Sexual Creativity please, not “Wellness”

From Dante to Cobain: The Hidden Engine of Creation

”Nothing really exists except examples.”

- Wittgenstein

English actress Rosemund Pike made a telling observation in The Criterion Closet last week. She was picking out classic Blu Ray film editions to enjoy.

“My first pick is ‘I Am Curious’ because I am curious,” Pike said. “I’m interested in the depiction of sex and sexuality on screen. Are we entering an age of prudery?

“I’m interested in the way that ‘wellness’ is taking over our lives— and yet sex seems to be taking a backseat.”

I agree with Pike — and it reminded me of something I wrote when this malaise was first on the horizon. Let’s unwrap!

© Honey Lee Cottrell and Susie Bright, 1983. San Francisco, 14th and Van Ness.

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If I had to judge my sex life by how many times I jumped into bed and had an orgasm, I'd get a big fat "F”. Oh, my notches are more than someone else's notches; but I've had long and short stretches where I haven't buttered up to anybody else's body, or even had my own private satisfaction. Yet this is the last thing I think of when I consider my erotic life. I say erotic life instead of "sex life" because when someone asks me about my sex life, it's like code for "Are you getting laid?"

So what's my code for replying, "Getting laid isn't the half of it?”

My dreams are filled with sex; my work is inspired with libido; my friendships are so influenced by my erotic creativity that I couldn't even pinpoint them all. Advisers tell people to search for a sex life, to make it happen by getting out of the house and into the right "singles" milieu— but your actual sex life is rocking your boat every minute of every day. You never ever have to leave the house or make a phone call.

I remember snooping in a neighbor's bookcase when I was a kid, discovering their garishly illustrated Kama Sutra technique manual with more than a hundred pages and pretzel-shapes to screw your body into. It had the appeal of a periodic table. This is what I had to learn to have sex? The book's title invoked erotic and spiritual symbol, but the spirit behind the presentation was Grey’s Anatomy. I had been so excited to think that one day I was going to have a “real adult sex life,”and I imagined it would be as inspiring as the music I heard on the radio, the novels I read, or the embraces I saw dissolve on the screen.

My childhood intuition was right— the top 40 hits on the radio were more sexy than a hundred nudist diagrams. Rock and roll was sex, and so were all the novels and movies I thrilled to, because they possessed sexual creativity, and the people who composed them were probably as transported as I was, or higher, when they first came up with their ideas.

Erotic experience is a wake-up call, the sign that you're not only alive, you're bursting. As my friend Michael once said, "It doesn't matter whether you're cooking a meal or playing basketball or writing a chapter. Sometimes you get this rush of holistic energy and you'd swear that you just got laid."

"I know that,” I said, "but how come more people won't admit it? It's not like I can line up a row of architects and rocket scientists to admit that, yes indeed, they built that atom, that bridge, and they owe it all to erotic inspiration. Everyone thinks if they admit how much sexual energy fuels their everyday life, they won't get any respect."

"But it doesn't matter what they say!" Michael is very good at overriding naysayers. "Haven't they ever heard of sublimation? You go to the museum, you look at the classic Renaissance paintings, where everyone is suppose to be praising god and fearing the devil— but what is it, after all? Naked bodies! The artists’ faith, their painting, their sexual energy, it's all the same thing."

Many don't want to hear their religious feeling is in any way erotic; it's an insult to their piety. They bring their holier-than-thou attitude to scholarship, to any profession or art they want to be “unsullied” by sex in order to be worthy.

What is their worthiness?

Michael started in on Dante's Divine Comedy. "We have a hero who goes from hell to purgatory to paradise, and at the end of it all, after he has seen God, what does he say? He speaks out to the memory of one woman, a woman he saw for only an instant, and she is 'the love that moves the sun and all the stars!' Remember, this is after God!"

"Yes, I think of that quote 'God is in the details,’” I said, "And so is sex.”

Your erotic life is what you notice about yourself, what drives and thrills you and even maroons you sometimes. It influences our every expression, our role models and the picture of our generation. I can read poems I wrote when I was a teenager, I look at the image of when I was giving birth to my daughter, or see myself on a stage today— and there's an erotic thread running through all of it. My character shows how motivated I've been by sexual creativity, long before I knew much at all about "having sex."

Wags have long argued whether eroticism saps their energy or lets it fly. An orgasm can make you weak in the knees, so that you feel closer to a nap than to creating a masterpiece. But that's why it's “in the details” to see the difference between the release of orgasm and the release of the creative (erotic) mind. A fantasy never leaves you exhausted, an erotic inspiration never tires you out. Sexual creativity stems from living life as if you were making something of it— instead of being made over.

I'm not taking about denying physical release, or saving your fluids like a reservoir. No, I mean the way we express the juice of our greatest joy and some of our most righteous clarion calls. Why not recognize the erotic genius in that passion?

The conservative goes miles out of their way to defend their artistic and intellectual intentions by saying, "This is not about sex."

