So for lent I gave up Myspace and Consumating, which has had some sad side-effects, like losing touch with some of my friends. It will make it all the more exciting to go see how their lives have changed come Easter.
I am not Catholic, though I am Christian, and share some very Catholic traits, like guilt and fear as inspirations for living. And I’m becoming more and more superstitious in my old age, making bargains with God, and trying not to jinx myself by liking anything TOO much. My mother tells me this isn’t how God works and I know this to be true, but I also Know this to be untrue. God Loves me, but he is jealous, and nothing should come before him. So when I lie in bed and feel it’s the most wonderful place on earth, I become frightened that he’ll burn it down.
And my mother tells me this isn’t true, and I know she’s right (my bed has never burned before), but maybe it’s only my fear that keeps it true.
When I was young, lying in bed with lovers post love, my stomach ached and filled with fear. I associated it with the guilt I felt over sexuality; many Sunday school lectures for teens are based around how true Love for God is showed through abstinence, and every Sunday I was filled with a desire to comply. Now I know that it was likely more than just my conscience working against me. One of the hormones secreted during orgasm, oxytocin, is also associated with nausea for some people. That natural response combined with guilt made for instant penance and made basking in the afterglow quite impossible.
I no longer serve post coital penances, though I do occasionally get nauseous from orgasm or intense nipple stimulation (which also stimulates oxytocin production), but there is no guilt. This came about after I finally succumbed to the Sunday school calling and became a born again virgin. Again my inner Catholic came out: no intercourse, to my boyfriends chagrin, but oral sex is okay, to my boyfriends amusement. He couldn’t understand how God could have such an issue with the specific act of putting a penis inside a vagina; something we were clearly designed to do. But I was a girl of specifics, and like Bill Clinton said, it wasn’t sex if there wasn’t a penis in a vagina. After much Bible study I finally came to the conclusion that what God was really concerned about was adultery, and since I wasn’t married, sex was okay. Specifics wins again! But my mother explained to me that what God was really concerned about was pain, and hurting each other, he knew that sex breeds attachment and that we tend to get hurt when we give it away indiscriminately. It was many more years before I realised that my mother was right. Most of the Bible is advice for simple happy living: find a partner, be faithful to them, support each other, take care of others, get a job that doesn’t make you miserable, work hard at it, eat food, enjoy it, and Love God.
And yet. I still ask God not to burn down my library to show me what’s really important in life. But like a good Christian I know that if he did, it’s because he Loves me.
The words are backing up in my head. My toes are swollen with them, unformed, useless, just letters milling about.
This is a time we will not remember. It is obvious in its wastefulness, like our Love on a Winters day. I don’t mean to be so quick to anger, it really isn’t like me at all, but here it is, all mixed up with all the words, a gray anxiety, all tinted red.
And you, sit at my feet, so silent, like you don’t even know you’re there. I reach out, but my legs grow longer, and my feet slip further away.
There is sex in my head, it erupts, interrupts, bends me over a chair and grabs me by the hair. Over and over to no conclusion, and you are there laughing, “Your head is a useless place.”
Every song becomes meaningful; I fill pages with lyrics; functional poetry for a functional life. “I hate you,” becomes my anthem, like it has some deeper meaning, like you’ll hear my heart, “I hate you,” has no meaning, but I like the way it sounds. Three words, like I Love you, and similar in so many other ways. “I hate you, ” words I used to be afraid of, never tumbled from my lips, but now I climb to high places and scream, and anyone who hears is a valid recipient, because you’ve all hurt me equally I think. A vague sort of solipsism, you reflect me, you have no choice, I can’t prove you exist, so how can you have feelings other than me? Me, me, me, me, me, better than I because there are twice as many letters, therefore it’s twice as important. And You, you have three. Three times as important as Me, but You, you don’t exist, so it didn’t get you very far did it? Such useless words, but I like the way they sound, and that’s all that ever mattered to me.
God told me there are three things I can do to live a good life: eat, drink, and enjoy my work, and like all things God says this is functional and obvious, so I agree. If someone tells you something that is counterintuitive and complicated, know that they are wrong, this is critical thinking, and this will make your life much better.
That was the moral.
The End.
