Genuflection

The American Roman Catholic church is undergoing a core theological controversy.
One with much less painful examination and victimization than the sexual abuse scandals, or even that of the Opus Dei’s battle for its reputation against the DaVinci Code’s book and movie portrayals.

But the recent positional change from “kneeling to standing” during the Eucharist, though seemingly inane at first glance, is primordially symbolic to how humans communicate our most basic interchanges with each other, in support of our beliefs, through the messages of our bodies. It’s calisthenical thought, for all of us, on the meaning of gesture.

Long the subject of Protestant giggles as testament to the impersonalized feudalistic Christianity that Roman Catholicism embodied, the rote, ritualistic “stand- sit- kneel” instructional during the liturgical Mass, is both comfortable choreography and reminder of willing group obedience for adherents, a deference of self to belief and community.

The church has since Vatican II in the 60s been known to accommodate its rituals to democratize its traditions: a universal Latin- language Mass gave way to each country’s native speech, the elimination of female head veils, taking communion by hand as opposed to outstretched tongue, and the almost hippie-like hand-shake of “peace be with you” now prescribed (uncomfortably for many) to be exchanged between all fellow-congregants within each other’s pew’s reach.

Apparently, this latest issue concerning genuflection was generated four years ago during the US Church’s Revised Adaptations to the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani. While kneeling has long been regarded as a respectful display of awe in belief of Christ’s transformation, the new adherence to “not kneel” is a return to the earliest centuries of the Church, seeing Jesus as a man-God, and linking our individual mortal roots from devine origin as possibility of achieving our own acts of goodness. A cyclo-revolutionary stance that Christians can choose to become “Christ-like” in their actions to others and a union of sorts akin to the Hebrew Jehovah’s original YHVH origins of godhead, meaning “to move from that which is, to that which ought to be.”

But at least one priest is getting down-right ‘fire and brimstone’, forcing his congregation to comply with this stance of equality under threat of excommunication. The LA Times reported today that Huntingdon Beach’s Father Martin Tran, a new pastor at St. Mary's by the Sea, told his flock in a church bulletin that
“Kneeling is clearly rebellion, grave disobedience and mortal sin.”
Rather than guiding his flock in the spirit of loving Sheppard of the church, he is old-school ruler-berating them as transgressors against his holy lead. Turns out the doctrinal change by the US Bishop’s Committee on the Liturgy is not mandatory, but meant to be a flexible choice for American Catholics. Father Tran’s obsessive flagellative posturing reminds one of Bush’s neo-cons buddies’ self-decreed manifest destiny of forced world democratized dominion, no matter the human cost or reason.

To kneel or stand or bow. To kiss or hug, to wave or shake someone’s hand; to cover one’s face or head, to greet cheek- to- cheek, or maybe rub noses. Moslems prostrate, Buddhists and Hindus meditate in the lotus. Americans applaud after their anthem, while other nations regard silent after-thought as more reverential to their anthems. Every culture— and animal in the natural world, in fact— chooses its physical phylum of respect and decorum, and its degree of offense when not observed; a fine line to which manifest gesture is revered or penalized.

Those who follow the libertine, aka much of Howard Stern’s generated in- your- face anti-censorship non-methodology, may say “kiss my ass.” But to those of us who revere the creative there is a courtly beauty in, at least , occasional submission to ritualistic (e)motion, be it with a lover, to a faith, or a nation. (The missionary position is included in the Kama Sutra, after all.)

The danger is not in agreed rules of order themselves, so much in their process and created intent of ordained abuse against individual freedom. The US, like the political Catholic Church has much to apologize for, in its historical laws against human dignity. In America, the FCC, the Supreme Court and Congress, are mandated to maintain the balance of open individual freedom of speech, while ensuring rules of order benefiting the nation, as a whole. The failure to recognize this duty of protecting free speech, while bending-over to special interests, is the crime perpetuated against We the People, our Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

In love and sex, life and politics, sometimes the way we touch or nod our head or utter a word, metaphorical or actual, can make all the difference. True sin is in the dehumanized intent against the body, mind and soul. Quoting HBO’s Ali G character, it’s all about “Respec!”— how we show it and how we earn it, while we move about the world we create.

