The Erotic Comedies (Vassi Collection Volume XI) (23 page)

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At the center is the Defining Principle. The first circle contains a Wife Surrogate (WS), a Lover Surrogate (LS), and an Ad Hoc situation (AH). The outer circle holds a Lover-Friend (LF).

The Wife Surrogate is a woman with whom I have developed a steady relationship, reciprocal at all levels. The Lover Surrogate is a man with whom I share traditional romantic values, our energies going from chest to chest more than from genital to genital. The Ad Hoc situation is an open space, variously filled by vagrant episodes, occasional threesomes, and so forth. The Lover Friend is an ex-wife who I see a few times a year and with whom I always share good talk and warm fucking.

The single most important fact about these relationships is that they are structural rather than personal. They remain unchanged in texture, activity, and feeling no matter who happens to be occupying the space at any given time. Should the Wife Surrogate leave, the next woman to take that position would, from the very first day, assume the depth, complexity, and quality of that role, and continue in that fashion for so long as we maintained the contract. To define the rule: for the promiscuate, all individuals are unique, and no one uniqueness is given special prominence over any other.

With the passage of time, the diagram changed its form periodically. For a while it contained a Peripheral Woman (PW) who called me once or twice a week and with whom I slept once or twice a month. But I found the presence of that category too draining on my energy and deleted it. Of course, this description has both a universal and specific aspect. Anyone entering the state of promiscuity seriously will develop a structure like this, but the details will vary from person to person.

Once I was able to be clear about my condition, I could explain to each of the people in my life precisely where they fit in relation to myself and to one another. Some found the notion grotesque, and wanted no more to do with me. But more than a few, both inside and outside the circle, were grateful for the clarity. I was able to distinguish the true promiscuates from the closet celibates and secret seekers after marriage on the basis of which grasped the necessity for such a conceptual structure. The motto became,
No Passion Without Paradigm
.

Too often we have taken the magic, mystery, and power of the erotic spell for granted. Fucking, the source of life and perhaps its most complete activity, is also our most comprehensive metaphor. Erotic energy is very pure, very fine, and comparable to the energy one develops while doing zazen or other meditational practices. In the act of fucking we pierce one another's flesh with flesh, breathe one another's breath, drink one another's fluids, swim in one another's souls, communing telepathically on all levels, tossed upon the same billowing waves of cosmic creation and thrust into the same intergalactic calms, speaking, weeping, smiling, listening to the cries and sighs of ecstasy which punctuate the profound silence of the erotic mood. It is unquestionably grand, a gift from the gods as well as a legacy from the animals. The major insight of the promiscuate, paradoxically, is that there is no such thing as a casual fuck.

Simply because this vortex is so magnetic, it shines out of all proportion over the drab routines of our grey civilization, and we seem unable to deal with it sensibly. Celibacy, ideally, is the awareness of the splendor of eros, a decision to treat that ground as so sacred one will not walk upon it. But all too often it is practiced out of fear of opening oneself, or out of some misplaced notion of holiness. Marriage can be a pact between two people who find fucking so special they decide never to share it with anyone else. Or else it may become a clutching jealousy which ultimately smothers the erotic spark. Promiscuity also has two faces: one sees fucking as a sublime activity, its own raison d'etre, and structures human relationship as a vehicle of erotic worship; the other continually cheapens the erotic impulse by pretending that it has no meaning, seeing fucking merely as a way of scratching an itch.

The exalted view of promiscuity, however, for all its lyrical charm, contains its own problems. The marriage reflex is the most trenchant, and it insidiously reappears whenever I feel it has been extirpated. Allied to this is the entire area of conflicting demands on my time and energy, a difficulty which prompted the notion of setting up a pecking order. Then there is the question of dumping. How does one tell one's Wife Surrogate that she has been cycled out and replaced by yesterday's Ad Hoc adventure? Specialization is perhaps the most thorny issue. Does one define the totality of one's erotic life in terms of the full range of people with whom one is involved, responding in part to each; or does one seek full expression with each every time?

I have found no definitive answers yet. The bonding reflex, on the level of social conditioning, may be dealt with consciously; but as a biological mechanism it is intransigent. The pecking order situation may be eased by having the various individuals in the circles meet and come to an understanding in relation to excessive demands. The problem of termination is eased since each of the people I see has his or her own erotic web. Breaking off with someone doesn't exile that person to isolation, but simply occasions an alternation of his or her own erotic structure. Also, anyone in the inner circle can move into the second circle, not an uncomfortable location. The question of specialization, very subtle and complex, requires much more experience and analysis before I can define its elements.

These and related difficulties indicate that the state of promiscuity presents a range of challenges as wide and deep as provided by marriage or celibacy. Those I have indicated represent first impressions, and I imagine that anyone entering this realm will find his or her own angles on the situation. My purpose in presenting, however sketchily, my current structure is to give an example of the model. My major concern lies in indicating that promiscuity offers a sane, adult, and compassionate alternative to marriage and celibacy, and one which requires research, self-awareness, strength, and a daring leap into a new realization of one's erotic makeup.

Beyond this, once promiscuity is given its proper respect, there is the possibility of movement from one state to another with greater ease. The end of a marriage need not mean a leap into degradation or loneliness, but merely a sidestep into a different mode. Hybrid forms are possible. One gay couple I know has been together for five years, and since the first year they have not fucked one another, but maintained all erotic liaisons outside their relationship. Thus they have the emotional and psychological security of marriage, the austerity of mutual celibacy, and the erotic flexibility of promiscuity, all within a single life style.

