Halloween, Sex and the Number Two Test

…to be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others…
~ David Whyte

People often ask how I know or choose what I’m going to write about next. I’d like to report that I carry a literary witching rod to divine a lofty inspiration from some higher source, but that’s generally not the case. I do two things. The first is called the #2 test. Usually while I’m driving I scan through recent events. If an idea is too intellectual, I skip over it because clearly my ego would be writing about what’s “important" (yawn) and not my gut and heart. Every now and then the divining rod strikes it rich and the material has to come out as soon as possible. I rush home and let it flow. If I ignore it or I can’t get home in time – you guessed it: the urge passes and I forget whatever it was I wanted to write. Naturally, the urge will return in some form and sometimes even when I do get home in time, I read it over and realize, well, it’s crap.

The second part of the equation is humor. If it’s not somewhat funny, no one wants to read it. Generally, if it’s funny there’s a darker underbelly to the piece, which gives you an idea about my sense of humor. But darkness is not necessarily twisted - soul seeks darkness. In Soulcraft, Bill Plotkin explains: “the movement toward spirit is a journey of ascent…transcendence, while the movement toward your soul is a journey of descent… a journey that deepens.”

So, today what got me racing home at high speeds was… s-e-x! Well, at least the idea of it. This weekend I went to a couple of Halloween parties. I dressed as Nefertiti, complete with a hat I made for the occasion. Totally ignoring the heavy eye make up and bejeweled dress, some guy asked if I were a “Bic Pen.” Really? That gave me an idea about how to use the headdress next year. Granted, I passed over sexier options, choosing instead an elegant sack, and at one of the parties, I watched as men gravitated to more skimpily dressed women. No surprise there, but it reminded me of the Halloween party in college when I dressed as a frumpy yellow bird and all the guys asked my two lithe friends, who were dressed as a kitty cat and a school girl in a low buttoned shirt and mini skirt, to dance while I sat in a chair preening my lemon yellow feathers. One of the guys pulled me aside and said: “You’re the kind of girl we’d want to marry, but who wants to get married in college?” I was such a nerd; it's no wonder I was a virgin until age 21!

I have no issue with being playful and wearing fun, sexy costumes, especially on Halloween. I've worn my share of them. And when I was married there was clarity and it was easier to venture from base and be flirtatious. Married but not dead. But as a single woman I want to be conscious about what I'm putting out there and what I want to attract. My last lover taught me a lot about spirituality and health. He said that most people “bleed sexual energy,” which depletes power and the capacity for deeper relationship. (I liked to remind him that when I met him at a Halloween party years ago I had my hair down and teased and I was dressed in a skin tight, one-piece snake suit draped in a strand of ivy.) The fact is some men are visual and won’t see my mind unless I show them my ass first. Alas, I wasn’t in the mood this weekend to be luring men, at least, not that way. I like to remind myself that as much as I learned from that lover, we weren’t on the same page. If I am meant to meet a long-term partner it’s probably not going to be dressed as a wanton middle-aged Lolita.

Certain traditions say that when a woman has sex, she carries that partner’s energy along with her for seven years. Maybe I knew that back in college or maybe I was a scared canary. Sex is never just sex – at least not usually for women. The heart gets involved in a way that can shred us. We think we’re going to be calm, cool and collected, and the next day we are crying and thinking about puppies dying in scientific labs and the affect of global warming on bees and is he ever going to call me again? On the flip side, one may have sex with a man who seems and looks relatively stable and then Pow! The intimacy triggers something shall we say... unexpected. Humans are complex!

It’s one of the reasons I’m not looking for sex for sex’s sake. Besides worrying about the puppies, birds and bees, I want to understand my heart more fully, and I think it’s been shut down for a long time. It’s why yoga has been so important to me. I remember last year when my favorite yoga instructor, Matt, led a class that focused on “heart openers.” Heart openers, I innocently thought, were exercises that stretched the pectoral muscles to free up my shoulders and arms. But NO! Fear the cruel yoga instructor! (And they all look so innocent. BUDDHIST BULLIES I say!) When it came time for savasana, I was a blubbering fool curled in a fetal position trying not to sob audibly and disturb the peaceful corpses lying next to me.

