STRIX’S JOURNAL - ENTRY 0110

SEX IS NOT A HUMAN RIGHT (0110):

Sex is not a human right. A man does not have a right to a woman's body, nor a woman to a man's.

 Sex is not just a physical act. We are spirit veiled through flesh; we are the shape of the Spirit on Earth. The Spirit is woven within the flesh. You cannot separate the two, no more than you can have a body after which the DNA has been removed. A physical Tabula Rasa.

What if Houellebecq was right and cloning replaces sexual reproduction?

With that in mind how do I live and have a relationship with a girl, a woman? How do I have 'sex' with someone? Well, I know the physical mechanics of it all; raise and bend leg R and insert penis P into opening V, etc.

“And I have to speculate
That God himself did make
Us into corresponding shapes
Like puzzle pieces from the clay.”

Or so the poet laureate of Indie rock sang! This is the view from Such Great Heights! 

If sex is a spiritual act, then how does that work? Is it just an ideal? When we are one, 'connected', how does this express itself spiritually? There are good and bad spiritual experiences for sure. Spirituality is never casual, never for one night only.

What do I want from my lover? I want her to cherish this body and I will cherish hers? That's all. That's enough. For that I would die...although she would have to be careful not to kill me by leaving me breathless. My disease can kill!

 CHERISH YOUR BODY

Cherish...not use...your body for their gratification. To be one flesh, so that there is no 'other'. Connected. One, not two. Sounds good, if...there is someone out there!

But my peers expect my compliance with everything from sex to drinking and drugs to rebellion. Everyone's doing it, but the 'majority' can be wrong can't they? And if everyone is doing it because they have to conform to 'belong', then where is the freedom? We trade it away so easily. How can I be an individual and act like everyone else? Can we have individuality without identity?

I think people drink to excess and take drugs so that they can have sex and forget, or have sex and lose their inhibitions about intimacy. Inhibitions? So, really we aren't free and are reliant on chemical agents to create the illusion of freedom? Is that it? Is sex so repugnant that we need to be...unconscious...out of our heads...to do it?

We form this dependency in the name of freedom.

What are we frightened of? If our greatest need is intimacy, then why are we so afraid of it?

How to break the cycle?

 Non-cooperation. Be big enough, free enough to say no? But is saying no, enough?

 Don't you just get a name for being frigid, or cold, or just freakin' incapable? A gawk! Celibacy isn't enough.

We, I, have to have a different way of life, of connecting. I think part of my problem is that girls are so frightening. They are totally other. What appeals to me, doesn't appeal to them. What I need in sex, as if I knew what I needed (!), isn't the same as them. How can you be open enough with someone to say what you need, well, what you think you need?

Girls worry me. You just look at them and you know they know something, something that you don't. Like they know what they need from a relationship and you don't! You could spend the rest of your life trying to find out. It's a kind of mysticism. Very worrying if you ask me.

 Intimacy isn't just an act; it is a way of life. What makes people frightened of being open to share their needs and desires? What is it with me...rejection, that they'll think I'm a freak. How about other people? Maybe you only say this kind of thing once, to the person you love.

 INHALING, EXHALING, TOUCHING, CARESSING AND WHATEVER FOLLOWS

Say? Once? Why do we think that communication about sex has to be verbal? Sex, for the idealist in me, is a language all of its own, a physical, tactile thing. We respond physically with different parts of our body, inhaling, exhaling, touching, caressing, our backs arch, our heads fall back. That's a language, right? Like movement is for a dancer or music a musician. Meaning isn't only conveyed when they talk about it, but when they perform it. Only the sexually illiterate have to talk about sex! Only the sexually illiterate need a sex manual! It’s all about technique...allegedly.

Touch is an art; it is its own language, developed in the absence of fear. It is developed through being naked together and unashamed.

Embarrassment is rooted in fear. Love overcomes fear. Fear impedes love. Mechanical sex is the absence of human language and intimacy is not a technique.

Can we think of intimacy like that? We can rationalise or psychologise it; perhaps it has its own language. Spirituality is sensual; it's about knowing without the need for articulating. That takes away the tyranny of proselytising I suppose, when you have to formulate, conventionalise, codify and programme it so that it can be communicated for others to adopt. We don't communicate sensually, but logically, as if spirituality is about that. As if sexuality is about that.

What would it look, feel like, if we communicated those things sensually? Perhaps having an intimate relationship with someone needs to start this way; exploring touch as an art and not a technique that works for everyone?

Whilst the world we live in numbs us, perhaps such a relationship could re-sensitise us to the spiritual, the intimate other? Maybe our fear is part of that numbness and our resurrection means an end to our phobias?

Until then, intimacy will frighten me!

“We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion”

(East Coker - TS Eliot)

Strix