{"id":3457,"date":"2024-05-09T19:05:12","date_gmt":"2024-05-09T19:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/?page_id=3457"},"modified":"2024-05-09T19:05:12","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T19:05:12","slug":"dialogue-or-my-museum-of-parasocial-delusions-by-rachel-stempel","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/dialogue-or-my-museum-of-parasocial-delusions-by-rachel-stempel\/","title":{"rendered":"“Dialogue; Or, My Museum of Parasocial Delusions” by Rachel Stempel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\tI\u2019d always tried to be like<\/em> someone but I gave that up when I started on Effexor\u2014it made me friendly. Besides, it\u2019s a tired game, all take and no give. I\u2019m learning to empty myself and I\u2019m learning it may be impossible. I contain multitudes, as they say, packed tightly between a god-complex and self-flagellation\u2014this is what I call my Slavic sensibilities. \n\tEvery morning I wake up preemptively enraged, then I go do my silly little tasks like everyone else. I spend too much time reading online anonymous forums. I seek out the most insane people online and commit their Twitter threads to memory\u2014this is what I call my socialist education. \n\t\tI\u2019ve never once listened to a podcast, but I know which ones are good\u2014i.e. masturbatory and funny\u2014and which ones are bad\u2014i.e. masturbatory and unfunny. I\u2019m an expert on comedy. Taste may classify the classifier but comedy transcends. \n\tI think I should start a podcast myself but I don\u2019t have much to add to the conversation. I can parrot Alex Jones\u2019 poetics and 4chan\u2019s greentext punchlines, but like I said, it\u2019s a tired game. I\u2019d rather write for an obscure online journal in some armpit of the internet that\u2019ll one day hammer the final nail into my coffin. (I could expedite my journey into obscurity, finely craft my cancellation. I know. But 4chan likes nothing more than self-martyrdom and dead girls, and while I\u2019ve always tried to be like<\/em> someone, I\u2019ve never cared too much about being liked<\/em>.)\n\tI\u2019d always tried to be like<\/em> someone and I said I gave up when I started Effexor but the real reason is because all my idols are dead. \n\tAll my idols are dead and I\u2019ve buried them inside me\u2014my guts, tied up with the scraps called memory I could salvage. I tried explaining this to my gastroenterologist, but she still told me stay away from gluten.\n\tAll my idols are dead and an algorithm will say of my Spotify history that I\u2019m stuck \u201cdry-humping Jim Morrison\u2019s grave.\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t*\n\tIt strikes me now that I know very little biographical information on Jim Morrison, but I imagine the sexual fantasies I\u2019ve had about him would be accurate enough. \n\t\t\t\u201cSo much forgotten already\/ So much forgotten\/ So much to forget\u201d<\/em>\n\tThey all start with an open book, its spine cracked beyond repair. It\u2019s probably Nietzsche in the original German. The Doors\u2019 drummer John Densmore said, \u201cNietzsche killed Jim Morrison,\u201d so it\u2019s only fair that little deaths precede. \n\tSo, there\u2019s an open book, probably Nietzsche, or something else he\u2019d feel the need to explain to me\u2014like Aldous Huxley\u2019s The Doors of Perception,<\/em> the band\u2019s namesake\u2014not because he saw himself as a conduit\u2014he did\u2014but because he saw everyone else as one, too. He\u2019d know I\u2019d want to know. And I\u2019d let him. I\u2019d let him know and know and know.\n\t\t\t\u201cReaching your head with the cold, sudden fury of a divine messenger.\u201d<\/em>\n\tThen, there\u2019s the question of leather\u2019s breathability. And the chokehold grip of his vintage pants. He\u2019s doused in patchouli. In his low porosity hair, a lingering dampness. A dollop of avocado hair mask he hadn\u2019t washed out. \n\t\t\t\u201cGreat glowing funky flower\u2019d beast\/\/ Great perfumed wreck of hell\u201d<\/em>\n\tIt\u2019s not pleasant but it\u2019s Jim-fucking-Morrison and suddenly I\u2019m self-conscious of my own artificial scent. The antiperspirant he\u2019d say causes cancer. The bubblegum body spray that smells like baby prostitute. I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m performing\u2014it\u2019s my sexual fantasy, I should be the one making the rules.\n\t\t\t\u201cIt was really wild\/ She started nude & put\/ on her clothes\u201d<\/em>\n\tI suppose I am because we never have sex. We stare at the ceiling and talk about our mothers. Morrison was an army brat. His parents never beat him but used military degradation tactics to discipline their three kids. After graduating from UCLA, he cut ties. Mostly. It\u2019s my sexual fantasy so he tells me he feels remorse about claiming he was an only child in the early days of his stardom. He tells me he understands if his siblings harbor resentment. He was the oldest, after all. \n\tWe don\u2019t talk about Pamela Courson. He knows he didn\u2019t deserve her. Men never deserve their muses. \n\t\t\t\u201cGreat slimy angel-whore\/ you\u2019ve been good to me\u201d<\/em>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t*\n\tThe Village Voice<\/em> once referred to Morrison as \u201cAmerica\u2019s Oedipal nightingale.