Interested in exploring desire, language and connection

[WrittenOnPaper]

Hello.

I study Psychology, Spanish and Mandarin at university (beginner level), I sleep outside and I sing and play guitar wherever I walk or sit. That is a very simple version of where my body goes and what it does when it goes there. As for how and why, it is language, communication, connection, sharing, sex, beauty, harmony, touch, love, pleasure, play, creativity, respect, freedom, giving and kindness that leak out from my soul and into my life like a dye; thus, if you were to stand downstream and gather me into your hands like water, I think these are the dyes you would see altering, energising and intermingling throughout my hopes, activity and substance. I like the thought of being like water, and of being filtered through someone's hands like water passing through grains of sand (and vice versa); indeed, it is these sensations, images and dreams, the ones that go into our rivers like sunlight, that I most want to explore with other human beings.

I feel joy, vulnerability, arousal and openness when I participate in and move towards these experiences; sometimes they feel scary, in part because I feel confused about the ethics and nature of desire, consent and objectification, but also because, emotionally, I have not been provided with a scaffold for understanding and climbing up into joyful, erotic and connected experiences. I'm also not very experienced, so I have personal work to do in this area; as such I am trying to build my own scaffolds, and have more experiences, and that is part of why I am here. I know that, sometimes, when these experiences and ideas are near, my body smokes and burns on the water like moonlight and damp leaves.

In general, I am trying to be more brave, more clear and more able to move towards the things that feel alive to me, both intellectually and emotionally, because my intuition tells me that is the right thing for me to do. I am not religious but desire makes me want to reach for words like grace, mystery, celebration, communion and surrender; it feels like a gift and I want to live a life of sharing, encouraging and embracing it. Something I find very compelling, for example, is the thought of making love in the grass, as if the natural world were a temple and making love its proper form of worship.

(I am suddenly reminded of the old-fashioned euphemism 'giving someone a green gown'. It brings to mind a TED talk I saw recently about how sex needs a new metaphor, since the dominant American metaphor of baseball connotes scheduled, agent-defined (pitchers, catchers and batters), formulaic and adversarial sex. The speaker suggests the metaphor of pizza as an antidote and alternative, one that should replace the baseball metaphor in sex education classes, because the pizza metaphor connotes, and has as its model, a social activity that is discursive, agent-neutral (you can have any number of pitches, catchers, batters and fielders - all of them get to eat and enjoy), cooperative and desire-driven. "Mmmm, I could really go some pizza right about now. How about you?"; "What would you like on your pizza? Should we get the usual?" and "Well, I don't really like Hawaiian - how about we go half-half?". This metaphor replacement seems a wonderful suggestion to me.

To my mind, the 'giving someone a green gown' metaphor is almost beautiful: it brings to mind a sweet and earthy passivity, of something similar to the wind falling in love with gravity and all the seed-heads it has been carrying up until now descending to the ground, probably to become a part of the grass. However, I prefer, and maybe you can sense that my thoughts are going in this direction, the image of it being the activity of the lovers that makes the hill green: "We dressed the hill in green". That is a sentence that feels like warm saliva in my mouth and which makes me think of love, humanity and poetry. It seems so much more arresting, truthful and real to me; insofar as it is expressing my emotions and sentiments, the way my thoughts transport sensation and perception, I think it makes sense to call it more truthful and real, too, even though a grass stain on a dress is the more objective perception. Thus, and while I don't know if makes sense to you when I say this, for me the image of the girl being given a green gown is not one of grass stains on her clothes, or in fact of her being passive and given something. Instead, there is an act of creation, done by both of them, that alters their world and experience of life and colour.

It is her warm skin, for example, her fingers wavering amid the grass and the valves of her breathing as she falls backwards onto the hillside and pulls him down with her, and his hands and weight that follow, dimpling her bottom as she is pressed down into the earth, and the two of them moving together in the sunlight, the sounds of them, their hair and thrown clothes, broadening out from where they sigh and clutch at each other, which is what makes the green of the hill actually become green. At least to my mind. But that was an aside.)

