The Grand Burlesque

At the request of a young lady friend, I went out into the world yesterday and pissed away some money on a webcam for my computer. It's an amazing device, but it wasn't invented for the likes of me. A video camera in an attractive woman's boudoire is a gateway into a realm of secret delights. The inner sanctum. Is there any feeling of sheer joy that can equal the experience of walking into a woman's bedroom for the first time? The sights and smells, and possibly a stuffed animal on the bed from her youth. You're both so aroused that you're practically throbbing. Hell, you feel as if you're floating around the room. Then you make a move and the stuffed animal goes flying.

With the webcam, though, there is only arousal. At the end of the night there is only my hand. The camera loves her body, her smile, her eyes and...everything else. I may be her boyfriend, and invited into her secret garden where she dances and prances in a celebration of erotic delectation, but I sometimes feel like I'm getting away with something sneaky and voyeuristic. Well, if not sneaky I'm definitely a voyeur. No shame in admitting that, not in this age of Internet pornography and "reality" television.

Now that I have a camera, our romantic interludes and happy conversations are no longer visually one-sided. It didn't seem fair, to her or to me, that we couldn't see each other. The only problem is that the camera doesn't love me like it does her. In fact, I think it hates me. It doesn't help that I'm fat and ugly. By setting up a camera on my monitor, I've invited the world into my inner sanctum. And that's a depressing, gloomy little place with a bad painting of a naked woman on the wall. It's very clean, except for a few papers and books spread around. But the presence of a nihilistic, lugubrious fat-fuck (me) floats around in front of the camera like a giant Woody Woodpecker balloon in front of a 5th Avenue window on Thanksgiving Day. You'll have to excuse me, I borrowed that analogy from Finnegan's Wake. Maybe not. I can only hope that my beloved will continue to see my inner beauty even as my outer homely is propped-up nightly in front of that fucking webcam. It's not like she hadn't seen me before, in various settings and such, but too much of my ghastly simulacrum may compell her to send me packing. Oh, well. In the immortal words of that great philospher, Popeye, "I am what I am."

Perhaps she'll find my attempts at titillation to be somehow charming, or even sexy. They are certainly at least amusing. Last night, I tried to get into a provokative pose and I almost broke the chair. I had a hell of a time. Then my nightshirt got snagged on my stereo and I displayed perhaps a bit more than I had intended. After awhile we settled into conversation, and I dropped my guard. I took some of my prescription medications, but to her eyes, it looked like I was shoveling pills in my mouth. I do take a lot of meds, yes. And I need to work on smiling more often...several people have noted that I don't smile.

The camera sits in the "off" position right now, and that's how it will be most of the time. Every so often, however, I'll invite a trusted friend or lover into my bedroom. Those special few will be treated to the grand burlesque.