NEWS: JONATHAN KESSELMAN'S SUICIDE WATCH: THE INTIMATE ISSUE

CULTURE: Jonathan Kesselman's Suicide Watch: The Intimacy Issue

I’m an anxious guy. Before I was born, back in 1974, the doctors didn’t use ultrasound. Rather, they would determine a childs' sex by checking the pulse of the baby by placing a stethoscope on a pregnant woman’s belly. A slower pulse meant you were going to deliver a boy. A faster pulse meant you would be having a girl. Needless to say, my mom’s friends knitted pink hats for me, her soon-to-be-daughter. I’m sure you can imagine their shock when I was born, and I didn’t have a vagina.

When I was 13 or so, I came down with a really bad case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. And for those of you who like to inanely say, ‘Oh my god, I’m so OCD!’ -- trust me you’re not. Just to clarify, using Post-It’s, or cleaning your apartment ‘a lot,’ or having a ‘super’ organized closet is not OCD. Flipping light switches in sequences of 4 for hours, or staring at the corner of ceilings while feeling compelled to repeat bizarre phrases in your head over and over and over again eight times in a row for fear that someone will somehow take over your identity…that’s OCD. A really clean apartment is not. So to those people who use my adolescent misery as a way to let people know that they’re highly motivated and responsible by simply saying, ‘I’m so OCD…’ fucking knock it off! Seriously…it annoys me.

It annoys me. It annoys me. It annoys me. It annoys me. It annoys me. It annoys me. It annoys me.

When I was 18, after years of failed ‘talking’ therapy and medication, I finally got over the ‘C’ part of my OCD through a Behavioral Psychological treatment called ‘Systematic Desensitization.’ Essentially, during the course of the treatment, you’re exposed to the things that trigger your obsessions, but then not allowed to relieve them by performing any of your compulsive actions. It’s sorts of like that part in the movie “A Clockwork Orange” where they make Malcolm McDowell into a pussy by clamping his eyes open and force him to watch violent TV…or like “Fear Factor” for that matter. Except, you probably wouldn’t have to eat bugs or talk to Joe Rogan; that is unless Joe Rogan was somehow one of your OCD triggers. But even then, I’m fairly certain you probably wouldn’t have to talk to him. You might have to watch footage of him on “Fear Factor” over and over again until he stopped making you anxious…but how fucked up of a disease would that be?

Well, a few years ago my general level of anxiety got pretty bad. I wasn’t working, I was completely broke, and I was, for lack of a better word, enslaved by my own anxiety. Needless to say, I was depressed, drinking a bunch in an attempt to self-medicate, and generally was not a nice guy to be around. So, when I turned 29, and the hangovers got too bad, I decided to see a psychiatrist and deal with it once and for all.

I was prescribed a wonder anti-anxiety and Depression drug called Lexapro. And then just as the slaves in the Post-Civil War South were set free from their Plantations, I, too, was set free from mine. Well, not a Plantation. For the record, I’ve never lived on a Plantation…or even the South for that matter. I live in a comfortable one-bedroom brownstone in Brooklyn …

So, I guess that probably wasn’t the best analogy.

Anyway, let’s just say I was ‘free.’ I could focus on work, I started making money, and I stopped snapping at people for saying stupid shit like ‘Oh my god, I’m so OCD.’

But with every good thing in life, there is always sacrifice. For example, after being set free, the Jewish Slaves in Egypt had to wander around the hot, arid desert for 40 years without deodorant or showers, eating Matzah. And anyone who’s ever eaten Matzah sans fluids knows that it makes you very thirsty. If you think about it, that was kind of stupid of the Jews back then. If I were in the desert for forty years, I’d at least stock up on Gatorade or bring Pineapples with me…more ‘wet’ foodstuffs. I guess they probably didn’t think they’d be out there for so long...

I digress.

I’ve always wanted to write that in a sentence. In fact, I’ll do it again, as I just realized that I need to digress from my first digression. So, I double digress...

Anyway, after some time, I quickly learned that a serious sacrifice came from one of the main side effects of taking Lexapro. Namely, I stopped wanting to have sex. Even more interesting, when I did engage in sexual activity, I could still easily achieve an erection. Oddly enough, however, I found that it would take me forever to cum. This is a phenomenon that I discovered is known as ‘Retarded Ejaculation.’

Sounds like fun, right? Not so much. Believe it or not, the fun of sex wears off after awhile. I’ll put it to you this way, after a half-hour of fucking, both parties desperately want it to end. Like those Jews wandering around in the arid desert of Egypt, I often found myself wandering around in the arid vagina of some poor, unsuspecting woman.

At first, I was ashamed to bring up the Lexapro thing with the women I would sleep with. It’s kind of hard to make words like ‘Anti-Depressant,’ or, ‘Anxiolytic,’ or ‘Retarded Ejaculation’ seem sexy. Here, let me show you what I mean with the follwing play-pretend scenario:

Her (Unsuspecting Woman): “Baby, I want you to cum. I want you to cum so bad. Cum all over my tits!”

