Sunday, January 28, 2007

My Middle Class Orgasms

(Anyone who is related to me, or who works with me, may care to look away for the duration of this post, as I fearlessly throw my editorial policy to the wind...)

It's been a long time since I stopped reading Cosmopolitan, and you don't get too many articles about the female orgasm in Wired or the Economist, so I don't know if this is common or not. But essentially, all you need to know (although you may feel that you didn't need to know this at all) is that at times of - ahem - intense sexual pleasure, I hallucinate.

These aren't your run-of-the-mill swirly psychedelic visuals, of the sort produced by illicit hallucinogens. Oh no. They're much more refined than that. More refined, and more materialistic. And quite design-led. So refined, materialistic and design-led, in fact, that sometimes it's a bit like watching a film of A Rebours directed by the art editor of Elle Decoration.

Here, by way of example, are some of my frequently-recurring coital visions:

  • A lovely Elizabethan knot garden


  • A lovely Elizabethan knot garden under the snow


  • An entire collection of retro Marimekko-style furnishing fabric


  • A flotilla of steampunk airships in the style of Fornasetti


  • A set of cushions with bold art naif flower prints


  • Some nice candy-coloured notebooks with a treeline silhouette motif

I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this, other than that my brain has somehow accidentally got wired up to Condé Nast. I don't know whether I'm inadvertently producing issues of House and Garden, or they're streaming back copies of World of Interiors straight into my head, but either way it's an arrangement that works for me. You can never see enough nice stationery, in my opinion.

Next week: My Middle Class Dreams, starring Florence Broadhurst and Nigel Slater.

30 comments:

Annie said...

That is beautiful! I have never experienced that — or maybe I just never noticed before. I will look out for it next time.

Orgasms are blog-topic of the week.

Anonymous said...

Jesus! Maybe I should stop posting so many pretty interiors. I guess you weren't wrong when you said design porn...

patroclus said...

Annie: it's always beautiful, but sometimes I worry that hallucinating Marimekko designs at times that are supposed to be profound and emotional and meaningful might make me just a little bit...shallow.

Vic: Erm, yes, your site is pretty much *exactly* what a lot of these visions look like. Don't let me stop you posting, though.

I put it down to synaesthesia, myself.

realdoc said...

Now that is definately the weirdest post I have ever read.
I mean I like stationery and everything but not quite to that extent.

Billy said...

lava lamps. well looks something like that.

There's a whole thing about this topic in Vox.

Annie said...

That is quite amazing. *battles through hopeless English repression to comment further* I, er, sometimes have totally random unconnected memories, sometimes of places that I've completely forgotton I'd ever visited, pop into my mind at that moment. There's probably some brain study being done on this as we speak...

GreatSheElephant said...

It's been so long I honestly can't remember.

This is my stock comment for all sex posts now.

Taiga the Fox said...

RetroMarimekko doesn't really do that for me, because I think all the Finnish schools were decorated with bright Marimekko fabrics during the 70s and 80s. But, erm, otherwise there is no better pleasure than visiting a design porn shop now and then.

Anonymous said...

Do you not on occasion see visions of Dorothy Perkins fitting rooms or moist-eyed shetland ponies being fed lumps of sugar by dungaree-wearing youths?

I do hope so. This would give me a frame of reference to cling to...

Spinsterella said...

*speechless*

violet said...

I get something more like what annie said, just like random bits of my brain firing off in sheer hysteria. I once had a flash of being in a shop buying a handbag a few days before and can't go back there now without smirking. Yours sounds much more stylish though. I can't even hallucinate properly. Hmph.

Anonymous said...

wow. it all sounds like the Telegraph Saturday magazine. I feel quite envious........

Tim F said...

William Morris just turned in his grave.

Although he might have done it to avoid the wet patch.

Mangonel said...

The difference between a prostitute, a nymphomaniac and a Jewish-American Princess?

(I tell this one well, dunno how it'll work typed)

After sex, a prostitute says

'That's it.'

After sex, a nymphomaniac says

'That's it?'

After sex, a JAP says





'Beige.


I think we'll paint this room beige.'

patroclus said...

Winters: Um, not as such. Although I did used to have a moist-eyed Shetland pony when I was little. Two, in fact. I am *achingly* middle class.

Sylvia: That's *exactly* what it's like (although it's a bit more like how the Guardian 'Space' section used to be in the late 90s, when it was small and square and its title was all in lowercase and it had breathtakingly pretentious guides to living in various fashionable London enclaves in it).

Betty said...

Ahem. Cath Kidston carpets don't figure anywhere, do they?

I wonder what Caroline Phillips hallucinates about then?

patroclus said...

I wouldn't be surprised, Betty. I've had some decidedly Cath Kidston-esque visions. I was wondering how soon La Phillips's name would crop up.

I'd like to stress that I have no control over these hallucinations, and sometimes they're so ridiculous they really make me laugh. Which isn't always a good thing, in the circumstances.

Moominmama said...

TF: Hahahahaha!

I find all this very strange indeed. You acutally halucinate/visualize the decorative arts while making love?! This is the first I've heard of such a phenomenon.

Anonymous said...

I think this happens to me but in reverse, so the lovely things you mentioned (and other, similar lovely things) provoke in me feelings of ecstasy and deep-seated satisfaction. I seem to major in homewares, although images of frosted evergreens also do it for me every time. Imagine what our summer holiday in Helsinki was like puctuated, as it was, by little yelps and moans - and that was in Summer. I think I might be afraid to go there in Winter.

patroclus said...

Tim made me laugh too, although I'd probably err more on the side of William de Morgan than William Morris, if we're talking Arts and Crafts. Plus W. de Morgan once worked IN THIS VERY BUILDING. Ooh, perhaps I'm channelling his spirit, in a sort of Buffy-type scenario.

CB: That's it in a nutshell. I was sort of hoping it might be quite common. Er, evidently not, eh?

Marsha: I'm very partial to the decorative arts in real life also, but not to the extent that they make me hallucinate with pleasure. I know what you mean about Helsinki, though - there are some very lovely things there.

GreatSheElephant said...

marsha - what you are describing is a storgasm.

patroclus said...

Storgasm! Hahahaaa!

surly girl said...

*keeping out of it*

cello said...

You just need to ask Mr BC to take his wacky pants* off next time (I am assuming he is occasionally involved...)

*I know that was a gratutitous use of the word 'pants' but I do love it so.

Anonymous said...

That's extraordinary. I sort of had cancelled my plans to go to Helsinki for the Eurovision Song Contest in May but I'm wondering whether an afternoon in Marimekko might be just the thing for my lacklustre sex life now.

patroclus said...

Even if it isn't, Looby, it's still an afternoon in Marimekko. A joy in itself! Plus they do very nice salads and apple pie in the deli next door.

llewtrah said...

I'm missing out. No hallucinations. While one part of my brain is experiencing climactic pleasure, the other is still capable of working out my shopping list/whether the cat's vaccinations are due/etc. It does make fo an interesting experience when a shiver goes down my spine at the thought of what was happening when I decided "ooh, must get more baked beans" ;)

DavetheF said...

Pleasure centre memories triggered by chemical receptors or summink

mad muthas said...

the world of your interiors seems very strange indeed. say, does the reverse happen when you go into heals?

patroclus said...

Fortunately the reverse does not happen when I go into Heal's. Well, not since that time I got thrown out for moaning by the Alessi saucepan stands, anyway.