The Erotic Comedies (Vassi Collection Volume XI)

by Marco Vassi

  Before going into a description of the modes and of the specific quality of sexual and metasexual dynamics, I would like to put all the information constituting the model into schematic form, to use as a diagram to refer to.

  THE EROTICUM

  SEX // METASEX

  Biological, “work” // Psychophysical, “play”

  A Function of Responsibility // A Function of Compassion

  Reverential Mode // Procreative Mode, Theatrical Mode, Therapeutic Mode, Romantic Mode, Masturbatory Mode, Zen Mode

  Number: Two // Number: Any

  Type: Male and Female // Type: Any Mixture of Gender

  Activity: Penetration by penis into vagina followed by ejaculation, during a period of fertility // Activity: Anything desired by the Participants

  This covers any possible erotic activity for any reason whatsoever, clearly distinguishes between sex and metasex, provides a new means with which to discuss and think about the erotic, and makes obsolete practically our entire "sexual" vocabulary. Through this paradigm, it is possible to arrive at a place through linguistic means which the liberation groups are attempting to reach through political means. For if we change the way we think and speak about the eroticum, the social manifestations of confusion and hostility will more easily disappear.

  II

  The modes of sex and metasex are my own rationalizations. I offer them as private considerations which may have universal application. I feel that if this paradigm is accepted, others will add new modes to the list, and a new erotic language be born, one which includes the mathematics of metasex.

  1. The Procreative Mode: derives, or borrows, from the conditions of sex. Through it one appropriates the ambience of baby-making-sex to a form of metasexual interaction. The feelings and attitudes of sex can take place where reproduction is not the issue, between two men, for example, or between a man and a woman where birth control measures have been taken. To operate in this mode it is only necessary not to throw out the bath water with the baby. In our era of general superficiality, and under the spectre of overpopulation, the experience of procreative fucking has diminished drastically.

  The most distinctive quality of this mode is a kind of urgency. By which I don't mean frenzy. There is, in the black culture, a term which captures its texture perfectly: it is called "rooting." It refers to lodging the penis deep inside the vagina and then "rooting around" as though a stick were being dug into the earth. If we remember that the word fuck derives from the idea of planting, and cunt means to hollow out, then it is clear that rooting is simply preparing the ground for the implantation of the seed. With this mode there is a quality of silence which has nothing to do with whether the participants make sounds or not. There is an almost holy intimacy which is unmistakable, an in-folding, a profound taking-in that does not appear elsewhere.

  Although there is no plan to produce a flesh-and-blood child, the procreative mode does allow a birth to take place, for it involves a peculiar energy bond that is highly vitalizing. Those using it give birth to an awareness which strengthens the body and exalts the soul. What is born is a vibration of goodness that is a real force in the overall evolution of the species. Those who fuck in this mode are simply made better by the experience, and to the degree that it fecundates their lives, they have brought virtue into being.

  It is obvious that two men having anal intercourse, and a man and a woman in oral intercourse, for example, can experience the vibration of the procreative mode. Sexually, this is a heretical notion; but metasexually, it is part of understanding that the mythic structures through which we apprehend reality are within our power to formulate, once we know what it is that we are doing.

  2. The Theatrical Mode: is a function of psychic distance, and entails the notion of performance. In this mode, there is always an audience, which may consist of actual onlookers, or may be the projected awareness of the participants viewing the act as though from the outside.

  The theatrical mode requires a lightness of touch, a deftness. This refers not to the activity but to a quality of mind. The participants may be involved in something as "heavy" as flagellation, but the psychological set within which they amuse themselves must not grow ponderous. Taken literally, this mode may generate costuming and the explicit assumption of roles, e.g. virgin and debauchee, prostitute and client. It is interesting that, existentially, there is no difference between a couple's playing a game of prostitution and a person's paying a stranger to have intercourse.

  The major danger of the theatrical mode is solipsism, which has a tendency to cut the circuits of energy flow between the actors and actresses. The acting-out of fantasy requires steady attention. Here the importance of compassion is clear, for it spells the difference between people's using and abusing one another. To have two or more fantasies brought to life through the eroticum without the entire affair's degenerating into confusion requires the skill of acrobats. And to maintain the "act" as an act, at the level of good theatre, without the admixture of psychopathy, presupposes soundness on the part of those involved.

  The style may vary widely, ranging from classical through improvisatory approaches. There may be a script or the scene can begin with no more than roughly defined characters. There may be dialogue and costume, or not. Above all else, it is a play, both in the sense of a theatre piece and in the sense of a child-like activity. It is both sophisticated and innocent. Like dance, it sculpts contours in time and space, using only the body as a medium. One can perform either tragedy or comedy or drift deliciously into irony.

  Still, this is but the literal aspect of the mode. There is another form which might be called the-theatre-as-the-real, or in eastern semantic, dharma drama. Here, there is no specific content, but only an awareness of the mode itself. The participants communicate telepathically and infuse their condition with full consciousness of the psychic structure. They take themselves to the limits of the conceptual artifact and enter the awareness of the voidness of existence. They then fuck in emptiness.