Their puritan boundary is their litmus test to discern credibility. If art is “great,” it’s not low sex. If it's love, then it's not cheapened below the waist.If it's real politics . . .

When people fortify faith, scholarship, and science in front of their sexual creativity, as an impenetrable screen, look at what they're hiding. They may be trying to hide the power of erotic perception, as colorful denunciations could make it go away. They are chained to their superstitions about sexual power, instead of embracing its potential— a place of opportunity, if incredible insecurity.

I don't blame our ancestors for being as afraid of sex. When I think of my mother telling me that when she was a teenager, she had no idea why she started bleeding, not even knowing the word menstruation, I think how much of our history has been spent being terrified of our bodies, mystified by the origins of life and causes of death. We sense the sexual connection but feel helpless to control its consequences or causes.

When we do get a clue about what makes us tick, we're more than likely to get a shameful lecture from someone who claims we shouldn't have been thinking about it in the first place.

I got a letter the other day from an outraged citizen. This particular man wrote, "Susie, you don't know what LOVE is, love is not sex, it's about trust, it's about sacrifice, it's about something that lasts."

The older I get, the funnier these lectures sound.

I don't know what experiences this man has had with his body and desires. Maybe someday he'll realize that sexual feeling is so lasting that you feel it from cradle to grave.

Sex demands a humility that only comes with the deepest sacrifices. Sex is one of the few honest places, inside us, that doesn’t know how to lie, even if we change the story for the public.

Sex is not about whatever lover done him wrong, or a one-night-stand he'll always regret— it's first the capacity to create and feel and connect. You can certainly love without fucking, but I don't think anyone loves without an element of erotic tenderness, anxiety— a sense of wonderment. If we understand erotic life as being something different from carnal life, or sexual gymnastics, then it really doesn't matter whether you're a whore or a virgin— your erotic comprehension is being alive, and feeling something that makes you bigger than the often ugly circumstances of our existence would let us believe.

It's not an original idea that sex and creativity are connected, or that erotic perception opens a path of consciousness that may otherwise be elusive. It's just that we don't always find enlightenment at the end of our sexual pursuits. At the end of the seeker's journey, there sometimes seems to be an erotic whoopee cushion, the indignity and humiliation of a lustful quest gone wrong. How many times have we shaken our heads at our folly? How often does a sexual high come down like a heavy curtain? “I thought I saw God, but it was really a pimple on my ass.”

It's more than one sorry individual's regrets. Many explorers have said there had to be more to erotic consciousness than the pain of individual trial and error. Was there was a guru who could lead us out of the erotic wilderness? I've met many enlightenment escapees who gathered around one central figure, their fearless leaer. He— and it's always a he— was the quintessential phallocrat to whom every member must submit. The sexism of this tradition impressed me more than the sex. I've never heard of a cult where everyone had to worship the leader's clitoris.

The American New Age examined the sexual prejudices of its faith just as little as the traditionalists. When sects pursue doctrine at the expense of contradictions— they never find the wellspring of sexual energy. Sexual honesty, let alone creativity, will never flourish.

When people feel sullied by passion, they often try to take the sex out of it, as if sex were the root of corruption. They find it easier to talk about the greater glory of eros if they keep it cosmic, out of gender, ahistorical, bathed in fairy tales and pink lights. I like dancing in a fairy ring under a rosy spotlight as much as the next person, but I can't accept the phoniness of a full-time, think-pink lifestyle. Eros is in the details, but those finer senses bloom anywhere.

I've felt desire make a fool of me.I've vowed to remove myself from the

fleshly indignities that made me feel low— especially after my heart got handed

back to me with a few holes in it. Rejection. Jealousy. Loneliness.

Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in George Cukor’s “A Place in the Sun,” 1951. The film still that says everything. Cukor was gay. So was Clift. Taylor a lifelong faghag, in the purest way possible. So figure it out.

It was only in the hindsight of the lovers’ disco, that I took stock of how I’d found access to sexual feelings I'd never had before. It didn't matter what happened to The Other— I was never going to lose this knowledge. I had more empathy, more passion, more patience, and a whole new take on surrender. Like Dorothy clicking her heels, the capacity was always inside me— the cork couldn’t stay in forever.

I'm thankful that I woke up at all.

I don't like to strike a redemptive pose; how you first must crawl through themud before you sit smug at the top. I say my piece to reach out to every person who ever thought, "There's more to sex than anyone admits."

As it stands, our traditions in sex-positive culture are wobbly. We don't promote erotic education. Our healthcare establishment barely has a clue. Our political system finds sex to be a fine whipping boy. Gossips and preachers are mainstream sex advisors; and their tone is usually damning, rarely daring.

So how does anyone dare?

When I do feel erotic ease, that I may be blunt, or curious, then the rewards are immediate and obvious. It’s a great incentive to do it again. The ease comes with familiarity. I've probably listened to others tell me about their sexual and creative lives more than I've talked about mine, and their stories are what influences my advice more than anything else.

