Sex

B"H

Nobody knows who I am (at least, I hope not), right? In fact, I haven't even figured out how to promote this blog and as a result nobody ever reads any of it, anyway. So, I can go ahead and admit all of my dirty shameful little secrets here, right?

Okay then, I'm going to tell the truth:

Sometimes I think there might be something wrong with me; because for whatever it's worth, there's nothing to confess. Goose egg. Zilcho. Isn't that a bit unusual?

But I feel like I'm normal, at least to myself. I guess I'm just "vanilla."

I'm not a prude, really; or maybe I am, and prudes have just been misunderstood this whole time. What I mean to say is that I have nothing against sex. I don't feel like it's dirty, nasty, immoral, wrong, etc. It's just that I have always had a difficult time understanding things that a LOT of other people seem to... well... respond to. I'm not offended by them. I just think they're kind of strange. Odd.

Don't get me wrong. When it comes to your generic naked people, that's not odd. They're just naked people, like those depicted by artistic works: paintings and sculptures such as Michelangelo's David or Venus de Milo. Sure bodies can be very beautiful, like just about any other living creature HaShem put into the world. Of course, the live human body houses a spark of HaShem--a G-d consciousness. That's what makes it holy, or "kadosh," and that leads into the whole concept of tzanuah.

With all modesty issues set aside for a moment, there are people who seem quite obsessed with non-tzniustic photography and voyeurism and all kinds of fascinating things. I mean, I'm fascinated that it gets people all worked up, or that it even holds people's attention at all. It seems to be a bizarre form of escape from reality and things can even get kind of... strange. I just don't "get it."

It has puzzled me for the longest time: Am I okay?

It's as if someone tells you a joke and everyone else laughs and you're embarassed because it doesn't seem to be funny at all. Even after they explain it, it makes sense that it should be funny on some level, but it still doesn't illicit so much as a chuckle. It's not offensive, not at all. Just not funny.

"Oh, you just don't have a sense of humor," they might say. Yes, it may seem that way; but little do they know you were laughing like a hyena about something else just the other day...

Ya dig? It's like that. Therefore, when it comes to most "sexy" things, I spend a lot of time feeling like I'm from a different planet than most everybody else.

If I may digress for a moment, there were times when I used to party and go places with girlfriends. Looking back, I'm not exactly sure why I ever went anywhere near a pick-up scene. But at any rate, it was way-back-when, before my baalat teshuvah days. Some of those guys were extremely (and I do mean oh-so-very) attractive and I got my share of pickup lines. I quickly learned how to spot-and-spurn them--in a playful way, of course.

It was puzzling to my friends and to the "regulars" at the clubs that we frequented. I just wanted to be out with my friends, rather than to be at home, bored all weekend. I really did have a good time, in my own way, as I was always a very social creature.

Sometimes, we'd go to an after-party at someone's house and my girlfriends would go off with guys to put some new notches in their lipstick cases. Meanwhile, I'd be in the living room sitting near some guy and we'd both be twiddling our thumbs. We'd start talking about things--sometimes even very interesting things, such as how Dante's Inferno was related to chess strategies. But whatever was "supposed to be" happening just wasn't happening. I had no interest.

After years of this sort of thing, I heard one-too-many unrelated people saying "you're not like most women," and "something about you is different"--though they knew full well that I still wasn't about to let them touch me and that they were free to go their merry way. I started to wonder if something was physically "wrong" with me (and to be honest, I still kinda wonder every now and again).

Much later, after I went BT, I learned something that helped me to understand that I really am perfectly normal. Different from most, maybe, but at least functionally healthy. Apparently, I'm just "wired" differently.

I had a Chinese philosophy teacher who once taught about how the soul leaves the body at the time of death. According to this ancient source (The Tibetan Book of the Dead, maybe?) the human body has several basic energy centers. To put it simplistically, the most basic, animal part is at the very bottom of the torso, the instinctive "gut" place is just above that, the emotional is just above that, intellectual is somewhere in the headspace, entering through the eyes, and finally there's the crown of the head.

The idea is that a person's soul enters and leaves the body from the area from which the person most related to the world during life. It's a sort of energetic "gateway" that's already open because there's been so much traffic, if you know what I mean. Everybody has one main gateway. Of course, we are not creatures of destiny. We are capable of contstructing new energetic highways and of redirecting the existing ones. But that's hard work and most of us are just too lazy for that.

Some of you may be asking "What does this have to do with sex?" If I lost you at this point, then I can't help you except to say that sexual energy is just energy. It can be anywhere in the body and fuel any part of the human process on any level of body/soul-reality. At least that's how I understand it.

When I learned this, it all suddenly made sense. Sex is, basically, a physical phenomenon; after all, we are animals. But we're souls, too--each one of us, so many layers and levels of soul. To take that basic, crude energy and to then refine it and to hold that space in a moment of relatedness... that is an art and a discipline. It takes "work,"--time, intimacy, patience, awareness, sensitivity, balance and (by default) a lot of love.

Now, this makes a lot of sense to me.

It's entirely possible that my soul somehow managed to come into this world through a spiritual gateway somewhere in the vicinity of my emotions and my mind. Arriving at this conclusion just seems kind of obvious, once I work my way backwards.

For example, if a man can give over some serious Torah--I absolutely swoon. Any heated and intense intellectual debate will make my cheeks flush and my eyes flash like razors. It definitely starts somewhere in my brain; but then if you add a moment of vulnerable intimacy, I just melt like butter and start to feel it everywhere.

Therefore, it just so happens that I'm a very sexual being, after all--holistically speaking, that is. Now, I just have to meet a "sexually holistic" yid.

Sure.

No prob.