My Erotic Life
in case you missed the audio last Friday, or if you prefer to read your pods instead of listen to them
I tried to plan out season two in its entirety – Not because I wanted to, I’m more spontaneous than that – But in the name of efficiency. Predictably, though not to me apparently, it sucked. And What did it suck? All the joy out of the process and I found myself not wanting to work on season 2. So I stopped. Planning, that is. And just kept writing.
So this episode found its provenance in a letter i wrote to a person I was dating but never sent. So the “you” in this letter was something of a temporary lover.
Here’s the letter:
From this crouched position, folded over myself in three layers like a cat, that you once asked “why are you sitting like that?” as I was very much naked on the bed at the time–is how I find myself as I write this to you. To say I know why I’m exactly the way I am would be a lie–though I do try to understand and one of the things I know, the knowledge of which has taken me years to earn–I will try to express below.
The whole of life to me is an erotic experience. To say sensual wouldn’t quite capture it, though per the definition, sensual is more accurate. SENSUAL- ADJ- RELATING TO OR INVOLVING GRATIFICATION OF THE SENSES, AND PHYSICAL, ESP SEXUAL PLEASURE.
I sensually enjoy life – the stroke of a breeze, the nuzzle of the sun, the color a leaf makes when it becomes transparent on the light board of a sunrise, the saturated flush of a fresh flower, the sound of water dripping at 100 bpm.
It often feels as if this weren’t my first go-round at this human thing. Enjoying the pleasures of a human experience for their own sake comes naturally to me.
That being said, sex in the traditional form of the word, between two, or more, people, is not so simple.
Janelle Monae, quoting Oscar Wilde, in her song Screwed said it best, “Everything is sex. Except sex; which is power, and power is just sex.”
And Octavio Paz, in his book The Double Flame says, “in sexuality, pleasure serves procreation; in erotic rituals, pleasure is an end in itself…the erotic act becomes detached from the sex act: it is sex and it is something else besides.”
So if everything in life is erotic to me – the way the tree branches submit to the push and pull of the wind, the way the moon reveals herself and then hides again - even washing dried egg yolk off a plate with my bare fingers and warm water, – then how does sex become sex? How does it differentiate itself? What is the “something else besides”?
What it is for me, I’ll explain after a little meandering.
I find in the chapters of this book, Octavio explains me to me. I had often wondered why the topic of eroticism was considered taboo or too controversial to be the conversation at the water cooler because I see sex and eroticism everywhere. So why isn’t it also discussed in a ratio that is representative of its importance in our lives?
Octavio comes to my rescue again with his answer: “sex threatens society…[it] is subversive: it ignores classes and hierarchies, arts and sciences, day and night,” to say nothing of our “inheritance [in the West, of the cult of chastity] from Platonism and other philosophies of antiquity…and the influence of Neoplatonism in the church fathers.”
This is to say, any chance of the culture embracing sex and eroticism, was fucked. Or, it wasn’t fucked. Or it was fucked but it wasn’t supposed to be, so it had to be fucked in secret. Which led to a lot of secret fucking without consent, which is essentially rape, and then the abuse of children. Which is wild. That abusing children in secret has been essentially culturally acceptable over an open and nonjudgmental dialogue about consensual sex and eroticism.
I feel for pedophiles, I do. I don’t see a solution to the problem of their desire. I think to be a pedophile would be a kind of hell on earth, bc if you're a “good” pedophile you never act on your desires.
Okay, I’m sure you can tell that this writing has now diverged from the original letter where I began.
This time around I really will attempt to write a whole episode on pedophiles, of which I am intimately acquainted, because my first-grade cherubic countenance became the subject of a pedophile's enthusiastic ardor for a period. Sorry it has taken me so long. I did tell y’all in season 1 that I’d write that episode. And I tried. But it was hard. I swear I’ll keep trying until it’s done. Cuz I think I can do it now. I just don't know if it's a season 2 thing or a season 3 thing bc time is of the essence and rn I'm attempting to revise and record the whole of season 2 during the 8 days that my child is visiting family in Texas.
