Starry Eyed With Pain & Longing

Anatomy of a Hump

It is well known that there is one thing that celebrities are not entitled to in any measure, and for which they therefore desperately petition us: pity. A similar longing for unearned pity grips us all, to one degree or another, during certain periods of our lives. Specifically, I’m referring to sex. That's right. Sex. Every time people get together to commiserate and/or share war stories pertaining to their dating miseries, protracted celibacy, or erotic yearnings, what they're really doing is petitioning for one another's sympathy; for no purpose but to be engulfed in warm waves of pity. After all, what other option does one have? Sexual rejection constitutes the most dreaded (and universal) condition of modern life. The horrible paradox of such rejection is that there is no recourse, no socially acceptable alternative, no exit. While there is a certain amount of sympathy available to the abstentious, it is a mere pittance of what is required. Yet such sympathy is continually sought out as if it were the only balm capable of soothing the pain engendered by the absence of affection. The result? Guilt. To admit to being emotionally desiccated due to an utter lack of human tenderness or physical contact is to admit (a) spiritual weakness, (b) reproductive failure, (c) general unlikability, and (d) untreatable malaise. And the guilt spreads like an infection. People try to set up their single friends with dates for one reason only: to get the monkey off their own backs. There's nothing as disquieting or as unnerving as a perpetually single friend who is perpetually rejected in their suits for romance. Loneliness can fester into a mental illness that not only impedes the ability to function in normal social circumstances, but also slowly erodes the goodwill of those most predisposed to be sympathetic. It is in this regard that the closest that many of us will ever come to experiencing celebrity is being horny.