If you are also interested in language, communication, connection, sharing, sex, beauty, harmony, touch, love, pleasure, play, creativity, respect, freedom, giving and kindness, and would like to explore those and do not mind (or indeed would enjoy) that sometimes moonlight will burn on the water, sunlight will enter the river and metaphors will be lit in my blood, causing me to wander into sensations (like I did before), then it might be very nice to email together, and maybe even to chat and talk. I do not know what exactly I would talk about; mainly, I want to pour with the colours and sensations, however it is they pour. I'd be very interested in you doing the same.

If we were to discover that the way our minds touch, and what it feels like to hear the other person's breathing, generates an erotic charge and makes mist descend from the mountains or oil pour from a jar, or that one of us is interested in bringing an erotic charge they are feeling from outside of the situation (and, thus, not specifically because of something about the other person) into the situation, perhaps because it feels safe to do so, I think it would be good to have a conversation about that. 1) I think changes in levels of intimacy should be explicitly discussed, to know where we are coming from and where we are hoping to go and what that would mean; 2) I think it is right to care about impulses towards eroticism, satisfaction and pleasure and 3) I think it is right to care about consent and all parties entering into interactions knowingly and willingly. There is something that I profoundly cherish about communication, mutuality, willingness, clarity and respect. Historically, I have not been very good at involving myself in such conversations, to my and the other person's disadvantage, but I would very much like to in the future.

At this point, I want to say that I am unclear about whether or not I would want to develop an online romantic relationship. For, while I appreciate that bridges can be built with words, and do believe that the stars can ferry sweetness, passion and intimacy across continents, there is something within me that still hesitates, unsure as to whether or not the moon can actually be happy with the earth; because, even though we loved it enough to send an astronaut, and even though our breath hitches slightly when we glimpse it and our bodies pool and heat beneath its pale colour, it still strikes me as being very far away from the many little footsteps we step and puffs of air that we puff, and thus I cannot help but think it would be somewhat sad and lonely. At least the mangroves get to hold hands underground.

A tiny poem just popped into life. I wrote the word 'lonely' and the word 'lovely' wanted to exist too. I am trying to give my body over to the things that are vascular and alive, so I will say Yes to its existence:

**********************************************
You are excruciatingly lovely, lonely little moon, in your
white dusting of rouge. How could we not love you?

And yes, see how the fish are dressing in silver for you? Tonight
the fish are coming out, darling moon, dressed like little combs:

They come to help you braid your beloved's wild blue hair.
**********************************************

But I don't know. As I said, I am unsure. I have the feeling, too, that, like the moon, I would be willing to pull at the tides just to receive a trace of someone's aroused breathing, brought to me on starlight. The thought does make my soul shiver and pearl, as does the thought of someone, filled with wanting, saying my name. I certainly don't want to be closed to anything that makes me shiver or create, if it is consensual, as I am here to explore, share and embrace connection, creativity and desire with another human being. Why express uncertainty at all then? Perhaps I was just being nervous. As I said, I need to be more brave, more clear and more able to move towards what I want - suggesting barriers and limits is not part of that. But guilty as charged.

If I sound like someone you would like to get to know and share with, I hope to hear from you. I don't know where it would lead but I am trying to open myself to desire, sex, creativity, pleasure, friendship, love, language and connection. A different way to phrase it, perhaps, is to say that I am interested in the way my body fills my soul and my soul fills my body. Thanks for taking the time to have a read.

P.S: Also, I'm Australian, male and 33. I hope nothing I said was in breach of Literotica policy.

 

[KeltAssassin]

Jesus that's deep.

 

[MissAshleyToYou]

This was beautiful. What passion you have with words. Good luck on your search.