Evolutionary Salvation

Spent the day not-ing: not–writing, not-cleaning, not-rambling, around the house to and fro. Some sits ups here, a few googles there, holistic tea-totaling (and last night’s wine) gave way to coffee drinking self-indulgence, contemplating my navel ( a moderate innie) on how to create a stiff upper lip toward worldly success (or just mere survival). Way of the dinosaur, I hear of today’s catastrophes, a devastatig earthquake in Indonesia, alleged Camp Pendleton Iraqi civilian murders, and the daily routines of my family and friends. An online magazine called Failure (hey, I’m in a mood) mentions the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement’s annihilistic approach to saving the world (an apparent one-upping of the zero-population growth sustainability movement of the 70s). Blindly or courageously, ala the lemmings, and earthquakes, we should go.

I close my eyes. Only a fantasy can save me today.

A mysterious lover appears behind me. (Do I know him? Is he the protective Angel Damiel ? Or a reality from my future?) Chills of promising rapture greet the left side of my neck with the first gentle stroke of his confident fingers’ caress, followed by strong slow kisses tracing my shoulder and over both my arms. He guides his potent body around me, a girder enveloping my frame; holding me securely, sheltering me with care. He is there for me, now and later, unquestioning of who I am to be. He knows my strength is just in wait for him, for me, for the world.

Ahhh, Calgon, do tell those guys who think their cunnilingual offerings of the moment make them king, what a woman really craves. Perhaps then, dear Darwin, conservatives, the religious right and even liberal men will have "come" full philogynous- phylogenical circle to the mysteries of our mutual salvation. Oral desserts, are a well-deserved topping.

Hot Monkey Sex

Recent anthropological research has been finding evidence that Homo sapien mated with other Homo species. A prehistoric child's skull was discovered in Portugal's Lapedo Valley in 1999
with both Neandertal and H. sapien features, and an adolescent skeleton in Romania's Carpathian Mountains found in 2003 is also hypothesized to be a hybrid with a different, but another intriguing combination of both species.

There also is some evidence of intermingled communities with sharing of arts and tool-making.

But today's article in the The Boston Globe, "Humans,Chimps May Have Bred After Split" is going to really shake Christian conservatives.

"... researchers, working at the Cambridge-based Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, used a wealth of newly available genetic data to estimate the time when the first human ancestors split from the chimpanzees. The team arrived at an answer that is at least 1 million years later than paleontologists had believed, based on fossils of early, humanlike creatures.

The lead scientist said that this jarring conflict with the fossil record, combined with a number of other strange genetic patterns the team uncovered, led him to a startling explanation: that human ancestors evolved apart from the chimpanzees for hundreds of thousands of years, and then started breeding with them again before a final break"

Will this get us closer to solving both the Neandertal Schwarzenegger and G.W. Bush monkey riddles?

Shake that Butt and Save the World

Being a regular woman super-hero, you know, fighting for liberty, justice and the pursuit of a slice of my own and others’ rights to happiness, in the words of the Erin Brokovich character -- makes me “really quite tired”. (Contradicting the rest of that quote’s punch line-- I haven’t had opportunity to perform 634 sexual blow jobs, as of late... .) Getting ready to attend two conferences in DC this weekend, Book Expo and Michael Lerner’s Network of Spiritual Progressives , I find myself energized by deadlines, yet lagging, with a general “just-one- of- those- days” funkiness.

So, in a symbolic homeopathic Law of Similars what better way to conquer a funk than with a funk of another kind? Turned on the Cable Music channels and the first thing that came on was Old School rap. Now, I’m not a big rap listener. (Sorry, Tim McGraw-Faith Hill-NASCAR fans, Country’s not my speed of mojo, either. ) But Grandmaster Flash and Treacherous 3 vibrated just the right kind of repetitive beat and underlying jam that rolled my body and soul back to the deep-down joy- loving “ain’t the world grand” kind of real-me.

