Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression (11 page)

I realized that by
no sex
the medical authorities meant vaginal intercourse. They were concerned that the opening from my vagina to my uterus would still be dilated, and more vulnerable to an infection from my lover’s penis. The warning hid a hundred assumptions: that there is no sex besides vaginal intercourse, that you can’t see your os yourself with a speculum to see how you’re healing, and, for that matter, that a man can’t wear a condom or be gentle. And besides, I’d had a cesarean, so my vagina was completely untraumat-ized to begin with. Guess what? I didn’t follow their stupid rule! Of course I was sore and exhausted and cranky, but being made love to with the greatest tenderness, when I wanted it, was one of the things that kept me going.

Parents of babies and young children feel that their sex life is stolen from them because their spontaneity is sacrificed; the pattern they’ve built of seducing each other is wrecked, or it’s rebuilt only with the most careful stacking of schedules, baby-sitters, and a week without catching yet another one of their kid’s many illnesses. Many people feel that they know what all the right steps are to have time alone together, but that parenthood ruins it for them.

More than one couple has told me that they “pretend” to have sex dates. They agree to this charade for the sake of their therapists or to appease the friends they’ve complained to in the past. My friend Chris told me that he and his wife are paying eighty dollars a week to go to a therapist, but then they lie to the shrink about having weekly sex dates. In fact, he’s having sex with pros on the phone and Internet. And who knows what she’s doing; I’m not her confid-ant. It does prove a point to me, though—you do end up having a sex life, a private life of one sort or another. It’s just a question of whether your spouse is part of it or even privy to it.

I think what takes a symbolic beating, post-baby, isn’t our sex drive so much as our romantic idealism. Frankly, it’s appropriate to revise our expectations, and it needs to happen long before a new member of the family arrives like a tornado. If you like your partner, if you are attracted to him or her, then you need to spend enough time together to express yourself in a number of ways; that’s what keeps your interest alive and your connection close. If your collab-oration looks the same every day, day after day, then you’re going to burn out, whether it’s arguing over dirty diapers or doing cross-word puzzles.

You also have to face jealousy head-on; your own baby will show you soon enough what that’s all about, even if you’re still in denial. With kids, your mission is to show them that there’s enough love to go around, that when you go away you will come back, and that they need to respect your privacy as well as their own. They will get jealous when they see you paying attention to someone else. When your infant howls or your toddler throws a fit, you’ll see just how natural jealousy is—but you’ll also see the “natural” wisdom of separating yourself, with love, from those you love.

Where our partners are concerned, it’s just as wise to respect their independent interests, their time to be alone, their right to masturbate and fantasize as they wish. Whatever your opinions of open or monogamous marriage, you should be wary of making erotic fidelity the be-all and end-all of genuine loyalty. I know this goes against all the old-fashioned marriage oaths, but how can I keep from pointing out that it’s those old-fashioned delusions that so often get us into trouble?

A lot of couples think that they’re keeping their spark alive with jealousy, but ultimately it’s a killer. Jealousy is not about lust or love; it’s about control and possession. I have a loyalty to my partner that resides in what’s important to us and what makes us feel cared for and defended; wearing a pretty little leash has nothing to do with it.

I don’t believe you can purge jealousy from your soul, but you do have to put it in its place. I get jealous as easily as I feel any of my babyish feelings, and I recognize them for that. Sometimes I’ll ask my lover for reassurance, but often I’ll tease him or make fun of myself. I’ll shout my most paranoid fantasy, because just saying it out loud makes me laugh at its absurdity: “You’re leaving me for the Girl Scout Cookie Delivery Bitch!” Being a jealous vixen is very cathartic as long as you declaw before the performance begins.

We don’t tell our children that we will never love other children besides them—but we do tell them that they will always have our love. We don’t have a report card going on their lovability; they are always in our embrace. We want so much to tell them the truth and simultaneously to protect them from its harshness. We want to cherish them forever, but we want them to make wonderful lives on their own.

