Apologies/Fall is Coming, that familiar rush, that familiar relief: that i am not dead, this part of me still lives and leaves, the zombie-fear vanishes, For Now.
Still a sleeping beauty, I became an Adjunct (yes, again, and times two). For those who don't remember, or never really knew, an Adjunct, for the purposes of this paragraph of this blog, is a part-time college-level instructor. I am already at home (back home? if the womb is the beginning and the end); content; with contempt. When I fall away, it is down into a place of uncontested, invisible, indivisible power. As I promised so many months ago, I marry: divisions, here: sadism and masochism, or domination and submission, or any combination thereof.
In another uncontested source of power, Shakespeare takes King John (for whom the play is named, and so, it is, questionably, "his" play, or at least his position is at--or on--the top) and makes him say to a subordinate, I love thee well; / And, by my troth, I think thou lov'st me well, to which the sub(missive) Hubert replies: So well, that what you bid me undertake / Though that my death were adjunct to my act, / By heaven, I would do it.
Ah, the willingness. The fierce, the sexy, the terrifying claim that can be transplanted in and out and in and out of Shakespeare and into everyone: What you bid me undertake... I would do it.
King John will ask Hubert to murder Arthur, and Hubert delights in taking orders, even though his death may result, adjunct to his act. I think this may be the first usage of the term "adjunct," and it is thus the curiously temporary connotation of contemporary usage that strikes me, the reader, as ironic. "Only can die once, right, Sir?" (forgive me for conjuring images of Streisand)--Even Fanny Brice is a sub for Nicky Arnstein in Funny Girl--but that is neither here nor there--as, I have obsessively tried to establish to my invisible and perhaps nonexistent readers, there is no here, there is no there, only gradations of each.
Without drawing too much attention to the politics of gender (with which I am becoming bored), or to the politics of sexuality, or to the possibility that yet another two of Shakespeare's men were romantically involved as is so vogue, I'd like to point out what many would call the "problem" with S&M/BDSM, because it is the same "problem" that deflated my excitement about my new adjunct "jobs" when I searched the term "adjunct" and found this definition: something added to another thing but not essential to it. This is where the power of submission diminishes. Kid yourself, please; it is pleasantly painful; but the doms do not need you. Again, we are dispensable, as woman, as faculty, as human. For every John and Hubert, there is an Arthur. But what the fuck ever, we'll still get off. And because of, not in spite of: another definition of "adjunct" is "a person associated with lesser status, rank, authority, etc. in some duty or service; assistant." Hello, Secretary. No offense to the Nachbar crew, who remain forever divided (note the ridiculously singular term 'crew': people, particularly groups of them, can never be married the way words and ideas can, the words and ideas I love much more, though they lie and lie tragically, without physical bodies central to making love) in their opinions of that film's star-with-the-best-first-name, but how not to recall a MISTER Gray when thinking of the control of a King, the John who doesn't force Hubert to kill, but acts on Hubert's desire to please? We will not forget the age-old connection between orgasm and death, or, more specifically, murder.
And now, finally, there is this definition of "adjunct": "attached or belonging without full or permanent status." Here is the best fit: an ill fit. As I said, I am happy home. A hermit crab I am I am, listlessly slipping on the next shell like a negligee, hoping the next one will be thrust upon me by a Mister and/or King, please-and-thank-you-and-you're-welcome.
Here is the best fit: here is an ill fit.