Fabric gets in the way when I dance—guess the old burlesque background from college days permanently exudes from my skin whenever there’s music – so I changed from my mid-spring, long –sleeved, computer- anguished, baggy shirt into a crop top. Started with firm, jolting diagonal rib and pelvic thrusts, very primal-powered; playing alternating speeds with more seductive arm sways, I moved over to a full length mirror (ballet-training posture check) and found myself sweating enough to strip the clothes. Sir Mix A Lot’s “Baby Got Back” hula-gyrated my hips. And then returned to torso-shifting, foot-working to the Mr.Clean genie-pants jiving MC Hammer’s “Turn This Mutha Out”. Not too shabby for a 46-year old ma’am, eh?

Last week driving on the Atlantic City Expressway, I was mesmerized by the Chili Peppers’ trippy tongue-trilling “Give it away, GiveItAway, GiveItAway, GiveItAway, GiveItAway, now.” While Gangsta rap’s misogynistic phrasing and culture are an infantile defecation, not a cathartic tool (Law of Similars--like the nationalistically sanctioned war monging mantra “weapons of mass destruction” jargon), this Old School rap talks the God-given body human.

But let’s not “give it away” rather “give it with.”

What would happen if Congress had to vote law in a dance-off? Or couples had to dance divorce court in a show-and-tell display of their anger-love-confusion-power-needs? Iraq—Bush vs Sadam: Round One: Arthur Murray School of Dance , Round Two: the French Foreign Legion waltz scene in Marty Feldman’s 1977 parody of The Last Remake of Beau Geste . In schools and on the job— the controversial Moment of Silence (what is wrong with taking time to ponder or pray?) could be paired with a moment of Sir Mix’s recommendation to “Shake That Butt”.

Take a moment, stop whatever you’re doing, right now, and just shake that butt…feels good doesn’t it? Yeahh, it’s good to be alive in a physical body.

Signing off, my mid-day break— with Kool Moe Dee’s “I Go to Work” – a lot bouncier for the rest of this day. Tomorrow, perhaps a touch of Vivaldi?

“Mother, May I” and How Male-Tree Sex and Masturbation Month Affect Your Health

It’s Mother’s Day, a well intended tribute to our moms, and in many ways, all of womankind, for the essence of healthy feminine spirit, love and nurturance in our lives. (Ladies, should we include the “all-out” bitches, in our midst, as well?)

My own mother, who taught me early-on to stand up for what is just and for those who need help, is always there when I fall from my many travails. (I’ve given her more cause to distress in my adult years than in my quieter adolescence.) My ninety-four year old maternal Granny did grandmotherly things with me, like sharing a pizza “with the works” when I was a teen— we understood together with the first bite why anchovies got that reputation. I met my paternal Oma, only once, with distance and language a barrier, the shy-loving way she placed her gift of a dainty crucifix necklace in my hand, when I was eight. In photos from that visit, I see her adoring gaze on my father and my brother and me. How her heart must have ached to see these two grandchildren for the first time, knowing it might be never again. And her youngest child, my father, that this, too, was fated to be the last time they saw each other. My womanhood has been influenced, by so many of my female relatives, special moments with my aunts, ex-mother-in-law, and more recently, conversations with my ex-boyfriend’s aunt. Male family members in my life have affected me, of course, but that’s for another day’s writing. Except, acknowledging that my mothering of my son was shaped (and sometimes mis-shaped) with him, as all children intuitively dance that dance of co-parenting of, and with, their parents. Thank you, my son.

Much of my sexual writing stems from my own life-long desire for male partnership and union (anyone who meets me or reads my blogs knows that I love the virility of men, even platonically). But I haven’t written enough about the love I’ve gotten and given with my female friends. I’ve long wanted to thank in writing all of my girlfriends, some of whom are mothers, others with whom they and I have mothered each other during crisis, small and large. Thanks to Becky, Helen, Nora, Cory, Leah, Annemarie and Flora for reaching out to me, for housing me, for making me go out and circulate again, for understanding my distress during the past year of difficult personal and career transition. And about 50 others of you girlfriends over the decades, who have understood sister-sister what it means to feel, listen, give advice, share tales, cry with each other and giggle like school girls. Even women I’ve met for a short time, or once, have often left a touching memory with a shared thought, in ways men can’t.