There’s a compassion for and an acceptance of contradiction in our love for our offspring that would be just as beneficial for

our lovers and dearest friends. When I have raised my ideals for what I need to be a good nurturer—whether it is patience, acceptance, sensual affection, or imagination—then I have raised my own quality of life, my passion for everything. Many people have been proud to say that being a parent made them better people; but because of our ill-understood taboos, parents have been afraid to say that their maturity as nurturers made them better lovers as well.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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SOULED-OUT SEX

Sensuality isn’t worth a hair more than spirituality, and it’s the same the other way around. It’s all one, everything is equally good. Whether you embrace a woman or make a poem, it’s the same. So long as the main thing is there, the love, the burning, the emotion, it doesn’t matter whether you are a monk on Mount Athos or a man about town in Paris.

Hermann Hesse

S
hortly after I began writing this book, I went to see my chiropract-or—a woman who’s brought me a great deal of pain relief, healing, and body awareness over the years.

When I told her I was writing a new book about creativity and eroticism, she winced and said, “Oh, no, it’s not going to be
The Soul of Sex,
is it? I’m so sick of those books with
soul
in the title.”

I immediately sympathized with her anxiety. The New Age influence is so pervasive, and its definitions so fuzzy, that faced with anything having to do with spirituality, many people feel only pure dread. There is so much chicanery, and so many Let’s-Make-a-Quick- Buck-off-Your-Soul activities in the fields of alternative health and spirit, that even to talk about the soulful aspects of sex seems to invite a hot dose of skepticism—my own in particular.

My first major embarrassment in the New Age Sex Wars happened when I worked at Good Vibrations, which had a very good library of books on every aspect of sexuality. I was eager to have something on hand to suit every customer’s dream or dilemma, and I was surprised to see how many men were coming in and asking for a good book on Tantric sex.

I grew up with parents who had lived in India in the 1950s—before the patchouli-incense youth explosion—and my acquaintance with Tantra had to do with the classical books and art I had examined at home. The literature, I knew, was eloquent (albeit rather retrograde in the gender department) on the topic of physical and spiritual fulfillment. Gosh, what a surprise to find so many men taking an interest in Hinduism!

As I spoke to these customers in more detail, however, I realized that few of them had any serious interest in religion, sacred texts, or history. What they thought Tantra meant was “how to get an erection whenever I want one and keep it going for hours and hours without flagging.” They were impressed by notions of Hindu gods who are endlessly virile and who have luscious babes in saris falling all over themselves trying to worship their lingam. They thought that Tantra is a physical trick, like wiggling your ears, that will produce the ultimate hard-on. Plus, they were so upset about what they regarded as their inferior sexual perfor-

mance that they were eager to try any sort of chanting, cock rings, or yoga headstands to achieve mastery over their phallus.

Understanding their true motives made me want to eliminate any book with the word
Tantra
from our shop. These men were being sorely misled about the real nature of sexual satisfaction (not to mention Hinduism)—and about how to change their sexual responses if they wanted to. Those same customers have now abandoned their earnest treks to Indian mysticism and instead are demanding Viagra.

There is only one “secret” to prolonging one’s erection before cli-max, and it is common to every culture and religious background: masturbation. I know the word doesn’t have the cachet of the
Kama Sutra,
but the simple fact is that men who experiment and play with their arousal, getting to know every nuance of their genitals and reactions, are the ones who have the most control over their ejacula-tion.

Women, too, gain the best knowledge of their orgasm through masturbating. Some may fantasize about the perfect lover who has the time and expertise to thoroughly explore and understand their body. But even if such a dream lover existed, it would not be the same as the knowledge gained through self-touch.

Certainly breath control, fantasy, and creative thinking can all influence an orgasm, but at a certain point you have to acknowledge your own body’s responses and practice them. It’s this kind of “fooling around” that is most effectively done when you’re not performing for anyone, when you’re alone and can concentrate simply on your own body and thoughts.

