I have long harbored a conspicuous suspicion that I ought never to have come into existence in the first place

 

(...)

I feel, that is, ina sense “ready” to die. It is an altogether new sensation for me. I suspect that most people are graced with this disposition of resolute readiness much later in their lives, although many no doubt also come to this point quite a bit earlier than I have, and still others, to be sure, never reach this point, but always fear death’s inception, even when their end is most imminent. As for myself, in the interest of accuracy, I must admit that | cannot say for certain how I would react if I were actually brought face to face with the Reaper right now; I don’t know if I would quail and shake and beg anew for the life I had so recently felt I could do without. Perhaps, in truth, I cannot trust my newfound thanatos- thirst; it may be that, resolute though I feel, I may not possess all of the requisite resolution to “cease upon this midnight with no pain” or “shuffle off this mortal coil.” I should also clarify that anticipating and at times even wishing for death does not for me equate to contemplating suicide. Ending one’s life by one’s own effort is an entirely different proposition than finding oneself eager for the moment when one finally slips the surly bounds of earth, having at last gained true wings, to effect a complete and final departure from that which one knows... and loathes (familiarity with such trappings having bred a quite proper conviction of contempt).

Perhaps, in fact, I will still have to endure this fleshly cell for many more years to come. But I feel myself compelled to set down some “notes before death” just the same, to cast forth some fragments to buttress against the blight of my soul’s ruination. This work, indeed, must of necessity assume a fragmented form, because this collection of musings and observations is intended, in its humble way, to provide a sort of mediation on earthly existence, and incompletion is our lot in this life. We come from we know not where, we are thrust into this chaotic, carnal realm for a certain arduous span of time, during which we come to experience the violent truncation of joy, the forceful circumscription of bliss, the final corruption of sweet innocence, and the sorrowful transformation from vibrant sentience into degraded senescence. Were this earthly realm merely a place of torment, it would in some ways be more tolerable, since then it would never provide passing glimpses of delight, and we would then not have to endure the anguish of losing that which we loved and treasured, but which nevertheless fled from us, never to return.

In any event, a man’s assessment of his experiences can never be complete so long as he lives, since he cannot break the bars of his fleshly cage until that deathful climax, that occasion of an “awful daring of a moment’s surrender,” when he finally shakes off his flesh and breaks free.

And so notes composed before death (the only sort possible to compose, after all) can only take the form of jagged fragments, pieces of a greater puzzle which fail to fit together as an entirely coherent whole, but which still provide clues which, for the sensitive undertaker of ideas, beckon even as they baffle.

So this sojourner into the dusky depths of death proceeds with his task, at once knowing the hopelessness of it, but aware also that somewhere, in some purer realm, the whole he seeks to convey does indeed abide: non-truncated, unfragmented, rendered radiantly manifest; its jagged, festering blemishes stitched together and made whole. But before this light breaks forth, he must first fall through a great darkness: the darkness which he currently occupies, and which currently occupies him.

ALL WAS WELL, UNTIL IT WASN’T

I have long harbored a conspicuous suspicion that I ought never to have come into existence in the first place. Not that I ever had any say over the matter, of course. At least, I have no memory of an ante-existent “existence” where I can recall giving the expectant authorities the go-ahead to have me incarnated in a fleshly vessel and bundled away to this earthly inferno within which we all now languish. Nevertheless, according to some traditions, we all exist somewhere in a preborn state, and individual incarnation is a matter of willful volition. In such a perspective, we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t want to be, and we have no one to blame but ourselves if we don’t like it, since we knew the deal ahead of time, even if we promptly forgot about our foreknowledge.

Perhaps this is so. If it is, I can only observe that I must have known something then that I don’t know now, something that actually made the journey into earthly incarnation bearable, even worthwhile. If this scenario is actual, I hope someday to rediscover this originating conviction. What I suspect, however, is that I didn’t choose to come here, but rather was summoned forth, for some inscrutable purpose known to none but my Creator himself, and, that for equally undecipherable reasons, He chose to keep this discovery, as well as Himself, hidden from me.

To be sure, my emergence into the world gave joy to some—namely my parents and my extended family—not because of any especially endearing traits on my part, but simply because I was theirs. Once I squirted forth, I became a much-loved boy, a somewhat spoiled only-child happy to live largely in his imagination most of the time. And in these early years, I remained unaware of any misshapenness in my being, or of anything that would cause me any sense of dislocation with the universe that surrounded me.

