Sex and Spring Cleaning

(story)

It's spring again!  Time to take your broom and sweep those memes of patriarchy from the corners of your mind.  Take down the expensive notions stored in your mental cupboards, dust them off and figure out which ones were rotten when you bought them.  Heave out that junk you've got concealed in the basement moaning at you through the night.

How tiresome, though… why not let the stuff sit another year?  You're used to the smell by now… well, not really.  Okay, what would get you psyched up for this job?  How about... SEX! 

Never fails (unless you're too depressed).

Hmm, let's see what we can easily send to the dump, while playing sex loudly in the background for motivation.

There's that junk you moved out behind the house years ago, but haven't actually disposed of: "bodies are bad," "sex is bad," and "you've got to restrain the dirty tendency to feel sexual about all those different people at once."

Yes, you realize such attitudes were delivered to you by a sick and twisted culture, but you just hate to get rid of them.  Who knows, they might come in handy some day (like when other people make you mad or scared, but we won't talk about that).

Where did those values come from, and why are they so strong?  Is it really wise to question the judgment of a hundred billion flies?  Or a billion patriarchs (a patriarch being any insecure boy with too much power)?  We're talking here about core patriarchal values. 

To review the basics, animal males have a biological imperative to compete for the privilege of impregnating females.  Females have a corresponding imperative to be impregnated by the best available mating stock, and be supported during pregnancy and early child-rearing as effectively as possible, to ensure the children's prosperity.

This translates into a strong human instinct to form one primary mating bond, and to buttress it with secondary sex partners as a form of reproductive insurance.  If you haven't read Helen Fisher's Anatomy of Love, she has a nuanced perspective on our wonderful animal nature, which expresses itself in every known culture around the world.

In cultures ruled one-sidedly by men, though — yes, classical Western European culture falls into this category — male competition takes a pathological form in which men try obsessively to control women so as to eliminate the horror of other people's sperm.

So, women are supposed to remain virgins until they marry, and thereafter fuck only their husbands.  In ancient Athens and many third-world patriarchies today, people assume the only way to ensure this is to lock women up.  Thanks to the relentless efforts of Christian patriarchs, though, it's been clear since Victorian times that middle-class taboos can be almost as effective. 

It doesn't matter whether women like the resulting sex — the main thing is, they have to breed.  Because they have so little choice about sex, it's actually preferable that they don't like it, so they won't be tempted to "cheat" on this wonderful marriage arrangement. 

You probably don't want that kind of toxic waste stacked up outside your bedroom window, so maybe it's time to dump the "sex is bad," "bodies are bad" stuff into the fires of the sun once and for all.

Throwing out "sex is bad," of course, still leaves "love is often painful," and even if bodies are yummy, we're all surprisingly picky about whom we want to touch and when and how.  The mate selection process has a lot more to it than social conditioning.

Nonetheless, doesn't it feel good to have cleared out the back yard a bit?

Well, how about tackling some of those leather-bound tomes in the library?  The spiritual rulebooks, for example, or the hot-sex rulebooks (let's keep this dirty).

So many people find comfort in following the teachings of great spiritual leaders like Jesus, Muhammad, or Aleister Crowley.  I mean, these guys were experts, right?  A lot of pagans want to be sure to stick to time-tested spiritual norms like the ancient Greek or Celtic or Norse or Native American or Voudon traditions — it's so important to follow someone else's authentic spirituality.

Similarly, we all learned that there's a right way to have sex.  Not with yourself.  Not with someone whose genitals resemble yours.  You ought to want it all the time but not too much.  Only with one person.  At a time. Although you have to be open minded.  Be responsible.  It should go on for days. Don't break the orgasm rules.  How fast should you come?  How many times?  Are you competent yet?  Well at least you're better than that person… just how inadequate are you, anyway?

One of the wonderful things about spring cleaning is to reassure yourself that eroticism and spirituality are personal.  They aren't about anyone but you.  Sure, you share them with people you care about, but it's your interior feelings that are important, and you own them.

Maybe other people experience sex differently.  Maybe they relate differently to divinity.  Maybe they have different reactions to sunsets or lying on the beach.  So what?  You're the one living here, and it's your experience that makes up your life.

