\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
So much noise all the time about sex.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean discussion of sex, or thought about sex-related issues.\u00a0 I mean just plain noise.\u00a0 Background noise.\u00a0 Yammering.\u00a0 Static.\u00a0 The kind of constant, ongoing noise pollution that does nothing more than make it difficult to focus on anything that really matters anyway.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like living next to the freeway, a city sort of thing.\u00a0 You get so used to the constant sound of traffic that you don\u2019t even realize there\u2019s a real racket going on all the time.\u00a0 Then one day you find yourself somewhere in the country.\u00a0 You wake up to real quiet, different from city quiet, and the absence of sound is deafening.\u00a0 It knocks you over.\u00a0 You breathe differently.\u00a0 You look around you differently.\u00a0 You notice things you never noticed before, or you notice familiar things in unfamiliar ways.\u00a0 Maybe you go running back to the known quantity of the bright lights and the noise.\u00a0 Maybe you just sit still and enjoy the way the noiselessness seeps into your bones.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bob Dole is on Bill Clinton\u2019s case for being soft on child pornography because a federal prosecutor in Arizona had reservations about setting up a government sting operation to catch viewers (not producers) of gay pornography.\u00a0 The prosecutor (a woman, by the way) allegedly felt that gays were being singled out unfairly.\u00a0 Despite the prosecutor\u2019s objections, the Justice Department\u2019s Project Special Delivery went on to arrest 70 men in the name of destroying the market for child pornography.\u00a0 But Bob Dole is running scared and can\u2019t afford to pass up an opportunity to put the words “children,” “pornography,” “unaggressive,” and “Bill Clinton” in the same sound bite.\u00a0 Sex noise.\u00a0 But, hell, it\u2019s nothing more than Electoral Politics 101:\u00a0 When in doubt make noise about something everyone is scared of.\u00a0 Like sex.<\/p>\n
Two prosecutors in the San Francisco District Attorney\u2019s Office have sex on a desk in an office after hours.\u00a0 Someone walks into the office at the wrong time and, omigod, it\u2019s a scandal.\u00a0 More sex noise.\u00a0 The two insufficiently discrete ones, their supervisor, and District Attorney Terry Hallinan all take heat.\u00a0 The upshot is that two people are out of a job, and neither of them is the person that Herb Caen, sensible at 80, correctly identified as the villain in the caper — the intruder who didn\u2019t have the good manners to simply close the door, and quietly go on his way.<\/p>\n
A man named Doug Blackie who lives in the town of Scunthorpe, Ireland, found that when he tried to register with America Online, AOL\u2019s indecency screening program would not allow him to post the name of his home town as part of his member profile.\u00a0 Can you guess why, dear smuthounds?\u00a0 I\u2019ll give you a hint:\u00a0 The situation was resolved when improperly racy Doug agreed to enter his town name as “Sconthorpe” instead.<\/p>\n
The New York Times<\/em> reports that “in a striking measure of changed sensibilities in school and society, showering after physical education class, once an almost military ritual, has become virtually obsolete.”\u00a0 The Times<\/em> article quotes one 18-year-old senior at a suburban Chicago high school:\u00a0 “Standing around together naked?\u00a0 Oh no, man — people would feel really uncomfortable about that.”<\/p>\n It\u2019s an old and boringly repetitive story, and I suppose there\u2019s no need to bitch and moan yet again about the whole antisexual mania.\u00a0 It\u2019s a little like complaining about gravity because it would be so nice to just be able to fly.\u00a0 I do know that antisexual noise is as much a fact of everyday life as is gravity, but my sex noise sensitivity seems to be on high these days, and sometimes the frustration that comes from years and years of having to struggle uphill about nothing at all just gets the better of me.\u00a0 How can anything so fundamentally nourishing and so simply delightful get so completely twisted and confused?<\/p>\n The annoying thing is that all the noisy antisexual fussing (and the accompanying hypersexual noise as well) has the effect of distracting us from the heart of the sexual matter (ok, one<\/em> heart of the sexual matter), something so uncomplicatedly profound and quiet that it easily gets lost among the various raucous commotions.