Though admittedly an absent-minded lad who indulged heavily in elaborate daydreams, it didn’t strike me then that I was eager to escape from anything, not even boredom, and certainly not horror or tragedy. It wasn’t that I was unaware of pain and discomfort; at the time, I would mainly have associated it with the state of being sick with a fever, or a sore throat, or a stomach ache. Of course even illness had its attendant pleasures of mandatory relaxation and eventual recuperation. The sweetest moments I can recall were of being on the mend, still ailing enough not to feel any pressure to get off the couch, but nevertheless sure that my recovery was taking place and that in short order I’d be entirely well again.

Up to the age of 12, I can honestly say that I never suffered in the least from ennui, that malady which would alarm and distress me when | reached the threshold of adolescence. There was, I recall, never really anything to be bored with at this time, no possible reason to account myself “bored’; boredom simply never occurred to me as a possible scenario or outcome. Usually something interesting was going on around me somewhere, and if nothing of interest was happening, I could still always find some fascinating concept to ponder or satisfying sensation to meditate upon, even if it were a mere sense-perception, like the satisfying taste of a crispy, greasy piece of fried fish or the hearty warmth of a blazing fire in the living room hearth.

Simply existing, and being aware of the wonder of existence, was itself a kind of high. Pleasure back then came naturally, and when I speak of “pleasure,” | of course do not mean anything improper, untoward, or unseemly. Instead, my general state was a general state of comfortable equipoise. Of course, I don’t intend to imply anything exalted about my character or temperament as a child; like most children, I would occasionally sulk or pout if I didn’t get my way, but the point is that, at bottom, I felt safe, protected, and at peace. | never asked myself if I was “happy” —such a question would never have pierced my profoundly satiated child’s consciousness. My innocent, inborn hedonism was, in fact, tempered by a naturally calibrated moderation; though | wanted to have fun—and in fact, primarily lived for “fun” —I also instinctively knew, knew in my very marrow, that experiencing “fun” required keeping alive a sense of adventure, and that creativity was required in order to retain an aura of proper adventuresomeness always pulsing in one’s brain, and that creativity could only be maintained as long as one possessed a nimble, active, flexible mind, and that retaining an active mind necessarily militated against the intellectual lethargy that is the inevitable result of overindulgence.

To be sure, I didn’t think in such terms, not in the slightest, but the proposition nevertheless held true. As an infantilely instinctive Epicurian, then, my sense of enjoyment never corresponded with the commission of any bacchanal-esque escapades, or whatever would constitute a “bacchanal” for a child... Of course, I needed my parents’ stern rule to prevent me from eating too many sweets, and to get me to go to bed on time, and so forth—once more, I have no wish to assert that, as a boy, | was in possession of any sort of preternatural inclination to healthy, prudent moderation... except that, to some extent I truly did in fact retain an ease of restraint, and a inborn proclivity towards the “golden mean,” insofar as I was occasionally steered in that proper direction by my loving mother and father.

All was not well all of the time, of course—often little problems crept up here and there, as happens in even the most perfect of lives... still, in a profound, general sense, all was well. And all remained well for blissful years and years on end... until, without much warning, a fearful transformation occurred, and suddenly all became most emphatically not well.

AN EYESORE IN THE ARCHTECTURE

As has been extensively recorded elsewhere, things turned sour for me at roughly the time of my initiation into puberty. It was at this juncture that that I came to recognize that my previous impression of being at ease in the world had perhaps always been mistaken. Indeed, having become self-aware, I now saw that my very presence, when I dwelt with others, seemed to have the effect of making those others uncomfortable.

Increasingly, in fact, the distressing notion came over me that people would be much more at ease with one another if I weren’t around to muck up the works. My existence in itself seemed to be an inconvenience which caused them irritation and annoyance.

Had things changed, or had I changed? As long as I was ensconced in the sweet cocoon of childhood, I never reckoned myself an eyesore in the architecture, as it were. Then again, it never occurred to me to think of myself this way, so perhaps it was merely that my perceptive abilities had grown more acute. Yet when I peer at a photograph of myself at age seven, and compare it to one of me at age fourteen, I am struck by a transformation in countenance, one not attributable to mere natural changes. Instead, there is an unhappy absence where once there was a presence, and at the same time, a malignant presence where before had merely been an absence. In the earlier photograph, my face, while unsmiling, nevertheless lends an impression of dreamy, distrait bliss; one - obtains the sense of a child who knows that, should he fall, he will nevertheless be saved from harm.

