I see a very specific work in front of me: a work on finding my own, personal style. Not in clothes, of course; for that my dark red accessories will do. In eroticism. And this is much more complicated matter.
Nearly all the global porn, as extensive as the phenomenon might be (some people say it is responsible for up to 98% of the movement in the world wide web), is a monotonous music played on just two strings: dominance and submission. As if it was a sad Sadian heritage spreading like a giant mantle in many shades of grey over the mankind. And Sade is not even a truly erotical author! 120 days of Sodom and such books are about the relation between order and evil, not about bodily delights in any proper sense. Eroticism as I understand it is just a tiny margin in culture, any culture. A tiny minority of people are truly attached to it, while the vast majority just live their lives playing on any of those two strings; rarely on both. The second one of the mentioned is more familiar to me, perhaps because I need no erotic role play to be dominant in relation to any male. But all this is as dull as the regimen of Sodom. Strangely, so many people seem stick to it quite lovingly. Perhaps they are trying to control the uncontrollable, make order in the most disorderly sphere of human experience. Oh, the delights of regimen, any regimen! I suppose even the delights of Islamic eroticism are for many people just this, yet another regimen, more pleasurable as it appears to be stricter. I search for a style, an expression, many more strings on which to play. A style of chaos, of freedom, of the unpredictable. Of the abyss from where most people seem so keen to run away, even if they would never admit it might be so. Is it really like this that true delight is like a void that requires us to jump, a ground removed from under our feet? Is this why we stick so desperately to habits, to whatever seems known and clear, even to physical pain? Just because pain is clear, known, down-to-earth; it won't take us far. The dullness of sex without orgasm won't take us far. While these brief four seconds might throw us into the unknown. Is it like this? Is it that we live most of our lives overwhelmed and driven by sexual fears instead of desires, temptations? The constant fear of going too far makes us constantly return to a routine, stick to a regimen. The abysmal aspect of the experience of orgasm may be relatively easy to grasp physiologically, even if this simplicity may be misleading. It is similar to the sensation of stepping on the limit of fainting, as if suddenly the blood was either running into the brain or out of it. I often had the idea that I might have any kind of stroke. A worry which, I suppose, is medically quite unjustified (am I wrong?). But it is instinctive to move back from that point. Similarly, I've never had much enthusiasm for the idea of multiple orgasms, another myth of a certain sexual feminism, just a few decades old. I just couldn't persuade myself into trying it. There is something so powerful in the experience of orgasm (the first of several that might come?) that says: Enough. Well, I cared to check in the Internet. In fact, I found the information about the risk of brain haemorrhages and stroke associated with sex, and more precisely with orgasm; it is also said that they correspond to some 15% of all strokes, which is, I suppose, something to think about. "Bleeding into the brain after orgasm is known to happen", a doctor says, although it is immediately explained that some underlying condition, such as high blood pressure, must exist for this to happen. I've also learned there is something called coital cephalgia, or "thunder clap" headache; I believe to have experienced it sometimes in my thirties, but never knew it had both medical and popular name, much less that there might have been a link between it and any sort of serious health risk; this is to say how little do we know. For the remaining risks associated with sex, beyond the usual question of sexually transmitted diseases and a bruised cervix, I also found the eventuality of broken ribs, although without any indication of the precise circumstances in which it may happen. I suppose that, with the kind of sex-in-the-desert lifestyle of mine, I might also be exposed to this... Which is a joke of course, but the question of stroke made me quite alert, even if they say women who had it would probably have it any more prosaic way, while riding a bike, for instance. But this post was to be about style, not about sex risks and injuries. The two strings aforementioned are generated by a single concept: power relations. What are the other strings to play on? I suppose the question of erotical style is diffused over longer periods of relationship, in slow evolution, not so easy to associate with a single gesture, an attitude, or what in older times used to be called a fetish. I suppose it is a way of being based on a kind of core value, an abstraction, such as might be freedom in my case, the use of freedom as a central motif on which to play. Kind of keyword to many things, giving them a specific coloration. Speaking in terms of cultural history, I suppose certain colours are codified, even if they are rarely practised today, fallen in disuse. Such is for example the opus in blue, built on solitude and longing. Barthes made his alphabet (Fragments d'un discours amoureux) largely out of this. There is all this tradition of erotical melancholy, of amor hereos. But what I need is a triumphal mood, a coloration of strong positive feelings. Something befitting my invincible womanhood.
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