Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression (14 page)

I gave my daughter some contrary advice, which—surprise, surprise—contains elements of sexual awareness and women’s liberation. The sexual part amounts to consensuality: if people treat or touch her in a way she doesn’t like, she has good cause to insist that they stop. When she expresses her personal feelings

in her journal, that’s her private space, whether it’s hating someone or pouring out her regrets. Her fantasies are not going to go away just because someone else says they’re bad. The women’s liberation part is my reminding her that the boys argue and resolve hassles with one another every day, and unless it’s the rare occasion for an all-out fistfight, none of the grown-ups lifts a finger.

When I get hurt or threatened, when I have terrible regrets—and I do, they haunt me—I can’t say anymore, “Oh, I’m
sorry,
watch me cry, because I’m the
sorriest
girl in the world.” I had a whole girlhood of being sorry. Maybe I should change the names of my public lectures; instead of saying it’s about sex and erotica, I could say, “My talk this evening is about not being sorry.” Those who carry bombs may curse me because I have not been bowed, I have not been penitent. The bomb threat vixens are not particularly forgiving anyway; they may be determined to
make
me sorry by hurting as many people as possible. They are like the sadistic Big Sister who wants to see the little girls cry some more, their “sorries” a soaking reminder of their helplessness. I think my hoaxer was well beyond sorriness, and into bitterness and cloaked revenge.

In our world, when people demand an apology they usually want submission, not a renewed spirit. There is, of course, an integrity in a real apology between equals, but how rare a gesture that is! When we are asked to stay closeted, sorry-full, when it is asked of us, “Are you willing to lose everything?” we are actually being asked to keep our spirits in submission indefinitely.

It’s the cruelest trick, to hold up everything in the material world that we care about, threatening to take it away—and in the process, leading us to believe that without our “stuff,” we have nothing. Since when did bombs make ideas go away? How does

scolding children evaporate their desires? How did making sex a sin and an abomination make our creativity disappear?

I don’t think I’ll ever be prepared for the surprise attack. I’m sure I’ll feel fearful and sorry again, I’m sure I’ll take a loss. I’ll hate every minute of it. But if I have a minute next time, a minute to catch my thoughts, I will know where the fire is. I’ll have an answer when the innocent bystanders ask me what the hell is going on. “I’m just like Martin Luther King,” I’ll say, keeping my face perfectly straight. “I am uppity, and I’m not sorry about it.” If anyone asks who’s ever been on the spot about being sorry, or whether their penitence is worth losing their freedom, they’ll understand why I’m not losing it.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
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LOVERS’ ETHICS

A lie can run around the world six times while the truth is still trying to put on its pants.

I
s there ever a good time to lie about sex?

Mark Twain

Yes, constantly! But when is a bright lie the right idea? And when should we have the courage to come forth with the more complicated truth of sexual matters? That’s a story that few citizens or lovers are happy to tell.

The fin-de-siècle case of the American president’s sexual affairs brought a good deal of the country to its knees (some on pads and some on nails) to press our faces to the window of our standard-bearing role-model, to pronounce him fit or finished.

“Everybody lies some of the time,” people say. Aren’t we going to be ashamed of ourselves if we cast the first stone?

I, for one, couldn’t help but imagine the worst during the entire White House scandal, just as I have feared the worst when

I’ve been caught in my own sexual lies. The reason that the scandal’s characters were so compelling on television was because they rang so true to life. Meanwhile, a great many Americans were gasping for air, wishing that someone powerful would show what kind of integrity is possible in one’s love life, what a lovers’ ethic could be. I dreamed the same dream, but I decided it was impossible with this cast. I can’t look for lovers’ ethics in the politico’s world of double standards and opportunism.

I find more hope just looking around my own community. Who among us hasn’t been rocked by a romantic triangle, confronted with the agony of consequences set in motion by the painful truth—or by a risky lie? I’ve been in all three rotten corners of that triangle myself: the lover who pursued her desire at all costs, the object of that desire, and the one who felt betrayed by the pursuit.

