shock and ew, or why complacency is bad

For its "Shock" issue, I've a new piece on Filthy Gorgeous Things. The issue's topic should give you a fairly good idea of whether or not you want to read the piece. It might, or might not, be your cup of O+. In any case, here's an excerpt of my piece, which I titled "The Value of Shock: Why we need the gasp and shudder of the unfamiliar":

A few years ago, I attended a sex blogger soiree. The lone monogamist in a group of X-Game level perverts, I felt overmatched. These were people who treated sex with the kind of hobbyist devotion usually seen in Civil War reenactors and ham radio enthusiasts. They had special clothing, a schedule of activities, DIY books and DVDs. They went to sex camp.

I don’t give this back-story to cast aspersions; I say it with a sense of marvel. I respect people who devote themselves to the pursuit of arcane bodies of knowledge—I was, after all, an academic. I am just too much of a dilettante with the attention span of a fruit fly to throw myself so whole-heartedly, or whole-genitally, into any activity for any length of time. I also give this back-story to provide context. This group was bonded by a shared experience, and I was an outsider. And this relationship, that of one who knows and one who does not, is necessary for shock, which is what I felt when one of the group told a story that happened at sex camp.

Stolidly middle-aged with a life-long hippie’s mane of gray, the woman told the story of the event she witnessed with neon bright eyes. “First,” she said, “he tied her to a chair, took out a phlebotomist’s kit, tied on a tourniquet and withdrew a pint of blood...."

You can go here to read the rest. While you're at it, you also want to read my friend Sean Doyle's piece,  "Big Buck Hunter." You might have to pay a buck to read it, but it's worth it. 

I begin this piece on shock with a seriously disturbing story that I'd heard in the most civil of environments--at a tea. We who write about sex in Gotham used to have this very polite gathering of sex-bloggers every few months. As with communes or jam-bands anything with baroque interrelationships has a tendency to do, this society eventually collapsed under its own incestuous weight and in a pyrotechnic conflagration of drama.

They were, however, interesting gatherings for reasons I wasn't expecting. I never, for example, got laid from one. The perverts' teas never led to actual perversion, at least not for me. I cannot speak for others. What, instead, was provoking for me was the purely intellectual experience of interacting with people who had minds ostensibly broader than my own--and how those discussions challenged my own ideas about myself, my ideas about sex, and, occasionally, other's ideas about me and/or sex.

Perhaps the most adorable conversation I had was one with a woman who was a staunch defendant of paint art enemas. (It might also be called "paint enema art" or "enema paint art" or "art paint enemas"; I remain a little unclear on the exact nomenclature). Paint enema art involves pretty much what you imagine it would: the administration of a non-toxic paint enema into the anal cavity of a person who then shoots the paint over a canvas, thus creating "art." 

I am not, I suppose, sufficiently sex-positive to see this act or this product as "art." As I told the very enraged young woman with whom I had the discussion, I support the rights of the paint enema art makers to make paint enema art and wave their paint art enema flags high; I do not, however, have to see the products as "art." She was having none of my argument and saw me irretrievably Bourgie. I did feel somewhat vindicated when upon recounting this conversation to my friend Audacia Ray, a woman whose impressive resume requires ten minutes to read and process, "Well, it's not very good art, anyway. The paint always flakes off."

Not all conversations were so light-hearted. After writing what remains, I think, the most important and most painful of all my blog posts, the one where I narrate my seven abortions, I found myself at another sex-bloggers' tea. A woman--in fact, the very same middle-aged woman with long hippie hair as the one who tells the FGT anecdote--told me point blank that while she was pro-choice, she thought that seven abortions was "too many." I tend to agree, but on a deeply personal level. My pain, and my need to inflict my pain on myself again and again upward to seven, was more than any one human should bear. But this woman was being judgmental, and quite frankly, fuck her and her condescending lack of compassion. People in pain deserve understanding, not judgment.

These days, I write a lot less frequently about sex, which makes this blog deeply problematic, and my role as a writer a bit more nebulous. In part, I write less about sex because I'm single and my days of indiscriminate sex are more or less past (I make exceptions from time to time). But mostly, I'm looking to write about other stuff. Sex is swell. I love sex. But a writer, or at least this writer, can't live by sex alone.  It might also be that when I was writing about sex a few years ago, the community was thrumming. It was new and interesting and everyone was doing it, however good, bad, or ugly.

These days, not so much. Things change. Everything happens. And if you want to read one of my favorite pieces of writing that has to do with sex and shock and O+, read this. I'm still quite fond of the piece and the revelation that I experienced in it. Only when we're past the possibility of surprise have we lived too long--or run out of things about which to write.

 

Comments

[sera]

This is so refreshing. All us sex-bloggers are supposed to be blase and upbeat about everything to do with sex, but shock happens. But then, you were always more complex in your writing about sex than that. And I actually like the blog just as much, if not better, when you're writing about not-sex. I don't think it's so problematic--I mean, it's not titled "Pretty Filthy Things", so I don't see the branding problem. ;) Great stuff.

[Pete]

CG,

Even though the "bloody mary" described is not my cup of tea, as long as it is safe, sane and consensual then it works for me. As a person who has seen many things, I too still get shock and ew sometimes as well.

The mind picture created by your prose was graphic.

Pete

[sweat shop sissy]

I've never once thought of your blog as deeply problematic. Well, other than the fact that you often use words that I've never heard before. But that's OK; sexy or not so much, I still enjoy reading.
Cheers,
sss

[chelsea g. summers]

Thanks you all. I'll do my best to write about, you know, whatever. And not worry my pretty head about whether or not it fits in neatly with the remainder of my oeuvre.

kissykiss,
chelsea g.