Except for sex. I think what's appealing to me about sex is not the actual friction between body parts-- although that's pretty damn good, too--but the out-of-body, out-of-your-fucking-mind, brain/body explosion that happens during the best sex. Good sex is just somehow...beyond. You're extremely focused on the Now, the line between you and other is blurred, and, in the best moments, you feel like you and the Universe are sort of throbbing together as one. Which sounds a lot like religious ecstasy. (Other times it's just you and your partner, or your hand, or your vibrator--you get off, then go about your day. Which is fine as well.)
In an oldish issue of Playboy, Samantha Gillison wrote a wonderful essay "The Platonic Ideal" on this idea of sex as route to the Divine. I would link to it, but-- incredibly in this day and age--it is not available on-line! Well, unless you pay. That's why this month I am a member of iPlayboy.com, for you, dear reader.
In Gillison's piece, she describes the moment she became illuminated on the joys of giving head. It was after a Bad Brains concert, and in the darkness of the parking lot, she knelt before her date.
We could have been strangers--we almost were--and somehow the darkness, the anonymity of the situation liberated me from worrying about doing something wrong or feeling self-conscious. I allowed myself to sink deep into the fantasy of what it must feel like for him--the pressure, the warmth, the wetness. All of a sudden the only thing in the world was that cock and my connection to it.
Previously, Gillison had thought of blow jobs as something you gave, like a gift, or something you did as a favor. Plus there was some fear and uncertainty.
It was just that I was unsure of cock when I got up close to one; it contained unreadable male mysteries. I might hurt it or maybe just do nothing right. Maybe I looked ridiculous. I didn’t really know which parts of it wanted to be touched, or how. It seemed to be its own creature, almost uncannily separate from the man who owned it. Perhaps simpleminded but authoritarian and judgemental.
This time, however, she had a revelation.
But starting that night in the parking lot, I began to understand the profound, dirty pleasure of giving blow jobs. It isn’t just that I discovered how much I like being in control, how much I like giving the kind of pleasure that makes someone helpless, and how intoxicating it is to be on the receiving end of hurricane-levels of desire. But, that night, it was also the revelation of the particular male smell you get up close with a cock and balls that turned me on in ways that are almost beyond description. It was like being inside sex.
"Being inside sex." Dear God.
Plato said that human beings can only truly access the divine through sexual ecstasy, Eros. This has always made so much sense to me. When else are humans as rapt by feeling as when they come and when they touch God? That feeling of connection to the universal, the feeling of having exited my own body as I orgasm is nothing other than touching the infinite.
Yet I have never been able to get close to that Platonic, out-of-my-mind kind of sexual ecstasy unless I can satisfy a primal hunger: Whether in fantasy or reality, I need a connection to another equally raunchy human being. It has always been the case with me, since I was a teenager, that I have to see someone else’s horniness in order to feel horny. What I happily realized on my knees in the parking lot is that an erect cock in my face is among the most blatant ways of experiencing the realness of someone else’s desire I’d ever encountered. And every time, it spurs a response in me, hot and dark and if I’m doing something transgressive in the best possible way.
Blow jobs! Philosophical talk! The phrase "erect cock in my face"! Gah, I am a goner! LOVE this $%$#!
I'll add a little bit more of her essay, because I want to make sure I don't stray from "fair use" territory to "stealing" and "copyright infringement." Here's Gillison on the experience of blowing a long time friend and feeling, then overcoming, the awkwardness inherent in that particular situation.
But then a supple communication started between me and his penis as I began to suck, a communication beyond words and much deeper than any we had ever had before.
His cock felt so sexy in my mouth, hard and hot and aching with desire. But I could also feel how much of this man was being revealed to me: his sexuality, his vulnerability, his musky smell.
Soon the connection started to feel like a merging, as though I was experiencing that blow job too. It felt crazy, off-the-charts raunchy, to fantasize that I was not only giving head but getting it. All of a sudden I was overwhelmed by pure animal pleasure. I was so turned on that I came.
Since that night’s discovery I always revel in the double fantasy of giving and receiving. And I honor the wisdom of the old Greek philosophers who pointed out that although the Divine is inscrutable, it is easy to find while sucking on a dick.
And there is no better way to end a post than what Gillison ended with right there, so I will leave you to your day.
xoxoxo
jill
* Afterword: Do NOT do a Google image search for "penis public domain." Hideous medical photos! "Lesion on the glans"! Holy crap! Look away! Look away!
photo: William M. Rattase
