May 24th, 2000 A Meditation on Erotic Communication| Heather Corinna When I was eleven, I developed a tentative first relationship with a boy in my class. Even from the beginning, it was star-crossed: I was an Irish-Dego mutt from a hippie family, he was an affluent Orthodox Jew. But all in all, the stars were aligned and we crushed blissfully among them. A year and a half later, he moved. From the time he moved until he returned again for a summer, the hot hand of puberty and sexuality had hit my cheek like a branding iron. My boyfriend left a vaguely off-the-beaten-path girl and came back to find a Lolita with a buzz-cut and a hefty attitude in tow, and more than her share of eye-opening sexual experience. About a week after he'd been back, we were trying to find the common ground we once had, and discovered it was largely chemical: we started kissing, groping, rubbing; he precariously and I with great enthusiasm. I pulled his hands up my shirt and said, "Feel me." He yanked them back as if he'd been burnt and told me I was acting like a slut. He thought I had meant to turn him on and turned him off: I had simply said what I felt and expressed what I wanted. I thought he had meant to insult me, and had only served to make me far more aroused. In truth, again, he was simply saying what he meant, with no thought at all of its effect on me. When all was done, both of us were all the more aroused and titillated, and I think it partly because of what was said, but moreover because what was said was truly meant. Truth, be it kind or unkind, in words and in action, is a powerful aphrodisiac. A decade later, he reappeared briefly, having moved back to the city to work for the States Attorney (my mothers very amusing response: "See, you could have married a lawyer and you blew it.") and gave me a ring. All six feet of him showed up at my door, handsome as the dickens, and we went out. He tried to outdrink me and failed, I had to drag him half-conscious unto my couch (which isn't very easy when someone is a foot taller than you are), and during that scuffle we ended up tangled in limbs again. He stank rather pungently of booze and pheromones, the chemistry was kaput, and any small chance of anything igniting again was completely ruined because not only did he not let me get a word in edgewise, the only thing he said to me was some vaguely slurred-line he'd clearly had handy for the occasions when a woman was in his bed. What we say to one another (or do not), what is said to us sexually, and what it does or does not do is arbitrary, unpredictable and changes more often than the face of the moon. What one person says that rattles our motors can turn us ice cold if said by another, and a phrase that arouses us one day may be completely ineffectual the next. This likely has far less to do with the words themselves as it does with why they are said (or not) and by whom. Silence is certainly golden when it can only be broken by words which have no real meaning. I have had a long-running love and lust affair with words and the spaces between them, be they spoken, written or unspoken, and have found myself in more than one long-distance relationship, delighting in the sheer agony of having only words, and longingly waiting in the hours, days or weeks between them. Even the Net for me holds a singular charm, and that is as a never-ending fount of words and whispers from those I adore or know well, those I only know in passing or by reputation, and strangers whom I will never meet nor see. At the same time, there are lapses between the nearly endless words I read in journals or articles, and those silences, in which life is being lived, are just as precious as those times when one cannot say enough. I know of myself that when I speak, I often do so in a torrent and a rush of immediacy, daring those with whom I am engaged with to interrupt passionately; I have interrupted others with words that simply must be spoken all my life. Yet at other times, I am without even one word that demands to be said. None of us need be a Byron, Vonnegut or Nin for our words to arouse and inspire, we need only mean what we say, and say what we do because we simply, and purely, have to. For so many, talking about sex in particular, either in the abstract with many, or with one partner in our bedrooms, supplies an additional charge because so few of us have ever been allowed to give voice to that aspect of our being, and it is such a vital and deep part of our psyches. I cannot even begin to describe the secret pleasure I get when reading an erotic story to a roomful of strangers, because I can feel an electric charge whirl through the room: I am seducing an entire throng, most of whom will leave the room with an elevated heart rate and a very fertile imagination. When I read to many, I try also to bypass my nervousness and remember the pauses between the lines, for those pauses make the words that follow all the more divine. There are very few of us who have not had someone say they love us when they don't, or experienced a well-practiced line or turn of phrase that intends (and often fails) to incite our desire, or listened to a rehash of a script from this porn flick or that one. I'm not talking about those kinds of words, words that intend to do something, and only live for the hope of some consequence. I am speaking of the words whose only intention is to free themselves of the throat and mind of those they dwell in. The purpose of language should not be to flatter or impress, but to only, instead, express. What differentiates, say, the word "love" or "now" when it is said by one person or another is not how it is used in a sentence, nor what timbre of voice it is spoken in, but what abstract that word