Memoir, from just outside the box
Sex Ed
Fox Butterfield / “China: Alive in the Bitter Sea” / 1982
The Chinese have always held the Taoist view that sexual relations between male and female are the primary earthly manifestation of the universal principles of Yin & Yang.
As such, the Chinese regard sex to be as natural and indispensable to human health and longevity as rain falling on the fields is to plant life.
The intense sense of guilt attached to sexual matters in Judeo-Christian tradition is, in Chinese eyes, one of the most unpleasant and incomprehensible aspects of Western culture.
Traditional Western hypocrisy towards sex has prevented serious study of human sexuality in the Western world until only a few decades ago.
Like everything else in Western philosophy, sex is viewed through the lens of dualism; it is seen as either sacred (in matrimony) or profane (out of wedlock), with no room for anything in between.
The Chinese, however, do not draw distinctions between sacred and profane sex. As far as the Taoists are concerned, the only important distinctions regarding sexual activities are those between healthy and unhealthy habits.
The Chinese approach the subject of human sexuality with a blend of curiosity and reverence, just as they do all natural phenomena.
Since sexual relations are as fundamental to human life as eating and sleeping, Taoist adepts devoted a lot of time and thought to researching its every aspect and implication for human health and longevity.
In a society happily free of sexual repression, Taoist physicians took a long and careful look at human sexual behavior, and they candidly recorded their findings in journals and books, couched in the usual florid Taoist terminology.
Consequently, the Chinese have been able to approach and study sexual relations between men and women, with open eyes and open minds, and they have, over three millennia, become the world's most astute observers of human sexuality, as well as the most inventive lovers."
The Mandarin Chinese phrase gāo cháo [gow chow] has multiple meanings, including high tide, upsurge, orgasm and climax.
my NYT reader comment / 2018
Pardon me if I don't trust a Catholic giving sexual advice. Sex is more than just sexual intercourse. You failed to mention the dozens of other ways to enjoy sex. I came of age during the Sixties social and political revolution, when the women were unleashed from the drooling, controlling clutches of patriarchy and were free to indulge in their own styles of sexual aggression and satisfaction. It was an era when everyone I knew I'd seen naked, when every sexual act I was interested in was demystified, and when a formerly narrow corridor of behavior became a massive field of play.
Trash
Today I read the obituary of Paul Morrissey (86). Morrissey's films, "made with Andy Warhol in the late 1960s and early 1970s, captured New York's demimonde of drug addicts, drag queens and hipsters and turned an unlikely stable of amateur actors into underground stars."
In Trash (1970), "an impotent heroin addict (Joe Dallesandro) lives with a transvestite (Holly Woodlawn) who spends time collecting garbage and cruising for sex."
Roger Ebert: "Trash passes right through pornography and emerges on the other side."
Vincent Canby: "Trash is true-blue movie-making, almost epic, funny and vivid, though a bit rotten at the core."
Gene Siskel: "The Warhol-Morrissey world is a strange one, but in many ways a far more real world than the formula Hollywood drama or comedy. The actors are solidly in touch with their madness."
In the spring of 1971, I saw Trash in a movie theater in downtown Syracuse, New York. I was in the Air Force and living off-base in a boarding house near the university. In the theater, I was sitting next to my first girlfriend, Cynthia. In 1971, we were both 24. Cynthia was an artist and a libertine, "a person who is unrestrained by convention or morality." It made perfect sense that she would gravitate toward an Andy Warhol production.
In the early 1950s in Ohio, Cynthia and her family moved in next door. She and I attended kindergarten and the first grade together, after which my first girlfriend and her family moved to Nashville. A year later, I visited Cynthia. We were 8 years old. Her progressive parents, Harold & Winnie, allowed Cynthia and I to sleep together in the same bed. My first published poem was about Cynthia.
Childhood Documentary: Two Weeks in Nashville, 1955
We built a golf course
across her neighborhood of lawns
and rolled through Tennessee
in an old side-tracked dining car,
a tȇte-à-tête over invisible wine
on the latest Catholic outrage.
We rinsed our mouths after every meal
and slept head-to-head in the same bed,
kissing each other on the mouth goodnight
as her mother backed out and left us in darkness.
Tucked in tight,
we whispered at the ceiling for hours,
and when we were safe,
she would slide a bit closer
and we'd lie pressed together,
wide-eyed, giddy, laughing,
caught without our raincoats
in the first great storm.