*Warning: adult language ahead!
Through the mist she came to him, walking slowly as she moved her hips to the rhythm of her thoughts. As she got closer he noticed the shape of her breasts, the outline of her now erect nipples announcing their arrival through the thin fabric of her shirt. He gazed up into her eyes again. Those eyes that had so magnificently transformed him so many months ago were not just beautiful but were also exposing a desire in her only he could quench. The lump in his throat betrayed the emotion within him as the lump in his pants betrayed just how much he wanted…no needed…this woman. She was about to discover how much.
She came to him and parted his lips slightly with her finger just before her lips sealed his fate. Their tongues wrestled, devouring any outside thoughts while placing the two of them solely in the moment. She moaned slightly as he grabbed her around her hips, placing his hand on that part of her back where it fit so nicely. He brought her closer, and the mixture of the masculine and feminine, of raw power and natural beauty began it’s slow ascent into Oneness. His hardness met her softness there, where time and space ceased to exist and where eternity was born each and every time they kissed.
Thus begins my written foray into a Tantric world where the physical meets the spiritual.
Although a novice in writing about it, I figured I’d brave the elements of our modern-day culture of fantasy and take a bit more of a concrete step into reality. Yes, there is great passion in reality if you find it. In the above opening, I have several places I can take those two characters. Given what I’ve seen of today’s popular modern culture, I am left undecided as to whether or not the heroine should be begging for a beating or something much more meaningful (to me). So I thought it would make some sense to explore how it seems our reality just doesn’t appear to be that real anymore.
If any of you follow my traditional stuff, you know that I write from the heart about subjects I am very fond of: love and suffering. I find nothing better than describing enlightened love between my lover and me in either poetic or essay form. I also enjoy the “painting” of my soul in these descriptions. I love just sitting down, surrendering, and seeing what my soul paints through my keyboard onto the canvas of my computer screen. Sometimes I scare myself with what I see at the end and other times, I am amazed. Yet, I always seem to hit the “Submit” button regardless just like right now. It is art, after all!
I get a feeling, however, that most of us are bored with such mundane topics as “pure love,” “intense suffering” or “romance,” and instead, want more of the raw, unbridled, hair-pulling sexual prose that is currently popular.
To put it more succinctly, it seems we want less romance and more hard fucking.
I believe I wanted to write this in homage of something that seems to be dying in our culture. We have replaced the spiritual component in much of what we do with an egoic desire and in doing so seem to have killed (or nearly killed) the very thing that can bring us the satisfaction we seek. It seems we are after the purely physical experience of fucking, and have forgotten the ancient art of making love. Yes, Friedrich, God is dead and we have killed him.
Truthfully, the simple act of typing the word “fucking” here feels liberating for this artist. I get to use all kinds of colors I don’t ordinarily use. I can’t wait to use words like “cock” and “pussy” and “tits.” I can’t wait to describe cumming over and over again while tied to some anonymous woman-I-haven’t-met-yet’s bed. I can’t wait to describe how hot the yoga instructor was in the last class I attended. Her voice sounded something right out of a phone sex service and her body was miraculous. I can’t wait to describe her hard nipples, her inviting ass, her full lips and tits (ring the bell Johnny! Yay!). Maybe I can even tell you how she brought me back to her “pad” and fucked my brains out. Or, better yet, I can tell you all how I fucked her brains out. What I won’t tell you is that I love her beyond words because, after all, that is irrelevant to the type of story I need to tell here.
Love, it seems, is lost in our mixture of physical need and mindless desire. What’s important here is the instant gratification our minds demand.
So, as an artist I am in a quandary here. Do I give you what resounds in me or do I give you what it seems like you want? Do I paint a picture from my soul or do I paint a picture that gets your genitals moving? Can I do both? Ah, there, my friends, is where the devil lives. Maybe, just maybe, what is in my soul can resonate with what is in your groins and you’ll actually put a dinner or two on my table someday. We’ll have to see about that.
“M” for Mature?
I do love how we consider sexually charged anything as “mature.” We rate games and TV shows that have sexual and/or violent overtones as “M for Mature.” Unfortunately, I don’t see any of it as necessarily mature. I see it as high school bullsh*t in which we create figments of fantasy and try to weave it as reality like we “boys” used to. The once common “Yes, I fucked (insert popular hot chick’s name here) and she told me I was the best” of our boyish high school years has now become an instance where characters in a book are living the lives we wish we were living. The trouble with this is that just like in high school, where we never fucked the popular hot chick, we aren’t going to achieve the level of fantasy and perfection we are fed with in this stuff.
Frankly, I don’t see much “mature” that’s about it. Seriously, are we mature in getting off by reading a book? How mature is it to be in a dark room watching other people have sex while we play with ourselves? I don’t see it as necessarily mature, or the target audience as necessarily mature. No, I don’t feel very mature when watching porn and I certainly don’t feel very mature in how I have to watch it. Add to that how utterly childish I feel when reading porn and, well, I simply don’t see much maturity in any of it.
When we have to consistently find solace in fantasy and not reality we aren’t truly maturing at all. We become like our childhood selves playing army or doctor in the woods and less like the spiritually evolved, conscious beings we are born to become.
If the first organisms to venture out of the seas onto land had behaved like us, they may have just crawled right back into the ocean instead of evolving into the fine creatures that adorn our shores.
I do understand that at least porn, whether written or visual, has a purpose. I can watch a clip and do my business if I so desire. I don’t leave the experience ready to discuss it with my friends. I don’t leave the experience believing that my lover needs to be anything like what I saw in that scene. In fact, I don’t really want anyone to know I’ve done it, and I certainly am not going to my local bookstore to proudly display it in my cart. I realize that what I have just watched is nothing more than something that will get me off short-term, but my real experience lies in the woman who not only “does it for me,” but also gives me so much more. It has virtually made porn obsolete at this point. I mean, who in their right mind would sleep on sandpaper when they have such wonderful silk sheets to enjoy?