The second photo, in which the subject betrays a tentative sort of grin, nevertheless evinces a budding aura of tragic disillusionment, as perceived from the perspective of one so new to being disillusioned that he does not feel at rest in the grip of its cold tentacles; instead, one senses that the young boy’s spirit throbs painfully between resolution and relapse, between the comfort of as-yet unwon despair and the agony of still-unkilled hope. It was the springtime of his youth, of course, and as the poet notes, springtime is the cruelest season, as it will not allow a boy simply to be alone with his newly-discovered grief, won't allow his consciousness to die to the world; it must instead torment him mercilessly with intimations of brazen optimism, whispers of a promised better tomorrow, considerations that, after all, in the words of the infernal Howard Jones, “things can only get better.” I could, however, never square these hopes with the reality which now pulsed so heavily through my perception. I was told that one day it would all make sense, that things would come together and reach rich fruition, that “before I knew it,” it would all coalesce properly, that “in the twinkling of an eye,” I would find that my overall state had, in fact, improved; I just needed to see things in the proper light. My temptation to be disillusioned was itself misinformed (so I was appraised); of course, they allowed, being as young as I was, it wasn’t surprising that I felt inclined toward such naive apprehensions ... but then, there really wasn’t any cause for me not to embrace the changes underway, both within myself and all around me. Change was good, they told me. I would become convinced of this eventually, in due time; I just needed to get some perspective on the matter. I’d find out, all right! (Here they would smirk a little at the racy and ribald implications of their forbidden knowledge, which they reckoned I’d soon discover, and which would be plenty compelling enough to get me to see things their way.) Soon enough, I’d uncover the wonderful truth, and when I did, I would again regain the happiness of my youth, in spades.

Oh yes, I’d “find out.” Boy, was I ever in for a delightful treat, once I finally grew up a bit and learned to accept what was happening to me, rather than always fighting it! These were the messages I was sent by my elders. And now, as an “elder” myself, I can testify unabashedly that my elders were, one and all, a bunch of smarmy fools. Of course most of them were no doubt quite guileless in spirit, in the main unconscious regarding the extent of their rhetorical skullduggery. That they didn’t know better, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that they shouldn’t have known better. Perhaps I am being too hard on them, but my severity is borne out of a very pronounced and definite sense of having been betrayed. After all, I trusted these fools, these speciously-informed, pseudo-wise, smirking, self-deceived, misinformed, irresponsible Pied Piping simpletons who fancied themselves counselors and relief-bringers.

I trusted them against my better self-judgment, trusted them in part because I wanted to believe their foolish lies. Yet at the same time, I somehow always knew the truth, even when I thought I’d convinced myself otherwise. I knew that things had changed irrevocably, and that change was in fact NOT good, at least not in this context, at least not as I had ever before understood the concept of “good.” To be sure, it may yet prove to be “good,” in the sense that all things supposedly turn out well, to those who subscribe to the notion of divine providence, wherein everything, desirable and undesirable, happens ultimately to benefit the victory of the-Good. But the changes that took place at the time were in fact of no good whatsoever, in any familiar usage of the term. No... change was plainly bad in this case. I suspected such at the time, but was implored to believe otherwise by authoritative forces; thus, out of seemingly called-for deference to authority, I refrained from mourning what should properly have been mourned, and instead trusted in my elders, only finding out later what I had truly known all along: that my elders were either deluded by or compliant in the corruption I rightly espied lurking behind their smarmy smirks.

REBUFFED

It was around this same period of time that I began to notice how my presence seemed to be a burden to others. I at times felt afflicted with the dreary conviction that it would indeed be better if I weren’t around, since when I asserted my identity it invariably caused discomfort. It sounds contrivedly angsty to declare such a thing, and I don’t blame any reader for feeling skeptical of so grandiose a claim, but I can still recall the arduous vividness with which this impression made itself felt at the time.

On various occasions, I would find myself caught up in what was-- by all accounts—a jovial conversation, involving a set of peers discussing one trivial subject or another. Over the course of these exchanges, my peers would fling forth witticisms, concoct bon mots, and dash off simple, unadorned observations, and each additional comment would be taken in stride by the rest of the group; whether it assumed the form of a dry query, a wry assertion, a glib rhetorical feint, or a bold and bawdy wisecrack, each participant seemed, in his own way, to be helping to buttress the overall structure, or meta-structure, of the thing being discussed. A sense of comradeship was being subtly achieved through the words that each contributor offered, each new remark acting as a new ingredient in the pot of delicious comradely fun being cooked up.

