Aside from the usual issues of what kinds of activities are permissible with what kinds of people, I realize that there is a sin of the flesh that is actually a kind of sin against the flesh. Asking sex to be more than it can be. I am not talking about intensity of pleasure, etc. but about meaning. And I am not talking about meaning in individual cases, where fallibility and luck are in the air, but meaning on a larger scale. Some people look for answers or an answer in sex that sex can't give.
It's not the fault of sex, but of the expectation. Contrary to what a lot of people have thought, sex is not dirty...except in a good way. It all depends on, well...Sex is amazing and wonderful and can be one of the places where we meet both the animal and the spiritual in us without contradiction, letting us feel both feral and godlike. I guess what I am saying, to use Catholic language, is that sex can be sacramental but it cannot be divinity itself. To continue in a Catholic way, the mystical tradition is careful to warn people that a mystical experience, especially one that seems extraordinary, is not a value in itself and can be either a doorway or a dead-end. So with sex. And if one expects direct divinity in what may be a sign of divinity and fails to find it, it is no fault of the stirring and magical gift of sex, but of a misplaced expectation. To use old Augustine's words, it mistakes the creation for the Creator.
Having said that, I will say, without TMI, that it can be like falling off a cliff into a raging and yet totally safe warm ocean, where you are submerged and overwhelmed and awake and alive and surrendered and powerful...all at once. Whole regions of brain and soul awake which normally either slumber or hibernate. And, damn, does it feel good.
One of my faithful readers and (voluminous) commenters recently asserted that the male body was intrinsically ridiculous. Here I suspect there is a huge element of de gustibus. Now I admit that a naked male in full erection can make you look twice. And depending on the male, it may not be something you want to dwell on. On the other hand, didn't St Irenaeus say something about the glory of God and man fully alive?
And I will confess honestly, from my own gustibus, that the female body does not look quite right to me. Extra parts that get in the way and missing parts where there should be something substantial. Too soft, too round, too much give. Not enough muscle, or fur,or stubble. Just a general and lamentable lack of...masculinity. Pretty funny, huh? Well, waddaya expect from a Kinsey 7?
Speaking of sex and sin, two Woody Allen moments come to mind, he who used to be smart and funny many years ago. Diane Keaton saying after sex, "Well that was the most fun I ever had without laughing." I think she was missing something; really good sex, for me, provokes laughing, among other things! And then Allen's oft-quoted line, "Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go, it's one of the best!"
And a link to a brilliant brilliant 1977 operatic pop song by Meatloaf, Paradise By The Dashboard Lights. Adam and Eve after their expulsion from Eden into High School USA. Lyrics. Music. Brilliant. Brilliant.
I have riffed on the Catholic tradition to suggest that sex has three purposes: creation, communion and play.
And it makes sense to me to think that the best sex, teleologically speaking, if the kind that includes all three aspects in full measure. But lemme tell ya: two outta three ain't bad!
4 comments:
"the most fun I ever had without laughing" was said by Woody Allen's character Alvy Singer. (I checkt on line)
Again I marvel that you seem to have had no experience of bad sex -- bad in various ways. For example: sex you felt obligated to do but wasn’t enjoyable even vicariously (e.g. sex as a chore in a relationship or marriage that one wishes to maintain); sex addiction (far too much time and energy devoted to sex, seeking for sex, imagining sex, immersion in pornography) to the detriment of other important areas of your life, and for such paltry pleasure; sex fever (inability to sleep, inability to attend to anything but imagining sex with the obsessively desired person of the moment). Put simply, is “too much sex” an unintelligible phrase to you? … Both pop culture and high culture (alternative mysticism, Freud, etc) associate sex with bliss or at least with libido in some sense that connotes “life affirmation,” but my sense is that sex and sexual appetite is more usually boring and disappointing. “Sex and Despair” seems to me a psychological book just waiting to be written -- pop psychology or therapeutic etc psychology.
Asceticism’s invitation to mortify not only sin but also sexual desire has not seem’d doltish -- impossible and futile, or possible only by ruining one’s health, maybe, but not unintelligible. In contrast, it would seem a total doltish affront to good experience to invite to mortify enjoyment of music or swimming (your example: how wonderful is sex? you say it’s like swimming in the ocean -- although you have fear’d swimming in the ocean ever since seeing Jaws).
