Posts tagged daniel bergner

The Other Side of Desire: Four Journeys into the Realms of Lust and Longing by Daniel Bergner In his acclaimed nonfiction book released in 1999, New York-based journalist Daniel Bergner details his stay in a penal institution in Louisiana, where he met and became friends with six inmates serving a life sentence. Using the penitentiary’s annual rodeo competition as a framing device, the award-winning writer recounts his experiences with his incarcerated subjects as he discovers that underneath the serious crimes that led them to the largest maximum-security prison in America each of them is still very much a person and not a mere prototype of a bad guy in a crime TV series. Bergner’s year-long self-imposed sojourn within the prison’s walls ultimately resulted in the publication of God of the Rodeo, a book that evinced both the author’s propensity for compelling narrative and his deference to the plight of others—qualities which he would exhibit again a decade later in another well-written work of nonfiction called The Other Side of Desire.  At once bold and captivating, The Other Side of Desire is an anthology of psychological nonfiction that could very well be God of the Rodeo’s identical twin. In this new book, the real-life protagonists are also prisoners, but they are of a different kind: they are prisoners of lust and its promise of ecstasy. The book, four years in the making, comprises four episodes of Bergner’s encounters with four individuals who are affected by different modes of fascinating, if bizarre, psychosexual conditions. Known in psychiatric parlance as paraphilias and often, but disputably, classified as sexual disorders, the conditions discussed in length in The Other Side of Desire include atypical patterns of behavior that when exposed are sure to cause raised eyebrows and turned stomachs, body parts that, while no doubt responsive, are not what Bergner sets out to elicit reactions from. As made evident as early as in the book’s introductory pages, he is after the reader’s heart and mind.  Each of the four intriguingly titled chapters in the book sees Bergner juggling between telling, fly-on-the-wall style, the interesting and at times surprisingly inspiring story of a paraphiliac person and presenting scientific information that seeks to clarify the mystery surrounding that person’s unusual condition as well as the varying proclivities of other similarly affected people. In the opening chapter called The Phantom of the Opera, Bergner introduces Jacob, a traveling salesman who has a deep-seated fetish for feet, endowing him with the ability to reach orgasm within seconds and without touching at the sight of a pair of what he refers to as “platypus feet,” with “toes [that] formed a perfect staircase.” In the next chapter, The Beacon, The Baroness, fashion designer by day and female sadist with a pronounced preference for “the topography of lacerations” by night, the author (and by extension, the reader) is made privy to her sado-masochistic sessions with her numerous slaves. The penultimate episode, The Water’s Edge, brings to mind Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert and Lolita as it focuses on Roy, a band performer turned pedophile, arrested for harassing her eleven-year-old stepdaughter. Finally, in The Devotee, an advertising executive named Ron shares how he lives with his odd and highly selective erotic attraction towards amputees.  These stories of real people who happen to possess inclinations that are perhaps no less strange than the wish of some persons to buy a piece of celebrity memorabilia at a ridiculously high price are interspersed with reports of Bergner’s research and interviews with experts in the study of sex, that force which is nothing if not “a powerful, biologically based appetite.” In his attempt to pinpoint the provenance of desire, Bergner talked with a number of renowned scientists and psychiatrists, including the personal therapists of the four protagonists of his book. Not surprisingly, the bits of information he gathered from his research and correspondence with the PhD-wielding authorities resulted in another long and winding battle between nature and nurture, a seemingly endless tennis match between heredity and environment. Taking the case of Jacob for example, I could easily come up with a series of questions in relation to the classic debate: Was Jacob somehow hard-wired to feel extreme sexual interest towards feet while still in his mother’s womb, perhaps causing the absence of an enzyme that would trigger this abnormality? Or was it his habit of looking down when asked a difficult question in grade school, evading the humiliating stares of his classmates and admiring their feet instead, that caused his fetish? And how come one man’s craving for feet is considered abasing and another man’s attraction towards breasts, buttocks, legs, or napes isn’t? Is a sexual “disorder” a mere product of society and its established norms? How does Jacob cope with his problem? Will he ever be able to completely contain such a strong desire? Does he even have to?  Although the book is filled with informative and thought-provoking disciplinary statements and most of its paragraphs are punctuated with interesting bits of trivia, probably the most memorable being the existence of a tribe in Papua New Guinea where fellatio between an adult male and a young boy is traditionally encouraged, I finished The Other Book of Desire feeling a slight sense of not knowing the answers to all the questions posed by the author, much less to the ones that swam in my head while reading it. However, I also felt a seldom experienced sense of fellowship, inevitably established after having read about the lives of Jacob, The Baroness, Roy, and Ron, not because I could relate to their unusual desires but simply because I could relate to their humanity. Bergner immersed himself in the world of these paraphiliacs, who I should point out are all human beings lest somebody forget or think otherwise, let them be seen in a new light, and wrote about them with such sensitivity that I gradually developed nonjudgmental empathy towards these individuals who are no more prisoners of desire, sexual and otherwise, than you and I.  — The Other Side of Desire is available at Fully Booked, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City.