From my own experience, I feel it is essential that the promiscuate be widely understood as a separate and legitimate type, on a par with the married and the celibate. Such a person blends the solitary quality of celibacy with the bonding capacity of marriage, adding a third and unique ingredient, conceptual primacy. Up until now, promiscuity has been treated by society, by psychological opinion, and by its practitioners, as some form of aberration, or else as a fantasy fulfillment. Promiscuates fell into the mindless habit of fucking first and asking questions later, coming to despise themselves for qualities which seemed debased only because they were not being totally expressed, poisoning themselves with an unconscious wistful hankering for marriage or a secret idea that celibacy was the superior way.

Once promiscuity is taken seriously, foolish and degrading behavior will be seen for what it is and one will have a much more difficult time justifying one's weakness and neurosis. Promiscuity is diametrically opposed to trashing, and perhaps the major reason why it has not been accepted as a viable lifestyle is that such an understanding might seal off an escape route for millions who have few other ways to deal with excessive levels of anxiety.

For myself, this is the conclusion of my current phase of exploration. A year from now, I may be married again, or celibate, or have worked out a new synthesis. But for now, while I am promiscuous, I have no choice but to understand the nature of the condition and to define it in the most rigorous terms. To be at once a person, an individual, operating within finite parameters of human relationship, and a transpersonal manifestation of pure energy, a reflection of the primal mystery of being, a living coordinate on the grid of creation, to be the actual embodiment of the principle of both/and, to have solved the problem of duality in the acid bath of eros, this is the promise held out by the path of enlightened promiscuity.

The Split Splits

Although, as Reich observed, we may begin to develop characterological tensions from as early as three weeks of age, it usually isn't until we are from between three and seven years old that our essential malformation installs itself at crucial junctures in our psychophysical infrastructure. The child undergoes incremental increases of muscular tensions, breath suppression, and perceptual distortion until some single incident activates an autonomous armor system which has no function except the maintenance of its own defenses. We can see this in nations as easily as in individuals.

This process of conditioned pathology has been variously described. In our attempt to understand why we are imperfectly made, we have evolved a full spectrum of rationalization. "Original sin" is no more or less explanatory than "cosmic ignorance" or "the emotional plague." And thousands of religions, therapies, schools of meditation, and political movements have been launched to delineate the causes of our stupidity as a species and to cure our disease.

Most recently, Janov's concept of a
primal split
has provided a useful handle for grabbing on to the problem. I remember an event which may very well have been the central factor in deciding the contours and content of my erotic life, and in providing me with a highly personal yoga through which to bring myself back into touch with myself.

I was eight years old. My mother and a neighbor woman were going shopping, and left the neighbor's two-year-old daughter with me to watch for a few minutes. My instructions were simply to see that she didn't get into mischief or hurt herself.

But the moment they left, I was filled with a deep throbbing which began in my chest and spread into my legs, until my whole body was trembling as though with cold. The little girl was lying on the floor, staring vacantly at the ceiling. My desire was strong and clear, guided by a biological genius that had not as yet been permanently deranged. Desire unstrung me, although I knew that what I was being drawn to do would be considered an act which merited severe punishment.

But with what fiendish cunning, at such an early age, I pieced together the understanding that since the girl was too young to speak, she could not report on anything I might do with her! While I couldn't articulate it as such, the relationship between truth and language stood forth in all its enticing complexity.

I had no notion of harming the child; quite the contrary, my impulses were expansive and benign, even though selfishly motivated. With untutored instinct I grasped the principle of give-to-get that it took Masters and Johnson a laboratory and a hundred exhibitionists to demonstrate. The little girl turned me on, and I wanted to make her feel good so she would make me feel good.

Taking the burden of responsibility for my need, I pulled the diaper down to her ankles. For a long while I gazed at the unformed cleft, knowing at once that any other notions of God would, for a large portion of my life, take second place to the mesmerizing appeal of that hole, I lay down next to her, unbuttoned my pants, and assumed my career as an erotic entity. I pressed my tiny penis against her crotch and rubbed myself on her, gently at first, and soon with mounting excitement.

I became lost in the mild frenzy of the act, yet I remember that the girl was relaxed and smiling throughout, and seemed to be enjoying herself in that vague way of infants. We were sharing a primitive communion and I was taken with the revelation that this simple play was the nicest thing I'd ever done with anyone. The mutual exposure games I had encountered with girls my age had always been tinged with a tingling sense of naughtiness that at once added to their intensity and eroded their naturalness. Much later in life I was to realize that what our culture considers eroticism is really a more or less sophisticated resistance to the acceptance of the flow of pleasure.

I was in the middle of a pretty good soft-cock-without-penetration fuck when I heard the front door open. I'm sure that no knock by police agents in the dead of night has even been as terrifying to anyone as that entrance was to me. It was my mother and her friend returning. My breath froze, the diaphragmatic paralysis which signals all psychic and emotional pathology. I pictured them descending on me, their faces horrible masks of anger, their curved fingers ready to tear at my eyes.

That what I was doing, in itself harmless and pleasant, a bit of natural behavior which in a sane society would evoke nothing more than an indulgent smile, would be judged a crime by the world I lived in, now represented by these mothers, is a wedge of knowledge that must have entered me through a thousand informal channels during my childhood. Without an explicit word ever having been spoken to me, I had introjected the judgment of civilization on the body.

I put my penis back and with fumbling fingers yanked the diaper back over the girl's legs. The suave lover of a few seconds earlier had rapidly disintegrated into a guilt-ridden, twitching bundle of insecurity. Perhaps if, at that instant, I had maintained myself bravely and continued in the authority of my innocence, I might have been physically beaten but would have retained my integrity. But I was a cowardly, intellectual youngster, and I capitulated without a contest.

The child, sensing the sudden tension, began to cry. And I was barely able to sit on the floor next to her and pretend to be trying to quiet her before the two women walked into the room.