Tag: sex

Fun, You Say? Maybe

If I have a kindred spirit I look to most often among dead writers. I cleave toward Dorothy Parker. She was raw and incisive in her observations and commentary.

Parker was famously known for her wit and sharp repartee. She also talked – and wrote – about sex more than her contemporaries, especially women.

That set her apart. To approach the subject of sex and relationships with a certain derring-do endeared her to me.

I haven’t yet found the courage to talk about sex as I experienced it in my lifetime. Too heavy and loaded in certain memories and affect.

I admit to a certain enviousness in Parker’s ability to write teasingly and often sardonically about men and sex and love.

When asked to use “horticulture” in a sentence, Parker snapped: “You can lead a whore to culture, but you cant make her think.”

Of high-brow college girls, she quipped: “If all the girls at Vassar were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

A high-brow form of Mae West was Parker. She taunted and teased and treated the subject matter with both a sense of familiarity and emotional distance.

It is not surprising to me that her own romantic and love life was less sizzling than her prose on the subject matter. Sayin’ – as I’ve often said before – ain’t doin’.

Such life experiences often scan better in the written word than they do in reality. I can relate.

Herewith, her poem reflecting on trysts and other manifestations of love and sex at the dawn of its disappearance.

No doubt, like Parker says, some men I knew were a lot of fun.

Good for a good time if not for a long time. Others, not so much

The Little Old Lady in Lavender Silk

I was seventy-seven, come August,
  I shall shortly be losing my bloom;
I’ve experienced zephyr and raw gust
  And (symbolical) flood and simoom.

When you come to this time of abatement,
  To this passing from Summer to Fall,
It is manners to issue a statement
  As to what you got out of it all.

So I’ll say, though reflection unnerves me
  And pronouncements I dodge as I can,
That I think (if my memory serves me)
  There was nothing more fun than a man!

In my youth, when the crescent was too wan
  To embarrass with beams from above,
By the aid of some local Don Juan
  I fell into the habit of love.

And I learned how to kiss and be merry- an
  Education left better unsung.
My neglect of the waters Pierian
  Was a scandal, when Grandma was young.

Though the shabby unbalanced the splendid,
  And the bitter outmeasured the sweet,
I should certainly do as I then did,
  Were I given the chance to repeat.

For contrition is hollow and wraithful,
  And regret is no part of my plan,
And I think (if my memory’s faithful)
  There was nothing more fun than a man!

Dorothy Parker

The Road Less Travelled

Right this minute, there is an eighty-something-year-old couple making love in their shared bed. Or maybe on their kitchen floor. They are both worried about how they are going to get up. But at this very minute, neither one of them cares.

There is an artist out there – maybe many. S/he is looking intently at the canvas in front of him/her deciding which direction to go in next. This shade of blue-green for those trees in the background. Or a shade or two lighter. A cup of coffee s/he made hours ago is sitting on the table in the art studio. Ice cold.

A writer is looking through a thesaurus yet again for the mot juste to capture and describe that scene of agony, bliss, confusion, or wonder. The writer is looking at that blank page in front of him/her straining to put down on paper what their heart sees and most deeply wants to express. It is a marathon, not a sprint.

These are the lucky ones. There are likely countless thousands more just like them and we have and never will have any idea of who they are. Because frankly, they don’t care much about us. Nothing personal, of course, and if we met them in person, they might be lovely, relatable folk. The point is they are so engrossed in their own version of creation that the entreaties of the world don’t much matter to them.

There are literally millions of people out there in the world vying for your attention. Their motives vary. Some are trying to build their empire by luring you into their vision of what is and should be. Some are just trying to make a living. Others are “trying on” a sales job to see if it is what moves them. Some will stay the course. Others will make a switch while they still can. Maybe they are doing what Mom or Dad did. This job – whatever it is – is the only career possibility they ever thought about.

My father was a lawyer. My mother was a journalist and writer. Their jobs defined my life and my career. But my heart was in neither profession. I was drawn to an entirely different kind of career which – in the end – I did not pursue. Something along the lines of international diplomacy. At the point where I needed to make decisions to move forward on that path, I refused the jump.

My parents neither knew nor showed much interest in my career path. My father derided my university pursuits. He told a boyfriend: “What is Margot doing in university? She is only going to get married and have children.” I was on the Dean’s List and pursuing a double honors major at the time.

I now wish, of course, that I had been strong enough to assign my father’s opinion to the dustbin where it belonged. It is only the strong and emotionally secure who can stand up to the dictates of their caregivers. No matter how weak and emotionally insecure those caregivers were.

The consequence of raising strong, independent human beings is that they may begin to defy you and your expectations as their own lives take shape. Not necessarily in a belligerent, oppositional way but in their own way. As it should be.

Change is scary. Abandoning well-worn paths and habits to tread “the road less traveled” isn’t easy and can be fraught with pitfalls. There are pitfalls you may not necessarily be able to see simply because of your unfamiliarity with the newness of the path you are walking.

I think of this when I think of my own journey to address intergenerational trauma. In my parents’ eyes, life was as it was and there was little that could be changed or affected by our own actions. Neither of my parents was raised in a rose garden.

I watched them dutifully do what parents of their age and stage were supposed to do. They both really messed up – both their own lives and that of their children. “Couldn’t be helped.” “That’s life.” “It is what it is.”

So I choose to celebrate and focus on the elderly couple making mad passionate love when everyone thinks they are past it. I celebrate the failed accountant and struggling visual artist whose parents believed there was “no future” in pursuing a creative passion.

Obviously, I am biased in my tendency to celebrate writers. Those who try to plumb the depths of life’s mysteries and humanity and their own role and take on all of it. By so doing, they add to a perpetual and necessary conversation. That writing has been so denigrated and diminished as an art form is a symptom of the world’s current spiritual sickness.

I recommend we hold on to and encourage writers. When and if the actual day of judgment comes, they may be the only ones who can make sense of how and why we got there. For starters, it is unlikely they unquestioningly accept the dire predictions of religious leaders that eternal doom awaits all but good Christians.

Writers may be the only ones who can show humanity a better option and offer a way out of the grim finality for “non-Christian believers” when the rapture occurs.

What writers know is that our lives are built on and built out of stories. Choose or create one that works for you. Be skeptical that others have your best interests at heart when they are trying to change their beliefs into yours. Screw your brains out on the kitchen floor if it brings you joy. At the end, no one else’s opinion matters but yours.