How close can you get without having sex

Many straight American men acknowledge (and perhaps on some level problematize) the conflation of closeness/intimacy and sex when find themselves expressing feelings often constructed as "gay" towards other straight men that they want to be or are close with. These identity crises create tensions that are often released through irony and humor or violence. See terms like "bromance" and "bromosexual," and the plethora of internet clips or personal narratives of straight men (often younger, often comedians) dancing right up to, and sometimes tiptoe-ing across, with varying degrees of awkwardness, that line of sexual intimacy.

I found this scene from the movie Superbad of two straight male friends expressing their love for each other to balance tenderness and humor quite well. The top comment right now on youtube for this scene is "Bromance is the truest form of love!"

Speaking of "bromance," consider the incest taboo - a cultural norm whose existence and vehement enforcement suggests again an acknowledgment of the distinct possibility of a conceptual blurring of intimacy and sexual attraction. 

To be close, to know somebody as well as family members or best friends know each other - how is that possible without having sex? One common distinction between these relationships and sexual/romantic relationships is the perception of the speed at which they usually develop. A family's intimacy comes over time, is almost measured as a percentage of your entire lifetime. So too with best friends (with the possible exception of "my new best friend" - often an expression used to mark out a character or person as shallow or childish).

Yet, in a recent interview, David Jay, the founder of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), and subject of a new documentary, (A)sexual, says:

Yes, [I date] sort of. In the past I had a series of close relationships with women that weren’t sexual. And we didn't know exactly what that meant. A lot of times they also had boyfriends but they were much more emotionally intimate with me. And their boyfriends didn’t know what to do with that—they got really jealous. It was a mess. And it was a mess because there were no words for a really close friendship that didn’t involve sex or sexuality. There was no status for it.

Implicit in this narrative is that the friendships with these women developed along a timeline similar to dating, one that is generally faster than becoming family or best friends. There's something particularly unsettling about this when it happens between two straight men as well, as captured in a recent episode of Louie, reviewed here on Slate. That reviewer notes:

in order to dramatize the way straight white American men stupidly struggle with—and even refuse—a certain kind of intimacy, C.K. presents a scenario that reads as gay as possible. It keeps you guessing at what’s really going on, and wondering where the episode might be headed. 

I don't really have a conclusion for this post, but this topic is something that continues to interest me. Speaking of lacking conclusions, I'm reading Judtih Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure right now. Maybe I'll write about that next.

Ethical Impotence

"Impotence is at base... a symptom of respect, a fear of causing displeasure through the imposition of our own desires or the inability to satisfy our partner's needs. The popularity of pharmaceuticals designed to combat erectile dysfunction signals the collective longing of modern men for a reliable mechanism by which to override our subtle, delicate, civilized worry that we will disappoint or upset others.

A better and drug-free approach might consist in a public campaign to promote to both genders - perhaps via a series of billboards and full-page ads in glossy magazines  - the notion that what is often termed 'nerves' in a man, far from being a problem, is in fact an asset that should be sought out and valued as evidence of an evolved type of kindness. The fear of being disgusting, absurd or a disappointment to someone else is a first sign of morality. Impotence is an achievement of the ethical imagination - so much so that in the future, we men might learn to act out episodes of the condition as a way of signalling our depth of spirit, just as today we furtively swallow Viagra tablets in the bathroom to prove the extent of our manliness."

- Alain de Botton, in his new book "How To Think More About Sex"

Porn as Distraction

"It is perhaps only people who haven't felt the full power of sex over their logical selves who can remain uncensorious and liberally 'modern' on the subject. Philosophies of sexual liberation appeal mostly to people who don't have anything too destructive or weird that that they wish to do once they have been liberated.