Yet when I chanced to say something, my words either went unheard or were ignored. After a few flailing attempts at becoming “part of the gang,” and each time being subtly but firmly rebuffed by all of its true members—never with overt mockery or outward expressions of contempt, but merely with a tactfully willed disregard, i.e., with everyone acting as if I weren’t truly present—I eventually slunk away, having taken the collectively-sent hint quite well.

FLAILURE

Presently, I managed simply to give up the ghost, to stop trying. But it took me some time to get to this point. At the inception of adolescence, I strove mightily, and rather pathetically, to include myself in the ranks of a proverbial “party” where 1) I wasn’t a member, and 2) I had never been invited. Eventually, however, I caught hold of the bitter truth, and realized that my place was elsewhere. Thus, I relinquished my once- perpetual proclivity to desperately wield those twin self-improvement instruments of hairbrush and hairdryer; I stopped cultivating the silly excuse for “fashion sense” that I had attempted to adopt upon earlier occasions. These things clearly weren’t for me, nor I for them. Yet with the distance of time, I find myself still slightly baffled concerning the fact of my exclusion.

For it was, indeed, a fact. There was no sentimentally mitigating interpretation possible. My status as a reject was in no sense “all in my head”; there had been no tragic misunderstanding; I wasn’t actually well- liked, but simply unaware of it, nor was it merely a case of me overlooking all of the many ways that my peers really treasured and adored me (though this was what my ever-optimistic would-be mentors tirelessly conveyed to me, and what I tirelessly attempted to believe). My alienated state wasn’t attributable to the fact that I had simply “not expended enough of an effort,” as my mentors tended to advise me, when they were in a slightly more severe, less indulgent mode... In fact, their message would vacillate with regularity, depending upon the degree of exasperation they felt with me, their inconsolably mopey, altogether hopeless charge. One day would find them insisting that I really wasn’t as alienated from everyone as I felt I was; but on the morrow their frustration would prompt them to launch into a lecture, wherein they would relIate the “tough love” lesson that if I feel alienated it was really my own fault—what I really needed to do was to TRY HARDER, to “fake it till I made it,” to refrain from acting so moody all of the time, to stop taking myself so seriously, to cease being so paranoid, to relax, to smile more, to be willing to make fun of myself, so that other people would see the wonderful person I was inside, to take care lest I become a self-fulfilling prophecy (“If you think you’re a loser who doesn’t fit in, then that’s all you'll ever be!”) and so forth... Hopeless! No, it wouldn’t do. I flailed against my fate; flailed ineffectually, and without result. I flailed on, and was only rewarded with a deep degree of what could well be called “flailure.” I flailed for weeks, months, years. I had in fact advanced well into my twenties before I ever left off my flailing routine, whereby my insides flopped around like a doomed, dying fish on a hard, dry surface, a being tragically ripped from the comforts of its true habitat. Yet I did not die, and the poisoned atmosphere which at first choked me somehow became my new, fitful home for what would prove to be the remainder of my life.
Indeed, I grew peculiarly habituated to conditions which by all accounts ought to have killed me. Yet it was a perverse adaptation, one which resulted in the spawning of an inwardly misshapen being, one which had learned to internalize the conflict which had previously battered and buffeted his soul from without. The resultant creature, staggering as from the wreckage of a terrible crash, should never even have lived an hour; his contradicting essential traits ought to have sabotaged one another immediately, causing a tragic but necessary stillbirth. I suppose, then, that one could consider it a “miracle” that I somehow escaped the clutches of oblivion; there was no reasonable explanation for why I ought to have emerged, body and soul intact, from such torment. Yet in adapting, I fear I may well have been complicit in a self-betrayal; that is to say, in choosing to adapt, rather than perish, I consigned myself to a far greater death, a kind of death-in-life. The very ghost I thought I had given up came back to haunt me.

THE IMPOSTOR

So contradictory have been my impulses that I have committed two acts I never could have imagined taking part in prior to giving up my ghost: that is to say, I have married... and I have reproduced.

These facts are particularly perplexing for me. I cannot fathom how such things could have taken place, given my general orientation to regard these and all such related activities as alien to my consciousness, and alienating to my sensibilities. And yet, I don’t view this unusual deveiopment as any sort of repudiation of the distinct convictions of my youth. My perspective, in fact, has little changed. I never was won over by my would-be mentors and their assurances that all would be well. In fact, all has not been well. In making this assertion, I am in no way expressing a repudiation of my wife or our children, whom I love dearly. In fact, I repudiate nothing—neither my nuptials, nor the births of my blessed kids—yet in pondering the oddity of having chosen this life, I conclude that the trajectory taken was one which could be categorized as “man bites dog”; indeed, it was a longshot that such a circumstance ever could have unfolded—something like a one in a thousand chance. In my case, that very “one” out of a thousand happened to be the one which was set into motion, and now, much to my shock and disbelief, I am a married man with two children.