The Other Side of Desire: Four Journeys into the Realms of Lust and Longing
by Daniel Bergner

In his acclaimed nonfiction book released in 1999, New York-based journalist Daniel Bergner details his stay in a penal institution in Louisiana, where he met and became friends with six inmates serving a life sentence. Using the penitentiary’s annual rodeo competition as a framing device, the award-winning writer recounts his experiences with his incarcerated subjects as he discovers that underneath the serious crimes that led them to the largest maximum-security prison in America each of them is still very much a person and not a mere prototype of a bad guy in a crime TV series. Bergner’s year-long self-imposed sojourn within the prison’s walls ultimately resulted in the publication of God of the Rodeo, a book that evinced both the author’s propensity for compelling narrative and his deference to the plight of others—qualities which he would exhibit again a decade later in another well-written work of nonfiction called The Other Side of Desire. 

At once bold and captivating, The Other Side of Desire is an anthology of psychological nonfiction that could very well be God of the Rodeo’s identical twin. In this new book, the real-life protagonists are also prisoners, but they are of a different kind: they are prisoners of lust and its promise of ecstasy. The book, four years in the making, comprises four episodes of Bergner’s encounters with four individuals who are affected by different modes of fascinating, if bizarre, psychosexual conditions. Known in psychiatric parlance as paraphilias and often, but disputably, classified as sexual disorders, the conditions discussed in length in The Other Side of Desire include atypical patterns of behavior that when exposed are sure to cause raised eyebrows and turned stomachs, body parts that, while no doubt responsive, are not what Bergner sets out to elicit reactions from. As made evident as early as in the book’s introductory pages, he is after the reader’s heart and mind. 

Each of the four intriguingly titled chapters in the book sees Bergner juggling between telling, fly-on-the-wall style, the interesting and at times surprisingly inspiring story of a paraphiliac person and presenting scientific information that seeks to clarify the mystery surrounding that person’s unusual condition as well as the varying proclivities of other similarly affected people. In the opening chapter called The Phantom of the Opera, Bergner introduces Jacob, a traveling salesman who has a deep-seated fetish for feet, endowing him with the ability to reach orgasm within seconds and without touching at the sight of a pair of what he refers to as “platypus feet,” with “toes [that] formed a perfect staircase.” In the next chapter, The Beacon, The Baroness, fashion designer by day and female sadist with a pronounced preference for “the topography of lacerations” by night, the author (and by extension, the reader) is made privy to her sado-masochistic sessions with her numerous slaves. The penultimate episode, The Water’s Edge, brings to mind Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert and Lolita as it focuses on Roy, a band performer turned pedophile, arrested for harassing her eleven-year-old stepdaughter. Finally, in The Devotee, an advertising executive named Ron shares how he lives with his odd and highly selective erotic attraction towards amputees. 

These stories of real people who happen to possess inclinations that are perhaps no less strange than the wish of some persons to buy a piece of celebrity memorabilia at a ridiculously high price are interspersed with reports of Bergner’s research and interviews with experts in the study of sex, that force which is nothing if not “a powerful, biologically based appetite.” In his attempt to pinpoint the provenance of desire, Bergner talked with a number of renowned scientists and psychiatrists, including the personal therapists of the four protagonists of his book. Not surprisingly, the bits of information he gathered from his research and correspondence with the PhD-wielding authorities resulted in another long and winding battle between nature and nurture, a seemingly endless tennis match between heredity and environment. Taking the case of Jacob for example, I could easily come up with a series of questions in relation to the classic debate: Was Jacob somehow hard-wired to feel extreme sexual interest towards feet while still in his mother’s womb, perhaps causing the absence of an enzyme that would trigger this abnormality? Or was it his habit of looking down when asked a difficult question in grade school, evading the humiliating stares of his classmates and admiring their feet instead, that caused his fetish? And how come one man’s craving for feet is considered abasing and another man’s attraction towards breasts, buttocks, legs, or napes isn’t? Is a sexual “disorder” a mere product of society and its established norms? How does Jacob cope with his problem? Will he ever be able to completely contain such a strong desire? Does he even have to? 

Although the book is filled with informative and thought-provoking disciplinary statements and most of its paragraphs are punctuated with interesting bits of trivia, probably the most memorable being the existence of a tribe in Papua New Guinea where fellatio between an adult male and a young boy is traditionally encouraged, I finished The Other Book of Desire feeling a slight sense of not knowing the answers to all the questions posed by the author, much less to the ones that swam in my head while reading it. However, I also felt a seldom experienced sense of fellowship, inevitably established after having read about the lives of Jacob, The Baroness, Roy, and Ron, not because I could relate to their unusual desires but simply because I could relate to their humanity. Bergner immersed himself in the world of these paraphiliacs, who I should point out are all human beings lest somebody forget or think otherwise, let them be seen in a new light, and wrote about them with such sensitivity that I gradually developed nonjudgmental empathy towards these individuals who are no more prisoners of desire, sexual and otherwise, than you and I. 

—
The Other Side of Desire is available at Fully Booked, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City.