Large Fierce Mammal

“Russian roulette is not the same without a gun, and baby, when it’s love, if it’s not rough it isn’t fun.”
~ Lady Gaga ~

Most men live their lives in daylight,
And when darkness wraps its claws around them, they are blind.

But embrace the darkness, my cherubs and you can see.

Most men blunt the barbs of their forbidden thoughts,
But why deny yourself the exquisite pain those piercing thorns provide?

Most men fear the primal urges, and bind them fast in secrecy and shame.
Simply strip them of their bonds, and unleash their wanton flesh upon the world.

Most men dare not penetrate the nether regions of their imagination,
To let it bleed upon the page.

I am not one of those men.

I beg you, dear reader,
Slide your key deep within my lock and set us both free.
You know you want to.

When I was 18 and in my last year of high school, I decided to read the complete works of the Marquis de Sade. Inquiring of the demure, soft spoken, ageless, and earthily attractive town librarian, she informed me without batting an eye that the Lunenburg library lacked the volumes necessary to slake my thirst, but that they did exist in the system so she would see to it that my needs were fulfilled. My words, not hers.

A few weeks later, the good librarian called to tell me that a book containing a comprehensive collection of de Sade’s works had arrived. She sounded slightly unsettled, leading me to conclude that she had perused the contents. While I was certain she knew who the Marquis de Sade was, I suspected that she found the nature of the subject matter, requested as it was by such a fine, respected young man of heretofore apparently impeccable virtue, to be disturbing. For my own part, I expressed my gratitude and enthusiasm, and asked her to read the table of contents to me. There was a pause, and then a sigh, before she complied with my request.

Previously unbeknownst to me, each title listed was accompanied by an illustration along with a rather unbridled one line synopsis of the story, and she began to obediently read those to me over the phone. When she got to Justine, she paused and gasped, “God! I can’t believe you’re making me do this!”

Now it was my turn to pause before saying, “I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. I’m not even there.”

My relationship with the town librarian underwent a change of tone after that, and while I had always enjoyed good relations with her, I can’t altogether say that the change, while subtle, wasn’t an improvement.

The Marquis de Sade had a gift for the delightful and once wrote, “I’ve already told you: the only way to a woman’s heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.” Before you lock up your daughters, take the time to read that again. He didn’t say it was necessarily the woman who should be the one being tormented.

The personification of dark sentiments, de Sade listed what he referred to as 600 “passions” in his 120 Days of Sodom. Passions ranging from the surprising to murder, although I suppose that last one could still be categorized as surprising, particularly to the one who gets killed. His writings were considered so depraved that it wasn’t until 1983 before his books were legally permitted into Britain.

He had a propensity to engage the services of prostitutes that he would then torture at length, something the rich and powerful could do with impunity. Unfortunately for him, he was neither, and lived his troubled life under three regimes – monarchy, the French revolution, and Napolean Bonaparte – acceptable to none of them. Born to privilege, he died in a lunatic asylum, immortalized in language as the name of a dark sentiment that is as old as human kind. You all know the one I mean. Ironically, this fact flies in the face of his last will and testament that requested his remains be buried in an unmarked grave and left untended so that  “… all trace of of my resting-place should disappear from the surface of the earth as I flatter myself that my memory will disappear from the minds of men.”

Eloquence and verbosity carry risks, and in the end what undid the Marquis wasn’t unbridled depravity. In his lifetime, one in seven women in Paris were prostitutes, and notwithstanding a public attitude that it represented perversity, open homosexuality was commonplace. The life of the libertine was scarcely unheard of. No, his sin was making his thoughts and deeds so very public.

At the root of de Sade, nearly drowned out by the cacophony of his own rantings amid the railings of his detractors, are unapologetic statements of some fundamental truths most societies lack the courage and conviction to face. That humankind is as much governed by Darwinian realities as everything else in Nature. That human conduct will always be driven by human passions and one’s own sense of right and wrong, unimpeded by laws artificially imposed by the state. That wealth and power can engender a sense of entitlement leading to the kind of evil that can only be stopped by the intended victims.

Fictional revolutionary Quellcrist Falconer appears in a the Takeshi Kovacs series of books by Robert K. Morgan. Of all her sage utterances, this one taken from Things I Should Have Learned By Now, Vol II came to mind as I crafted today’s dark sentiment:

“The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference – the only difference in their eyes- between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life, and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.”

I’ll close today’s article with the trailer to an exceedingly dark film made in 2000 starring the incredible Geoffrey Rush as the Marquis de Sade. Quills is a must see, and to borrow a term from a portion of its dialogue dealing with the subject of necrophilia, you’ll find it “… worth the dig”.