How did I wind up in this position? It is inconceivable and inexplicable, but there it is. I have no compulsion to shirk my duties, yet I can’t help but feel myself to be a kind of fraud for having taken on that which I clearly was never meant to adopt. Indeed, my strongly-held impression as a youth was that I would remain celibate for the entirety of my life. I did not come to this conclusion lightly, though it was assuredly not reached due to any dearth of a sex drive. My appetite equaled or exceeded that of the average teenage boy, but unlike the average boy I instinctively saw the dangers lurking in heart-related affairs, and wished to have no part whatsoever in that ghastly business, even though my Joins certainly wanted every part of it. The price, to me, however, didn’t seem worth the alleged enjoyment of the experience.

As these matters are all discussed elsewhere (in my memoir Confessions of a Would-Be Wanker), there is no particular cause to redundantly reiterate them here. It seems, though, that a significant glitch took place somewhere in the warp and woof of reality, ultimately causing two new lives to enter the world. Yet my alienation from anything approaching the “normal” perspective on married life has always remained. There is still nothing “normal” to me about the state of being a husband and a father; even after having adopted these roles, | still cannot properly comprehend how I came to take on either one or the other, much less both. .

Perhaps it sounds startling and grandiose to you, good reader, that I should declare myself such a glaring exception to the rule, that I should indeed be a husband and a father, and yet a celibate at heart. I take my family responsibilities seriously, to be sure, and I have no shortage of affection for my wife and children (and yes, for those who must know about such matters, I do indeed have a carnal relationship with my wife), but there is still a general consciousness of being apart from others of my alleged “kind”; when I regard other husbands and fathers, I don’t think to myself: “There is another one like me!” Instead, at my essence, I am an unabashed acetic, even while I find myself inexplicably saddled with the trappings of a family man. This state of things cannot last, | am sure: my outer shell-- which resembles the guise of a “family man”- will surely crumble away from my spiritual body once I die and go to my reward, whatever reward that may be.

Indeed, though I have wound up engaged in the “worldly” pursuits attendant upon being a “family man,” (working to support my wife and children, doing the best I can to guide and assist my son and daughter to become happy, healthy, spiritually nourished, and morally scrupulous human beings), I also on many a day find myself looking upon myself with incorrigible incomprehension and bafflement, as one would regard a stranger who has somehow, by some disconcerting miracle, stepped into one’s own consciousness. Who is this impostor? How and why did he come to be here?

AFTER THE FALL

A great conviction has shaken me of late, familiar yet recently heightened in its intensity. This conviction has seized me in its grip with a harsh, violent, and terrible tenacity. It has so addled my perception that I cannot tell for certain if in fact this conviction is accurate, or if I have been put under the spell of some malignant delusion. But whatever may be the case, I must repeat the things that I discern. Readers may judge for themselves whether or not what I perceive is true, or if in fact I have been led astray. What I see, in part, is this: the complete degradation of human affairs is due to the permeation of carnality into every cranny and nook of our lived consciousness. An overripe, oversexualized age, with the spirit of eros run rampant and rendered spectacularly ghastly.

But I discern still more. Rightly or wrongly, erroneously or factually, I perceive that eros is, at its core, a destructive and degrading force. How it soaks us in all its slime! A more prudent age was at some level aware of this fact. It knew, of course, that, still and all, the vast majority of our species would still wish to partake in eros; nevertheless, it saw to it that the best among us would wish to do without this indulgence. The institution of celibacy, in all of its forms, exists because man saw that only in renunciation of the flesh could he find his way to his essential, purified self.

I know that this message jars at the ears of those indoctrinated into the current Zeitgeist, with its relentlessly enforced doctrine of “sex-positivity,” but I particularly perceive that one who has carnal relations has been “used up,” spoiled, and rendered morally hideous. Lest I be misunderstood, I don’t make this claim in what may be called a “misogynistic” context; I’m not talking of de-virginized women here as having an exclusive claim to the “used up” label. Indeed, though the hymen is an organ particular to the female sex, it is an apt universal metaphor—applying to males and females alike—for the very thing of which I speak; its rupture—that which is referred to in vulgar slang as “popping the cherry” —broadcasts the bloody-mess that is post-lapsarian life. The blood shed at the moment of penile penetration provides a poignant illustration of the horror of having been irrevocably degraded.