\u00a0 Namely that underneath all the noise, sex is about some fundamental, primal, and universal needs of the human organism — things like love, intimacy, and the simple (though not easy) necessity of connecting deeply with other people.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Purple is the color of the longing<\/p>\n tucked into the folds of pulpy organs<\/p>\n soft and vulnerable.<\/p>\n A finger could pierce like a bullet<\/p>\n this swollen pulse.<\/p>\n An uncaring touch would tear to pieces<\/p>\n the soft fiber of its nest.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Defenseless it hides<\/p>\n in the soft warm dark<\/p>\n safe and alone<\/p>\n and dreams silently<\/p>\n of the most gentle hands,<\/p>\n hands that part the flesh with trembling care<\/p>\n inching open the egg,<\/p>\n hands that breathe, warm and moist,<\/p>\n attentive to the quietest heartbeats,<\/p>\n slow patient hands that touch<\/p>\n with no shadow of demand,<\/p>\n fingers that explore hinted textures<\/p>\n radiating wonder and discovery,<\/p>\n bridges delicate enough to join<\/p>\n one time<\/p>\n under the noise of aching lives<\/p>\n the being of one<\/p>\n with the presence of another.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Stan Dale, who has been leading sex workshops for twenty or thirty years, likes to ask the fundamental question, “What is sex?” and to marvel that after a whole lifetime of attending to the sexual perplex he still doesn\u2019t know the answer.\u00a0 At all.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t claim to have the answer either, or even to think that there is any one answer to the question of what lies at the heart of the sexual matter that makes sex so incredibly strong and powerful.\u00a0 Jack Morin, in his delightful new book, The Erotic Mind, observes that people\u2019s most intense sexual experiences derive from a process of overcoming various forms of sexual resistance or impossibility.\u00a0 Morin\u2019s basic erotic equation reads “attraction + obstacles = excitement.”<\/p>\n Now it goes without saying that in a culture that defines sex so fundamentally as something to be feared and suppressed there is tremendous emotional mileage to be made from the excitement of breaking antisexual taboos, both taboos that are externally imposed and those that we have internalized.\u00a0 But even if what people describe as their hottest sexual experiences often involve being bad in one way or another, there\u2019s something even more fundamental about sex that has nothing to do with breaking rules.\u00a0 Some very simple, very basic, stuff — large issues that ironically find expression through the smallest of particulars.\u00a0 Something as simple and complicated as finding one\u2019s way to some genuine, honest, caring contact between one human being and another.\u00a0 Something as fundamental as confirming to ourselves that, when all is said and done, we are not really alone in this lonely world.\u00a0 Something as essential as being able to create passing moments of unmistakable meaning and beauty as we make our ways through a world that is so largely dominated by meaningless ugliness.<\/p>\n Underneath all the noise, as far as I\u2019m concerned sex is about having the opportunity to bring real pleasure to someone we care about, to be able to communicate how much we care about them by participating in pleasure with them — physical, emotional, and even spiritual pleasure — in a way that reaches beyond surface wantings to something more basic, something more fundamental.\u00a0 It is through sex that we remember at some primal level that touch is love and warm is wonder, and through sex that we get to share that intimate recognition with people we care about.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n You ask what I want<\/p>\n as if we are in a doughnut store,<\/p>\n as if I could say:\u00a0 two glazed,<\/p>\n once chocolate old-fashioned,<\/p>\n or a jelly roll to go.<\/p>\n Always I am without words.<\/p>\n I move my mouth, say nothing.<\/p>\n What is this want?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s not like that, I say finally,<\/p>\n as if I don\u2019t want.<\/p>\n Yet I do.\u00a0 I go away empty,<\/p>\n the vacuum sucking at me.<\/p>\n I am hungry to put voice to the void<\/p>\n and still the words won\u2019t come….<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I want to see the bottoms of your eyes<\/p>\n looking into mine<\/p>\n beyond all images<\/p>\n beyond all history<\/p>\n beyond all wishes<\/p>\n beyond all hopes.