The Friday Sex Blog [In Praise of Darkness]

¡Hola! Everybody…
The nip is in the air: the message that autumn will arrive, dressed to the teeth, at that moment when you most need change… I’m going to get dressed just because I feel like it. LOL

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-=[ Doing it in the Dark ]=-

Cuddle up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night.
-- Rolling Stones

I'm guilty. I am guilty of equating sex in the dark with shame. Truth be told, sex is the only game we play in the dark. Are we ashamed to watch what we’re doing, or does darkness offer a way to free our most intimate passions?

Darkness offers a safe haven. In the darkness, lovers are safe from each other’s unrelenting gaze, and the prying eyes of others -- children, parents, and neighbors. To the extent that you want to deny others knowledge of you as a sexual person, you will welcome the protection of the dark.

Under the cover of darkness, we are all beautiful. Flab, cellulite, sags, spots, and wrinkles are all mercifully hidden. Out of focus, the often comical contortions and grimaces of sexual exertion become a graceful ballet. If you find down-to-earth images of skin and sweat distracting, you will welcome the camouflage of the dark.

Darkness confers permission and in the permissive darkness, sin and taboo are softened. Transgressions transpire without witness. If your upbringing and social conditioning stressed sexual inhibitions, you might seek, even require, the tolerance that comes with the dark.

Obscured by the darkness, the cracks in your life -- or the ceiling -- lose their urgency. Right here, right now, under the covers, in the half-dark with air as still as held breath, close together, more connected, more alive, the details of everyday existence a faded memory. In the dark it’s just the two of you, two streams of crackling energy knitting together, entwining, tightening, forming a kind of growing liquid knot that becomes more complex, twisting in and of itself, the focus limited to completing that knot, to finding its ultimate expression, until you’re immersed into a blaze of sexuality.

We live in an image-obsessed culture, and once we are blinded by the darkness we are forced to use our other senses. We rediscover touch, sound, aroma. Encumbered by clothing, we are chronically deprived of the variety and possibilities of the pleasures and comforts available through touch.

Emboldened by the darkness, we become audacious, our words and rhythms betraying a lusty eagerness we might otherwise deny. Shyness can be slain in the dark. In the unconditional privacy of the darkness, we can exaggerate and improve our actual experience through our imagination. Our deeper wishes fulfilled, we feel deeper love and greater passion. Through our imagination, we become more engaged in reality. To those of us who cherish our fantasies, darkness is an ally.

The trouble with darkness, it seems to me, that you can’t see what you’re doing. You can’t really see how your partner is reacting. You can’t gaze into each other’s eyes. Travelers afraid of the sexual territory tend to stick to the familiar and sex in the dark often becomes a routine and dry exercise. I think the biggest objection is that people tend to see nudity or nakedness as a sin of immodesty. But c’mon people, we’re talking here of a candle and some moonlight, not film shoot spotlight. But many of us have a hard time believing that anyone would enjoy seeing our genitals. This is especially true of women who have been repeatedly told they are cursed, or dirty. Many women are so paralyzed by shame they even avoid medical examination “down there.” Modesty, my brothers and sisters is often shame in disguise.

Perhaps because of the taboos put upon showing and looking, such acts can be slowly introduced as a final revelation of trust between two lovers. Perhaps the darkness can soften the way a little, so that full openness is something natural and not forced. Otherwise our nakedness becomes a sham -- empty gestures of intimacy.

Love,

Eddie