Oops, there I go again. I had to add something about love. Dammit, this is about fucking. Ok, hit the “refocus” button, Adderall taken and blinders are on. Sorry for the temporary loss of focus.
I should say that I have never read a graphic novel. At least not since graduating elementary school when I first read the book Wifey, by Judy Blume. I have to admit that to a 12-year-old boy that stuff was awesome! My first real boners were to that book, and I remember not being able to wait until I had sex like that. Fortunately, I’m still waiting.
Seriously though…
Maybe I am just lucky. I have a very rewarding sex life. My lover is awesome, and we have the best sex in the universe. My forays into porn are very few and far between, and even when I don’t see her for an extended period of time our phone sex rivals any graphic novel or nudie magazine I’ve ever seen. There is no porn starlet that gets me going like my lover does. There is no graphic novel that can come close to describing the lovemaking that goes on between us. There is no one, real or imagined, that I would replace her with in any department for any reason.
In fact, I did not get a bit sexually excited describing anything until I started thinking about her. Why would I ever need to read about the sex between two fictional characters when I all I have to do is close my eyes and remember our last encounter? Yes, it was awesome and no, I’m not telling you about it even if I change her name to Anastasia Steele (no I have not read it, I had to Google the characters of the book).
This is not braggadocio. At least I don’t think it is. Maybe I’m just lucky to have found the one person in the world who not only has captured by soul, but my cock too (ring that bell again!). See, she captured my soul long before she captured my cock (ring-a-ling-a-ling!). Maybe that is the secret? Maybe great sex has little to do with the motion of the boat in the ocean and more to do with who is in the boat with us?
And After All That…
I’ve failed. I can’t stop writing about romance even when simply trying to be a “dirty little whore.” Maybe it is because I have found that the absolute best sexual experience of my life have come with someone I love beyond words. I feel it important to note that I have had a lot of sexual experiences in my life, not to brag, but to ensure you that my lover tops a list that is way too long. The experiences I have had with her make all of the rest seem nonexistent. In fact, I could consider myself a virgin when I met her because I had no idea what great sex was until my first moment with my lover. I believe that was because I loved her with a deepness indescribable. She had entered me emotionally and spiritually long before I had ever entered her physically.
So, I wonder, is this type of experience all but dead to most of us in this culture? Are we so into the physical that we have all but taken the spirit out of yoga and out of our bedrooms? Are we marrying our soul-mates or are we marrying our fuck buddies? Are we experiencing the “One” or just the “O”?
The 50 Shades of Grey Phenomenon
I understand the big business of turning men and women on. I just returned from BJ’s Wholesale Club (no pun intended) where I always check out their book club table. Today, I was treated to at least 25 percent of it being laden with the latest paperback edition of Fifty Shades of Grey (and at $9.99, what a bargain!). I watched the half-dozen or so women meandering around pretending not to be interested in the book. I even saw one woman put her copy under a cookbook in her cart and then return the cookbook. In my mind I walked over and picked up the book and began laughing hysterically as if it were a joke book. I then turned to the woman next to me and asked her where the latest edition of Penthouse Forum was. This was a dream sequence mind you, I didn’t actually do it! Still, it made me chuckle.
I noticed there that these women seemed to be engaging in multiple fantasies at once. First, it was the fantasy that this book was a necessary component of their adulthood. Yes, I’ve heard the conversations that seem to suggest that women have been somehow empowered or liberated by reading this book. I’ve marveled at hearing women brag about reading it while chuckled silently when others suggest they have read it but didn’t like it so much they had to read it again to see “what all the discussion was about.” Yeah, and my uncle bought Playboy for the articles.
Second, it was that someone besides this interested observer cared that they were buying it. I didn’t care that they were buying it actually, I was interested in how they behaved while buying it. In circling the table like disinterested sharks on a feeding frenzy, they actually highlighted something that was interesting to me. Why the portrayal of shame here? Was it fear that you’d be seen and judged? Or was it the inner knowledge that something was so missing from your life that you had to buy it in the first place? I should have asked, but I wouldn’t ask a shark to lick my hand either.
Third, it was that they weren’t really buying it at all. Evil Tom wanted to peel off the price stickers so that the cashiers would have to announce a price check (do they do that anymore?). I imagined in my mind that these women felt like I did the first time I bought tampons for a woman or condoms for myself. At some point I realized that there was nothing wrong with either menstruation or safe sex and the novelty wore off at the cash register. So, was there anything wrong with buying 50 Shades of Grey? It depends on your motivation and conditioning I guess, or if you care what people think about you. Me? I wouldn’t buy it based on the reviews I’ve read, I simply like well-written smut, not dime-store illiteracy with a twist.
The experience at BJ’s made me wonder about the role of sex in our relationships and in our culture. Are we left to read about the wild forays of fictional people because we are lacking in our own relationships? I wonder if most of us would truly leave the fantasy behind for a good roll in real hay. Are the characters we read about much more appealing than the people we are sleeping with? If so, what do we do about it? Finally, is the raw appeal of a good hard fuck in between the covers of a book a cheap replacement for the love we aren’t finding between the sheets in our own bedrooms?
It’s obvious there aren’t any answers that just jump out of the darkness. Besides, the questions are best answered personally it seems. Most of us probably already know the answers and have for some time. Others may not even care as long as they get some private time with Christian Grey.
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Editor: Brianna Bemel
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