LOOKING BACK: ON WRITING SEX
Blogkadahan, a hugely popular group of Filipino bloggers from around the world, once invited me to guestwrite for its blog, Rebels Without Because, some years back. The topic or theme I was asked to participate in was SEX, and so as it was I wrote for them. During a subsequent revisit to RWB site, I noticed that the "Sex Topic" wasn't there anymore, as well as most other topics that used to occupy its Archives Section. In my interest to find out what I wrote (or what I was thinking for writing what I wrote - no matter how self-damning it may be) I searched my own files and folders like someone attempting to retrieve a lost diary.
What I found was a manuscript of the first draft, not exactly what I sent to the then moderator - the sexy Sachiko - but not totally different either.
Anyway, here's what I wrote, grammatical error and all -
*****
Nimbus: For all indications I have no relation to this Lord Chesterfield who scoffed at sex by saying that its pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable. To mollify my rankling at this putrid opinion, here's a politically incorrect joke for you, Oh my Lord C: Q. Why do Canadians prefer to do it from behind? A. So that both can watch hockey at the same time.
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Fact
I was still an adolescent and getting by with sub-rudimentary things of this world when I discovered my interest in 2 things: writing and sex. Writing and sex happened to be the twin pillars of my emotional build-up with their prodigious similarities - both have strong connection to imagination, style, and spelling (actually, one has to do with spilling.) And so in my earnest desire to make my mark in both interests at the same time like a horny Canadian couple, I decided, in my raw and rueful mind, to be...a sex writer.
As an emerging sex writer I had the tools of the trade. I was wet between the ears, wetter even between the legs, and if you went to an all-boys Catholic high school like me where in the highest degree of sexual heat the closest woman on sight happened to be the religion teacher who resembled the devil - and still procured an erection - those tools get to be polished even more. And so with the blessings of my classmate-friends, my future was cast in stone - a sex writer whose phallic symbol was the sexual pen.
One day a classmate who had this awesome talent in sketching asked me to write explicit dialogue to his sexually graphic drawings, and so I did the text that were base and gross to the bone, jumba-jumba-jumba, and we came up with a composite of words and figures that displayed different clichés of movements inside and out (inside and out, inside and out). Our sex cartoons became a daily staple in school – at the canteen, under our desks, in comfort rooms, or just about everywhere but the principal’s office. In one strip, we introduced a young boy who feuded with his Visayan nanny who, in turn, offered to reconcile: Sigi na naman buy, bate na tayu. The boy acceded and the rest was anatomical history.
But my writing and thinking was an incriminating evidence of my state of unlay. A miserable hand other than mine had not touched me and in the process my outlook on sex was of the narrowest, shallowest, kind. But of course in due time things changed, and when they did, thinking and writings changed, too. As the saying goes, adulthood is a good opportunity to grow up (and rise, in any form or place), and so in this sexual transformation, I deserve howsoever you may judge me.
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Fiction
My dear Sweetheart,
I’m battling off this insomnia in my concern not to wake you up. You seem to be dreaming your solemn dream and I can tell, from the unique forging of your smile, that you are having fun at my expense. Right now I am sitting upright, my back against the headboard that – like you - seemed to have acknowledged my contour. It is 4:00 in the morning and I still can't find sleep so I just took this chance, to while away the time, of looking at you closely without my ear getting licky wet from the persistent character of your tongue.
Up close I’m in awe even more at the shape of your head. Yours is a thinker's head, a massive reservoir of exceptional thoughts with a pretty arch at the top rounding off the flow of impeccably glorious crown. And I’m enamored by your smile. It has as much mystery as meaning, and every little twitch gives me that sense of thrill, that sense of interest. What are you thinking now? What are you dreaming of now? What are you smiling about now while your hand firmly gropes at this stiffness underneath my side of the satin? Are you thinking about last night? Margaret Atwood beckons me -
I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head
You must be tired. I can tell from the "pfffing" of your lips, which emanate that sweet breath, that you are tired. How could you not be tired from the thousand little things we did last night? (And how could you possibly have that sweet breath at this time of the day?) Last night was as sweet as your breath, us sitting on the carpet in front of the fireplace and listening to Yo-yo Ma interpret Vivaldi’s Winter and J. Massenet’s Meditation from Thais, reading to each other passages from the book we held, sharing moments of silence when the cracklings of fire competed with the beatings of our hearts.
Do you remember that one moment of silence when my hand tried to find its way between our legs in search of your inner sanctum but was having difficulty because our legs were cradled one on top of the other, your leg, my leg, your leg, my leg - like logs awaiting the culmination of bonfire - and you pinched my naughty arm and asked in laughter, What are you doing? By coincidence I was reading that part from Nabokov's Speak, Memory which served as my curt reply: The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are, the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo’s natural members? And to end that episode you in turn shared your understanding of Elizabeth Bishop's Sonnet to me -
I am in need of music that would flow
over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips
with melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow
Finger tips, trembling lips, liquid slow. Exactly!
I don't know how much further now I can hold on to looking at you without kissing that smooth neck, without feeling the pattern of those shapely breasts, without sharing the warmth of those hands (discovering hands as I call them after you gave me a massage and came across the funny sixth bone in my spine; discovering hands that right now know where and what to explore) which I can’t do lest I wake you up. I should probably just pretend a dreamy sleep too and further ruminate in Atwood’s verse –
I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only, I would like to be that unnoticed and necessary.
Wherefore sleep your dreamy sleep, my dear. In that other world I’ll give your silky tummy a dose of my own nose rub, and then I'll see you in the morning to replicate this loveliness many times over. Stay sweet forever, my dainty flower; stay potent forever, my charming Viagra. I love you more than the god of numbers will even care to know.
From your light and strength.
c
posted by cbs @ 10:10 AM |
3 Comments
JM Coetzee's latest opus Diary of A Bad Year zeroes in on the lead character's (Senor C's) political thoughts - referred to simply as "strong opinions". Senor C's thoughts, obviously, represent Coetzee's own personal thoughts (same way that he was indeed Elizabeth Costello in the book of the same title), and for which, I must say in my own strong opinion (whether or not I agree in some of his) that this Nobel Laureate from South Africa is, truly, the world's greatest living writer.
