2000-07-26 - 10:18:41
Know Thyself: Sex & Farting

Know Thyself: Sex & Farting

This morning's dream:

I am at a sex club much like the Bijou with my Toronto friend Lou. He says he wants to taste my ass. I don't want him to. For some reason, in fact, I don't think he should have sex at all, and he seems to agree that erotic play is off limits for him on this visit.

Bizarrely, the sex club is populated with both men and women. A group of attractive lesbians are congregated in a little darkroom off to the side. Lou and I are standing amidst a group of men and women milling about in a well-lit hallway.

Lou starts chatting up this cute guy in a blue t-shirt. I am quite disgusted when I overhear the lesbians in the next room farting. They seem to think it's a big joke. I feel sick to my stomach. Then I see Lou seducing the cute guy, raising his blue t-shirt up around his nipples. The guy's belly is very unattractive to me; I get even more grossed out.

I wake up.

Lou is a close friend of mine in Toronto, and I introduced him to the skanky Bijou several years ago. Lou happens to be a 72 year old gay man, and I have learned a lot from being his friend. Until I got to know him, I had major hang-ups about older gay men, freaked out by my imagining that all they wanted to do was get into my pants. Lou did want to get into my pants, but accepted that his attraction was unrequited.

In many ways, Lou has been a role model for me, a fabulous example of how to remain playful and mischievous and soulful. It's not just that I hope to have as wild 'n crazy of a sex life when I get to be his age; often, I have enviously wished I was "getting it" as often as he is now, at my age.

Lou has modelled how to live a rich, fulfilling queer life. He enjoys several sexual friendships with men of all ages, alongside a committed but nonmonogamous intimacy with his lover of three or four years.

And, both Lou and I know what it's like to get carried away with sex--particularly of the anonymous variety. While I was coming to terms with the fact of sexual compulsion in my life a couple years ago, Lou was an important confidante.

And so here I am dreaming about him and I out whoring at a sex club. Lou is coming onto me, I'm not interested, and we both agree that sex is a bad idea for him at the moment.

The dream comes at a time when I feel soulful and open about my sexuality, relatively free of the compulsion. I am learning, haphazardly, to discriminate. By most people's standards, I still have a hyperactive sex life, but I am coming to appreciate my sensuality and taste deeper erotic yearnings.

My relationship to lust is changing. I used to worship its trickster power impulsively; now I am as likely to delay my gratification. Inhale the feverish desire deep down in my belly, hold it there a while, seeping into more of me before breathing all over you.

I remember that sick-to-my-stomach feeling that would sometimes come over me when I was out on the prowl, looking for sex. This was always a visceral sign that I wasn't meant to be there, that sex was not the answer to whatever question was puzzling me. The more I steep my desire before enacting it, the less I cramp up.

Sometimes, a good fart is the healthier release.

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