No Toys, Just Sex

Erotic Chinese Prints



The latest issue of Parabola magazine is devoted to sex, or rather, SEX, because everything in Parabola: Tradition, Myth, and the Search for Meaning is Profound, and worthy of bold caps. Even just bumping uglies.

Actually, it's an interesting issue, and worth checking out. There's a nice article by Trebbe Johnson, "Down Came the Door of Dharma" about the mythology of sex between humans and gods. Some nice art with that one (no color, but still nice.) There's a slightly appalling discussion of Christian notions of sex and spirituality by some guy named Eugene Myshkin (who he?), which includes this typical passage:

"One of Cain's descendants was Naamah, the daughter of Lamech. Her name means 'pleasant' and she is considered the first prostitute. Thus, through prostitution men joined pagan cults and became invisible members of the church of sin. For that reason, when Israel stopped worshipping Yahweh and turned to pagan cults with participation in their practice of prostitution, God said: 'you prostituted your beauty; and you spread your legs for every passer-by and you multiplied your whoredom' (EZ 16:25)"

Uh, thanks, Eugene. We couldn't have a profound discourse on SEX without reminding ourselves that girl=bad. Bad, bad, bad. Whores, all of us. Ever since Eve, etc. (For a look at who the real whores are, bop over and read "The Abstinence Gluttons" in the June 18 issue of The Nation.)

But there's not much of that particular theme, Parabola being generally devoted to a kumbaya view of the world. There's an obvious editorial effort to make sure the girls get theirs. In Rick Blum's "The Most Sacred of Places," Yahweh sets Moses straight on the fundamental righteousness of female desire, and a series of excerpts from various holy texts includes this gem from Igrot Moshe: "The duty of a man to engage his wife sexually is not contingent upon whether or not there is the possibility of pregnancy, for it is mandated in the responsibilities of marriage that she should receive pleasure and not suffer..."

Let's hear it for not suffering. Amen.

Sad to say, boy-boy/girl-girl pairings don't get much positive attention, although sacred texts that blather on about "abomination" and the like are carefully overlooked. There's a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" fable from Ireland (Ireland?), and a brief mention of guy love among the whales (whales?), but that's about it. Good ol' Eugene does allow as how deep friendship between men (aka, repressed homoeroticism) may be more pleasing to God than the sexual love of men and women, however spiritual--but I don't think we can count that as gay-friendly.

I thought the most moving contribution was the excerpt from Thomas Merton's journal, about his unconsummated, forbidden love for Margie Smith: "She will always be to me her soft voice speaking out of the depths of my own heart saying that the central reality of all is found in our love that no one can touch and no one can alter." Even though Merton clearly felt physical desire for Smith, and the denial of that desire was a large part of his torment over the affair, the passages from him paint the clearest portrait of the holistic nature of eros. Too often when we try to talk about the spiritual aspects of sex, we tend to get caught up in trying undo the false disconnect between the body and the soul. There's a lot of conceptual flailing around as we work hard at reconciling the down-and-dirty with our higher nature. But that approach only perpetuates the false disconnect, and obscures an important truth--that there is no separation between the down-and-dirty and our higher nature. We don't have to reconcile them, because they are the same thing, revealing itself in different ways.

Michael Sims, a terrific author I am lucky enough to know thanks to a shared association with The Nashville Scene, wrote something that suggested that totality of eros in a recent email to me. We were discussing the astonishing personal charm of a certain Famous Writer with whom we've both had incidental encounters:

"... It always seems to me that part of charm, in the most casual interaction or in dating or whatever, is the attentiveness. What is romance, after all, but being (seemingly) attended to as you secretly think you deserve? Then the attention fades and we say that the romance is gone. He has that romantic, attentive, charming way of peering at the world, in his writing, a somehow affectionate lust for description, for getting it all down. Lust and curiosity, those forbidden sins."

Every moment we are awake to the world and to each other, we are erotic creatures. Eros is the part of us that reaches out to engage another soul, or the face of the earth and all the beauty and horror in it. Sex is an inevitable, inseparable part of that. The moment you place a higher value on, say, the desire to see the Mona Lisa than on your curiosity about a potential lover's body, you lose a chance to understand either sex or spirit.