The puritans are suspicious of sex education because it leads to tolerance, to enlightenment, frankly. As a teenager, I was embarrassed that my sex knowledge came more from books than experience. By the time my experience caught up with my library, I could say that a learned book was on a par with a learned fuck, without disrespect to the lessons learned from either.

Tolerance and knowledge are the pre-conditions for candor. I was asked this year to teach a class about lesbian and gay social issues, substituting for a couple of teachers who had taught the course for years. One of their most effective exercises for their students was to ask them to write a hypothetical "coming out letter" to their parents, friends, or work mates.

I was struck by this popular gay phrase, since "coming out'' (only previously used by debutantes) has a much bigger definition now that we know how demanding any sexual identity can be. Queer? That's not the half of it! People (including me) make fun of organizations that have names like "Gay-Bisexual-Lesbian-Transgendered-or-Wondering” — but the “WONDER” part is the most psychologically astute. We are in a state of wonder. Our coming out is lifelong. We are not a terminus.

The beloved Kurt Cobain quote: “What am I to say?— everyone is gay.” His tone of voice, "Can you get over yourselves?" caught a feeling.

Whatever you "are," one is first a sexual person who has a limitless mind. Why keep up the pretense? Why not the wonder?

Coming out, if you want to call it that, is a sword of truth. It slices through the choked vines that starved our erotic development. It has a Joan-of-Arc quality.

The hardest part, always, is knowing oneself to make the first cut. . . then letting the blade do its work.

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More

A Reading List

Below are titles from my bookshelf that I’ve returned to more than once, thinking about sexuality & creativity. Rosamund would like them, too! ;-)

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• USES OF THE EROTIC: THE EROTIC AS POWER - an essay by Audre Lorde, later collected in the linked anthology (1978)

I wish Lorde was with us today, so much. I remember attending her talks in the 70s. She inspired my generation of feminists. Audre flat-out demolished the faux separation between sexuality and creativity. My own essay is a mirror of her book: sex as a profound wellspring of creative energy. Everything flows from that. Lorde’s “sex talks” are about liberation, not romance.

• EROTISM: DEATH AND SENSUALITY - by Georges Bataille (1957)

The connection between fucking and dying. Bataille says, eroticism is human because it transcends “animal” sexuality through contemplation of death and the sacred. Although after a lot of animal-watching, I’m starting to wonder. . . Nevertheless his yearning for connection linked to spiritual and mortal transcendence is irresistible. Bataille rejected white napkin narratives about "healthy sexuality" when such a thing wasn’t spoken of.

• KING KONG THEORY - by Virginie Despentes (2006)

Feminism with fangs and working-class credentials. I think Rosamund Pike was echoing Despentes, who delivers an eyeball-peeling critique of how "wellness culture" sanitizes sexuality while “the fathers” profit from women's servility. I re-read this everytime I want a shot in the arm and the clit.

• WAYS OF SEEING - by John Berger (1972)

Berger's book (and BBC series) shattered pretenses about Western art being merely aesthetic. I remember my ex Honey Lee Cottrell first sitting me down with this slim volume and reading aloud. Berger’s analysis of the male gaze was the original— how men looked at women while women watch themselves being looked at. This is what Honey was determined to turn upside down. Yes, it’s a Marxist framework, maybe the best one since Engels. He exposed how oil painting's celebration of possession reflected capitalist values, the mystic hollowness of "high art.” His “get real” atitled about how art serves power is timeless.

• VENUS IN FURS - by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1870)

The novel that gave masochism its name — but that’s the trivia card. There’s no better memoir of erotic obsession. Power dynamics shape desire, no matter how much they insult bourgeois propriety.

• A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN - by Virginia Woolf (1929)

Ah YES. The material conditions necessary for creative expression! It’s like an ode to masturbation, art, and women’s economy, all in one essay. A room of one’s own is freedom.

• L'AMOUR FOU: PHOTOGRAPHY AND SURREALISM - by Rosalind Krauss & Jane Livingston (1985)

I saw the exhibition that reflected this books release in the 80s, and I was a changed woman walking out of it. Surrealist photographers subverted their medium to explore desire and the unconscious. Man Ray, Brassaï, Bellmer —all distorted and reimagined the body, particularly women's bodies, through techniques like solarization and photomontage. The women artists who took it further tell the tale.

• A LOVER'S DISCOURSE: FRAGMENTS - by Roland Barthes (1977)

I call it “Lover’s Disco.” There has never, will never, be a more unyielding examination of heartbreak. You can open ANY page, and find a passage that reads like a Tarot Card — in fact, performance artists have done exactly that on stage. What is waiting for the beloved? Jealousy? Ravishment? Lovers Disco is Barthes’ lexicon for the ineffable aspects of desire. When you are irrational, out of your mind, in love and in art, these are the pages you turn to.

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In Case You Missed It

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Susie’s June Classes

My master classes, on writing and publishing for the Stack— and other short-form media, are June 7 & June 14.

June 7 is for newcomers to this medium; June 14 is for veterans.

Details here. Limited seats, small seminar.

https://literarykitchen.org/substack-for-writers-new-susie-bright-seminars/

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