Men are accustomed to associating masturbation with juvenile behavior, with the guy who “can’t get any.” Most married men are regular masturbators, but no doubt many of them are

ashamed of that fact or hide it from their partners, as if it were a rejection of their spouse. Masturbation is not a rejection of anyone, and although Tantric philosophy will lead you to similar egoless conclusions, you don’t need to take a quick pass at a centuries-old religious practice to get that simple message. When I tell men to save the Tantric chitchat and start jerking off with pride, they can barely believe me. But it’s true—every tip, every treatment, every spiritual practice that addresses sexuality has self-discovery through masturbation at its core.

Some people associate masturbation with some sort of selfish isolation—the sure way to never go out on a date again, because you’re so infatuated with your own hand. But why do we think that solo erotic practice is so different from, say, violin practice? Do we listen to musicians rehearsing their instrument and bemoan the fact that they’re never going to want to play with anyone else ever again? No, our practice as solo lovers gives us some of the most precious knowledge that we can bring to our partners.

Some of my spiritual-seeking customers were offended that I even mentioned their penis in the first place. What they wanted was a sexual ecstasy that built up in their heart and filled their whole body with light—the kind of One-God, One-Love, One-Bliss-Out eroticism that didn’t dwell in the lowly genital regions. Many women on the New Age erotic path felt this way as well—that a physical orgasm was only a speck of what sexual enlightenment could really mean. Part of me was quick to agree with them. I was delighted that they didn’t think of their sexual bodies as mere machines that you pump quarters into and pull the handle. I’ve had great sex without any erections whatsoever; I’ve had kisses that bordered on extrasensory

hallucinations; I know what a look across a

crowded room can do to your body temperature. Everything about sexual pleasure is initiated in our minds, and this capacity is le-gendary.

Yet I also could see a certain judgment against lust and physical gratification from some of the New Age books and teachers. Some of this is because teachings based on various religions (whether Hinduism, Islam, or Judaism) are just as influenced by puritanical, ascetic, and sexist traditions as is Christianity.

It’s not that far from being an uptight WASP, shamed about sex and its attendant desires, to being a New Age Seeker who disdains all the earthly appetites. Such people believe that if they lose their need for food, sleep, and sex, they will get closer to God. I think they’re getting closer to losing their minds. Their wish to lose their “animal” self, to be closer to enlightenment, ignores the fact that our bodies are not simply ungainly and distracting containers; our creaturehood is essential to our creative powers.

If you are drawn to a nontraditional, non-Western ideology, ask yourself where sexual liberation lies in its philosophy. Are masculine and feminine roles fluid and accommodating, or are they drawn to fit a predetermined role? Does your faith tell you that masturbation is selfish, that it wastes one’s precious energy? Or that monogamy is the only mature relationship in the eyes of your God? Are you led to believe that your sexual satisfaction is something that only your faith can give you, or something that must be sacrificed to get closer to essential truths?

If any of these Rules of Living sound familiar, ask yourself why something that is supposed to be so very divine and far-reaching—a tradition far beyond your own conventional church upbringing—would hand you the same load of body-loathing, double-standard, sexually shaming intolerance. Where’s the higher ground in that?

I lost two lovers, who I cared for deeply, to the conservative and oppressive wings of alternative religions. It would be easy to call their groups crazy cults—but then I always thought it was unfair to call someone in a turban a cult member while treating a Roman Catholic bishop as if he were perfectly legitimate. A religion is just a cult whose bank account has reached critical mass; witness the sterling success of the Moonies and the Scientologists.

I was curious to see how my converted lovers would treat the sexual concerns that they had before they joined their new church. One of them, my boyfriend Mark, worried that he failed to keep an erection as long as he thought he was supposed to; he ignored the fact that I was satisfied, and he disregarded the pleasure of his own orgasm. It also troubled him when we had any kind of sex that reminded him of homosexuality. I was so naive about what triggers men’s “Am a I fag?” hallucinations that I had to pester him to tell me what he was in such a stew about.