spring is for...

Caveat Lector: I'm gonna write about sex and if you don't want to read it, stop reading right now.

Trying hard to avoid all the easy cliches about blossoms and sap flowing and even, I guess, bunnies, I want to write something about how the spring season reawakens something in me that always manages to go dormant every winter. The most amazing thing about it, I think, is my own lack of awareness around it so that it is always such a happy shock when spring rolls back around and I realize I'm not the numb and lifeless lump I thought I was.

First, it reminds me we are animals, living on the crust of a planet in a geographic region with seasons which affect our moods and behaviors. No matter how much theorizing or psychologizing we do about things, and how high above the earth our big brains make us feel, we can't escape that hard-wired pulse sent straight from the spring air and into our deepest center which, to be perfectly frank, had me sitting in the coffeeshop yesterday practically overwhelmed by a completely impersonal and detached *desire,* such that I was nearly ready to beg somebody, *anybody,* to touch me.

So I went home and read a book. The thing, at the end of the day, that does separate us from most of the other animals crawling around on the ground and fucking at random is our ability to just sit with that knee-knocking desire for a few minutes, take a deep breath, and just move on without actually dragging the somewhat slimy coffeeshop proprieter into the bathroom and having sex with him on the sink. (The fact that I've never even had sex with a man in my life and that this was the first thought to hit me yesterday is testamony to the indiscriminate sexual power of spring. He was simply the first person I saw.)

Being the dutifully intellectual homo-homo sapien that I am, I cycled home and started reading "Full Exposure," a book about sex by "sexpert" Susie Bright. I got about 50 pages into the slim volume of essays about sex and, sure it's all interesting, but I keep waiting to get to the meat of it. She promises to help open my eyes to the power of my sexual creativity in all aspects of life, to show me how sexual energy is what fuels all creative endeavors, in or out of the bedroom (or coffeeshop bathroom, as the case may be) -- and I appreciate her efforts, but I'm waiting for the results. Feels, right now, like pretty wheels spinning.

She asks us, in the first page, to consider our own erotic storyline -- our history, our characters, etc. So, I think back over the thirteen years of my life as a sexual being (she would, I'm sure, encourage me to think back longer than that, even beyond the bad-high-school-hetero-gropings, back further into even my most proto-solo-sexual meanderings) and I am a little disappointed when I consider the trajectory I've taken. Like a dud firework, I shot into the sky but died without a bang. I made a list yesterday of all my sexual partners since I was 18 and I made up little symbols to denote this or that quality (whether I loved them, whether I slept with them more than a few times, what types of sexual expression was shared, whether there was sadomasochism, etc) -- I realized as my paper filled with names and funny symbols that my sex life has been different (and better) than I had originally remembered.

I also realized that, in the past few years, I have stopped experimenting, stopped reading about sex, stopped actively seeking new kinds of sexual experiences and have, instead, reverted to a kind of dormancy. A longer than seasonal dormancy. Why? I see, when I look at my list and chart, that I had a not-so-good experience with a leather belt that put me off to pain and power in sex. That was in 2001. And I think it would be very easy to say that's what sent me packing back to a space of sexual quiet. But that's too simple. Because, what also happened in 2001, is that my brother died and, shortly thereafter, I entered the worst depression I'd ever yet experienced and shortly after *that* I started taking anti-depressants, which worked wonders for my mood, but certainly squelched most of my mystical, dreaming qualities and left my appetite for sex somewhat limp. By the time I finally took myself off the meds, like taking the training wheels off a bike, in 2004, I was with CB, already feeling a strain and tension in our relationship which clearly impacted our sex as well. Instead of rising up from that dormancy then, I sank further and told myself that maybe I just wasn't a very sexual being (despite plenty of past evidence to the contrary) and wondered if maybe I shouldn't just go join some buddhist monestary somewhere where I could just practice in peace.

This is a complete oversimplification of my sexual history. Don't think I don't know that. But I'm writing a blog-post, not a doctoral dissertation, so I have to condense.

I find myself, right at this moment, opening to spring in what feels like a new body, a new life -- two years off meds, more than two years out of awful depression, out of a not-so-good relationship and hurtling towards May 4th (9 short days away!) when SK returns from Australia. Out of common decency, I will leave SK out of all this sexual-philoso-bloggin, but I will say that I am using my human powers of restraint to channel all my new, spring energy in one direction and that direction is hers.