Passions And Fears Are Contagious

The biblical expression, 'knowing' someone, is what is implied when we learn about someone else through and with another via sexual togetherness. Knowing what someone tastes like, the pitch and tenor of their sighs and moans, their body talking back to us is a small part of getting to know someone. Being a voyeur takes no courage. That is not the case when we say yes to another and trust them, allowing someone to engage our sexual emotions, allowing ourselves to be driven off our center of gravity, to a place that can turn our lives upside down or around, to respond to a touch that initiates a cascade of events that can be dangerous, unsettling, unexpected, exhilarating, out of control, indescribable delicious and so much more. .....and where we know that there is no chance to turn back and away! Do we accept the dare, cross the sexual threshold and unfurl a trajectory of feelings that are set in motion as lips meet, touching, tongues exploring, a hand caressing breasts, the smooth skin between her legs, or her hand on a hard cock, the sound of gasping for breath, eyes half closed but you know all about our minds eye experiencing the multiple nuances of sex played out together.

This is ridiculous. I am spinning a bottle which can point to any and all of the features of sex, what has been said, sung, written, painted, photographed so why add some clichés?

Who are we and what are we made of? Look in a mirror and you instantly recognize it is you staring back but animals like chimps and elephants also recognize themselves in a mirror. Surprised? While we admire ourselves and elephants in the mirror it is also clear that the elephants also bond and not just fuck. You recognize your writing, your voice, your body odor and underwear. If I ask you to tell me about yourself you are likely to come up with some of your biography and then move beneath the surface of your life events and facts about you and that is when you start introducing and mixing the real of you with your well honed fiction scripts about your 'true essence'. We all do that because reality, our reality, is inevitably a 'mock up' that includes the heavy hand of past experiences, biases, knowledge networks and pathways in our head, schemas, concepts, hopes and wishes and so much more baloney about what we wished were so. Of course you know that reality is in our head and not outside your skin. So where does it leave the question of who are we and the answer lies not in what we say about ourselves but by our actions, what we do and how we respond in all sorts of situations. I may believe what you say when you tell me you have a sense of adventure, that you are kind and generous but I am more likely to be convinced by seeing what you do, how you live your life. Sex as just one of the more effective mirrors available that can let us know who we are and what we have hidden in our cupboard.

Continuing with the obvious which brings us back to our brains, the real source of our reality and our experience of our sexuality. Modern brain science can give us some clues about the pathways, brain circuits and systems that are the basis of desire, the basis of our experience of an orgasm, attraction and so much more. The sex trappings that are so stimulating are one fact of our historical past, based records of our experience. What we find attractive, the color of eyes, the way someone moves, the color and style of their dress, their underwear, and so much more are all there as part of our 'brain' knowledge that comes into sex-play. We are aware of some of that knowledge but much of it lies outside of awareness but nevertheless influencing our response to our object of desire. While we don't know where our 'special' tastes came from just that they are important to us and that the origins of our tastes go way back and are located in some yet to be names knowledge brain network. Brain science can provide clues about where all the sex action is happening in the brain but that does not mean that we know how things like desire are constructed in the brain. It is one thing to know about what features (systems) of the brain need to be considered in constructing a brain portrait of desire and another to come up with a working real model of the brain expressing desire.

One more thing to consider is that we, like mice, are creatures of habit. Our sexuality our objects of desire, what 'turns us on' and our sexual response, is often repeated over and over and that is a consequence of how we move about our brains along familiar, well-worn paths (like trolleys moving a along a track). Sexual patterns such as domination, submission, a desire to be humiliated or to humiliate are often repeated over and over without a visible connection to the past that might account for how and why we behave as we do. Wandering off to the new and unexpected sexual directions can be viewed as dangerous. Do we yield to the sirens beckoning to us, "come, come join us" (Odysseus)? Do we try the equivalent of the Odysseus strategy for resisting their seduction by asking his crew to tie him to the mast of his ship..... so that he can survive and meet other, new challenges? Are we as fortunate or unfortunate as Odysseus? Sometimes we are not left to our own devices and luckily, instead events, people, circumstances intervene and then what, what do we do? Can we stay in the familiar places of our mind? Do we dare risk soaring over a cliff?

The pathways of the mind can allow our imaginations to soar to anywhere but that does not mean we will act on where our mind takes us. The voyeur in us provides glimpses of scenes and people that are not part of our lives. We sit back and observe lives lived with their moments of excitement, drama, sadness, laughter, pathos. We meet people at a distance, in books, on the screen, on our TVs and that, comingles with our experience of our families, friends, work, our neighborhoods. Will we allow ourselves to lift someone from the pages of a book and, arm and arm, head towards the bedroom?

I have been writing some sexually explicit stories. Why? In part because I want to. I want to try and see if I can write about people teasing each other, fucking, sucking, holding back an own orgasm so that our partner has room and time to have their passion explode with us there. Describing the action is ridiculously easy and captures little of what sex is about. Can I find a way to explore and describe minds at work in the excitement of the moment, the point at which desire is so powerful that it overwhelms all the other pathways in the mind?

More later after I catch my breath.