The truth in my life, and many women’s lives, is that most men, especially lovers, have disappointed, emotionally, in their lack of even momentary protection when we are in need. I think American men aren’t sure where to place themselves in the role of protector, so they over-control or abandon us. And maybe we women are unclear of our roles in that regard, of supporting and protecting our men, as well. There’s been an unnatural division in our grasp of defining equality.

Robert Bly’s mesopoetic movement, caricatured in the media with men bonding by roaring and running naked in the woods, was actually on the right track, as is feminism, when defined in its attempt to humanize for all of us, not in its extreme to make woman anti-male. Robert Bly names “shame” as the reason for male emotional impotence. Riane Eisler’s classic The Chalice and the Blade names the “dominator” society (be it male or female) which needs to give way to a “partnership” society, to value our differences and compliment the integration of them for our mutual benefit. It’s about respect and value and appreciation and giving each other support.

Our natural world mimics our society and visa-versa. The estrogenization of nature due to chemicals in our water and food supply (xenoestrogens) has been documented in everything from male frogs developing eggs in their testes to young girls starting menstruation at ten. A faux feminine bath regulates us by food and drink. Paradoxically, there is artificial masculine influence from tree pollen in the air we breathe. Urban and suburban planners decided in the 1950s that since female trees were messy— bearing fruits and seeds— that male trees would be more economical for municipalities to maintain. ( In some human societies, men also decree that menstruating women should be isolated away from the village , and girl babies are killed because they are not as valuable as boys). Scientists now say that the 33% increase in allergies and asthma over those many years are somewhat related to the over-abundance of pollen (male seed).

Metaphorically, like the preponderance of male trees, more men seem to flounder out of fear, or ego, or who knows what (as we women estrogen-flagellate you for your inability to give or commit) and end up “spraying their seed”(emotional and physical) in the wind (or tissue).
On the bright side, if you’re gay – man or boy-tree— all this musky tree pheromone talk must be heaven-scented.

Which all leads in a circuitous way to another holdiday in May —Masturbation Month.
Good Vibrations designated this month in 1996, and seems to have not commented much on it for 2006. But Dr. Susan Block added it to a blog comment to a Gay Talese interview in Truthdig.
Our own International Threesome Observance Day celebrates March 3 for the sexual and scientific combo of “threes”, and Valentines Day, of course, and most of February, is devoted to couples ( Big Love aside, and not against polyamory, traditionally couples of “two”, not four, for our example of “two”).

So, Bravo and Salute, to an entire month dedicated to the solo-sexual adventure. Makes sense that the sexually explorative Greeks in Delphi “knew” that the biblical “to Know” was best demonstrated by “know thyself” first. Applause to Betty Dobson and Jocelyn Elders for courageously guiding us to American self-touch acceptance (and, no, it doesn't make you blind or hairy- palmed unless that's your fetish. The animated Comedy-central cartoon, Drawn Together, even shows the healing and commercial wealth potential of masturbating-created clum babies)

As Susie Bright says, “Clits up! ( and a celebratory wish for penises, too; They can both be up – and co-ejaculating together, at the same time, how about?)
And for this one, on Mother’s Day, the month of May or any of the remaining 334 days, you need not ask mom-- “Mother, May I”.

Lessons of Verbal Intercourse (LA,Part 2,Continued)

I walked Hollywood and Vine Saturday morning, a week ago, at dawn.
A Friday night out with the girls, and an essential 2:30 a.m. breakfast at Mel’s, forgot that LA rolled-up its streets and parking lots. Spent the wee hours sleeping on a black couch at Avalon, while hip twenty-somethings actually danced until 7 a.m., the same time the car lot’s posted sign said it would re-open.

