It beats like a drum, in harmony with the synthesizer beats at the club last night. Thump thump thump. It explodes in thousands of colors… colors more like temperatures – bursting in orgasmic pulses, throughout every limb. It flickers, then ignites for that impressive instant… until it consumes its beholder. And all that’s left are ashes, floating and billowing around a memory… a firmament held in the cerebral labyrinths that constitutes depression.
Should we consciously consider love? Or should we just allow the threads to wind themselves, coil and uncoil, under the surface of nonchalance?
I’ve a friend who has recently undergone a sexual revolution. With fervor she pursues the impulses of her ID, much in the vein of Colette or Anais Nin. No attachments and no regrets. Just exploitations that could fill the pages of a French erotic novel, or a sultry publication of the like.
I, on the other hand, am much less bold and masculine in my approach to sex and romance. I feel as though engaging in a sex act constitutes much more than ephemeral pleasure, but an attachment and a security. Perhaps it takes much more experience in the romantic field to prepare one’s self for the glory of casual sex. Or, perhaps I will never find it.
So, do I begrudge my friend of her exploits? Do I shamefully and proudly (a dichotomy that somehow works in this situation) hide beneath my own protected skin? Or am I bearing a false security to hide my own ambivalence?
Something I’ve deduced through my observations is that, whether casual or formal, sex is personal. It’s the personal declaration of one’s instinctual impulses. That thump thump that pours through their veins, manifesting itself in the form of tangible bodily fluids. Some are more honest to these feelings, some question them, and some suppress them until they backfire.
I often feel as though we understand each other through others. We realize who are through reactions from other people, results of our accomplishments, the shadows of our actions. Whenever I try to look into myself, explore “me” through internal excavations, all I get are muddied results. The high-pitched yelping laugh of Coral, the squinty nose tell-tale of confusion of my friend, or the inquisitive, yet, endearing eyebrows of a lover, tell me more about myself than I could ever figure with my own devices. I suppose this goes back to Freud’s analysis of the story of Joab. The analysis presented an angry God, who envied man for his self-reflective ability. It presented a God who did not know himself, for he couldn’t learn from his mistakes, or absorb the reactions of others.
Perhaps I’ve gone on a bit of a tangent here. But, I feel as though sex is an act of understanding. It is, perhaps, the most intimate of connections. Dialectics get us nowhere… they push us into an elastic circumference of confusion. But through thrusts and that exquisite warmth, we understand. We communicate. And when that feeling capitulates to frivolity, I think we’ve lost something very important.