\u201d He says he likes the descriptor because of the work it makes the tongue do\u2014Oedipal nightingale, Oedipal nightingale, Oedipal nightingale.\n\tThis would make a good podcast intro.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t*\n\tI\u2019m watching HWY: An American Pastoral<\/em> for the first time. On YouTube. Morrison is indifferent to the accessibility of the platform. \n\tHWY: An American Pastoral <\/em>opens with a police siren that morphs into a wind instrument medley that sounds ominously like howling. Morrison emerges from a stream, the flow of a waterfall like electronic feedback. He lies in the sun. He is still in tight pants.\n\tHWY: An American Pastoral<\/em> is everything you\u2019d expect it to be for an experimental piece filmed in Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert in the spring and summer of 1969. Discomfort, even during the musical montages. A sense of impending doom carves its nest in your chest and sits, breathing just enough, for 50 minutes. I mean, I\u2019ve read Didion. I know<\/em> about 1969. Not the 1969 my mom remembers\u2014the Mets winning the World Series, landing on the moon. She sees the world through rose-tinted glasses. And I love her for it, but no wonder I felt the need to look elsewhere for structure.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t*\n\tA friend of Morrison told Radical Reads <\/em>that he \u201creally seemed to become what he read sometimes.\u201d Jim Morrison by any other name\u2026 To think this leather-clad softboy was trying to be like<\/em> someone. He was trying to give you something, dear friend, for your own sake, and you misread the generosity as preoccupation. \n\t\t\t\u201cWe are obsessed\/ with heroes who live for us and whom we punish.\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t*\n\tI\u2019m disillusioned with 4chan\u2019s performative transgressions. If you\u2019re not familiar, consider yourself lucky\u2014the future is for normies. But for now, it\u2019s for us\u2014me and Morrison and our violently unsexy sex poems.\n\tIn one scene of the Super8 (do they still sell those?) porno Morrison and I make in Room 32 of the Alta Cienega Motel in West Hollywood\u2014his primary residence from 1968 to 1970\u2014we talk about anonymity. \n\t\t\t\u201cCamera, as all-seeing god, satisfies our longing\/ for omniscience.\u201d<\/em>\n\tWe talk about anonymity and the loneliness one must feel to drag another through an imageboard warzone, uncredited. How a man cannot claim himself if he cannot claim his idea. I don\u2019t know if I believe him, the way the stone blue of his eyes glaze over, power-sick at the thought of his unflinching notoriety on \/mu\/. We\u2019re falling into a familiar pattern. I want to save him from himself. \n\tWe talk about anonymity as the Super8 captures the most audacious upskirt shot of the century. \n\tThen, a disorienting flicker, and Morrison and I switch outfits. His pants don\u2019t fit me but he doesn\u2019t call attention to it. My dress fits him too well. \n\t\t\t\u201cSomeone new in your knickers\/\/ & who would that be?\u201d<\/em>\n\tWe read to each other our poems, unheard even to ourselves. He gifts me a line from \u201cLament for my cock\u201d and tells me to make better use of simile. Metaphor, he tells me, is a kind of restraint. He knows restraint from his army brat origins. He tells me he is interested now only in giving. To himself, mostly. He laughs. \n\t\t\t<\/em>\t\t\t\t\u201cI write like this\/ to seize you\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t*\n\tAfter a conviction of indecent exposure at a Miami concert in March 1969, Morrison tried to keep a low-profile\u2014as low as his stardom would allow. He hesitantly took an interview with Rolling Stone <\/em>in July, stating, \u201c[T]here\u2019s much less bullshit\u201d in club venues. \n\tHe\u2019d arrived at the Miami show already drunk. Doors producer Paul Rothchild said booze produced for Morrison a Jekyll and Hyde effect. So, Mr. Hyde played The Dinner Key Auditorium. His stage presence that day was otherwise underwhelming. Jeans and wrinkled linen. His formerly lithe frame had filled out. He stumbled through his songs. He berated the audience. He drank more. Then, he cracked\u2014\n\t\u201cYou didn\u2019t come here for music, did you? You came here for something more, didn\u2019t you? You didn\u2019t come to rock\u2019n\u2019roll. You came here for something else, didn\u2019t you? You came here for something else\u2014what is it? You want to see my cock, don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\tI ask him about it now, if he still feels the concert model lends itself to a \u201ccrowd phenomenon that really hasn\u2019t that much to do with music.