 

[RipRian]

It is impossible to sanctify and universalize sex at the same time. Sanctity depends upon distance, upon guarded admittance to the sacred experience. The metaphor of the pizza is vulgar and demonstrates the point - is there a less religious experience than eating pizza? If sex is to be like eating pizza then our attitude to it would be the same nonchalance, and sex with its complications which give it its excitement would be as boring as satisfying our hunger. It is simulation and the boundaries of the simulation must be guarded.

The metaphor of "giving the green gown" is better because it suggests a re-vitalizing function to sex which is more correct. We live by nature's laws of survival and procreation, and although we conquer nature and make a mockery of its laws, we are still conditioned by it. I think ultimately the sexual agon of domination and submission, the quasi-gamification of sex, is the most fruitful for the variety of configurations, the excitement it offers.

 

[WrittenOnPaper]

KeltAssassin: I'm quite impressionistic and easily made nervous; right now, I worry I lack sufficient interpersonal skills to give a good response. The word 'assassin', for example, and the hard 'k' sound that starts your name, initially loom as a bit unapproachable for me. I also had the vague feeling that you were talking about me, rather than to me, whether right or wrongly I don't know, and that presents a further barrier to knowing what a good response would be.

I don't want to simply joke and throw something light back in response, because what I wrote was written in earnest. But if I had that fluidity, and was not as confused or easily battered about by the wind, I'd probably say something like: 'Maybe that is why my nose doesn't clear the water'. The paradox is that if I wasn't easily confused or easily battered about by the wind then it wouldn't be true to say it, because I'd be up above everything and giggling in a hot air balloon. Oh well. Thank you for your response. I'm not quite sure how to take it but increasingly I feel a fondness for your response. And your signature certainly gives me the opposite impression to the hard K and that most dangerous of words, Assassin!. Thanks, mate, and sorry for being a goof.

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MissAshleyToYou: Thank you for your comment, MissAshley. I understood it! It was nice for me to hear something of what you felt in response and for your understanding to be expressed. It was also very nice to be wished good luck. Good luck to you as well. It is a very nice sentiment.


*********************************************************************************************
RipRian: Thank you for your reply. I had a think about what you said. I wrote some things in response:


When you say it is impossible to universalise and sanctify something, I understand what you mean; indeed, the words themselves and anthropological data try to persuade me of your claim. However, I'm not wanting to tether my thoughts about sex to historical argument; that is, the cipher I prefer is my own experience, not the historically accumulated and politically articulated practices a priestly caste used to separate out and give significance to the words 'sacredness' and 'sanction'. I do agree: historically, sanctity and the sacred is conditioned by guarded admittance. But when I put forward words like sacredness, communion and grace, I am not trying to find and curl up leaves from the forest floor, there to carefully roll them up into little homes for my feelings; instead, I am growing them out from me like a spider grows its web: from my very body, from the things it has experienced and knows as well as the hints it gets from the wind tugging at its makings. I am tempted by the wind, not by the buildings.

I worry I run the risk of implying you are not speaking from a place of passion and engagement. After all, you spoke of excitement, revitalisation and agon, and of how unsatisfying sex would be if it were the same uncomplicated process of satisfying one's hunger with pizza.

It might be worth saying here that I think sex can be different things to different people and that I believe that the experience of food-eating and the pleasures it brings can also vary across people. I can, for instance, imagine pizza-eating that is not nonchalant, and not because its boundaries and ways of breaching into or being welcomed into the experience of pizza-eating have been carefully maintained or strenuously achieved, just as I can imagine sex that is like a warm blanket, something comforting and refreshing like a bath, without fight, excitement or conflict. More comfort and nurturance than Greek passion and agony, perhaps, true, but not for that reason lacking in taste or sophistication. I would claim that it remains a sexual experience: one that a person could value, want and choose, even if it is as uncomplicated and as abundant as the water from the bath tap. It involves a world and the sensations of that world.

