Fetish

I know what a fetish is.  I've discovered that I have more than one.

You have some idea about fetishism, don't you?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines the fetishist quite unflatteringly as one who has, "over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving the use of nonliving objects (e.g. female undergarments)."  This inanimate turn-on disrupts normal sexual function, in that one can't "perform" without aid of the fetish.  I reject this pathologizing description for my own purposes.  

Sacher-Masoch has a slightly more poetical take on fetishism; although his characters come to no very good end, at least they traffick in more original objects of desire than prosaic "female undergarments."  Severin loves Wanda's fur coat like anything! And if you've never read "Venus in Furs," I do literally mean that he is hot for her fur coat.  Meaning her outer garment made of ermine.  That, and her whips.

A languid abandonment pervaded Wanda's entire being. What a voluptuous softness there was in the gloaming of her half-closed eyes, in the red flood of her hair which shimmered faintly under the white powder, in the red and white satin which crackled about her with every movement, in the swelling ermine of the kazabaika in which she carelessly nestled.

"Please," I stammered, "but you will be angry with me."

"Do with me what you will," she whispered.

"Well, then whip me, or I shall go mad."

"Haven't I forbidden you," said Wanda sternly, "but you are incorrigible."

"Oh, I am so terribly in love." I had sunken on my knees, and was burying my glowing face in her lap.

"I really believe," said Wanda thoughtfully, "that your madness is nothing but a demonic, unsatisfied sensuality. Our unnatural way of life must generate such illnesses. Were you less virtuous, you would be completely sane."

"Well then, make me sane," I murmured. My hands were running through her hair and playing tremblingly with the gleaming fur, which rose and fell like a moonlit wave upon her heaving bosom, and drove all my senses into confusion.

Well, when he puts it like that, you can understand it, can't you? I can and it's not even my fetish.  "Make me sane" indeed.

So what is my particular fetish? I've been thinking about it over the last few days (in between taking dissertation notes of course of course) as I've been reading certain blogs whose authors sometimes write in dialect (and yes if you happen to be reading this, you know I'm referring to you!)  I must pause here for a moment and doff my little black velvet cap, yes, hats off to the rarest of rare who can pull off written dialect.  It is the hardest thing on earth to do, and if done well it is absolutely fucking brilliant.

Brilliant and, well, delicious.

So there you have it, I love accents.  Not just any accents of course.  Specific ones.  Certain accents, and correlatively, certain dialects, have become inanimate objects of my desire.

An old boyfriend, whom I wrote about here, hailed from the deep, deep South where the men apparently drawl all over their girls.  Each night of our courtship, he would call me long distance from South Georgia, and read to me over the phone--I don't even remember what it was he read--poetry probably, and Pogo, and other things which I didn't really pay attention to--so carried away was I on the cadences of his voice.

As for my other fetishes, well, that's a story for another time.

Are you a fetishist?