I’m happy to say my heart is accustomed to opening more readily thanks to the safe space of yoga, tango or BodyMantra. Don’t get me wrong. Sex is a show stopper. It’s glorious, transcendent, life changing at its best. But it's more fun with a committed partner. Our culture seems to breed men and women fumbling towards one another with the idea that we can complete each other in a night, that the other person will erase our pain. We go into relationship with too much expectation - we wonder why it caves under all that wet snow! We might be relieved that – God forbid – we are not seen in public alone...again. We jump in without taking the time to feel our way fully, without understanding our hearts and the deeper quests it leads us on. Our media flaunts sexuality as if sex is no more life changing than eating a bag of chips. Sadly some people who've been abused and never taught otherwise are inured and their hearts and feelings are shut down so that it isn't any more special than Cheetos. While some teens may be ready to experience it with a sense of fun and wonder, other kids feel obligated and lost, slamming the heart shut for another decade or for good.

There really is no answer here. It’s like the question about what I’m going to write next – sometimes the urges we follow, whether on the page or between the sheets, turn out to be great and then other times… not. I guess what I’m hoping for is more creativity when it comes to engaging with the opposite sex – especially for middle-aged singles. Friends often say that dating in our 20’s was fun and easy. At 50 people are crumbling fortresses of terror. Halloween is our signature holiday.

I feel a certain peace when my yoga teacher comes over to kneel on the back of my thighs and ease down on my upper back as I’m lying on my stomach; my heart opens like a tide pool on my yoga mat. I feel this same serenity and safety with a couple of dear male platonic friends - one I've only known a year and the other I have known for five years who told me he would never sleep with me because down the road it wouldn’t work out and we would lose our friendship. I thought he was wrong at first, but now I know – in my heart – that he was right. What I've come to find with both is this unconditional acceptance, a freedom of interrelating with someone from the opposite sex without expectation.

Granted, it would be nice to have a sexual partner, but ultimately friends with benefits seems to end up biting someone in the ass. It's been so long... I want to bite an ass. Sigh.

While I’m not officially declaring abstinence, I have made a commitment to sink into the feeling of what it’s like to be by myself... making snow angels! And, without getting lost in another person or carrying yet another man’s energy around for seven years. (That is such a weird concept.) There will come a time for losing myself – again – to delicious, blissful love, but first I want to know my heart. I want to urge her out of hiding. It’s all perception. I could focus on the disappointment of going to one more event without a date, but I am beginning to trust that being single is right where I’m meant to be. The universe will open the door to a relationship and when that happens, I will be ready to walk through the door without leaving myself on the other side of the threshold.

In the poignant book by Martha Beck, Expecting Adam, as she contemplates whether she’s going to abort or keep her unborn son with Down’s Syndrome, she asks herself: “What is it that people do? What do we live to do, the way a horse lives to run?” Later in the chapter she reveals: “This is the part of us that makes our brief, improbable little lives worth living: the ability to reach through our own isolation and find strength, and comfort, and warmth for and in each other. This is what human beings do. This is what we live for, the way horses live to run.”

I may be single, but I don’t feel alone. My life is graced with a wonderful immediate and extended family, close friends and dear teachers who sustain my heart and make every moment worth living.

This Delicious Dance

Within 24 hours I shot a bow and arrow and a BB gun and went pole dancing. Things get a little wild when you visit Utah on the biggest Mormon holiday of the year. I hope I’m not going to Mormon Hell! My sister, Vanessa (below), who lives in Salt Lake City with her husband and two adorable children, and I had a lot of fun. The pole dancing gave us plenty to joke about, but too, it inspired some insight.

It’s no news we live in a culture that struggles with gray area and subtlety. Sex is either suppressed for being bad and dirty, or blatantly displayed. Pornography is rampant as a backlash to a culture too busy to make love in the way that sex is best practiced. Ideally, sex involves all the senses and is sacred. I’m not saying you have to be married, but the most memorable sex is generally experienced within a consistent and trusting relationship, between a woman who loves her body and a man who knows what he’s doing and doesn’t do any of it quickly. (Well, that’s the hetero version, but you get what I mean.)