I do wonder if a difference that is being expressed here is the difference between excitement and enthusiasm. To gesture to their prefixes, ex-, which can mean 'from without', such as being external to, and en-, which means 'from within' and takes us to the centre, to questions about what is inside, and not to questions about what things are going on out there to stir things up - well - maybe this contrast somewhat clarifies the thought I am having that there is a difference between us.

I *am* interested in the idea of sexuality as excitement, as something that gets called out from you by an external incitement or that happens to you because of external conditions and causes, but fundamentally I feel myself more drawn to the idea of sexuality as an enthusiasm, of an internal spirit that blooms and takes possession, like how the self-activity of the breath or heart blooms and takes possession of our lungs and blood. Maybe excitement and enthusiasm are rivalrous, maybe they follow different biological pathways or maybe, ultimately, there is no great difference between being possessed by God and being confronted with demarcations and restrictions that inspire an appetite for gaining victory over and/or experiencing the divine.

For now, it remains the case that I imagine sexuality as more like an internal sun, with characteristics that can be discovered and read and understand as emblems of a person's emotional needs and experiences; much more so than I imagine sexuality to be a state of arousal from perceiving and overcoming conflicts with self and/or others. That is, I am inclined to think that there are emotional and aesthetic hungers, the satisfaction of which is like having God or sunlight in your heart. For me, at least, holding my heart, and helping it know its own fire, seems the more fruitful - not for the excitement it brings, but for the enjoyment and enjoining it brings with others.

I have said, however, that I need more experience. In the interest of balance and self-knowledge, I'll step away from the glow of the campfire, were there are happy songs about love and emotion, because very likely there are darker sensations, and maybe even darker answers, to be found in the forest. And what if I go out there with the word excitement on my skin like frost? There is the sound of a stick being stepped on, my attention suddenly swiveling and narrowing, maybe without any gain of light and warmth in my heart too, maybe nothing like what I had previously described as being sexual, but perhaps with gain in heat, focus, energy and tension in my limbs, with the levers and impulses for action suddenly completely present and wanting to move, without thought of heart or emotional expansion, like the barrel of a gun straining with the forces of combustion now that the hammer has been struck, the gunpowder has been exploded and the laws of physics have been catalysed to create automatic movement and automatic noise.

Is this sudden, perhaps very sexual, harnessing of my attentional system, which surges - for what? prey? victory? conquest? - excitement? Maybe it is what you want to gesture to and describe as excitement's fruitfulness, which perhaps can be very pleasurable: the fact that there is something wanted and rewarding about experiences of competition, the way there is the desire to win and achieve and how it narrows attention, probably cannot be argued. I would need to look into the nature of our attentional systems and emotional systems further, though, to have a better understanding of how they interact and what is aimed at.

At this point, it may only be ethical concerns that make me want to hold up my hand and say 'no, hush, this ravening excitement is not a thing' or to attempt to subsume my sexuality under a horizon characterised by enjoyment, mutuality and respect. Sometimes, I can imagine that life is about accepting that one is human or fighting to actually be human.

I think what must give pause, however, is that the beast hungering in the frost that I just described was an act of creation, a spinning from my mind conditioned by my mind, and that as such it is more complicated than simply observing that human being X became mindless and sexual in the forest because of excitement and the way dominance, and the possibility of dominance, thrilled him. In many ways, it could be said that my choice to conjure the image of animality in the forest was a decision to breathe enjoyment and play aesthetically.

I hope I was coherent.

 

[WrittenOnPaper]

Not searching anymore

Hello.

I am in love and not searching for these things any more. I know where and with whom I want to share and discover everything with. (With María.) I'm not expecting people to contact me about this but I want all the places where I searched for intimacy and connection to be touched with the truth.

 

[Misha_Davis]

Congratulations on meeting someone. I hope that it works out for you

Hello.

I am in love and not searching for these things any more. I know where and with whom I want to share and discover everything with. (With María.) I'm not expecting people to contact me about this but I want all the places where I searched for intimacy and connection to be touched with the truth.