I’m a fan of Sasha Grey. She’s a porn star who’s inspired a lot of my photographic work. I like her too because she seems to have a great sense of humour (in one of her movies she has sex with a man in a bear-mascot costume). I admire this the most, the sense of humour. I must have some too, to deal with my peculiar dilemma.   So I’m a fan.  And I also am a fan of pornography, meaning I covet it but not really as much as I used to.

 Lately, the way I come across Sasha Grey is more often because of my photographic research rather than smut watching. And lately, I don’t watch it (smut) that much, period.

I’m on antidepressants. 

I have been on them for some time and they’re more effective than the Net Nanny when it comes to searching for adult content on line. I don’t think about it that much any more therefore I don’t seek it. Incidentally, I don’t seek sex all that much either. I mean, I have it and it’s good but if I stopped having it, I’d probably forget about it. Which is depressing but, hey, ha ha ha, I don’t get depressed any longer.

In her Salon piece Antidepressants and Sex: A doomed romance, Tracy Clark-Flory has interviewed people about their experiences with happy pills and their sex life. A 25-year-old photographer stopped taking his happy pills because, he said, it wasn't worth the side effects. When I read that, it became clear to me that he must've had had quite some balls on him (pun intended) and was willing to forgo his sanity to satisfy the urge to frolic and fornicate. It makes me worried for him but it also makes me envious that he had those balls that let him do it 

I’m also envious of Sasha Grey, or rather of women that I imagine her to be like – not necessarily porn stars but women who have high libidos and prefer sex to chocolate not the other way around. Because when I was younger and so-called crazy, I was full of abandon and I miss that. Chocolate could go and fornicate itself in favour of a good lay.  

Ever since I can remember I loved sex. I found my parents’ secret copy of Marquis de Sade Justine at an age when I still haven’t even kissed a boy yet.  That book horrified me but also confirmed that what I had already glimpsed by walking past sex shops, quickly changed TV channels and what I had once seen in a public shower at the pool was enticing.  There was some wacky sex stuff out there.

I grew up and moved out and was (almost) always lucky enough to find partners who liked to. A lot.  Over the years, I had revisited all those formerly taboo places, like sex shops, and situations, and all was well in the kingdom of lip-biting. I was never into watching pornography together but I never had to hide it and had a great fun on my own.  I had fun.  I spent a lot of time thinking about it and doing it.

Concurrently – whether it was because of those relationships, Moon phases or because I was always wearing pants one size too small – I was also growing a bit (okay, a lot) depressed.   Additionally, I struggled with anxiety and an eating disorder.  So someone eventually suggested antidepressants.  And lo and behold, with longer and shorter breaks in between them, I went through the alphabet of happy pills, finally stopping and staying on the good old “P”.

One of the side effects of antidepressants is lowered sex drive.

My libido didn’t decrease over night. Not even over 365 nights. It took a while but I can safely say that I’ve arrived at a sort of – for me – sexual inertia. This means that I sleep-sleep at least three nights a week.  That may be fine for you but it’s not fine for us, me and my lover.

Theoretically. For me, actually, it’s becoming kind of fine. My lover and I talk about this a lot and I would feel really broken up about it... if I could only feel properly broken up.

But if I could feel properly broken up about it, I’d probably be really, really broken up. I’d be so broken up, I’d possibly be broken for good. And my lover – having been with me for almost a decade now – knows this about me. He’s been there when I wouldn’t leave the house for long stretches of time, when I threw my bicycle into the street in the fit of rage or when I sat in the room for hours and cried for no reason.

Me: “Would you rather more sex, but with a crazy devil?”

Him: “No, I’d rather less sex.”

We had this conversation just the other day. Because I do go through periods when I mourn my high libido and do feel somewhat broken up about it, and guilty, even – perhaps unreasonably – guilty for deceiving my lover into thinking that I was wild and crazy in bed when he met me. Maybe I was – either way, the crazy sort of carried over past the bedroom so he supports curbing it. 

I can stop taking my pills and try some alternative methods (hitting head against the wall, board games, nature) to curb the Crazy inside me but why? It’s not like the pills have robbed me of my ability to see or hear.  I can still come even though it’s not as intense, and once in a while I even do stupid things like take my pills every other day because I imagine – placebo effect or not – that it brings back that spark that I’m missing.  But then this also means sitting with my heart in my throat at the end of the day and who needs that? So I don’t do it often.

I’m reminded of former sexual thrills when I see someone like Sasha Grey (though lately I see her popping up in the mainstream, which is what I’m mostly interested in and tuned into these days).   And, yes, I realize that she’s probably got her demons and who knows, maybe even conquers them with happy pills. And even though I wouldn’t trade the peace of mind for the bodily abandon I still miss it. So when I see Sasha Grey I am reminded of that powerful, limitless libido, the filthy fun that she’s representing and it’s like some kind of an afterimage.