2. (Sarah)
I think tonight is going to be an exciting night. My heart is ready to be alive again. Let me take my time, like I've done for the last two months. I've wanted to go back to visit Main Man, but I didn't feel I should hurry. I wanted to take my time.
I think it started when I thought about something I'd said earlier, that "I was pretty much a virgin." That wasn't exactly true. The clarification is a story but I'm not ready to tell it now. The important point, I decided, was that maybe there was something to my feeling at that time — my feeling of not having fully arrived. I realized I wasn't fully there, even after my visit to Main Dude's incredible castle. It was fun and pleasurable and so validating, in ways I still don't fully understand. Yet I didn't feel like I was fully there, fully aware. Was something missing? It went so fast. Maybe its difficult to absorb the first time or two? Maybe sex isn't an all-or-nothing deal?
I realized I was full of questions, and I wanted some education. What could I do? Society keeps sex hidden — or at least implicit — in the day. And the nights are obviously dark and dangerous, nowhere for a sensitive person to explore. I wasn't ready for sex shops, and my friends laughed when I bordered on bringing the topic up. The internet was my only hope. But as I looked and looked, I found that education wasn't easy to find! That seemed odd. It was so
easy
to find crap, commercial exploitation. Like the strip malls that surrounded my neighborhood — they were easy to find, indeed, impossible to avoid. But nice stuff, like nature, or beauty, or just a place to walk or be with people, are all crowded out. Is exploitation all this planet is good for?!
But slowly, eventually, and after persistence, I found some fertile grounds. There were nice articles in the Wackypedia, and Koogle turned out an honest tool — 'sex education' meant that. So ironic! And there was lots of fiction, at all levels of quality. So many ways of being! So much variety!
So I read a lot. I had many feelings. I felt good, and sometimes I felt bad. I decided I should catalog those feelings, maybe even write a book. But not now.
I did find some prizes. The first was technical information, which I applied and practiced, all in my safe bedroom lab. Mmmm.
But then the outside world intruded on my life and the work situation got bad. Exploitive assholes who can't get kicks in more constructive ways, trying to drain the life out of me. Even mean vampires would be better, or at least more honest. I got angry, and then depressed. Surfing went morbid. And wow, I found some negative takes on sexuality.
It seems that for much of human history, the doctrine was that sex was evil. As I comprehended their arguments, I stepped into sinkholes of guilt. Sex, the original sin. Treatises on the mortal sin of masturbation, perhaps the best and most evil example of self absorption. I was often self absorbed, and sometimes it was my only pleasure. Had I spent too much time alone? Was that my busy parents fault? Am I just another narcissistic failure in a generation raised without proper fear of hellfire?
The thought of going to church entered my mind for the first time. Fortunately, it left. I just couldn't believe their doctrine. Their hypocrisy was just so obvious. Look what the church's 'just say no' doctrine led to. Thank god I was never an alter boy! I twisted the phrase to make the irony clear.
"Just say 'no,'
to a billion neurons?!"
Yet, it seemed that saying 'yes' could be a joke too. Yes, I probably could have learned to fit into the sex-teen stereotype that most of our culture implicitly encourages, while hypocritically mouthing 'no'. Most kids in high school did try to fit, me included. But my friends seemed to lose their brains as they exposed their skin, and it made me sad. And at least for me, public exposure made it difficult to hear my own thoughts. I'm sorry, but the history of the world has produced a few good ideas that hide amidst the crap of high school. I wanted to grapple with the ideas in clothes I could space out in.
So here I was, a few years later, and I did fit into something sleazy. Something about the place and time felt right.
One night I saw a movie that gave me some perspective. It was about old times, the 60's, and the beginning had this fascinating tone. There was this mother, a good woman, in a small town. She had a family, including a dedicated workaholic husband, but it wasn't enough for her. She had a home, and a kid, and men were walking on the moon. But it wasn't enough for her. And then this hippie guy came to town. And beautifully, like a wonderful dream, he helped her discover her sexuality. She became alive. I cried. There was something so human about it. Apparently, she never had good sex, never a passionate outlet for her existence. How could one get locked into such a deal?
But then, of course, things turned bad in the movie. I turned it off. Why do stories about human discovery have to be shrouded in darkness...?
I guess this movie was about this thing called the 'sexual revolution.' I don't really understand it because from my viewpoint it was a major, total, extreme, flop. Apparently, people gained permission to say the word 'sex,' and the technology to have sex often. Ok, the pill is great; thank you!!! But the freedom it enabled has not been realized, as far as I can tell. Nobody has gained real insight about sexuality nor, perhaps more revealingly, humanity. Sexuality, in our society, is so lost in exploitation!
So I've come to a resolution, or at least a perspective. Maybe we are all on a long and difficult road to becoming fully human, still far from our destination, perhaps still trying to find our direction. Perhaps sexuality has been difficult for people to deal with. And perhaps the sexual revolution was just an early baby step. Maybe I'm hung up too, but maybe a little less so than my parents. They don't seem free sexually but at least they have always been decent to me. And because of that, maybe I've been able to learn to approach the subject just a little more openly. And maybe I can learn to be freer, and maybe someday I help raise children more open than me.
So here I am. Trying to feel myself, but still just starting. There seems to be something out there, a frontier of learning to be human. And just maybe I can explore its edge. What an opportunity tonight presents!
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