ANYWAY. Back to eroticism. According to Octavio, “[eroticism is] a radiant approval of life.” Which tracks for how I experience eroticism and life. But here, he explains more of me to myself when he begins differentiating language from poetry.
“The relationship between eroticism and poetry is such that can be said, without affectation, that the former is a poetry of the body and the latter an eroticism of language.”
“poetry eroticizes language”
“poetry places communication in brackets the same way that eroticism brackets reproduction.”
It’s no wonder then, that my email, violetathepoet, while impossible to communicate over the phone, is the one that I’ve kept the longest because it describes me better than the name on my DL, which isn’t even available as a Gmail anyway, but also because when I say I’m a poet it isn’t because I write poetry, though I do, It’s more that who I am is what poetry is:
An eroticism of language. A bracketing of reproduction. “Invention. Constant variation…Imagination…Desire….Sublimations, perversions…Originating in the senses but not [ending] in them…A ritual where pleasure is an end in itself.”
I originally wrote this letter to my temporary lover, whom I think might have been a clandestine fuckboy, trying to explain what sex was to me. He was coming over, or already had, the order of events is fuzzy now, but I had told him that no matter how much I seemed to want sex, he shouldn’t give it to me. He failed, of course, and we fucked. But that was the end of our time together because I had explicitly asked him before, Told him that I will seem like I want it, because I do, but don’t give it to me.
I’m a sub, you see. And I had given my supposed dom a boundary. He was in control, so it was his job to maintain that boundary, no matter what signals he was getting in the moment. Had he “passed,” we might still be dating. And this is what I was trying to explain. But I’m not a scholar of BDSM and, if anything, it was BDSM light, but there’s not only psychology to sex to me there’s also spirituality, and trust, and of course intimacy.
And for him to give in to my inspirations let's say, meant that he failed the psychological component for me – I’m not attracted to, nor can I trust, a person who can't control and essentially master their desires – So then, sure, orgasms and merriment were had, but it ended up checking a box temporarily, no pun intended, and couldn’t, therefore, be what I am ultimately looking for.
Which is eroticism, not just sex, but not just any eroticism, right? Because we've already established that the whole of life is erotic to me. So a short ride and some, albeit really great orgasms, just don't reach the bar. The metaphorical, philosophical, spiritual bar. Because they did hit the physiological bar pretty nicely.
I’m looking for a kind of tantric spiritual transcendental kind of eroticism. Which has to be scaffolded. And if the foundation of the scaffold can’t be established, whether psychologically or trust-wise, ie. – I said don't give me what I seem to badly want – then that ascension simply can’t occur.
And that’s the “something else besides.” That is how sex for me differentiates itself from the normal eroticism of my everyday life.
So I didn’t send the letter. But I did clarify things. And ofc Octavio Paz explained more of me to me. And I got to fill the tank so to speak. But most important was the clarification.
I do expect my partner to have mastery over their desires. Otherwise, how could they be my master? A person who can't control their desires, I can't help but see as weak. And I can’t submit to a weak person.
I know it’s a tall ask, esp of men, who I do understand are fertile 100% of the time – which must be torture. Those few days a month when I’m fertile I feel like a fucking cat in heat. How do you think I got my mini-me? She wasn’t a thought experiment – she was a ticking time bomb – which might explain her personality. To feel like that 24/7 would be difficult, to say the least. Which might mean that the type of partner I need is in the minority and part of a type. The type that has mastery over their body and mind.
Which really makes me want to talk about astrology. And how my moon is in Ashlesha, which is the coiled snake. And according to Claire Nakti, desiring a powerful partner is one of my functions. And KRS, I think in his video about Rahu/Ketu in the 1st/7h axis, which I have in my chart, says the only way I’ll ever be happy in a relationship, is if I can submit. Which tracks. Not only with my experiences and feelings, but also likely compounded by my Ashlesha moon. Astrology is wild. But I do think that will have to be another episode.
So, in this episode, I talked about sex and eroticism and their equivalence in language and poetry. And I teased two future episodes about pedophiles and the coiled snake. I’d say I’m on brand.
Check out the other weird shit I do for fun at adultpapers.com or linktr.ee/lunarviolet