Objectophilia
I have not been able to settle lately. I moved back to London a month ago and I have not stopped to rest in about thirty days - rolling from work to dates to drinks to day trips to parties and to work again. I don’t stop, I don’t think too much, I just keep rolling. It’s exhausting and it’s delicious.
When my dad was dying in February this year, I dreamt about this kind of movement. Time back then was still and the days repeated themselves in a slow trod of grief. Every day the hospital, or home care, or the hospice, or death: a monotonous downwards spiral. All I want now is constant change - invite me to your party and let me forget about death for a few hours, please. No cold hands or oxygen tanks here, pour me another drink.
As I embrace this period of change (or at least, I try to), I think about periods in my life where I’ve craved stillness. Sometimes it’s been the perfect summer day I’ve wished to extend forever, at other times it’s been a good date I didn’t want to end. Sometimes it’s as brief as a nice kiss I don’t pull away from and sometimes it’s as long as dismay at my childhood home being redecorated over a period of years. Stillness has its draw, too - to sit in what you know and ask the world to stop is no small thing.
There are those who take this love of stillness beyond my amateur levels. Objectophilia, otherwise known as objectum-sexuality by those who practice it, is the attraction to and love of inanimate objects. To love an object is to love stillness and permanency. An object can be the best parts of a lover as an oasis of security and stability in an often hostile and unpredictable world. It can avoid the worst parts, too - objects don’t grow old and die like humans do, nor do they change their minds and leave you. Your object is nearly entirely within your control.
In the last few decades there has been a media parade of objectum-sexuals for us to ostensibly laugh at and distance ourselves from: Erika Eiffel, who married the Eiffel Tower; Linda Ducharme who loved a ferris wheel named Bruce; Amanda Liberty and her beloved chandelier Lumiere. All have been subjects of the modern-day freak show: reality TV documentaries. Others who have spoken to the press include Joachim A. who adores a steam engine, Bill Rifka who is in love with his iBook, and Doro B. who fell for a metal processing machine. The range of objects that draw objectum-sexual attraction is vast - some objects are owned by their lovers while others aren’t, but they all have a solidity and stability their partners can rely on.
Like everything treated as a modern peculiarity, what we might now understand as objectum-sexuality has old roots. The illustration for this article is of Pygmalion and Galatea - in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the young sculptor Pygmalion is disgusted by the sex workers in his native Cyprus, swears to celibacy and crafts an ivory statue of his ideal woman. He names it Galatea and falls in love with it - the perfect unchanging woman for a man repulsed by women’s embodiment and fleshiness. Aphrodite eventually brings the statue to life, Pygmalion’s celibacy wanes, and they have a child named Paphos. I wonder if he preferred the statue to the real woman, but a wife is also an object in the eyes of a misogynist.
While there are many benefits to objectum-sexuality in its stability, it would be remiss not to discuss its complications. There is, of course, the absence of a real flesh-and-blood human who can return your affection. Objectum-sexuals are not usually celibate (except for our friend Pygmalion) and do engage in sex with their lovers - this can be masturbation in the object’s presence or caressing and grinding against the object until both parties are understood to be satisfied. Sara Rodo, who loves a model plane, states that “I noticed that I wasn't attracted to people when I didn't want to cuddle or become intimate with them unlike my objects where I crave cuddles and being intimate - it's the best sex I've ever had!”
While objectum-sexuals who speak about their sex lives discuss it positively, for those of us who are non-objectum-sexuals the absence of a lover to return your physical affection can be dismaying. If you, like me, experience sex as an enjoyable negotiation between two or more parties in the pursuit of pleasure, objectum-sexuals call into question what sex actually is and where the line is drawn between masturbation and copulation, if there is one at all. Is it so different than when we sext someone and imagine how they would look and feel in bed next to us while alone with our phone? In plain terms, when we sext are we fucking the person or the idea of the person? If it is the idea of a person, things become untethered - objectum-sexuals may imbue their lovers with as much personhood as I do a stranger on an app. Only one of us is seen as unusual.
Perhaps it is less about the physical presence of a lover and more about their emotional presence. Someone I’m dating, or fucking, or sexting can respond in ways that surprise me. They can love me one moment and reject me the next, they can grow into someone new over a period of years until they’re unrecognisable to the person I first met. They are changeable and they can grow in ways I might not like; it’s my duty to meet them where they are and hope they’ll do the same for me.
An object, on the other hand, does not grow. It acts as a mirror for the person who loves it, imbued with whatever attributes they might like, just as Pygmalion sculpted a woman simple enough to fall in love with. The object reflects who you are and you can safely grow around it knowing it will never leave you because it can be continually re-personed to suit your needs. If you’re angry it can be pliant, if you’re horny it can be seductive, if you’re scared it can comfort you, and so on, and so on. A human lover, on the other hand, might not be there when you need them. You may have to reckon with feelings of abandonment and how you navigate forgiveness, as well as your own weakness - all scary things, even to the best of us.
While I embrace the change of moving city and wrestle with the continual passage of time six months after my dad’s death, it’s easy to see the appeal of objectum-sexuality in its stability. I wish time could have stopped ten months ago when my dad went into hospital, but it didn’t, and here we are. To throw yourself into change and movement is as much the human condition as wishing for fixity and stillness. Perhaps there is a middle ground. I’m yet to find it.
I write Looking at Porn around my full time job as a health comms worker. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, you can tip me on Ko-Fi here. I’m not on Twitter at the moment, but you can email me at robinccraig@gmail.com or follow me on Instagram here.