Me: “Um, Wow. That might be kind of a difficult thing. You see, I have this side effect from my combination Anti-Depressant/Anxiolytic medication. It’s called Retarded Ejaculation. Basically, it’s a physiological phenomenon that occurs when…” You get the point.

And to make matters worse, because I didn’t tell these women what was going on, they assumed that it somehow had something to do with THEM! That perhaps maybe they weren’t attractive or sexy enough. And so finally, because I felt immense guilt after seeing how panicked and insecure these women would become because I couldn’t blow my load when I was with them, I gave in to the shame and told them the truth. Some people might call that being “honest,” or “intimate,” or “real.” I called it “embarrassing.”

Oddly enough, upon hearing about my retarded ejaculation, most of these women would instantly relax, and then take the news as some sort of personal challenge. So, out would come the lotion and the towel, and after forty-five minutes of having my cock stroked and being talked dirty too -- all the while having my eyes closed, intensely focused on my most base and perverse sexual fantasies: fantasies involving a completely shaved, unicorn-loving, blonde, temp-receptionist named Krissy who likes to scream out ‘Fuck Me, Captain’ while she’s bent over my imaginary High-Powered Manhattan mahogany desk from the Sharper Image catalogue…or there’s the one in which I use a never-before-tested mind-control agent concocted by a shadowy, classified department of the CIA to assist in my espionage work in South Korea -- a top-secret assignment in which I am too fuck the beautiful Communist midgets into our way of thinking…

I might SOMETIMES cum.

It got to the point where I realized that since I wasn’t all that interested in sex anymore, and because it was becoming such a hassle to come up with even more elaborately specific sexual fantasies that could do the trick, that I’d just excise sex from my life completely.

And it was then that I realized something amazing. As human beings, our desire to procreate is kind of fucked up. You see, because when I finally stopped trying to get laid, a few things happened. One, I saved a shitload of money. I no longer had to buy chivalrous man-dinners at expensive restaurants, or pay for $125 ‘Thai’ massages. I no longer had to buy flowers, or drinks, or Rohypnol…

I’m kidding of course. Buying flowers for a woman is totally lame.

But secondly, and even more importantly, my career started taking off. I learned that the pursuit of pussy takes up a lot of time -- time that could be well spent writing, or taking meetings, or networking, or watching TV, or napping, or watching TV, or napping. And lastly, I no longer had to deal with all of the emotional baggage that came from…what’s the word I’m looking for… ‘connecting’… with another human being.

So, to sum it all up, the lesson I’ve gleamed from all of this is that Freedom doesn’t come without its price. We all have to make sacrifices sometimes if we want our Freedom. In his time, to be free, Moses could not come into the Holy Land – and today, at least for right now, neither can I.


Jon_Kesselman is the filmmaker responsible for THE HEBREW
HAMMER. He is currently co-writing and directing Odd Todd for Paramount, writing and directing The Orbit Of Bob for Nickelodeon, writing, producing, and directing The Hebrew Hammer 2: Hammer VS Hitler, and producing Confessions Of An Ivy League Bookie with Andrew Fierberg and Steven Shainberg. He already regrets posting this column.

interesting article it makes a change thanks

that was actually really well written, a nice change.

brilliant post

Couldn't stop reading it. Great post. And I don't think I've ever said this before, nor will I say it again:

Congratulations on not getting any lately.

Please don't regret posting this. It's the most entertaining (intentionally entertaining, even!) news post I've read on these boards in ages.

Freedom is overrated.

And I find the type of freedom that it seems a lot of people are obsessed with isn't much different from the alternative.

A really good read which struck a chord with me. I had a similar experience a couple of years back with Citalopram, which cost me a relationship but gave me space to focus on changing lots of bad stuff about my career.

"But secondly, and even more importantly, my career started taking off. I learned that the pursuit of pussy takes up a lot of time -- time that could be well spent writing, or taking meetings, or networking, or watching TV, or napping, or watching TV, or napping."

Oh darn... what Seinfeld episode was that now...
Kooooostanza

Are there morre of the articles or will there? If so Point me to them. I want to read 'em. Damn fine writing!

I just wanted to say that The Hebrew Hammer is one of my favorite movies!

i really enjoyed this. thanks.

That was great; thanks for sharing. Personally, I just went off the meds in an attempt to feel.

I'll surely regret it.

But she was Portuguese!

Thank you very much! I just emailed the editor Helen Jupiter to see if she could make it easier to access my past columns. As of now, if you go to my profile, under the SG NEWS tab there is a list of them. And keep looking out for a new one every Thursday!

Thanks for the support...you've made my day! I'm actually in the process of writing the sequel - "Hammer VS Hitler," and I am having a hell of lot of fun with it.

I still feel. I just don't feel like killing myself, or taking others with me.

Great writing. Honest, funny and heartfelt.

::Cartman voice:: Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet!
I look forward to it!

oh mylanta.. i know this story so well.

This is fucking fantastic.

Interesting....

Great article!
I really like your writing style.
I should probably be more embarassed about having watched it, but one of the most interesting episodes of Mtv's 'True Life' series was "I Have Obsessive Compulsive disorder".
It gave me a much better understanding of what life with OCD is like.

Gotcha.