It was Cinderella-ish actually, this unexpected little adventure, high-heeling at 6:55 in the morning, in step with a curious menagerie of Gloria Swanson, Art Linkletter, Gypsy Lee Rose, Fay Raye and Tony Orlando on the very cleaned-up Hollywood Walk of Fame, wearing my night club jeans and flounced baby doll halter (last in style in the 70s, when I was 13— they had matching panties back then).

My car was locked adjacent to the Greyhound station, and Kermit the ticket master and Armen, a taxi driver waiting for his pick-ups, took turns sheltering and conversing with me in their workplaces. We laughed and appreciated the humor in my situation; spoke family and politics, life in their native Mexico and Armenia/Russia, respectively, and they opined the parking attendant’s usual Saturday arrival time, as the clock passed over each of their previous guesses. We shared a communion, these men who were protecting me in a limited but valued way, as they offered their jackets to warm me and I gave them my girlish morning-after-nightclubbing smiles.

The parking lot attendant, Jose, showing up at 9:30, smiled at me, too, and told me the White Lotus next door had my keys. Buzzing their back door by propping a long stick through their closed back gate (resourceful Survivor that I am— after pounding on the trash bin didn’t get any attention) I was told the manager would be in at 10:30 (a.m., thankfully, not p.m.). The next hour whiled away at the newsstand down the block, discovering mono-“command”-named alternative magazines: Go, Yes, Up, Shift, Dissent and Conscience, my clothes, flattered by Duan a handsome, soon to be retired cop, already father of two young adults, looking not more than 30 himself, handing out flyers for his sister’s new store. It was a good day.

I drove home on Sunset, winding the curves through Bel-Air to the background sounds of Daniel Powters’ perky “You work at a smile and you go for a ride ..You had a bad day.” Was this a movie in the making or what? …. Da- da- da- da-daa ---- da ----da-da-da-da-da --- da-daaad-da- DA-daaaaa…an updated choreography to “Singing in the Rain” was ready.

My sister-in-law said my face beamed when I arrived. Yes, I was late for an event, and had moments of being annoyed this morning waiting, but a morning like no other. I had spent just two nights before and will have spent two nights later in various intimacies with male friends; Both, as well as my encounter earlier in the week, provided momentary sensual awakening of comfort and well being and ahhhhh. And yet, the lesson is that in sex, even condoms don’t protect fully. It is often the simple verbal intercourse— of shared acknowledgement on an out-of-the-blue day, that brings me the most contentment and belonging, without the worry of the morning-after.

Side Notes— Carlos, a percussionist I also met last week gave me a Nemo squeeze toy as a cute hello gift, noting its multi-purpose functioning as a hand de-stressing squeezer, comical animated face changer and squishy sound maker, along with a throw ball of sorts. Playing with it tonight, my thumb found itself pushing between the young clownfish’s eyes inside through its tail, transforming his shape from cartoon fish into a PVC latex-soft, rubber filled penis head. My thumb, stroking back and forth, which squished the gel, sounding like a Sponge contraceptive, nonetheless, felt consumed within the enclosing elastic material surrounding it. I could only imagine the much stronger sensation a penis must get from the responsive give- and- take of the vagina. Hmmmmm. On the other side, last night on Real Sex, they had a segment on fucking machines for women. Noted one woman on how amazing her orgasms, “But it can’t cuddle you afterwards.”
To have sex — to not have sex. This blog is about ironies, and sex is ripe with that. And if state governments increasingly have their say, like the Supreme Court has recently ruled for Alabama, sex toys, but not guns, will increasingly be illegal. No toys, no free-love, no verbal intercourse either. Will they cut our fingers off when we do it solo… hey, Mr Nemo…..

Middlesex— Between Fucking and Lovemaking (LA, Part 2)

I got sex.
Monday night.
I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you.
I want to bask in the afterglow of him and me. Wishing I could watch the 2 hours-with- a- slight- intermission in replay to validate that we looked as good as it felt. Having felt so deprived for so many months, I am hungry again. A good and vibrant thing—to want sex.