However, anyone who has experienced the power of sex in general and internet pornography in particular to reroute our priorities is unlikely to be so sanguine about liberty. Pornography, like alcohol and drugs, weakens our ability to endure the kinds of suffering that are necessary for us to direct our lives properly. In particular, it reduces our capacity to tolerate those two ambiguous goods, anxiety and boredom. Our anxious moods are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so they need to be listened to and patiently interpreted – which is unlikely to happen when we have to hand one of the most powerful tools of distraction ever invented. The entire internet is in a sense pornographic, it is a deliverer of constant excitement which we have no innate capacity to resist, a system which leads us down paths many of which have nothing to do with our real needs. Furthermore, pornography weakens our tolerance for the kind of boredom which is vital to give our minds the space in which good ideas can emerge, the sort of creative boredom we experience in a bath or on a long train journey. It is at moments when we feel an irresistible desire to escape from ourselves that we can be sure that there is something important we need to bring to consciousness – and yet it is precisely at such pregnant moments that internet pornography has a habit of exerting its maddening pull, thereby helping us to destroy our future."

- Alain de Botton, from Let's Talk About Sex, Live Q&A on Guardian.co.uk

"Porn is Not a Dirty Word"

“Many men believe pornography is harmless and women should stop banging on about it...”

So begins the article, “Porn is not a dirty word,” by Bettina Arndt for The Age newspaper.
(image above is taken from the article posted on theage.com.au website)

What follows in her article is, predictably, an apology for mindless male entitlement; in this case, for the right to remain blissfully ignorant about some of the reasons that people might 'bang on' about it in the first place...
I’d like to unpack some of Arndt’s arguments one by one, and offer my response to it given my recent deconstruction of porn-as-unproblematic-product.

“Everywhere men look there’s another woman banging on about the dangers of porn.”
Not even preceded by an ‘it seems’ nor with a consideration of the many women who enjoy porn, nor also of the men who bang on about porn’s dangers as well.

According to the article, a recent Q&A program (a television program exploring current affairs and topics of general interest, often with guest speakers and audience participation) featured British sociologist Gail Dines, whom the article insinuates is one of those women ‘banging on’ about the damage done by “body-punishing, brutal, dehumanizing and debasing” pornography.

The choice of Dines’ admittedly extreme words, accurate or otherwise, is then contrasted with the level-headed voice of reason by a male audience member, Jeff Poole. Poole states on the program that he “had been watching porn for more than 30 years” and “In all those many thousands of hours of wobbling pink bits, I’ve never seen any of the things you talk about. I’ve never seen the degradation of women or men for that matter. I’ve never seen rape, real or simulated. I have never seen violence.”

According to Arndt, Poole “spoke for a huge audience of men who hear constant negative discussion of pornography and wonder why their own experiences are so very different… bewildered at women’s outrage at what they see as a harmless outlet for the strong male sex drive…” Arndt then adds, “To many men, porn seems a perfectly normal aspect of male sexuality that provides comfort and entertainment, and redresses the serious sexual imbalance between male and female desire.”

There are several problems with resting on men's perceptions of our own porn use as plainly acceptable, particularly just because it seems a "normal aspect" of our sexuality.

Simply:
1. What is normal is not necessarily good, true, healthy, or wise.
2. Arendt makes no further effort to problematise this normative assumption of the differences between male and female sexual desire, nor does she address the equally problematic assumption that porn actually SATIATES men’s presumably 'excess' desires (relative to...?).

Arndt does at least mention that there seems to be a difference in the types of stimulation that men use today compared to a generation ago, when she writes,
"While the older men in my project wrote about poring over dad's stolen Playboys, today's young men grow up with an internet sexual smorgasbord. Most report roaming far and wide, from vanilla sex to the ''oh my God'' offerings. One mentions breakfast conversations at his university college, dominated by boys sharing notes on the latest online ''girl shagged by donkey'' type video. Throughout history there has been sexual material designed to stir male loins, from Roman frescoes and Japanese screen prints to Victorian ''dirty postcards''."

However, Arendt does not seem to make a link between these generational differences and the reasons why some people might 'bang on' about the potential problems of porn use.