is expressing as it comes from the mouth or hand it rises up out of. That is a subtle and intimate art achieved not by skill or flourish with language, but by the finer art of sincerity and truth; by real communication. In learning to speak about sex, there is no need to add flowers where there be none, or reach for something coarser or more shocking than what we seek to express. In learning to express desire and sexuality, as in learning to express anything, the work to be done is accomplished with a simple recipe: add equal parts emotion, bravery, vulnerability and absolute necessity, mix well, and pour. I had a lover once, of many words, from whom I was separated from by a continent for many months. We lived through letters and phone calls, and when he returned nearly a year later, for hours, we said nothing. Not a word, for there were none to be found. After hours of traveling to get home, we plunged desperately for the bed, covering one another in mouths, tongues and hands, and there was no sound, save moans, sighs and the crinkling of sheets. In time, his back was pressed hard against the wall, my legs wrapped high around his waist. Sweat poured from our faces and chests as we ground our hips together. My chin hovered, bobbing above his shoulder, and after hours of utter silence, he pressed his mouth to my ear and every word -- amidst heavy, hot breath panting and groans of pleasure and gratitude -- of John Donne's The Ecstasy (he, like I, had spent the months apart buried yellowed volumes of English poetry) spilled from his lips like a cup overturned, as we both climaxed and those words finished themselves at the very moment we were spent. Where, like a pillow on a bed A pregnant bank swell'd up to rest The violet's reclining head, Sat we two, one another's best. Our hands were firmly cemented With a fast balm, which thence did spring; Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread Our eyes upon one double string; So to'intergraft our hands, as yet Was all the means to make us one, And pictures in our eyes to get Was all our propagation. As 'twixt two equal armies fate Suspends uncertain victory, Our souls (which to advance their state Were gone out) hung 'twixt her and me. And whilst our souls negotiate there, We like sepulchral statues lay; All day, the same our postures were, And we said nothing, all the day. If any, so by love refin'd That he soul's language understood, And by good love were grown all mind, Within convenient distance stood, He (though he knew not which soul spake, Because both meant, both spake the same) Might thence a new concoction take And part far purer than he came. This ecstasy doth unperplex, We said, and tell us what we love; We see by this it was not sex, We see we saw not what did move; But as all several souls contain Mixture of things, they know not what, Love these mix'd souls doth mix again And makes both one, each this and that. A single violet transplant, The strength, the colour, and the size, (All which before was poor and scant) Redoubles still, and multiplies. When love with one another so Interinanimates two souls, That abler soul, which thence doth flow, Defects of loneliness controls. We then, who are this new soul, know Of what we are compos'd and made, For th' atomies of which we grow Are souls whom no change can invade. But oh alas, so long, so far, Our bodies why do we forbear? They'are ours, though they'are not we; we are The intelligences, they the spheres. We owe them thanks, because they thus Did us, to us, at first convey, Yielded their senses' force to us, Nor are dross to us, but allay. On man heaven's influence works not so, But that it first imprints the air; So soul into the soul may flow, Though it to body first repair. As our blood labors to beget Spirits, as like souls as it can, Because such fingers need to knit That subtle knot which makes us man, So must pure lovers' souls descend T' affections, and to faculties, Which sense may reach and apprehend, Else a great prince in prison lies. To'our bodies turn we then, that so Weak men on love reveal'd may look; Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book. And if some lover, such as we, Have heard this dialogue of one, Let him still mark us, he shall see Small change, when we'are to bodies gone. That day was as perfect in it's silences as it was in it's gorgeous language. That lover could not even conceive of how every word of the piece poured from him like a spring, only that it did, uncontrollably. I cannot even read but a single line from that poem without getting a blush in my cheeks, and a head full of wistful memories and remembrances. It's meaning was pounded not simply into my head, but into my very skin, in every thrust and gasp. The beauty of that day was that both it's words and it's lack of them were equally expressive, one no more or less than the other. When we speak then, of learning to "talk" about sex, or speak erotically, let us not confuse speech with communion, nor simple lip service with speech. Let us strive instead to communicate, to express, and if there be words for what we must express -- for what we must let loose or else metaphorically implode -- we will not need to reach far for them; they will create themselves and the beauty of them will be in their truth and sincerity, not in their structure. If we communicate in that way, if we "speak" by expression, and not by merely filling uncomfortable spaces with noise, we will find our words come readily and powerfully, even when they do not make a sound. So must pure lovers' souls descend T' affections, and to faculties, Which sense may reach and apprehend, Else a great prince in prison lies. © 2000 Heather Corinna. All rights reserved. wenches of yesteryear | home