Not for nothing do we still refer to the initial act of coitus as a representing a “loss of innocence.” We intuit that sex is corruption from the very start, and no amount of social conditioning from our masters will remove this solidly fixed impression.

Yet even the older, more traditional mores of the previous dispensation still amounted to little more than whoremongering, ultimately, even if it was a more Subtle variety of that which is common today. Sex back then didn’t entirely permeate the culture, and its more deleterious effects were kept in check by still-prevalent force of traditional morality, but even the more innocent past was tragically soiled by the consequences of the Fall. The time of our corruption antecedes both the present and the past; there never was a time, in fact, when it was not, at least not one that lurks anywhere in our collective memory... and yet, we still somehow feel the irrevocable loss in our bones. And even if we were to regain the mores of the halcyon era, before the onrush of militant indoctrination into ever more malignant forms of degeneracy, we would still feel this loss.

Of course, it won’t do for a decently married man to see wedlock as merely a more sophisticated form of prostitution. Such a perspective demeans the perceived legitimacy of marriage—an institution which, as we all know, has already taken its share of knocks in recent years. However, I can’t help but view things the way they present themselves to me now. True enough: there are varying degrees of degradation, but sex within wedlock—the traditional norm—contains, as it were, the virus of corruption, even as it renders it less virulent and appalling in its effects. It does not, however, eliminate the degradation as a thing in itself. Of course, I am not suggesting that we should strive to eliminate it, since such quixotic crusades-- which attempt to extinguish entirely that which, for better or worse “comes naturally”—are almost guaranteed to cause more mischief than they are meant to curtail. No: eros is a force that can perhaps be contained, but never stopped; it is a force, indeed, of nature. Nature must have its reign, but that which is “natural” isn’t therefore good: that we are bound to tolerate it  [we aren’t VB] isn’t to say that it must be liked, much less loved.

It isn’t that sex isn’t agreeable or pleasurable; to be sure, it is both. [Its agreeableness and pleasurableness depend on perceptual distortion VB] Finding it loathsome in its essence and éffects isn’t the same thing as finding it unappealing as an activity. The wreckage of our bloody, oozy, ejaculate-flooded, hymen-perforated world, increasingly shorn as it is of every former vestige of innocence, is a testament to the fatal indulgence of this proclivity, “natural” indeed, but no less malignant for its naturalness, as might indeed be said... of a tumor.

ADULTERATED

“But it’s through that very force, which you liken to a ‘tumor,’ that life emerges!” So it will be objected. In response, it would only be appropriate to point out a couple of things. First of all, the fact that life comes into being due to sexual intercourse does not function as a pro forma argument, rendering the inherent goodness of sex self-evidently obvious. If one wishes to make such a case, one would instead need to demonstrate that life itself is inherently good—a considerably more dubious proposition absent the assent to some a priori doctrine on the matter. And even if life is an inherent good, it should not therefore be seen to follow --as the proverbial night follows the no less proverbial day-- that sexual intercourse is good simply because it is an act which produces life. In any event, while such an argument constitutes the basis on which the Church, and Christianity generally, has praised sex as a God-created good (provided it is kept within wedlock), it is most emphatically not the reason why sex is typically lauded in our day and age. Rather, to put badly, sex is lauded because it represents 1) raw pleasure and 2) the obliteration of innocence. What makes sex “sexy” isn’t the fact that it produces babies but rather that it signifies a version of “adult”-hood (as in turn is signified in related terms like “adult language” or “adult situations,” both of which are common descriptions of “adult movies” —and need we add terms like adulterate—meaning, “to render impure” —and adultery— meaning, “to be unfaithful” ?) Sex is distinct from other pleasures of the body in this way: unlike with eating, drinking, sleeping, and so forth, here the pleasure derives not merely from indulgence, but from having been seen or known as one who has participated in said indulgence. Hence the hullabaloo typically made about virginity; when one “loses” this state of being, it functions as a sort of initiation ritual into an “order” which, while not necessarily characterized by sin per se, definitely has the earmarks of moral complication and psychic besmirchment.

Finally, I offer that my point of view on this subject is not to be taken as the final word on the matter, (not that anyone is likely to feel tempted to take it this way anyhow). What I am relaying here are my impressions, valuable if read within certain prescribed limits, perhaps “thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season,” but no more fit to be dismissed for all that. Perhaps, though, there is something redeeming in sexuality, something I have always previously missed. Please note that I use the word redeeming, not merely “alluring,” “appealing,” “desirable,” or... “sexy,” but “redeeming,” as in salvific, as in not savoring of sin, defilement, or corruption.