In each case, whether I chose secrecy or confrontation, I did so without a net. There was no perfect standard by which my peers or family judged my actions, only the situation itself.

Oh, sure, I know what my culture’s “moral standards” are: a virtual cheesecloth of “Just Say No” incantations. What wouldn’t I give for even one politician to get up and say, “One thing I’ve learned from this awful mess is that we must decriminalize sex between consenting adults”! Now
that
would take some honesty, not to mention balls.

When was the last time any leader came forward to say it’s important to affirm the freedom of erotic association and choice? They won’t do it because sexuality is what they shame their opponents with. A politician will never tell everyone to fuck off and mind their own business because they do believe it’s everybody’s business. It’s not only some nasty compromise they make, it’s a faith. Our political culture believes in sin, and

in Madonnas and whores; it believes that sexual pleasure will lead you astray. Clinton bought the compost heap and now he’s lying in it.

If our presidents were born-again feminists, instead of preachy Goody Two-Shoes, they would recognize that they are being humiliated for their sexuality. The presidency itself is being made out to be a floozy. Maybe if our virtually all-male Congress had to talk to a few professional whores, they’d get a glimmer of what it’s like to be discriminated against for your sexuality every day of the week. But they don’t have the first clue about that; their own chauvinism is constantly handing them a rope.

So, fine, let them all hang; but what about the rest of us? Many of us are clear on the kind of sexual politics we’d like to support in public life, but we’re still utterly lost when it comes to our own private twisting and turning. There is a huge gap between our sexual lives on paper, as addressed by antiquated laws and puritan punishment, and what real people are going through.

I know what consensual sex is, but sometimes that doesn’t help. Once I was hopelessly attracted to a lover who had such violent fits of anger that I wondered whether we’d both live to see the next day. One night in bed, after I’d caught him in a pretty embarrassing lie, he put his hands around my neck and squeezed hard. I couldn’t breathe. He looked into my pink eyes and whispered, “If you say one more word—one—I’ll kill you.” He rolled over and amazingly sank into a deep sleep within seconds. Why didn’t I just walk out on that scene immediately? Why wouldn’t I tell my friends the truth? Why did I hide what was going on? Eventually my fantasy of the relationship derailed—but was it the truth that finally wised me up, or just sheer scariness?

Other times I’ve tried the “truth” and hated it. I told someone I loved as a best friend that I couldn’t be a lover to him without an erotic attraction; and after that great blast of fresh air, he didn’t speak to me again for years. It was agony, and I always had to wonder, “Was I stupid?” Why couldn’t I have been more sly, so that it all would have seemed like it was his idea to let things die down?

Another time my lover left me while I was away on a brief summer vacation, but I realized it only because, when I came home, she made love to me but would not let me make love to her. (That was her way of being faithful to her new girlfriend.) I asked, “What’s going on? What happened?” and she was completely mute. She never told me a damn thing, and I said to her, “Damn it, if you won’t tell me what’s going down, I’m going to make it up!” I’ll never know how close my made-up story was to the truth, or whether I’m glad she spared me.

We lie with gallantry to protect someone’s feelings or reputation, we lie with pragmatism to save face, we lie in fear to avoid conflict, and we lie in loyalty—to at least keep the appearance of a promise. Underneath those sympathetic emotions, however, we lie to maintain control. If you lie to your lovers to protect their feelings, you are first and foremost protecting yourself from their reaction: anger, disappointment, indifference, whatever. If your beloved learns what you are up to, then she or he will be able to react, and you will

not control the story.

We value the
appearance
of trust over actual trust; we’d rather pledge monogamy than discuss it. A higher moral standard would place a higher regard on accountability and equality, which in intimate relationships means a greater esteem for trust and truth.

The not-so-noble reason that people lie about sex is less complex. Sometimes it’s because it really isn’t a big deal. We don’t report an occasional one-night stand because we consider it unimportant. Once a woman who had an encounter with my lover approached me in the park, saying, “Don’t you want to talk to me about this? Didn’t he tell you?”

