My previous post was about the vitality that I feel when I’m engaged in a back and forth with a woman, but it’s not a strictly sexual phenomenon.
When I was young, I used to check my answering machine for messages multiple times a day, desperate for some evidence that someone, somewhere, was thinking about me. At the time, I think I thought it had something to do with importance — that A, if there were messages on my machine, it meant I was important, and B, if there were messages on my machine, it meant that I might have some urgent requirement that I respond in order to avoid some catastrophe.
In my latter years, though, I think it’s more primal than this, more visceral, more fundamental. On some level, I think it’s that when I don’t have evidence that someone else is thinking of me, I begin to imagine that I don’t exist. My world has ended in some profound, essential way.
I can theorize as to why this might be, but long-time readers of this blog know that there is no turn-on greater than knowing that someone is thinking of me.
Featured image prompt (openai): Large-format color photograph, deep interior dusk. A landline answering machine sits on a bare wooden side table against a dark wall — its small red indicator light glowing, unblinking, in an otherwise dim room. The light is the only warm source, casting a faint blush on the grain of the wood and the surrounding shadow. The machine is slightly too centered, the room slightly too still, the red light slightly too red — the kind of quiet that reads as held breath. No figure. Saturated shadow, rich chestnut and near-black, the single red eye the only thing alive in it.
Bottom image prompt (gemini): Dim hallway, late evening, a wall-mounted rotary telephone in olive green, the handset slightly off the hook, a coiled cord hanging loose. Bare plaster walls, a single overhead bulb casting a warm amber pool on the floor. The carpet is worn, patterned, faded to near-nothing. A small side table beneath the phone holds a glass ashtray, empty, and a folded slip of paper. No one is here. The air feels suspended, held, as if something was just missed or is about to arrive. Shot on medium-format film, slight grain, deep shadow in the corners, the light concentrated on the dangling handset and the blank wall behind it.