Porn and Desire

In her blog, Cupid's Poisoned Arrow (which she co-writes with her partner Gary Wilson), Marnia Robinson has written in a series of different different articles...
(a few, for example:
"Sexual Superabundance Part I"
"Sexual Superabundance Part II"
"Porn and Perception: Is Your Limbic Brain Distorting Your Vision?")
...that porn, far from sating our desires, is actually complicit in ratcheting them up. To defend porn because it temporarily sates our 'excess' desire is like defending the marketing of an itch cream that temporarily soothes our itch, while actually also being one of the very conditions which further entrenches and exacerbates the itching itself, making it far more difficult to ignore later.

Robinson writes, in her Sexual Superabundance - Part I essay,
"Men... have been learning to pursue orgasm even more efficiently and frequently--with a lot of help from today's media. They can also generate super-stimulating porn with a mouse click. In fact, as my husband says, 'an Internet user can see more hot babes (or whatever gets him going) in an afternoon than his ancestors saw in a lifetime.'
Are men more satisfied and happier? Are their relationships stronger? According to psychiatrist Norman Doidge, patients report increasing difficulty in being turned on by their actual sexual partners, spouses or girlfriends, though they still consider them objectively attractive. Initially porn helped them get more excited during sex but over time had the opposite effect." (information that Robinson cites from Norman Doidge's excellent book "The Brain that Changes Itself")

In an earlier post of mine, I've already covered my thoughts about the limitations of Robinson's writing, particularly in prescribing and reproducing tired heteronormative relationship types. Nonetheless, I reiterate that Robinson's strength is in helping to address the problem of Arndt's defence of porn as a harmless, sexual-excess-satin' tool for straight men...


The Sexless Marriage

Arndt writes, “The problem comes when men try to bully women into things they don't want to do - but arguably porn has nothing to do with the insensitivity causing men to behave in that way, which stems from their cultural and social backgrounds.”

Um... As if porn isn’t ALSO a part of culture and society, as if porn was not a PRODUCT of culture and society, as if porn does not also SHAPE, CHANGE and AFFECT culture and society.

It would be pretty ludicrous to assume that, for example, fast-food chain advertising in mainstream media plays NO part in influencing how we experience our desire for food, and concurrently, how we might articulate this desire when we choose to share food (or avoid food) in the company of others. So similarly, it is pretty ludicrous to assume that pornography would play NO part in influencing how we experience our desire for sex, and concurrently, how we might articulate this desire when we choose to share sex (or avoid sex) in the company of our partner(s).

Robinson’s writing is here far more sophisticated than anything I can render, in her compassionate reading of the neurochemical basis for the transition into sexlessness from what may once have been passionate liaisons. Habitual orgasm to a single stimulus (either a single woman, e.g. one’s wife, or a single image on a computer screen), diminishes the capacity for that stimulus to titillate in the same way. i.e. One requires more diversity of stimulation, or increased novelty, in order to achieve the ‘same’ orgasmic outcome.

This is not inherently a problem, of course, if one is able to understand the dynamism behind this bio-logic. However, the problem in this sexless marriage between a man and a woman requires multiple ignorances:

Two at least:
1. Of the woman, for the man’s need for variety / stimulation in order to achieve orgasmic ‘satisfaction’
2. Of the man, for the fact that this underlying dynamic is actually further reinforced, reinscribed and exacerbated through the use of porn. It is not necessarily a harmless remedy.

Arendt’s proposed remedy, one which poses itself as sex-positive, is for these women to just get over their prudishness, and be open to the inherently different needs of their innocent male partners’ militant libidos which will always be in relative overdrive because of their sex.