Yes, he told me, and—not to be rude, but—I forgot about it. He had fun, it was nice, but it didn’t change our lives. As a veteran of open relationships, I’ve learned that while some affairs create unbearable jealousy and insecurity, others just don’t have that punch. Maybe you have other fish to fry.

There’s a difference between secrecy—hiding significant information—and privacy, which is our right to maintain an existence that isn’t constantly orbiting around our mate. Secrecy devastates relationships, but privacy enhances them, because it distinguishes us; it resists the urge to merge.

I know what I’ve just described may sound unnatural to some. Most Americans I talk to act as if monogamy is God’s natural law—but that’s what most of the world thought about slavery for centuries as well. Modern monogamy is a combination of our natural tendency to “pair up,” chilled by a heavy dose of property rights—
“you belong to me”
—which suppresses our equally natural desire for sexual variety. We do dream of pairing up, of divine and lasting chemistry, but we also wonder what else is out there. The two yearnings are not exclusive.

Sexual desire will have its way with us. We will put on and cast away a hundred masks to disguise it and deny it, but then it will grin at us, strangely unafraid of the consequences. It’s become a national joke now to hear politicians rue their “youthful indiscre-tions,” as if tender youth were the cause of it all! Every decade has its own sweet nest of indiscreet opportunity; every year we

grow more aware of who we are erotically and of what thrills us or threatens us. Hiding doesn’t work, and aging doesn’t cover it.

When the president lied about his sexual affairs, he got tattled on; yet even if he hadn’t, I doubt that he’d find a lasting peace. In the short term, his public denial must have felt like a huge relief, when he thought his secret was safe. It’s the same for millions of Americans who don’t relish discussing these kinds of intimate problems any more than Bill Clinton does; they hope their secrets are just as se-cluded. Out, damn spot! Can’t we just get to work on time and leave sex out of it? Yet the harder we deny it, the deeper the mark.

I regret that I did not tell my best friends about my violent lov-er—not because it would have ensured my leaving him the next day, but because they would have told me similar stories from their own lives, and that would have given me courage.

I wish I had been less clumsy about letting my dear friend down—but I’m glad I was honest. Years later, when even harder things happened, he trusted me, and I love him now more than ever. As for my lover who left me with no story—when I met her again ten years later, she told me that she couldn’t remember anything from that time, because she was always high. I told her my made-up story that I had used to comfort myself, and she said it was a good one to listen to, sober. I was glad to throw it away; I don’t need

it anymore.

If our political leaders were truthful, and if that truth required tolerance and equality, then it would signal the revolution I’ve longed for. But that would only be the paper side. A real sexual revolution will never be led by the government; it’s the last to respond and the first to defend the most degrading status quo. Our legal and political standards for sex and public policy are

Victorian. We don’t have leaders who scrutinize the antiquated moral tyranny—witness Jocelyn Elders, who made one little peep about masturbation, and immediately lost her head by the king’s command.

No, it’s those in the trenches of lust, unfettered by partisan opportunities, who have been the ones to test honesty, respect privacy, and honor without false pretenses. We’re covered in mud, but that’s because we’re close to the ground. We can only ask ourselves: Where’s an army of lovers when you need them?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
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ABSOLUTION

W
hen something so wrong feels so right…” I’ve heard that refrain playing in my head since the beginning of my conscious erotic thoughts. It’s echoed in so many songs, so many stories—along with its imperative, the bad thing we simply must do. Sometimes I laugh at it, like, what is this, the sociopaths’ party joke? Other times I’ve believed in it and suffered under it like a conviction; living with the humiliation.

Sometimes the grace of knowledge clears up your tragic misun-derstanding. There was the time when my formal sex education began, and I could look up a word like
masturbation
and say, “Oh, it wasn’t wrong after all; the wrong was in the ignorance, the superstition.” For some years I lived with that happy, politically reformed consciousness, where simple things that had been