\u201d If he knows what he meant when he said that, if it was an act of self-preservation for America\u2019s Oedipal nightingale (Oedipal nightingale, Oedipal nightingale). If \u201ccrowd phenomenon\u201d is not the ultimate objective of ritual<\/em>, something he mentioned five times in that interview, alone. I tell him his conviction has since been overturned\u2014he was pardoned by Florida\u2019s clemency board in 2010. I ask if this will change his answer.\n\tHe cites Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek. In a 1998 interview, Manzarek said that the incident was a mass hallucination, that \u201cit was Dionysus bringing forth, calling forth snakes.\"\n\tMorrison says he supposes it doesn\u2019t matter, if he whipped it out or not. Celebrity demands uproar. If he stood there long enough someone would\u2019ve whipped it out for him. Like I\u2019m doing now.\n\tI think about other stories I\u2019ve heard. Like when Janis Joplin broke a whiskey bottle over his head at a party. I shouldn\u2019t bring this up. I do anyway. I tell him I think he\u2019s superficial, but so am I. I mean, I\u2019m no Pamela Courson. I\u2019m no Janis Joplin, either, but I suppose the body comparison is more accurate. Here, he turns to me. \n\tThe Super8 zooms into our knees, now touching. He whispers into the bed about actor and spectator and prisoner and dancer and maybe what I feel isn\u2019t lust or love but desire for embodiment\u2014\n\tOut of the 49 pins I have in my Pinterest board titled \u201cunfucking real people,\u201d Jim Morrison accounts for 32 of them. The rest are nameless, at least to me, save for some screengrabs of Kristen Stewart in that one Rolling Stones music video.\n\tAnd I ask for an impossible decision. \n\t\t\t\u201cThe skin swells and\/ there is not more distinction between parts of the\/ body.\u201d<\/em>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t*\n\tJim Morrison was found dead by Pamela Courson in the bathtub of their Paris apartment on July 3, 1971, a little after 6:00a. He reportedly appeared to be smiling. \n\tMorrison had left California for Paris earlier that year. His alcoholism reached new lows\u2014he was drinking almost 40 beers a day while recording the Doors\u2019 final album, L.A. Woman<\/em>. He\u2019d gotten fat. His voice lost its sultry quality and took on something groveling. He left California for Paris to get better. \n\tWord of his death made it to his family\u2014and the American press\u2014six days later. \n\tCourson inherited Morrison\u2019s estate, which is never a good look for a young woman, married or not. Here\u2019s where it gets messy. Or, messier. There was no autopsy\u2014 she allegedly misled the American Embassy to say there was no next-of-kin, ensuring a swift burial. No investigation. Again, no autopsy. The death certificate, citing heart failure, is signed with some illegible drawl and she couldn\u2019t recall the doctor\u2019s name. When Doors manager Bill Siddons arrived in Paris on July 6, the certificate had already been signed, the coffin already sealed. Only Courson and Alain Ronay, a friend of the couple\u2019s living in Paris, had seen the body. \n\tNo one really thought she was a murderer but it was suggested she gave him heroin and said it was coke. \n\tHe was buried in the P\u00e8re Lachaise Cemetery where he remains today, despite a 2016 bid by Florida officials to bring him stateside. \n\tI tell him about the theories. Target of a state-sanctioned movement to wipe out counterculture icons. Murdered by a Wiccan ex. Alive and well and spotted in Tibet. There\u2019s a twinkle in his eye but it quickly dims. Courson herself died of overdose only three years later. She\u2019d been a heavy user. \n\tIt\u2019s my sexual fantasy so she won\u2019t make an appearance. \n\tI tell him I\u2019m sorry.\n\t\t\t<\/em>\u201cI met you\/ & now you\u2019re gone\/\/ & now my dream is gone\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t*\nNote: All quoted material comes from Morrison\u2019s The Lords and The New Creatures, a posthumously published collected works.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Rachel Stempel <\/strong>is a queer Ukrainian-Jewish poet based in Binghamton, NY.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019d always tried to be like someone but I gave that up when I started on Effexor\u2014it made me friendly. Besides, it\u2019s a tired game, all take and no give. I\u2019m learning to empty myself and I\u2019m learning it may be impossible. I contain multitudes, as they say, packed tightly between a god-complex and self-flagellation\u2014this … <\/p>\n
Continue reading ““Dialogue; Or, My Museum of Parasocial Delusions” by Rachel Stempel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2310,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3457","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2310"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}