Subject: RE: My So Called Life & Salinger
From: Malcolm Lawrence (Malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Date: Fri May 09 1997 - 14:25:03 GMT
>lisa and malcolm--
>would you be able to say these things, i mean about sex and losing
virginity >and all that, to such a perfect stranger as i am if we were face
to face? just
>wondering. i know it's easier for me to talk about these things to
faceless
>electro-entities. i love the internet!--matt
(Well first off, on the net I only consider "perfect strangers" someone who
has been lurking who has never said anything before. I feel as if a lot of
people on this list I practically "know" already. This list has a measure
of maturity that is very refreshing and I feel comfortable with the things
I've said and how I hope they'll be read.)
Oh sure, if we had a context and I knew (like any conversation really) that
what I was saying was not to simply get me to reveal something that could
be passed along, taken out of context and distorted, but to see if I could
illuminate something. There's a subtle difference between being able to
illuminate the process of intimacy and someone who simply "kisses and
tells."
See, with me, I was born in England (a very sexually repressed culture, as
we all know) yet raised in the States by two parents who never really
wanted to become Americanized and as a result displays of affection let
alone sex itself were none too plentiful around the house when I was
growing up. So all the time I was growing up I felt very estranged from my
peers because the sexual arena was something that was not only foreign to
me because I was a child, but because I was a "foreigner" as well. My
father still believes two people shouldn't live together before marriage,
for example. I never got the little talk, let alone could even talk about
such issues with my folks, but luckily over the years I've had good male
and female friends (and girlfriends) with very enlightened attitudes and
perspectives whom I could talk all the stuff out with and was able to
develop a pretty healthy attitude about sexuality.
I went to a pretty progressive college and very early on realized that it
helps to strip sex of all the cultural baggage and see it for the paradigm
that it is, which means the symbolic union on two people FIRST, and THEN
start to take into account the emotional aerobics, the possible familial
displacements going on, the baggage from previous relationships that are
projected on you, and all the other layers that make up what we know as
rumpy-pumpy.
I'm currently sketching out blueprints for a huge essay I want to write
about "love" because it's endlessly fascinating to me how the times we're
living in right now a lot of the traditional notions of "love" and
"sexuality" are changing dramatically, specifically homosexual, yet it's
much more "homo" than it is "sexual"...ala what Ellen Degeneres' partner
was talking about: it's about sensibilities, it's about soul exchanges.
(Take me for example, I have a very gay sensibility with a lot of things
(not all), yet I'm not gay. So what is it that defines what is "gay" and
"straight" as far as tastes are concerned (musical, movies, literature,
style, fashion, etc. etc.)? It has very little, if anything, to do with sex
itself, it's more about the acceptance that a soul best suited to you could
not be of another gender. And the implications are going to be devastating
to the mainstream. Shake society right off it's foundation.
But I digress...
Malcs
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