The Catholic faith, to which I am a convert, seems to think this way. It has always taught the intrinsic good of sex between married a husband and wife. Yet through the vast majority of its history, the Church has mostly made reference to marital relations as a means towards reproduction. Only in the post-sexual revolution age have Church leaders attempted to defend the glories of sex as such, as with John Paul Il’s somewhat queasy “theology of the body” innovations. It is true, of course, that from its inception the Church engaged in metaphorical comparisons between Christ and the Church as being equivalent to that of a man with his newly-wedded bride; it is also the case that when nuns take their vows, they pledge their troth to Christ to express their spiritual fidelity.

Still, when it comes to the sexual act itself, the Church has wisely refrained from making any explicit parallels, in order to avoid any unseemly figurative ramifications. Again, we see reinforced the scarcely concealed admission that sex is a thing best not looked at too closely, a thing essentially loathsome and corruptive in nature.

DARK SPRINGTIME

As I write, it happens to be the height of the spring season, when a fine polien powder coats the earth like yellow snow. What is more, a powerfully musky scent hangs in the air, which plainly resembles semen. It is oppressively inescapable.

Springtime has been hymned and gloried in by poets and nature enthusiasts from time immemorial, and it is indeed a time of mystical resonance and power, since it is the time wherein life reasserts itself in all of its simultaneous glory and ghastliness. It is at the heart of the very notion of birth, a central mystery of existence, one whose origins can in no sense be properly addressed by applying purely mechanistic explanations.

Life is indeed a miracle, in the sense that it shouldn’t exist, yet does. But much as the poets and sentimentalists go on about the vernal wonders of springtime, they seldom pay attention to what could be called the dark side of the season.

********

“In spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” So writes the poet, knowing well enough the resonances he is conjuring up. Springtime connotes carnality; just as the bee invades the bud of the flower to plant its seed, so the “young man” aches to deposit his seed within the womb of his lover. Tennyson couldn’t have expressed such a sentiment outright, of course; it would greatly have offended the sensibilities of his readers to be so forthright. Like most skilled writers, he merely hinted at a plainly undeclarable notion through subtle analogy.

I have known love, myself; the reader would be wrong to conclude that I take these stances on carnality without being acquainted with the matter on a personal level. Not only have I been in love, I have also (as previously noted) married and reproduced. I have watched my two children emerge into the world (each time, my attendance for this event was quite against my will; I would just as soon not have been present, and remained in the waiting room until afterwards, as was the norm in previous eras, but for my wife’s insistence). I love my children dearly, and wish nothing but the best for them, but seeing them spring from their mother’s womb didn’t cause me to fall in love with the process of birth, or make me eager to praise the manner in which new souls become incarnated. That it is “wondrous,” there is no doubt; that it is inexplicable, certain; that it is, in its way, a “miracle,” indisputable, but none of these conclusions necessitates that one ought to regard it with reverential adulation. To be sure, birth is awe-inspiring, in its way, much the same way that death is; that life suddenly appears is as weirdly arresting to the apprehension as is the notion that is suddenly disappears as well. Birth and death are intertwined wonders, for the one cannot exist without the other, and carnality—the means by which life, and therefore death, comes about-- is also a wonder, though, as with birth and death, its undeniable intriguingness doesn’t render it a good thing. Coming to such an arbitrary conclusion is at best intellectual sloppiness, at worst (and most typically), sheer anti-intellectual cant.

THE MARK OF CAIN

I have long held to these conclusions, based upon my deepest, unshakable convictions. I did, for a time, attempt to put these notions aside, the better to adopt what I understood to be the tenets of Christian orthodoxy. After falling in love, and getting married, I tried to convince myself—in accord with the doctrines taught by the Church-- that sexuality was an inherent good. I chalked my earlier thoughts up to youthful folly; I told myself that believing such things was just a testament to a priggish tendency to be overly extreme in my boyhood beliefs. Now, I congratulated myself to think, I had grown “mature” and “responsible” in eschewing such untenable and fantastic ideas.