The most wonderful things in life are not rushed. Delicious meals take a while to prepare: sautéed mushrooms and risotto, fresh broccoli from our own garden with butter and garlic, baked kale chips – taking care to be creative benefits us mind/body/soul whether we are making a meal, tending a garden or making love. Sex is not meant to be fast food, but everyone is so tired and busy trying to keep up with the culture we created that prevents us from true intimacy. Most of us are just trying to make it to the next check. But the more we scramble, the emptier lives become.

Which brings me back to pole dancing. I wasn’t sure what to expect. No men allowed; there were women of all shapes and sizes and ethnicities. First, we stood on one end of the room and learned how to walk across the room – to quit slouching and hiding: “the girls” up, barefoot on the demi-pointe and looking straight out (and not down at the ground). It felt like charm school from the 60’s. We strut to our designated shining gold poles that we had carefully cleaned with puffy, yellow rags and Windex before class officially began. Our instructor, Sophia, was middle aged, with full, auburn curls that dangled to her mid back. She had a voluptuous figure, but walked delicately, using her hips and hands strategically. This was all new to me. I had grown up in an era where athletic girls were the most desirable. In the 70’s, we were busy making ourselves out to be more like men. I was more comfortable shooting the bow and arrow than sidling a pole. But Sophia explained that claiming femininity is powerful. Loving our bodies is imperative. Curves – even a little tummy - are more delightful than gaunt, stick-figure models.

But when Sophia proudly explained she once “frisked” the produce counter and left the store with half of her groceries for free, I wondered if she’d gone a little too far. While I appreciated some of her tips, I was getting tangled in double messages. It felt contrived to use my body separate from my mind and heart. Do we really have to be gripping a pole to come to terms with our femininity? There’s a way to be sensual without being objectified. The process lacked play. The fireman spin was so fun I found myself whipping my leg into the turn over and over, touching down and jumping up from the floor to do it again until Sophia cleared her throat and said: “We are NOT children on a playground!” I felt like skipping around the room and starting a game of tag, but I stood there and it dawned on me: I am a little afraid of my sensuality. Maybe spinning was a ruse to avoid intimacy. Maybe I’ve been taught that sensuality is dangerous and wrong. Maybe that programming takes a lifetime to overcome. It’s probably why so many good girls are tigers in the bedroom, freed from the waving finger of the perverted judge – but, they haven’t learned how to integrate it into their lives. It’s so black and white, and it doesn’t have to be.

It’s a delight to be a woman. It doesn’t serve the world to hide or diminish our light. We are all – men and woman alike – reflections of the divine. Pretending to be what we are not throws us off track. Tell the little girls of our culture, it’s not about getting sexier, but becoming more comfortable in our own skin and loving that skin. Unfortunately things get a little twisted because we are all starved for the real thing – for nourishing, satisfying meals, for the caring connection two strangers can feel for one another without touching. We are becoming more detached from ourselves and others, and therefore, when we do come together, it is a sort of clamoring.

We frisk and flirt to win attention because we feel separate from God, but we are never separate from God - or whatever you want to call the Force. Separation is an illusion. We don’t need anything to complete us because it is already inside of us. If we stop running and begin to live our lives with sensuality and presence: cooking thoughtfully, clearing out extra stuff, reducing what we use, while having fun at it, then GRACE will step in to replace the RACE to nowhere. With this knowledge we choose a partner because we want to be in their company, because their presence makes our lives richer, grander...because we like how they smell and feel and how they touch us.

Imagine lying in the woods next to a rushing, exploding river, next to the man or woman you love on a soft, fuzzy blanket, surrounded by your favorite foods. Imagine kissing slowly, tenderly with the taste of fresh peaches on your breath, the feeling of the silk dress and bare feet pressed to the velveteen. You are best friends and lovers. And let it be enough to just be you on the blanket. You are your greatest witness. THIS sensuous vitality is what being in the body is about and it is a celebration of the sacred reflection that we are – it is a holistic presence, and interjection of the gift that we are into time.

In gratitude,
Jen