(which, while posing as a liberated, sex-positive view, seems to me frankly gender-reductionist and regressive)

Sure, we may ask our partners to be more compassionate about our use of porn, and we may even experiment (with their consent) to a MUTUAL use of porn. We may certainly insist that we should not be shamed because of our use. These are legitimate calls for autonomy, and the basic need we have (no matter our sex or gender) to be respected as decision-makers around the organisation of our sexual impulses.

However, another remedy, which is one that I am and have been proposing throughout my few pieces on porn, is for men to actually catch ourselves in the thick of this cycle of habituation to variety and stimulation, and our tendency to ignore the addictive potential of this game of habituation (desensitisation to stimuli).

We can learn to de-condition ourselves from this cycle. We can actually consider that there IS an alternative to normalising and habituating to porn use for managing one’s libido, including within the context (or confines?) of a sexless marriage.

Here are some thoughts:
1. Sexlessness is not necessarily a problem.
2. To the extent that it is a problem, it does take at least two in a relationship for there to be a problem... In other words, acknowledge our own complicity (as men) in creating and/or maintaining this problem.
3. Consider that habitual porn use may be a part of how we are complicit.

I want to re-stress... This is not strictly a moral issue for me, nor do I mean to condemn the use of porn, any more than I would condemn the consumption of sugar. Sexual desire and hunger are two inevitable and indeed, even joyous and pleasureable parts of human experience... particularly with good company. I also certainly mean no lack of compassion, empathy or understanding for those of us who truly do feel stifled by sexless marriages, or sexless partnerships (or indeed, unwilled singlehood or partner-less-ness). Indeed, I empathise with the genuine belief in pornography’s benign role in assisting in relief, and its role in sexual liberation. After all, I have certainly felt this way myself for much of my adult life.

My main concerns have to do with the lack of insight into the impermanent nature of the relief that comes from porn, indeed, into the fact that porn is one means that the original itch is exacerbated (and then essentialised and assimilated as a 'normal' aspect of male libido), the potential problem of the increasing ubiquity of porn (particularly of the escalating normative standards of stimulation) in men's lives (and increasingly, women as well), and also in Arndt's hypocrisy of hinting at women's prudish hysteria while contrasting them with the calm innocence of men in sexless marriages. 



Further Questions to Explore
The issue of the assumed problem of sexlessness (asexuality as pathology?)


Some of my Previous posts on Porn:
--> Abstinence From Porn
--> Integral Theory and Pornography

"Fuck" and So What?

Robert Augustus Masters writes a fabulous, simple-yet-sophisticated essay titled “Eros Undressed: An Intimate Look at Sex,” in which he explores the multitudes of diverse roles that sex plays in people’s lives. In this essay, he teases out some assumptions and value systems that may underlie our unconscious relationships to sex.

Masters writes:
"...there is so much that we expect sex to do for us! More often than we might like to admit, we assign it to stress release, security enhancement, spousal pacification, egoic gratification, pleasure production, and other such tasks. We may use it as a super sleeping pill, a rapid-action pick-me-up, an agent of consolation, a haven or hideout, a control tactic, a proof that we’re not that old or cold. We may also employ it as a psychological garbage disposal, a handy somatic terminal for discharging the energies of various unwanted states, like loneliness or rage or desperation. Mostly, though, we just tend to want sex to make us feel better, and we use it accordingly, whether in mundane, dark, or spiritual contexts."

Interesting... but what of it? One segment of his essay struck me in particular, which was his analysis of the use of the word “fuck.”



“Fuck”

I am considering my use of this word.

Masters writes:
“Many of the words and phrases denoting human coitus bluntly illustrate our often confused, disrespectful, and exploitive attitude toward our sexuality, and sexuality in general. Consider, for example, the notorious and enormously popular multivalent “f” word, for which there are an incredible number of non-copulatory meanings, a fucking incredible number, all pointedly and colorfully describing what we may actually be up to when we’re busy being sexual or erotically engaged.