Yet I am conflicted. Yearning for tender love making, what we did together I think was frolicking fucking, with somewhat gentle stroking moments. It was middlesex. Not the 2003 Pulitzer winner by Jeffrey Eugenides referring to a hermaphrodite’s dilemma of gender, family and societal identity. But to sex that is neither solely pure and wanton carnality nor engaged in the throws of ecstatic lovemaking, either. Or perhaps middlesex can also be that which is a compromise between whatever each of the partakers want. Or to timing— of being with someone new versus what you would create together should there be more times of intimacy forthcoming.
It’s a matter of definition, or maybe more clearly of communication, or maybe like the bestseller it’s to the core of identity—because isn’t sex the expression of self with another?
When two people (or more…) decide to be sexual with each other what is it that each expects before, during and after? Spontaneity leaves much to the unforeseen. It is an understood unknown, this middlesex.

He was so incredibly passionate, unexpectedly buff and his cock, well, it was beautiful. ( It had been his mind, his confident friendly calm, and philosophy that I had been attracted to, after all.) I felt myself become visibly sexy and primordially feminine again, a state of consciousness that had been devoid from me for a long many months. But here we were two intelligent, experienced, caring, respectful adults and he assumed that I would be okay with whatever happened (I had suggested to him in an email about the possibility of being sexual, so I was the aggressor while he had expressed concern about not hurting my emotions). I was negligent in assuming he’d know (by merit of the gentleness that I thought he knew of me) that I needed more tenderness than humping, at least this time, and to spend the night over ‘til morning, snuggled and appreciated. We were both tactile givers and we verbalized during the course of touch. Like any interaction, verbal or physical, there is much subliminal complexity of balance even in the most ease. And words, spoken or here in this writing, as powerful as they are, often are unable to sentiently expose feeling as they happen.

Sexual pleasure. It’s not a male/female difference in definition. It’s what a person needs that moment and it’s about rules. In our threesome stories, many of the women were concerned about setting limits within the spontaneity. Not a paradox but really a protective tool for keeping things gratifying for all. Rules are with us internally, it’s expressing them to the other, that makes them visible, if not even then, understood.

I found myself the next day, still pulsing from him, yet alienated. Had I told him ahead of time, that no matter how wonderful the sex was that I needed the night-long cuddling, he either would have made that possible or we would have come to some other agreement. Instead my self-wounded me, after he expressed his schedule’s inability in a phone call the next day to see me again during this trip, felt a need to find immediate comfort-sex with others. So, Tuesday evening I called two men whom I’ve known in the past, and time will tell later this week what comes about.

How do I communicate with the other men whom I’ve dated (and maybe even read this blog) that bedding me is not what I planned for with them, right now? That the timing/chemistry is not yet, or might not ever be? That they are each amazing in different ways, but that I don’t want to reveal or share with them in that way? How do I communicate with the men I choose to be with what level of sexual attachment I desire with them—an appreciated fuck buddy with lots of affection, and what happens when feelings happen? Honesty goes all the many ways. And emotion is always there with sex in some way, even when ignored. We each can only try to be as honest to ourselves and to those we touch. Committed relationship makes it more innate, but even then honest touch is often unmet.

What about me chosing to be chaste for another four to six months? My life path desires a lover who is my "compadre-amour," but along the way, I will not dismiss my sensual needs. I will engage and desire this middlesex, but a spontaneity with rules expressed. Agreed by him and me. So will sex with any of the other two guys happen this week?

My platonic friend John took me to Gaby’s on Venice and Overland last night. The dressing on the Greek Salad was so clean and tart and moist and light and zesty and understated, and “ all- that” -- that my tongue was in serious rapture. He’s got a great paying new job and we talked about the difference between just surviving and enjoying living. Patience, my love, with a daily dose of this succulent sauce— the new chocolate— maybe the more wise and prudent course is just that, patience and living.

PS: Does anyone know the best remedy to heal (or at least conceal) a really kiss-scraped chin?