It's Complicated

By Lisabet Sarai

During my third year in graduate school, I blossomed sexually. Or to put it more crassly, I started to sleep around. The shy, studious mouse I’d been up to that point burst from her chrysalis (inflicting severe violence on a metaphor) to become a gorgeous butterfly, flitting from flower to flower.

I realize now that hormones contributed to this explosion of sexuality. I was in my mid-twenties. My body was trying like crazy to procreate. (Fortunately, modern contraceptive technology thwarted this biological imperative.) At the time, though, the experience felt like magic, a kind of liberation from my past self-image as nerdy, socially awkward and unappealing. All at once, it seemed, I was desirable. Potential lovers were everywhere. I could indulge myself. If I wanted someone, I could act on that desire. If someone wanted me, I could say yes, without hesitation or guilt.

Was I over-sexed? I reject the judgmental tone of that question. Looking back at those years, I feel a bit embarrassed, realizing how slutty I must have seemed to anyone observing me, but indulgent. I was learning, growing, changing—and having a marvelous time, for the most part. Isn’t that what youth is for?

I wasn’t just scratching a physical itch. This wasn’t primarily about getting off. My lovers weren’t faceless, interchangeable bodies. I wrote page after page in my journal after each encounter, poem after poem.

Here’s one of them, a particularly detailed explication of one day in my sex-drenched life. It’s not a very good poem at all—starts out well, but degenerates into adolescent hyperbole by the end—but I’m offering it as a historical document, not as a literary effort.

six-sixteen-seventy-nine

by Lisabet Sarai

1. greg
   
   and when you,
   firm, assured, proud,
   began your vows
   a summer cloud
   misted my view
   and I couldn't help
   recalling you
   between my legs.
       but the spicy tears
    and the hungering lump
    in my throat passed
    and I let you go
    (will you ever know?)
   I came to your wedding
   dressed like a bride
   in starched summer white
   and with pity and pride
   took both your hands,
   wished you the best,
   felt myself blest
   by your chaste kiss.

2. matt
  
   curiosity
   and champagne...
   excuses. 
   I chose
   to follow my hormones
   to your motel
   knowing full well
   your precocious mind. 
    another adventure
 in technicolor,
 in sun-burnished flesh,
 in salty moans,
  hunger, humor...
 stranger,
 strange but sweet
 it was
 if not for this 
 icy torrent of voices
 (which one my own?)
 drowning the moment.

   in your nineteen years
   have you known regret?
   and why should I wonder?

3. bob

   yes, yes!
   so totally right for the time,
   my fantasy 
   flourishing, blooming,
   a porch-full of roses,
   this june rejoicing
   I'll press and save
   till the end of my days.
    bob, it was better
 than ever imagined,
 real and deep,
 comfort and caring,
 effortless sharing,
     god-given fitting--
   words cannot tell
   my grateful wonder,
   but hearts can 
   (and bodies as well --
    or better)
   man 
   from my dreams,
   I thank you,
   bless you,
   release you,
   but hold the memory,
        holy-whole.

And what’s the back story here? Greg was my housemate, the good-looking, self-confident scion of a wealthy Connecticut family, who teased and tempted me until one night, when my boyfriend (who also lived in the house) was away for a week, I knocked on Greg’s bedroom door. As I discussed in an earlier post here, that rash action ultimately broke up my relationship with my boyfriend. However, all the housemates, including my ex, traveled from Pennsylvania to Darien for Greg’s wedding nine or ten months later.

Matt was the nineteen year old brother of Greg’s bride, in town with his family for the celebration. (I was twenty six.) Clever. Flirtatious. As the poem says, precocious. Enough said.

And Bob? (Who could possibly write a poem about someone named “Bob”?) Given the poem’s assertions, I’m embarrassed to admit that I barely remember him. A friend of Greg’s, I believe, who had shown up at our house parties. There had always been strong attraction between us, but he had a girlfriend. (And where was she that sunny June day? That information is lost to posterity.)

As I reconstruct things, Bob gave me a ride in the evening after the reception, back to the Hartford apartment of the female friend with whom I was staying. She was out. Bob and I shared a joint out on the apartment balcony. One thing led to another.

At the time, I clearly believed I’d experienced some sort of epiphany. And perhaps I did—even if the memory has faded.

My older self wonders whether he deliberately gave me a ride home just so he could get laid. I’d rather think his motives were less selfish. Certainly our connection that night felt more than just physical. But then, all my liaisons did.

I wouldn’t say the day chronicled by this poem was typical. However, it wasn’t some sort of fluke, either. There were other days during that period when I had sex with more than one person.

I’m not ashamed. I’m not sorry. And yes, I miss the breathless newness of sex back in those days.

That’s a big part of what I try to capture when I write erotica now.

Battle Hymn of the Femme Fatale

They call me Lilith, mother of demons. They call me Eve, thief of forbidden knowledge. They call me Salome, destroyer of Saint John, the baptiser of Christ. They call me Jezebel, worshipper of false gods. They call me Medea, child-killer.

I have been marked as the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, a symbol of evil personally applied to living women.

Many of us have been damned for our sexuality, but only the powerful have become legendary sluts: Messalina of Rome, Catherine of Russia, Marie-Antoinette of France.

Millions of us were named witches. Only a few are remembered by name: Alice Kyteler of Ireland, Rebecca Nurse of Massachusetts colony.

Some of us killed our husbands, the ultimate crime. Some of us killed our parents, our lovers, acquaintances, passing strangers.

In the nineteenth century of the Christian calendar, we were identified as Fatal Women, temptresses with cold eyes who were said to have lured many susceptible men to their death simply to exercise our power.

Most of us have been innocent of any crime. Untold numbers of women have become martyrs: tragic victims of the irrational fears of those with power in the real world. The youngest of us have been aborted while still in the womb or shortly after birth, incapable of causing harm. Incapable of self-defense.

Our innocent dead outnumber the victims of every other massacre recorded in the history books. Does this make us all collectively blameless? No.

Regardless of the theories promoted by male scholars that we have a collective soul (or none), we share a basic human condition: we are individuals. We are no more alike on the inside than we are on the outside. We choose our own actions based on our personal perception of the choices available.

If we are not all guilty, we cannot all be innocent.

As the imaginary alter ego of one erotic writer among many, I survive by eliminating those who pose a threat to me. Forget “promiscuity” as the sign of a corrupt woman. I follow the example of male warriors from the beginning of time: I silence those I have used.

Why do I do it? Look around you. How many conscientious women live happily on their own terms? As someone once said: “Women feel guilty if they assert themselves and resentful if they don’t.”

The moral codes of an unjust world are as tangled as a huge skein of barbed wire. I don’t waste time trying to untangle it. I do what I must to live as I choose.

I am not a team player. I co-operate with those who show their willingness to add pleasure to my life. I'm rational, not spineless.

Don’t tell me that I give women in general a bad name. We had a bad name in this world long before I came into it.

Call me whatever you want. You would probably slander me even if I had spent my life in the cell of a convict or a nun.

Just don’t cross me. You would be lucky if you lived to regret it.