<\/p>\n I want to feel all of your connection to me<\/p>\n in the tips of your fingers<\/p>\n in the texture of your mouth<\/p>\n in the flow of your breath<\/p>\n in the pulse of your blood.<\/p>\n I want to be with you<\/p>\n all the way up the mountain<\/p>\n and all the way down the other side.<\/p>\n I want to touch you<\/p>\n spirit to spirit<\/p>\n aura to aura<\/p>\n just to feel the colors mix and swirl.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you are with me, I will feel it.<\/p>\n If you love me, I will feel it.<\/p>\n If you run away, I will feel that too.<\/p>\n The body never lies.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what makes sex so vulnerable.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t you know?<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Aside from all the frenetic activity that takes up most of our days, what has real meaning when push comes to shove?\u00a0 At the risk of sounding like a Hallmark card, a little love, a little attention, a little caring, a little generosity, go a long way toward putting some solid ground under our feet in shaky times, and all of these are things we feel (at least on good days) when we\u2019re being sexual.<\/p>\n Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a profound sexual observer before he degenerated into a Rolls Royce driven media phenomenon, once said that if everything in your life can be expressed in words, you haven\u2019t really lived.\u00a0 Sex, among other things, is a language that allows us to communicate feelings that can\u2019t really be adequately expressed in other ways.\u00a0 Certainly not with words.\u00a0 I mean, how can saying or writing the words “I love you” really compare in eloquence to being touched or held or kissed or fucked in a complexly loving way?\u00a0 Some of the most important messages get communicated brilliantly through the smallest of\u00a0 gestures — a finger\u2019s touch, a hug, the way a palm shapes itself to a shoulder or a hip, not to mention the momentous connection embodied in the way a cock rests in the dark warm damp of a cunt.<\/p>\n In the forgivably heterosexual words of William Everson — Catholic monk, erotic poet, general eccentric, and sometime university professor, recently deceased at age 80 or so:\u00a0 “The phallos is holy and holy is the womb:\u00a0 the holy phallos in the sacred womb.\u00a0 The man, listening to the meaning of woman, hears her sound, for he is within her.\u00a0 And her womb and her body, murmuring, sing the feminine meaning, and they too listen.\u00a0 They lie with only their sex together, they taste communion.\u00a0 This: the whole of intentness now, this melting.\u00a0 The phallos loses all life of its own, at one with the woman.\u00a0 Her fire is his.\u00a0 In the vaginal dark, her body has wrought its meaning of meld.\u00a0 He becomes that meaning.”<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n It is 5:45 in the morning and even in the city there is relative quiet.\u00a0 First light is coming into the sky and the first bird of the morning has the stage all to itself.\u00a0 The razzle-dazzle of another day is about to begin and with it the opportunity to forget everything important we have ever known.\u00a0 The mystery of sex and its quiet wisdom will continue its subterranean wandering, drowned out as usual by the noise of a thousand new sexual rantings and ravings.\u00a0 It is the way of the world.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Face to face across the mirror<\/p>\n we dance slower than I have ever moved before,<\/p>\n staying exactly together<\/p>\n from first touch<\/p>\n to night<\/p>\n to morning<\/p>\n to noon.<\/p>\n We wait for one touch to be done<\/p>\n before even imagining the next.<\/p>\n We bleed into each other.<\/p>\n We drink each other, drop by drop,<\/p>\n miss nothing along the way.<\/p>\n Everything I give in my touch you receive,<\/p>\n and your fingers answer with all of you.<\/p>\n There is no coming or going,<\/p>\n only being here,<\/p>\n totally alive, totally aware.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n June 1, 1996<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 1996 David Steinberg<\/p>\n So much noise all the time about sex. I don\u2019t mean discussion of sex, or thought about sex-related issues. I mean just plain noise. Background noise. Yammering. Static. The kind of constant, ongoing noise pollution that does nothing more than make it difficult to focus on anything that really matters anyway.<\/p>\n It\u2019s like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comes-naturally","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}