Here is a partial list, most of which overlap in meaning with each other: ignorance (“Fucked if I know”); indifference (“I don’t give a fuck”); degradation (“You stupid fuck”); disappointment (“This is really fucked”); rejection (“Get the fuck out of here!”); manipulation (“You’re fucking with my head”); disgust (“Go fuck yourself”); vexation (“What the fuck are you doing?”); exaggeration (“It was so fucking good!”); situational MSG’ing (“What a fucking great meal!”); rage (“Fuck you!” or “Don’t fuck with me!”); and, perhaps most pithily revealing of all, exploitation (“I got fucked”). It is also worth noting that the noun “fucker” is, though usually far from complimentary, sometimes used in an affectionate or playful manner. A fine fucking mess.”


I am interested in how the uses of the word “fuck,” in all of their myriad, overlapping and confused ways, may indicate how this word has, over time, and through many incarnations and acculturations, come to accommodate the many manifestations of "libidinal" motivations. We may, in the context of a conversation on sex/sexuality, call these manisfestations some translation of "libidinal energy," or in the context of considering the more amorphous, "pure potential" versions of this energy we may call it "life force," or “prana,” or “mana,” or “qi”, or “Lüng” or "Élan vital"

…

Now, I am certainly no expert on any of the aforementioned words and concepts, given their cultural contingencies, and often orthopraxic origins. I have simply cross-clicked on wikipedia to find (somewhat) analogous concepts that can illustrate or hint at some underlying stream of energy/consciousness that stirs our flippancy with (sexualised) terminology. While I have only had a rudimentary experience in considering even just a few of them, they all seem to point to some inherent energetic potential that infuses our selfhood with life, the animalis (having of breath) of our animality.

Different schools of esoteric knowledge have taught various ways of (re-)organising these subtle energies, which I loosely categorise as different therapies, such as acupuncture, reflexology, massage, etc., or as meditative methodologies: From physical yogic postures, to attentional/concentrative practices, to breathwork and breath control, etc.

So these energies, which may otherwise have been channeled into cultivation of qualities such as equanimity, compassion, humility, growth, creativity, and so on, are basically denied ANY existence by the normative epistemological system of Western civilisation, which is empirical science. The empirical sciences (or the ‘hard sciences’) have thus far failed to recognise the objective reality of any existent ‘force’ that we could call Qi, or Lüng, or Prana, etc., and has thus categorically denied its/their (potential) reality entirely.

All of these energies, to the extent that they can be experienced as subjectively "true," are likely to be at the very least systemic combinations of any number of objectifiable entities (e.g. mixes of neurotransmitters, the contact between external conditions with subjectively reported interior "effects," neuro-limbic processes, etc. etc.). This possibility could at least allow for advances in, for example, neuroscience and systems thinking, to make room for (more) scientific anaylses of otherwise amorphous sets of culturally diverse esotericisms.

What I am hypothesising is that, outside of a formal system of organising these energies in the “West,” we have come to inherit …: “Fuck.”

To reiterate from Masters' list, without systemisation, these energies come out in their various guises, articulated by “fuck,” as:
“ignorance (“Fucked if I know”);
indifference (“I don’t give a fuck”);
degradation (“You stupid fuck”);
disappointment (“This is really fucked”);
rejection (“Get the fuck out of here!”);
manipulation (“You’re fucking with my head”);
disgust (“Go fuck yourself”);
vexation (“What the fuck are you doing?”);
exaggeration (“It was so fucking good!”);
situational MSG’ing (“What a fucking great meal!”);
rage (“Fuck you!” or “Don’t fuck with me!”);
and, perhaps most pithily revealing of all, exploitation (“I got fucked”).
It is also worth noting that the noun “fucker” is, though usually far from complimentary, sometimes used in an affectionate or playful manner…”

I would like to add to this list:
intoxication (“we got TOTALLY fucked on booze”);
destruction (“fuck shit up”);
shock/surprise (“fuck! I totally didn’t see you standing there!”)
relief (“fuuuuuuuuuuck….”);

And, finally, and perhaps in a melancholy, poignant, ‘obvious’ sort of way, to refer to typically phallic-/penetrative sex. (“I love to fuck,” “please fuck me,” “do you prefer to fuck or get fucked?”).

