The Friday Sex Blog [Fantasies, pt. I]

Hola Everybody,

A few years ago I got the following in a text message from a psycho-ex “internet fiancé”:

9,000 people are fucking right now, 2,000 are kissing, 1,000 are getting head, and one lonely fucker is reading text messages. You hang in there sunshine… ” LMAO!

Fantasy

Repression is not morality.

The brain, my dear friends, is the largest sex organ, and if intelligence equates to sexual prowess, then imma bad ma’fucca! I’m joking!

While you may be aware of the brain’s vital role our sexual lives, it may never have occurred to you that it’s also an incredibly resourceful sex toy. Today, I’m going to write about fantasy, but it will have to be incomplete. This topic is much too rich and profound to attempt to tackle in a one-page, single-line MS Word document. In fact, one could fill a library with books written on this topic. Therefore, I’m not going to do that, but I will offer a (very) brief overview because it’s so important for our sexual awareness/ liberation.

First: you people are some sick muthafuckas! I’ve been inside your heads and you all have some of the sickest, dirtiest, nastiest fantasies. 

Yeah you! LOL

But I’m not going to get into the content of sexual fantasies this go-round. Today, I’m going to attempt some clarification, however briefly.

As I stated before, the brain is the most fascinating, most versatile sex toy you own. While it is a fact that without the brain responding to stimuli and sending messages to the rest of the body, you would have as much sexual feeling as a piece of wood, it is also within the brain’s capacity to gather a vast supply of erotic material. These are known as fantasies. It is your fantasies that make the brain such a powerful sex toy, since fantasies can be revisited an endless number of times for sexual pleasure. Here’s one of my faves:

Some say certain fantasies are corrupt. I would disagree. On the contrary, most mentally unbalanced individuals do not have a rich internal sexual fantasy life. Case histories of most sexually motivated serial killers, for example, show they are tortured by their fantasies. They spend an enormous amount of psychological energy repressing their fantasies.

The fact is that most of our sexual fantasies are things we would never do. For example, an individual who would never have sex with an under-age adolescent girl, might still harbor such a fantasy and never act out on it. In fact, there is evidence showing that fantasies help relieve our frustrations and anxieties and, in cognitive terms, allows people to grasp its inappropriateness. In cognitive psychology, for example, one method of taking apart false beliefs is by helping the client take those often self-defeating and erroneous beliefs to their conclusions.

Simply put, sexual fantasies are illusions or daydreams people have about specific experiences. Part of the power of sexual fantasies may come from guilt (taboo) or fear (such as in the fear of getting caught sexing in public). Many fantasies have their root in childhood development and continue to be primary sources of pleasure throughout life. Other individuals change fantasies regularly. I would submit that there is a connection between actual sexual experimentation and the ability to create new fantasies.

The feeling of being overpowered by a sex partner is one of the most popular sexual fantasies. Studies show that some women have a deep attraction to abduction or rape fantasies and like to be “taken.” Right up there with being overpowered is the fantasy of having sex with a stranger. In fact, at least with research I have encountered on the subject, I would say sex with a stranger is probably tops. There is this powerful human attraction of sex with a stranger -- The Other. This is reflected in our culture when we fantasize about having sex with movie stars or performers. These are people we wouldn’t know from a hole in the wall (pun intended), and yet we entertain in some case elaborate sexual fantasies about these individuals (Halle Berry!).

As I stated before, certain fantasies evoke situations most people would not want to experience in real life. These fantasies are specifically designed to increase adrenaline and excitement levels to the point of being able to orgasm without the help of a partner. Believe me, you don’t want to know what’s in my mind (and I probably don’t want to know yours)! Just so you know, some of the fantasies of quite normal people can be quite sadistic and violent sadistic fantasies might serve the function of relieving stress and aggression more than sexual tension. If you feel guilty because you consider your fantasies sick or violent, you should read the case histories of otherwise tame and harmless individuals. In fact, you people are sick.

But that’s for the next post…

My name is Eddie and I'm in recovery from civilization...

I am Not Target Practice... Say It, Sing It

Hola mi gente,
I usually post works of art and art criticism on Saturdays. I was at a conference at NYU’s law school last night where I was treated to the powerful work of Dr. Joshua Bennett. It was a conference on prison abolition (yes, I am a prison abolitionist). 

One of the presenters was a poet, Dr. Joshua Bennett, author of The Sobbing School, holds a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University, and an M.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Warwick, where he was a Marshall Scholar. Winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series, Dr. Bennett has received fellowships from the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Cave Canem, the Josephine de Karman Fellowship Trust, and the Ford Foundation. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in Boston Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry and elsewhere. He is currently a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.

