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Sexual pedagogy | page 1, 2
One day she remained after class, weeping over Michael Smuin's ballet "Song for a Dead Warrior," which I had shown during the "modern dance" part of the course. I knew, as we hugged each other in sympathy for all the oppression in the history of the world, and to seal our intimate solidarity, that I was hers. I asked her to have a beer with me at the City Hotel, knowing I was opening the door into a dimly lit room of lurking taboos and uncontrollable urges. She was 23 to my 58, awful numbers in my lexicon, and there was no undoing them; it was the whimsical chronology of some malevolent god. We nudged and rubbed against each other for the better part of a month, as she soaked up dormant knowledge from my brain, before I invited her to travel with me during spring break, envisioning intertwinings both elastic and torrid for which there would be no end. Pounding rain on the coast aborted our hiking plans in Point Reyes, so we headed south to Santa Cruz, looking for vibrant sun. We piled book finds on the bed of our hotel and drank copious amounts of tequila as we postponed the inevitable disposition of our bodies. The breakthrough occurred at a showing of "The Shawshank Redemption," the poignant ending of which ("Hope is a good thing; it may be the best thing there is") had us weeping and gripping each other's writhing hands. By the time we got back to the hotel, boundaries had been erased. What finally happened was so delirious that it evaporated as soon as it occurred, like candy so sweet it destroys the brain. She moved in for about two weeks after the trip, strewing candles on all flat surfaces and altering the chemistry of the house. I rushed home after classes almost in panic that I had imagined her, but finding things like fresh soup and small kindnesses instead of false dreams. And then she was gone. Small traces, like the paths of electrons, zoomed by: A tender letter, a glance, a bit of music. I visited her once in Santa Cruz, where she had moved with her lover, and slowly drove away as from a funeral. She said, "You were too sober," which was true, no more changeable than my age. Years have gone by. I have a fine friend who climbs in my bed and then leaves, after we have celebrated each other's freedom with wine and candles. I start my classes and end them gently and ceremoniously, not bothering to return the polite solicitations that are part of my unspoken contract. But just one month ago, an invisible student from the back row came to the front of the room to lead the discussion of Oedipus, who blinded himself from the truth. I watched her walk up the aisle and take her place next to me, before she turned to me and smiled. I recognized it right away. It was the smile of the goddess of destruction. On intellectual grounds, these things are hard to defend. I know all the arguments: Imbalance of power, taking advantage of naiveté and so forth. Biologically, they make sense, but only if we accept that the biological imperative can overpower consciousness. If we adopt Sartre's point of view, such liaisons are immoral because those with more consciousness prey on those with less. But there is a huge assumption built into that proposition from the perspective of Buddhism, which sees consciousness as something that potentially takes many lifetimes to develop. From this point of view, an older person might be considerably less conscious than a young one, whatever blame resulting from past karma. But none of these arguments makes any sense in the realm of the emotions. I hesitate to bow to Freud here, but the arguments of two of his descendents, Norman O. Brown and Herbert Marcuse, are compelling. Our society does cause excess repression, and it is liberating to open oneself to "Love's Body." We paid a very high price for Puritanism. We also pay a very price for resisting it. Ultimately, these things do not get worked out on paper. They unravel themselves whenever the smile happens, and two beings, from whatever complex personal histories and psychological makeups they have, get intertwined. The goddess of love cannot be bribed. She will have her way.
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