As Masters concludes his list, this is “a fine fucking mess.”



So What To Do?

It may be helpful to notice the ways that we use the word “fuck” in everyday language (if we do). We could consider, expediently, fasting from using the word, while bringing mindful attention to the parts of our day when we otherwise typically mindlessly use the word “fuck,” to notice not only how we use this word (which is an interesting enough project on its own, of course), but also how it feels in our bodies when we speak it or resist speaking it, and how these embodied feelings may well overlap, in their confused forms, with our experience of our sexuality.

In the meantime, we may well better tease out new ways of engaging with our energy, so that our propensity to ignorance, indifference, degradation, disappointment, rejection, manipulation, disgust, vexation, exaggeration, situational MSG’ing, rage, exploitation, affection, complimenting, intoxication, destruction, shock, surprise, relief, and sex are properly differentiated from one another, and we may have a better chance at being more involved as agents of our own integration.

I was going to end with a “fuck” pun, but I think I’ll try and practice what I’m preaching, and see what comes of it.

The Erotic This

This:
The erotic politics of just remaining discernibly present to what presents itself as true and viable and real and possible in each moment that arises... Right before it falls away, back into that primordial void from which it came, and some familiar something emerges in its place (that is, every successive moment, moment and another moment and yet another still…)

This:
This is the beginning of something erotic, my fingers tap tap typing on a keyboard with an agenda: To explore the erotic with abandon, like clothes flung off of a body too weighted by civilisation’s distinctions of top halves and bottom halves, sleeves and sandals, broaches and belts. All the ways our bodies are subdivided become moot when these articles of consensual bondage are tentatively undone. We embrace one another to start toying with uncivilised meaning. Up becomes down, face to crotch, the impropriety of tongue to cock, fingers to cunt, arse to mouth, the eyes that gaze much longer on any given mound of flesh, or that remain shut so that the sounds we typically mold into words escape unformed from some wellspring of vibrations much deeper than our throats… somewhere guttural, gluttonous, gargantuan graceland of moans and yelps and squeals and sighs and we are mammals once again, Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You for this Marvellous regression.

This:
That this is no regression… No… A prior vision has already structured and enabled this encounter in this incarnation (in words, electronic format, birthed from my fantasy): That we have already conditioned our environs with candles and fresh sheets and calm music (or heavy metal) and latex condoms and lube and drawn curtains and duly forewarned housemates and phones put on silent. This is the earth from which we have planted the seeds of two or more lovers whose time have come to sprout their shoots, dip deep their roots, and bear fruit in carnal convalescence. Lovemaking is the limbic pushed through and emerging, just as whole, but now wings to soar through the frontal cortices of our visionary ill-logic…

This:
The time after with which to reflect with one another on what has just occurred, through giggles and laughter and joy or in sobs or cries or sorrow, or perhaps just a blissful silence through touch... Or in dreams through slumber... (dreams of a dream that has just played itself out). This is the rapturous After, the Real tomorrow. We are grateful that we are alive to witness the gracious gift that we have been bestowed, the gift of this celebration of our bodies in song… Our only mission, should we accept it, is to ensure that the bed gets made, and honour that we remember one another’s names…

Little Death

The French rendering of the orgasm as 'les petite mort,' or the 'little death.'

Within a discourse of heterosexual reproduction as the normative vision of Life's pursuit of immortality... "I" begets "I" in genetic replication, through heterosexual union, pregnancy, enjoining of seed and egg, sperm and ovum, strands of DNA mixing only superficially from two parents... more expansively, each zygote inherits the entire history of its genetic ancestry from infinite number of parents of parents of parents stringing all the way back, all of which involved the jizz of so many little male ejaculatory deaths.