You say: »I have riffed on the Catholic tradition to suggest that sex has three purposes: creation, communion and play.« All very well for the theory of official purposes for sex. In practice sex is, I suspect, usually necessity, false pretenses, and chore.
When Zarathustra says sex (Wollust) for the rabble is “the slow fire on which they are burnded,” (Of the three evils ¶2), we don’t ask “Whatever could he be referring to?” Admittedly, though, I do wonder what he is referring to when he says that sex “for free hearts, innocent and free, the garden of happiness of the earth, the future’s exuberant gratitude to the present.” Is this your routine experience of sex? -- not divineness, but “sacramental” as you say. Your heart is free in this way, you are innocent and free? You sure it isn’t “a sweet poison” for you as one of the “wilted”?
What does make sense to me: Zarathustra says sex can be an invigoration of the heart when it is “the wine of wines” that is “reverently reserved” (sc never drink’d, but always consider’d in an anticipation of drinking). Without beautiful sensuous womengirls walking the earth, there would be far less yes-saying in my heart. Perhaps this is foolish of me -- in good and bad/evil ways?
Of course, this uses sex as “parable,” Zarathustra says. For the three evils concern the libido of the flesh, the pride of life (selfishness), the libido to rule), the libido of the eyes (avarice; the libido to rule). In Satan’s terms: turning stones to earthly bread, relying on the necessity of the ego or son; the dominion over the kingdoms of the oikoumene and their glories. Or in Ivan Karamazov’s terms: mystery, miracle, authority. … Still, though, you’re to be congratulated that you’re really getting into the libido of the flesh as you approach the age where one would expect you to turn senex.
Re: »On the other hand, didn't St Irenaeus say something about the glory of God and man fully alive?« Your implicit interpretation of this text or text fragment may be entirely accurate. The appearance of ridiculousness is not thereby removed or proved mistaken. (I think there are Greek statues with erections, but the ego faces look totally deranged --- in contrast to Michelangelo’s David.) … Consider’d from the vista of medicine or scientific anatomy, a woman’s body too may seem rather a contraption and to have a glory. Watching a nature show on PBS about birds, my grandmother once remark’d of a shoebill “How … wonderful that something can seem so ugly.” Beasts and birds, many of them, seem glorious to us even when they seem odd or bizarre. The Old Testament brings this out.
But at least as regards the beautiful young womangirl, psyche keeps us usually outside the perspective of medical anatomy, and women and men (most gay, not only the hetero) see the prime meaning of beauty and glory in her. Projecting that feminine identity --- she can overwhelm everyone in a room and yet is uncertain of who she is -- an attitude that is, as I’ve mention’d before, far more accurate than the male attitude of foursquare givenness and matter-of-factness in identity. (I often have wonder’d what I am, but never who I am, which is obtuse of me.) Accordingly, homoerotic art tends to lengthen a man’s legs so that his proportions become more like hers. ... Men in their glory à la conservative culture (Navy Seals, SAS, et al) are clothed; the clothing is intrinsic, not veiling and a protection of vulnerability as with womangirl’s clothing. Would you prefer handsome men at the academy awards, for instance, to wear not black tuxes but colourful and revealing attire either similar to actresses’ or in some style different from theirs? … Rousseauan nonlegitimateness provided for such an improvement in appearance for men: no more popinjayism! The colourful get-ups traditional for higher clergy rightly now seem laughable to us. To think that these styles once show’d the charisma of authority! … I deplore that the glory of Rousseauan nonlegitmateness for men and women are now eroded by ?postmodernist ?neo-paganist piercings and tattoos and bizarre little beards and so on. I suppose this objection makes me sound “fascistic.”
P.S. re Meatloaf: reminds me of an occasion at church, where the minister was asking for volunteers for some programme. He said of the organizers, “They want you. They need you.” I turn’d to my sister and whisper’d “But there ain’t no way they’re ever going to love you.”
Post a Comment