  In this situation, aware of themselves as in and of the universe entire, they become the channels for all roles. They fuck archetypally, passing through the guises of gods and goddesses, demons, animals, ancient and modern races, historical entities, mythic figures, and all life forms in general. Perhaps the poetic vision which most completely evokes the theatrical mode in its total richness is that of The Dance of Shiva.

  The theatrical mode ranges, then, from the literal use of theatrical props, dramatic structures, and audience, to the cosmic awareness of the universe-as-theatre. It is at once potentially the most mundane and most encompassing of all the modes.

  3. The Therapeutic Mode: is the trickiest, since it simultaneously liberates repressed feelings and perpetuates the expression of those feelings. By doing the first, one makes the unconscious conscious and grows saner and healthier; by the second, one reinforces restrictive habit patterns. The point of this mode is to allow the first while dissolving the second.

  My first contact with this mode came one evening when, during a long and frenzied spell of metasex, the woman I was with burst first into sobs, then began wailing, and finally released a skin-prickling scream that shrivelled my erection. It was some years before the publication of The Primal Scream, so I had no handy metaphor with which to understand the phenomenon. I learned more about this mode during a period of neo-Reichian therapy, working on breaking through the body armor, the deep organic tensions which form the defense system against feeling and perception.

  I started to realize that when I became, through regression, a baby reaching up for mother's embrace and breast, the motions and sounds I made—gurgling, cooing, pursing my lips, yearning with my chest—were exactly what I often did while sucking cock. Again, in the midst of reviving an old anger, as I lay on the therapeutic mattress, my fists clenched, whipping my head from side to side, shouting "no" over and over again, I saw that this was indistinguishable from expressions I made while being fucked and from expressions mad
e by others while I fucked them.

  It did not take too long to see that erotic energy was the equivalent of the therapeutic ambience, therapeutic technique, or drugs, in releasing repressed states of being. The one difference was that during metasex, one did not ordinarily link the resultant feelings with incidents and patterns of one's life. Thus, metasex could provide abreaction, but usually did not allow integration. Yet, if used consciously and correctly, it might provide the most powerful therapeutic tool at our disposal.

  I suffered some ambivalence for a while, since it seemed profane to use the eroticum as a vehicle for therapy, but when I had understood the concept of mode more profoundly, the difficulty dissolved. It occured to me that this paradigm was a potent mythic structure within which to pursue greater self knowledge. For a while, fucking was not unlike going to see an analyst. I began to link certain postures with the expression of repressed states, and as that took place, my very behavior in bed underwent a transformation.

  With those partners to whom I was able to explain these ideas, metasex in the therapeutic mode became an exciting and sometimes devastating activity. We could proceed openly to explore the psychosomatic ground of our personalities. There was the added advantage of dispensing with expensive, professional help. And there was an interesting side-effect: once a given manifestation, say, spanking, was seen as a need for punishment born of childhood fixation, then I became free to experience that activity an sich, within itself. Once the energy is generated and the etiology revealed, one is the master of the wide range of erotic forms.

  Within each adult, the child lives. It is necessary to let the child come forth and be, to exercise its faculties, especially those which were distorted through negative conditioning at an early age. In the therapeutic mode, one allows these usually hidden aspects of the self to find their expression, and in so doing creates perhaps the most poignantly beautiful gestures of the body and face in the entire realm of erotic response, as well as discovers feelings which give the metasexual act a unique depth and texture.

  4. The Romantic Mode: lies embedded in western historical consciousness. It is linked, inextricably, with the word "love", a concept outside the eroticum per se. To fuck with someone one is romantically in love with is undoubtedly the most exhilirating form of metasex. There is a totality, a joy, an overall sensation of rapture unparalleled in the other modes. This is the kingdom of yearning fulfilled and unfulfilled.

  The basic requirement for this mode is a willingness to follow the emotions to their heights and depths. This imparts a recklessness to the romantic mode that must be reckoned with, for one becomes prone to extreme statements. The words, "I love you," or "Marry me," or

  "I want to be with you forever," come easily to the lips. This is a natural phenomenon, for at moments of great feeling only great declarations will satisfy.

  Here the question of truth enters in. To say something so definite in a moment of passion has the ring of truth. However, when the feeling disappears, the description of that feeling, the testament to permanence, is oddly bereft of meaning. It is certainly a grand thing to mean in the morning what one has said the night before, but that need not be a precondition to saying such things. If the romantic mode is understood among the participants, then they may enjoy a lifetime of ecstasy in a single encounter, and when the encounter is finished, return to a different vibration without feeling that their words must continue to haunt them.

