this end point. I fashion you into a table. Saw off the excess, sand down the surface, lacquer the wood grain. This is what your/our desire produces. Tables fucking and sucking and biting.
An endless catalogue stretches out before us both of nameless tables. An object with a discrete function. You and I do not desire the forty-year-old who still remembers the first brick through his window. As he and I and you, have all been fashioned down sawn, sanded, bolted, painted- he does not serve the same discrete function to our organ-machines. He, therefore, does not exist.
You and I are complicit in his non-existence. He is aware of his non-existence. He desperately wishes to escape his non-existence. He is an ontological dead-end. I asked you not to think of him as symbol or metaphor. I would like to ask you to fully realise the depth of his pain. His hate. His humiliation. You, however, cannot. He does not exist. He cannot be realised by those who must realise him most.
You were aware of this space of non-being. Somewhere in the back of your brain (or perhaps your cock) is recognition of the fact you face being shunted into the same space. This is, of course, true of me.
You see what’s happened here? Now you are desperate to be fashioned into a table, to have your value as use recognised. This sex-desire machine we operate via the organ-machine “interprets the entire world from the perspective of its own flux”. Everyone in need of a quick fuck is fashioned into a table and in turn sees only tables.
It's a kind of self-policing, an interior fascist who’s fascist tendencies arise from desiring like-minded fascists. Again, I ask of this system: Does it line up with your/our anarchist/leftist principles? Is it worth it for a shag?
Think back to the menial conversations always preamble to our primary uses. They follow strict codes, simple social conventions which are ironclad:
“Hi, hru, looking for?, wuu2?, Hi, hru, gd thanks, wbu?, looking for?”
It’s a plastic simulacrum. Look at its poverty of expression:
“Wuu2?, hey, up to much?, looking for?, t or b?, hru, hi, wbu”
Deviation from this norm is met with shock. A general feeling of offence that we are now forced to engage in unscripted conversation to receive what the organ-machine desires. Why should I have to work to feed my sex?
Whittled down, now so much even your expressions are afterthoughts to operating the sex/desire machine at optimum efficiency. No one is real in this space; no-one truly exists as more than fuck-table in this space.
Henry, I will not refuse to see your cock. That is the whole teleology through which this machine operates (you also have a good cock).
This is to show you my anger at being so sickeningly optimised in this pursuit. And to point out what it is taking from us (and from him).