Which is not to say other people's experiences aren't important — if you're having sex with someone else, it's way nicer when you can give them a lot of pleasure too.  The thing is, there aren't exactly rules for doing that. Not only is every single one of us different, but we change from minute to minute, day to day, year to year.  I think a good lover is someone who feels love, and is willing to be generous out of that feeling.

We can certainly learn from other people's spiritual experiences. Over millennia of spiritual practice, lots of wonderful images and techniques have been formalized all across the world.  The key is, these are most useful as sources of inspiration, not as rules.  Sure, lots of religious organizations pretend they've discovered spiritual laws analogous to natural laws.  They tell you you can't be doing it right if you're not following their recipe.  That's politics, not spirituality.  Just as each of us is sexually unique, each of us is spiritually unique too.  One size doesn't fit two, much less all.

Sex and spirituality have in common that the only goals in these areas of your life are ones you accept for yourself — outside of that there's no success or failure.  I believe the challenge in both areas is to keep exploring bravely, choosing your paths thoughtfully, informed by love and generosity to yourself and others.

And it's interesting — wisdom in these area doesn't always come with age and experience.  Often we know things when we're young that we forget as we move along, even while we learn new things.  Spiritual and erotic wanderings are not linear.  So pay no heed to people who speak dismissively of neophytes — I, for one, would love to relearn some of the things I knew as a raw kid. 

Okay, lug the boxes of weighty leather-bound rulebooks out of the library for recycling, while hanging onto all your shelves of well-thumbed spiritual/erotic travelogue paperbacks.

Now, how about that mess in the bedroom closet?

You know, all those things you haven't said over the years… the weird hurts, hopes and dreams that would make you look so stupid and selfish if you didn't put them right into the closet and shut the door.  Better throw all that stuff out, right?

Because after all, sex is perfectly natural — if you and a lover are at all normal and competent, it just happens between you in lovely unspoken harmony, never requiring the least negotiation.  Which just proves two things you've always suspected: your lovers were all incompetent, and you're a substandard freak. 

Well, get a big garbage bag.  Start by putting into it a couple of lovely romantic ideas you probably keep right beside the bed.  For example, the concept that you shouldn't have to express what you want because a lover will just know it if s/he's any good.  And you shouldn't say anything that might imply your lover isn't already doing what you want (that would be rude).  And you shouldn't explore those weird kinky things you fantasize about but find so disturbing (they're sick and it wouldn't work).  Such glistening trinkets are usually kept in a beautiful crystal bowl that says you don't really need responsibility and power in your own sexual journey. 

I know, those are pretty ideas, especially the bowl of helplessness, but they've got to go before you can even get the closet door open (funny how it sticks in wet weather).

Going through the closet can be fun, but it may take years to leaf through all the piles of old fantasies and desires you've never used while separating fear and resentment into a throw-away pile.  At first, your impulse may be to throw everything away because it's all so childish and impractical, but that'll only make the closet door stick worse.

A more useful approach is gradually to translate agendas for other people into agendas for yourself.  "I wish s/he loved me more" can become "I wish I didn't feel so incomplete."  "I wish my lover was physically different" (better-looking, bigger/smaller tits/cock, wants sex more/less)  can become "I want to get more turned on and feel more satisfed."  "I wish my lover were more considerate" can become "I want to have more control in our sex life."  "I wish my lover weren't attracted to other people" can become "I wish I weren't so scared of being left."  The advantage of such translations is that you have vastly more power to change yourself than to change others.

Once you've begun translating stuff and throwing out the resentment and fear, you can gradually move things out of the closet.  By the goddess, you can take more control of your sex life.  You don't have to be stuck anywhere — you can stand up and move.  Translated wishes are always a lot more work than the other kind, but it's fun when you realize you can actually make them come true.

Well, that's a good start on spring cleaning, but where's the actual SEX?  Go on, take a break — stroll into erotic meadows with a friend or by yourself, and pick a wildflower — it's spring.

(originally published in 2000 in Widdershins volume 6, issue 1).