Nameless Grub · 3mo
apologies in advance for infodumping about myself a little bit in your inbox, but i find it necessary to properly express my thanks. i've had a severe fear of vomit and vomiting for almost 20 years at this point, and i don't know that it will ever completely go away (although it's not as bad as it was when i was a teenager and even just eating at all was a disturbing experience where i spent the rest of the day dreading how it would come back out of me).
your work has meant a lot to me in relation to this... i remember before the phobia developed, as a kid, i was fascinated by vomiting and would obsess over any experiences i had with it and talk people's ears off about it. i was grossed out, but also really interested and unafraid. (i guess i do the same obsessing now, only it's colored with fear and physically overwhelming disgust.) i remember when i first read that people have a fetish for vomiting that i was really afraid and disgusted, and i told myself that i didn't get it. but i think i did already understand that there's not that much difference between fetish and fear- that maybe for me, there was a fork in the road in childhood where my fascination could have developed in one way or another.
anyway, the way you write about it, and about vomit-adjacent experiences (any lack of control over the body is vomit-adjacent to me), i can tell that some of the root of why it's so horrifying and difficult to cope with for me is visible to you, which is that feeling of being out of control of one's body, and deeply vulnerable, and turning inside out, and not knowing if it will ever end or if i'll be living in this experience forever and ever... and it can be very sudden, i don't necessarily know when my body might betray me by doing this. you convey that, and the grossness of it, and what i feel is an inherent horror, in a way that somehow feels very tender- maybe just seeing and acknowledging these things is tenderness? but i felt comfort where usually i would feel only fear and discomfort- i was comforted and discomforted simultaneously and that felt even better than just being comforted.
and also i could finally acknowledge the appeal of it as a fetish. and almost wish that i could turn my fear into that fetish. maybe one day i could! probably not. but being able to acknowledge the understanding felt good. anyway, thank you for your art.
also i wanted to ask because i feel like having a phobia of it clouds my vision and prevents me from seeing all the things it can represent to other people, so i have my own ideas but: why does insul puke so much? lmao.
PUKE THOUGHTS:
yes, being turned inside out, it's an eternal fixation for me, and so fun to write about
puking is miserable, esp chain puking
feeling it eat away the face, burning the enamel and the throat, and knowing it will keep happening, even when there’s nothing in the stomach to throw up.
i grew up as a dirty child
who didn’t have the same sanitary affordances or training as others
and i used to fear being unclean during sex
it wasn’t that i minded being dirty around other people, but that i feared they wouldn’t feel the same way
and would judge me for not being porny clean
fortunately there’s lots of really gross people.
when someone interacts enough with an actual body and loves it, not just on a screen, they come to love the complexity hidden behind clothes, the smells and heft of the apparatus responsible for maintaining life. the fragility is what it makes it hot, the trust it takes to share an interface for commensual, and sensual bacteria.
anyone worth keeping around won’t judge you for throwing up.
the last time i puked with a friend, i made out with them kneeling around the toilet.
neurosis happens when fear is allowed to build up like a physical crud in the muscles/brain.
turning fear into arousal is one of the best ways to purge it from the body. doesn’t have to be JORKING IT, just any kind of sublimation, externalizing it the way the act itself, this ask itself, is an externalization.
insul pukes a lot because he sustained injuries where he would realistically do that. these injuries are incredibly common in every type of media but they fail to show the actual effects, because they’re cowards. when you’re choked or concussed, you can get brain damage, vomit, or die days later. these are injuries to very delicate parts of the body that govern the rest. a lot of people don’t recognize these symptoms, partially because of lazy writing that treats brain trauma as a scene transition.
he gets injured so much, i didn’t want to depict it casually, so i linger on his recovery throughout the whole novel. cognitive issues, fatigue, nausea, etc. the fragility of the body is central to Serious Weakness, after all.
oh yeah and it’s really hot
thank you for this ask, it's exactly the kind of thing i appreciate people noticing. good luck with having a body, sounds like you’re on the right path <3
P.S. the new story i wrote for my upcoming book has SOME REALLY SHITTY VOMITING AND VOMIT-ADJACENCY IN IT, hope you enjoy or don’t, whichever is better!