Perhaps then, this reproductive, orgasmic rendering of sexuality is both heteronormative and somewhat counterintuitive to true immortality or longevity. Each satiation post-orgasm is not truly satisfactory. Some of us become more needy for affection, some of us simply roll over and snore. The affliction here is the sudden death of motivation; Here the pleasure principle meets the death drive and the cycle becomes addictive. Addiction to pleasure, or addiction to a subtle masochism of many little deaths with a myriad of partners (or images), while each way along the way, immortality (or the permanence of the reified Self) remains elusive......


Immortality

I believe that this primordial drive for immortality (in part symbolised by the fetishism of fertility in Goddess cults, or in fundamentalist obsessions with the heteronormative centrality of reproduction in the sexual encounter) is made possible only because we intuit the plausibility of immortality in our experience of living.

Who has not experienced the tantalising, timeless eternity of erotic tension, the 'enlivening' (and hence, 'longevitising') rush of passion, inspiration and poetry from the lavish promise of union? Most of us too, have tasted the joys of youth, with its lush fields of seemingly limitless libidinal drive and infinite possibility, the 'forever'-ness of many days and nights, pregnant with potential...

It is for these and many more reasons that immortality is conceptually possible. Even if it is only ever lived vicariously through our children, our children's children, or the memory of our own youth... These are reminders of the 'forever-ness' of one's self through Legacy and Melancholy...


Libidinal Alchemy

But what if... There was the possibility to experiment with a different vision of immortality...? One that is neither contingent on romanticising the past (with more libidinal drive) nor clinging to hope for better futures (where we may nurture our progeny as products of our drive)? Instead, what if there was the opportunity to simply work, alchemically, with the drive itself?

Instead of assuming that the only logical outcome of the libido is its culmination in a little death, I want instead to experiment with Daoist theories of circulation, recharge, share and exchange... Rather than the end goal of orgasm as an outcome of the libidinal drive, I instead relish the beauty of my partner(s) indefinitely, without goal, simply to cherish the pleasure of their Being without grasping onto the simulacral reality of pornographic "fucking" and "seeding"... A greater goal awaits... A Mission, a Purpose;- One to Beauty itself, one to Divinity it/her/him/themself(ves), made manifest in the world through so many beautiful people, the interplay of order and chaos...

I do not intend for Catholic repression of sex, but I do not wish either for the false liberation of sexual excess... I intend for a Buddhist middle, a post-modernist, post-colonial, Madhyamikan transmogrification of libido into more careful consumption, where one focuses on subtlety of taste, the company of friends, and the fresh virtue of cuisine, rather than the utilitarian, capitalist obsession with nutritional content, speed, novelty, and planned obsolescence.

Intellectual Masturbation

This metaphor:
Of "intellectual masturbation."
As an insult...?

I’d like to work through this metaphor, in a sort of intellectual masturbatory exercise in itself. However, my intent here is not to jerk my brain off to some sort of epiphanic jism, but instead to revel in a more Daoist circulation of intellectual, libidinal energies; A meditative “edging,” a love-making with the holographic delineations of my own consciousness that has not conclusion, decision and execution as its goal, but rather the pleasure of ruminating as alone reason enough for beginning.

Here the ‘conclusion’ is the process of the rub and tug of mental play, ‘decision’ the diversity of pause and periodic punctuation across and in between sentences, and ‘execution’ the beginning of this rumination that has no end. Indeed, on some level, intellectual auto-eroticism (sometimes with a friend or few) without the dogmatic certainties of ego-orgasm (we know well the violent excesses of fanaticism and fundamentalism), may well be the very ‘yes!’ of life. To engage in wistful brain-play, to be constantly challenged, to always have our preconceptions de-stabilised (yet that we are relaxed), to always be stimulated by the fresh (without undergirding our fidelity to our previous lovers), to be tired but not drained, calm and yet enlivened.