I was fortunate to listen to and experience the following spoken words. Check him out… 

Say It, Sing It If The Spirit Leads

(After Vievee Francis)

* * *

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

The Friday Sex Blog [Strange Sex]

Hola mi gente,

I work at (not for) one of the largest penal colonies in the world, Rikers Island. It is a highly dysfunctional, violent world. I facilitate workshops at one of its most violent facilities. I will be writing more about those experiences very soon.

Today, this blog is about sex. Enjoy the holiday weekend to my readers in the USA.

Desire (or: Strange Sex)

It's so much better to desire than to have… The moment of desire, when you know something is going to happen -- that's the most exalting.

-- Anouk Aimee (1932–) French movie actress

I once dated a staggeringly beautiful woman. She was beautiful beyond anything I could approximate through mere words. Exotic, tall, with an arresting presence, and a curvy figure, she was every man’s dream made manifest. She said she loved my intelligence and confidence and the fact that her beauty didn’t intimidate me (it made me hard). As is true with most women like my friend, her love life was a mess: extremes between being lonely on the one hand and meeting jerks on the other.

I loved the heck out of her except there was one problem: she didn’t enjoy sex!

Contrary to what some people here think, I’m not a sex fiend. However, I do enjoy sex. And it wasn’t that she wasn’t “good in bed” (whatever the hell that means). Technically, she knew what she was doing. The problem was that she didn’t really like sex and was aversive to true intimacy (but that’s most people -- including women). Sex with my friend often felt as if she were performing a duty -- something necessary to keep me around. It was a real turn off. Of course, being with me means you’re going to open at least a little.

We didn’t last too long because it was frustrating for me to be around someone who saw sex as a duty and not an art to be practiced. We remained friends, however, and would keep in touch. One day, she called me. She had gotten engaged and was having the same problem. I suggested she participate in some tantric workshops, open up some of those energy centers.

This is not an uncommon problem. First, we all like what a childhood friend and I used to call “strange sex” -- sex with strangers, or new lovers. Moreover, women desire this also -- don’t give me that crap, you know you want to even if you don’.

::blank stare::

Studies show that one of the most powerful fantasies, for both men and women, is sex with a stranger. But why is it that we seek the novelty? Why does sex often becomes stale, especially in long-term relationships? I think part of the reason is that we don’t work at sex. Too many of us are like my former lover -- sex is something you have to do to keep your man (or woman) from getting it from someone else (strange sex syndrome). It’s also because we often don’t screen our partners for their level of sexual desire -- especially over the long term. You know how it is: in the beginning you can’t seem to get enough of each other. New lovers will often accommodate one another and are happier than bugs in a rug. The problems don’t tend to emerge until much later.

Let me put it this way: if two committed people want to make love only once every six months, that’s perfectly fine -- there is no problem. It only becomes a problem when there’s difference in sexual desire.

Sure, one way to manage the problem is masturbation. Don’t look at me that way, married men and women masturbate -- it’s normal. But I didn’t want to be jerking off all the time having that lovely body next to me. That was too frustrating. I’ll do it once or twice, but I wanted her ready, willing, and able --reasonably speaking.

The other day a married friend of mine and I were having a conversation. He’s always asking me about my personal life. He has a beautiful wife that I always flirt with. It’s cool -- it’s an inside joke. I have nothing but the utmost respect for my friend and his wife. One day, he was reluctant to go home and when I asked him why, he said he had to go home because he and his wife had scheduled a sexual tryst. They have two young boys and I could identify: I remember when I was married and the sex had become more a duty than something to savor. In addition, busy lives means that sex has to be penciled in between soccer matches, birthday parties and PTA meetings. I laughed at him and told him to go home and perform! 

There are many factors involved in low sexual desire, but for me the most important one is lack of creativity. We fall into our ruts -- the lick em, stick em, and cum school of sex. It gets stale ladies and gentlemen. There’s no role-playing, or if there is, there’s no energy behind it. Contrary to what you may have been told, sex isn’t a natural act, it must be practiced. In order for sex to remain viable, it must be an integral part of mutual growth. It must be almost like a religion. A religion in which both partners are transformed, becoming more evolved in the process.

If you can cultivate sexual energy in that way, then the sex never gets old, it’s always crisp, fresh, and new.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Poetry [You Are Not... ]

Hola mi Gente,

Hope everyone is well. Today is Saturday and it’s about poetry around here. I wrote the following a long time ago... 

Nows [no. 13]

You are not...
more perfect than anyone.

But you have a
fine sense of style.

A sharpened sense
of your outer edge:
the changing purposes
and possibilities for
your eyes and your ass.

A master of the passive assault,
you caress me
with your passing glances,
and lure me to adventure
with a smile
I can never be sure I saw.

-- Edward-Yemil Rosario ©

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…