 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
|
|
||||
|
||||
| Celebrity Wettings by Garrett Caples June 2003 Under the broad category of sexual fetish known as watersports there exists a minor vogue for celebrity wettings. As their name suggests, such reports chronicle the event of some well-known cultural icon— usually but not always female— wetting her pants. Ideally this will have occurred recently, in the time of fame, but we’ll always settle for a recounted incident from childhood. Absurd, of course, but there it is. The odds of a celebrity wetting (whether a pre- or post-fame micturation) can, I imagine, be no less or more than that of other adults, or other adults when they’re children. Yet there are those who wait breathlessly for the latest episode of incontinence among the rich and famous. I don’t necessarily understand it myself. Most watersports stories depend on some degree of anonymity in the name of verisimilitude. A victim of airplane turbulence, and the fasten seatbelt sign; occupant of an immobile elevator; a regretter of roller coasters; the unfortunate concertgoer; unhappy campers. In other words, as a general rule, accounts of accidents strive for the typical in the service of the believable, and— structurally-speaking— most boil down to one of, say, three or four scenarios. (O Lévi-Strauss!) After all, how many circumstances are there under which a toilet-trained, physically-sound adult might plausibly lose bladder control? Few, sighs the watersports enthusiast. Unlike most stories, or even most sex stories, pantswetting anecdotes thrive on the ordinary rather than the extraordinary for maximum effect. (Why? Because the event itself is so extraordinary? Because, much like the stain it commemorates, it shows up best against a plain background?) Too, the increased technological options for anonymity have been a positive boon to the collector of anecdotal wetness. You’d be surprised how many people, even those lacking the sexual interest, will volunteer a tale of pissing themselves under the cloak of the internet. And yet, like Russian dolls, there are aberrances within that already marked aberrant. In the face of the painstaking and plausible efforts of most practitioners of watersports fiction flies this cult of celebrity wetting, like an ultra-hedonism. Your high school sweetheart’s bungee-jump mishap is one thing, but the heroine of your favorite sit-com! How decadent a bon-bon indeed! Perhaps it’s a simple case of "celebrity" = superlative person. Perhaps it just puts a face to a name. I can imagine what "Jenny" of the internet chestnut "The Bursting Schoolgirl" might look like, did she exist, or tentatively recreate some confessor based on her "blonde and petite" self-description. But with a celebrity I don’t have to. Indeed, the more celebrated the person, the more democratic the pleasure, as more and more readers can visualize the same victim of their pet embarrassment. Such rationales may offer some insight into this bastard sub-genre of watersports, but they fail to erase its essential and almost poignant incoherence, the utter non-relation between being famous and wetting your pants. Celebrity wettings are an uneasy juxtaposition of separate enthusiasms, our society’s generalized worship of the well-known forced into an equation with a minority’s sexual fetish. An unstable combination, it’s true, but for that compelling, as metaphysical poetry compels. And too, it reveals the humanity of the perverse. As some people dream of fucking Madonna, some dream of her wetting her pants. But what fun would it be if I stuck to the hypothetical? Shall I name names? Tori Spelling, Belinda Carlisle, Paula Abdul (twice), Darryl Hannah, Goldie Hawn, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sally Field, Barbara Streisand, Pamela Anderson (pregnancy), Roseanne, Rosie O’Donnell, Claudia Schiffer, Monica Seles, Suzanne Sommers (bed), Steven Segal (!), Alicia Silverstone, Jenny McCarthy, Maria Shriver, some semi-famous models of varying credibility, a number of lesser-known marathoners, random sexy Britishers known only throughout Britain. Allegedly Sandra Bullock wears diapers. Cindy Williams and Tonya Harding have shit themselves. I want to say Gloria Estefan and Mariah Carey, but I may be misremembering. Whitney Houston? Janet Jackson? No doubt wishful thinking. Michelle Yeoh? Teri Garr? Now I’m making things up. The capacity to invent such scenarios is, perhaps, the most revealing aspect of celebrity wettings: the ease with which examples come to mind. The famous are famous, after all, and invade one’s consciousness with all the brusque indifference of paparazzi invading their lives. And it’s hard to avoid picking favorites. I picture Michelle Yeoh panting and angry, having lost it in the course of a kung fu fight. Teri Garr would be amused and blithely indifferent. Even more suggestive, however, are the transformative possibilities a celebrity wetting affords, for what is desire if not transformation? The means of passing nourishment from mother to child, for instance, recast as an object of allegedly inherent sexiness. (The arbitrariness survives in a pun: "jugs.") What I mean is the sudden aura a previously uninteresting celebrity might take on in the eyes of the fetishist, due to an accident of fate. The degree of transformation is, of course, relative. While the information of Roseanne’s incontinence is insufficient to stir my loins in her direction, Rosie O’Donnell’s intrigues just enough to raise an interest. Jenny McCarthy’s studied vacuity continues to leave me cold, but Paula Abdul’s vapid strains have acquired additional resonance in the wake of the wonderful flood. And few forces in nature could effect that. |
 |
Out now: |
| Archives>> |
|
The Rail invites you to a reading with Jason Flores-Williams and Brian Carreira, along with musical guest Steve Strunsky of the Lonesome Prairie Dogs. Thurs., Sept. 22, 8:30 p.m. Vox Pop--Flatbush, Brooklyn www.voxpop.net |
|
OFF THE RAIL FALL 2005 at the Central Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library - Grand Army Plaza |
|
The Independent Press Association-NY recently honored The Brooklyn Rail with the following awards: |