"Dearest
— my body is simply crazy with wanting you — If you don’t come
tomorrow — I don’t see how I can wait for you — I wonder if your body
wants mine the way mine wants yours — the kisses — the hotness — the
wetness — all melting together — the being held so tight that it hurts —
the strangle and the struggle."
— Excerpt of a letter from Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz
It
is not physical pleasure that I seek exactly, though
this passage is obviously focused on it. But the passion I hear in this, the longing.... I utterly identify with it. What I long to find is
someone who understands that physical desire is - or can be - a metaphor for something
even more profound.
In Hebrew, to engage in sexual intercourse literally means “to know.”
In the book of Genesis, for instance, we are told that "...Adam knew his wife
again; and she bare a son, and called
his name Seth..." I have heard it said that the reason the bible uses
this phrase is because the writers were uncomfortable with explicit
descriptions of human sexuality. But based on other passages and accounts found in it, I am persuaded that this is not true. This is not the
modest euphemism of a culture uneasy with raw sexuality. On the
contrary, it seems evident that the writers
understood, perhaps better than our own culture does, that sex is an act
of the entire person. Not, at least in most cases, just an act of the
body.
It is well known, and no coincidence I believe, that the most vulnerable part of a man's body are his exposed sexual organs. And the human penis is
somewhat unique among mammals in that the mechanism by which it is held erect is
entirely the work of the circulatory system. It becomes, literally and metaphorically, an extension of his heart. The heart, pumping blood,
holds it out not primarily as a demand for pleasure, but as an offering of what is inside him. It is an exposing, a baring, of the source of his inner life. It is a raised flag, an unequivocal declaration of love. If, in some fairy realm, the same man were able to approach his beloved with his hand outstretched, his beating heart lying pulsing in his palm... the romance of it would be clear. And once inside the woman, his pulse is actually beating inside her body. One heart, during this holy ritual, shared within two bodies. Two souls, momentarily inhabiting one joined flesh. Sex is a symbol of the crossing, the momentary dissolving, of the boundaries
of self. An intertwining of personhood. A vehicle so that two souls may caress one another, braid themselves together. It is communion. In fact the word "communion" in Latin means "with-oneness".
Yes, I am a guy. Yes, I have happily had sex that was ostensibly "meaningless", and evasive of the deeper emotional entanglements that it lends itself to. I know that sex can be just play, and I enjoy it as such. But finding physical pleasure is actually quite easy. Finding someone who sees, understands, and embraces my inner life as tightly and passionately as my outward form; finding someone with whom I wish to linger, gazing in wonder, in that intimate space created by physical
sex; someone with whom I want to be naked and vulnerable - seen - not just physically, but
emotionally and spiritually; finding someone who wants to know, and be known... I find that rather less common.
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