Doing it better by breaking down sexual archetypes

Another guest blog, this one from Joshua Bagby from Sex in the Light. If you're interested in guest blogging, write to me at isaacg at sfsu dot edu. We'd be happy to have you!

It’s a constant theme of my blog that sex in our culture is often presented as a paint-by-numbers approach to producing physical orgasms. We don’t pay much attention to the mind, heart, and soul of sex. I am going to hammer on that theme a little more.

Sex for me has been changing as my body changes with age. In my mid-forties I began losing that masculine ability to create erections through thought alone. As men age, more direct physical stimulation is frequently required to bring on the hard stuff.

I was not overjoyed with this development.

In my fifties, I began losing the kind of musculature control over my orgasms that is the take-it-for-granted condition of youth. This is a very gradual loss, and what it means is that physical orgasms are not as powerful as they once were. There’s still a pretty good woo-hoo factor, don’t get me wrong, but the fountain of youth has definitely lost some oomph.

I was not overjoyed with that development, either.

Many men of my Baby Boomer age range think that nature is cruel in masterminding this slow decline. Part of the reason for the rush on medical fixes like Viagra, Cialus, and Levitra is to restore the physical performance lost to the aging process.

But I am not one of them.
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Rather, I have taken the view that maybe the problem is not nature; maybe it’s us. Maybe it’s that we as a culture have not been open-minded enough about sexual pleasure to step out of the performance paradigm. Maybe nature is trying to nudge us in a different direction—to open our closed minds to new possibilities.

Fortunately, I was one of those guys who learned during my thirties that if I hold back from ejaculating quickly, I’d create stronger ejaculations when I finally let go. By doing that, I’d also intensify my sex energy. Now that I am not so young, and while my ejaculations are less intense, I still have this gift of sex energy.

And that seems to be getting better with age!

What happens for me is very hard to describe because it is such a subjective experience. So much of it happens in the mind, heart, and spirit. I feel it very strongly on a physical level, too, but what separates it from normal body part-by-body part description is that now my mind floats outside the lines and out of the box.

It’s like unlocking myself from the rigid paint-by-numbers approach to producing orgasms. Often I launch myself into a consciousness of pure sensuality. I enjoy sensations of warmth, coolness, wetness, dryness, smoothness, prickliness, whatever. It’s much like that state of awareness you were in as a little kid when you’d lick a window because it felt neat. You were more into the undiluted pleasure of sensation rather than saying, “I think I will lick a window.”

By stepping outside the lines and not painting by numbers, I let my mind soar into a delicious world of abstract thought and feeling. Maybe I’ll see colors, patterns, light. Maybe I’ll see inner drawings or photographs or cartoons. Often they will pulsate in animation and visually represent what is happening sensually. For instance, if I am physically nuzzling between two breasts, my mind might deliver an abstract representation of this activity. It turns lovemaking into art.

Lovemaking for the soul gets so far beyond the range of pornography or everyday R-rated films it’s like re-inventing sex. I wish I had had these eyes when I was younger, but I am so happy to have them now.

I have also experienced a phenomenon I call energy personalities. As a creative writer, I have, of course, become quite familiar with the whole process of dwelling in imaginary worlds. I make up characters all the time. I am also familiar with when I know that I am deliberately making something up - and am in control of that whole process - and when something just comes to me without my deliberating on it. The latter is inspiration. I am more like a passive observer attuned to some cosmic TV, and the idea just pops into my brain ready for action.

Energy personalities are entirely spontaneous and inspired. I do not create them. They come into me. It’s as if for a little while I assume a different identity than ego Joshua and become someone else. That may sound spooky or psychotic, but it’s not. It feels wonderful. Maybe it’s a past life. Maybe it’s a friendly energy presence, a spirit. Not once has it ever been scary or threatening. A rush of energy usually accompanies it.

If you’ve never experienced anything like it, it’s difficult to convey how exciting this process is and how it is often superior to the kind of sex we’re conditioned to want through the media. High energy is naturally exhilarating. It’s like Alka-seltzer for the spirit. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz.

So far, energy personalities for me have been like archetypes. One of them is like a beast that growls like a lion. When this guy is activated, the output of energy far transcends anything that comes out of me as an ordinary human! It’s almost as if he is a different kind of spirit guide - I only experience joy when he is about.

If there is a bottom line to this, it is that when lovers encourage each other to explore sexually, to step outside the paint-by-numbers approach to orgasm production, great things can happen. But because society is generally so conformist-oriented and people are so terrified of making fools out of themselves, diversity in sex is usually discouraged. Well, when you’ve got to do everything by the book, you miss out on a lot of wonders. And when you do what you've always done, you get what you've always gotten.

Blaze your own trail. Give your love the encouragement and permission to re-invent your lovemaking.