  In this mode, one is free to wax poetic, and the effect on language can be dazzling. This is especially true for first meetings, although it can be enjoyed by old married couples. There are the classic settings: ships at sea, foreign countries, mountaintop meadows. And there is a prediliction for certain props, such as wine, marijuana, and music. Its special season is spring. Lowered lids, palpitations, rushes, languorous limbs, and fragile fucking are marks of the mode. As in everything, of course, styles may vary, in the way that Wordsworth is different from Scriabin.

  The romantic mode generates such powerful feelings that there is the constant danger of its transforming, or infecting, one's life as a whole. The most extreme examples are those Japanese lovers who, forbidden to have one another, tie themselves together and hurl themselves off cliffs, to die clenched in one another's arms. Also, this kind of metasex can be so addictive that one forsakes all other modes, and becomes monomaniacal. The guiding principle of this mode is ultimate union, and thus has overtones of mysticism.

  5. The Masturbatory Mode: is in many ways the home mode. Giving ourselves pleasure through touch is one of our first activities, and masturbation itself is often our introduction to eroticism. Much has been made of this form of gratification's being a substitute for "the real thing," but again, this is a sexual judgement upon a metasexual matter. Metasexually, someone choosing masturbation as a sometime or often or even total means of expression is no more or less valid than any other way of doing it.

  All who have masturbated without guilt know that it can provide the most intense orgasms, clear searing explosions which take one out of the body altogether and into a different consciousness. Also, the masturbatory mode does not limit one to masturbation. Two or more people can perform the motions of fucking or sucking or stroking and have the thing be simply a more complex way of having everyone bring himself or herself off. This is a subtle and delicate game, involving responsibility for one's own cycles, yet requiring sensitivity to the inner workings of the other(s).

  Behaviorally, the masturbatory mode favors the tendency to celibacy, which is the final step in auto-eroticism. Not by repression, but by progression, one learns to cycle the erotic energy totally within one's body, and thus becomes self-contained. This homeostasis is considered by some to be the highest form of erotic evolution.

  6. The Zen Mode: is produced through transmodality. An act may begin in the theatrical mode and shift to the therapeutic. Or different participants may play different modes at the same time, something like a piece of music played by instruments in different keys. Dissonance is seen to be nothing other than a special form of harmony. The concept of mode is itself shaken, and finally bursts open, until the conceptual curtain lifts and all imagery dissolves. As with the Zen experience proper, there is little to say about this mode. It carries a unique sense of the moment's utter reality, and within that there lie all the joy and terror of coming face to face with The Nakedness.

  III

  As against my massive involvement in metasexual activity, my experience of sex has been limited. My metasexual fucking resulted in three unwanted pregnancies, but until recently I had never fucked with the intention of making a baby. Through that experience, I came upon the notions of responsibility and reverence as the basis of sexual behavior.

  Sex implies morality, by which I do not mean conventional morality which, as Mr. Krishnamurti rightly points out, is immorality. I mean conscience, that quality of sensitivity which distinguishes right from wrong not on the basis of some orthodox code or preconceived ideal, but through an awareness of the nature of life in general and of humanity in particular. To use the current phrase, it is an ecological consciousness. The mode of sex, reverence, is nothing other than a profound susceptibility to all the implications of having a child. This requires shunning sentimentality on one hand and callousness on the other. To raise a child is the most difficult yoga we have, and requires that one's own life be so firmly rooted in righteousness, that one's organism be so finely attuned, that the task flows naturally from one's deepest sources, without thought. For the moment one fucks to make a baby, one asks, "And in what sort of a world will this child be born?" And then a thorough and unceasing questioning begins.

  In my own situation, Lucinda, the woman with whom I planned to have a child, and I, discontinued our birth control measures, and entered the fields of sex. We first noticed a change in the priorities. Although we still experienced sensual pleasure, orgasm and the waves of excitation and release, these qualities took second place to the serious realization that we w
ere performing the holy and awe-inspiring ritual of actually creating another human being. Puny, awkward creatures that we were, we had within us the power to bring another person to life, a person who would grow and become very much like ourselves and pick up the cycle of life where we left off. In the process of that recognition, we saw our own deaths quite clearly.

  A far-reaching chain of insight coiled about us. For suddenly, issues that had seemed academic became vital. A line from Dylan came to mind: "You've hurled the worst fear/that can ever be hurled/the fear to bring children/into the world." At once, not only the species, but we as individuals, were on trial, and on all counts from the personal to the geopolitical. For example, we both smoke, and are guilty about being enslaved by a self-destructive habit. Now the question: will the nicotine we ingest into our blood streams infect the child? And more subtly: shall the child have parents who are still prey to debilitating habits?

  Further, will I, knowing the extraordinary effect for ill which lurks in any implicit or explicit dishonesty about erotic feelings by parent toward child, be able to love my child physically? That is, to hold and fondle it, and accept the heavy erotic component of that behavior, and maintain what erections may come, and still not damage or limit its psyche by imposing too strong an impress while it is still young? And when it is older? What are my real feelings about incest? Do I believe it is categorically wrong?