The trouble was, I was never able to convince myself of my newly- amended tenets regarding sex. I recognized, of course, that there were gradations of corruption, and that not every manifestation of this proclivity was foul or objectionable to the same extent. Matrimony and wedlock tamed and contained this beast, it was true; still, the beast itself did not register to me as anything but beastly; it did not grow angelic once tamed. A temperate, well-ordered society which enforced monogamy was indeed better than a culture which promoted “free love” and hedonistic abandon; a nation which tolerated monogamy but most fully prized celibacy (as endorsed by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians and by Christ in his “become eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven” homily) was even better, but sex, wherever it manifested itself, still represented a tainted and compromised psychic condition, scarring the soul of the human race much like the mark of Cain.

Eventually, the truth, as I had originally comprehended it in my formative years, pushed its way back to the surface, and I found myself yet again seized with the sure knowledge that had come over me from the very inception of my transformation. It is, however, with something of a mournful heart that I find myself once again inhabiting these intellectual quarters. Not only is my belief in itself at odds with the impulses of my body (for I am not, nor have I ever been “asexual”), but my convictions are intensely alienating to most people. In fact, they tend to become astonishingly indignant when this point is raised... to the point that I seldom do raise it anymore, except in print.

The last time I argued for antisexualism was a couple of times when I was a teenager. I recall both occasions quite well, at least when it comes to certain particulars. One time was in a college dorm setting; my interlocutors draped themselves all over each other licentiously, as if in defiance of my unwelcome argument, while I sat alone, fittingly enough, and vehemently made my case with all the bravado of an arrogant and eloquent young man. On an earlier occasion—one that is more seared in my mind, for some reason—I was riding on a bus, during a summer school trip in Ireland, of all places. As we drove through an intensely picturesque landscape of forest glen under ominously overcast Celtic skies, a conversation got struck up somehow, for some reason, on the subject of sex: whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. I must have made some Opinionated, semi-belligerent verbal sally or other, else it would be unclear why the debate would have ensued at all; certainly none of my classmates hewed to such a strange and perverse doctrine that would actually disparage sexuality! As some outspoken wag would later put the matter: “Who the FUCK is anti-sex?” That he would use this particular profanity was telling: it reflected not only the emphatic incredulity of his response, it also showed the blatant carnality of even his metaphorical conception of affairs.

I don’t really recall much about the content of my argument. I think I may have focused on how sexuality causes us to be selfish, since we end of paying more attention to people we find attractive and caring less about those with the misfortune to be ugly or plain-looking. Also, I suspect that I honed in on the ego, and how it gets puffed up by sexual pursuits, to the point of chasing only its own gratification, whereas true love is self-sacrificing, rather than being acquisition-oriented. The “loss of innocence” angle didn’t really occur to me at the time, perhaps because I hadn’t yet achieved much distance from it, being still relatively fresh from the ravages of puberty and still in the throes of late adolescence.

Little as I remember about my own talking points, I have even less recollection of what my interlocutors said. It seems that there were four or five of them who chimed in from time to time, along with a few other mere interested (or semi-interested) spectators who said nothing. I was, to be sure, the only one among us taking this most intrepid stand. It seemed to succeed at agitating one of my classmates (though he was an easily agitated fellow); he grew eager to convey to me how much of an idiot I was, and how reprehensibly atrocious he found my point of view. He responded to my theoretical points as one personally offended. There was also a certain moon-faced girl who actually felt so hurt by my assertions that she broke down and cried silently. It mustn’t be thought that she was weeping out of compassion for me, however; she didn’t regard me as a tragic figure who had come to faulty conclusions and now was denying himself the comfort of carnal companionship and dooming himself to a lonely life in the process. No: though there would have been something touching about such a response, I’m afraid that hers was more the sulky apprehension of a frustrated, generally unreflective faithful believer in the presence of a shameless blasphemer.

Though our debate no doubt had the effect of alienating me still further from my peers—who at the very least found my ideas somewhat freakish, and at worst thought me odious for attacking what to them was close to sacred—nevertheless, I felt pleased with the interaction, since it at least indicated a level of engagement with them, something I had felt very little acquainted with as a youngster, being, as I was, a general “eyesore in the architecture” at that time. Here, I was at least being noticed, and noted, rather than scrupulously avoided, as was more typical. And hope kept stubbornly asserting itself: I found myself caught up in its clutches, pressed up against its fulsome bosom, where its deeply deceitful heart vibrated seductively, causing my own heart to flare with undimmed expectation. Perhaps, after all, I still stood a chance of being understood, accepted, embraced. I never admitted to myself that I desired such an outcome, because it struck me as a base betrayal of my better self; still, I indeed wished for it. (...)

NOTES BEFORE DEATH
Andy Nowicki