by Marco Vassi
And what of the fact that almost any school I send the child to will be a factory run by mindless conformists, processing human beings on a conveyor belt of pseudo-knowledge the way automobile parts are run through on an assembly line? What of the fact that we live in a world where only a few know even of liberty, much less freedom? And what of the realities of monstrous warfare, and unwholesome food, and foul water, and filthy air? The human species is making a concerted effort to prove conclusively that it is the lowest form of life on earth, and into such a situation, what is the purpose of bringing a child?
Such thoughts put a definite cast on the quality of our fucking. Ranging from existential speculation to ecological evaluation to character analysis, I was unable to rouse the dragon of psychophysical lust. Our sex became tentative, and on a number of occasions we did not make a sound, but coupled in stillness, as though we were listening for something other than what was going on in the two of us.
When Lucinda's first period of fertility passed, we were, by definition, returned to our metasexual playground, to our moaning and heavy breathing, to our pyrotechnics. We became, once again, a man and a woman picking their way through the erotic monkeybars of our epoch. From anal intercourse to small orgies, we continued in the annotated routines of the carnal circus. We turned to an exploration of the metasexual modes, discovering the nuances of theatrical fucking and the dynamics of the therapeutic attitude.
Then, the menses, and the realization that we had missed the first time around, and would try again. The next cycle provided a different and deeper angle of penetration into the nature of sex. One night I was on top and plowed her like a farmer burrowing in soft earth. Another night she was on top and took me fiercely, while I, sensate and inert, felt the seed sucked from my body. It seemed certain that a child conceived during one kind of fucking would be quite different from one conceived during the other. And a new element of study entered in, and we began to examine, in a way we hadn't before, what it is that we actually do when we fuck, and when we come. What thoughts do we have, what feelings? Who, in short, are we when we merge our bodies and our minds in that singular way? For, with the purpose of our fucking so clearly defined, the epiphenomenal aspects stood out in sharp light.
Concurrently, our metasexual involvements grew richer, for we no longer confused them with what we were doing sexually. One afternoon, Lucinda and I went swimming with another couple in a private stream where we could take off our clothes. Jack and Susan had had a threesome with Lucinda some months earlier, and so on this day there was the open question as to whether we would make it four. We spent a long summer day swimming, drinking wine, smoking grass, and letting time melt away, until we might have been stone age citizens on a picnic in an ancient forest. The sun beat down in its six dimensions.
I looked at Jack and Susan a long time, for I had never seen either of them naked before. The sway of Jack's cock, the curl of his shoulders, the line of his forearms, were tinglingly erotic, as were the curve of Susan's lower back, the high arch of her feet, the smoky directness in her eyes. But within five minutes, I felt my attention wander. It was not that they were not attractive enough to spend more time on, but that my senses and sight and thought had been sated, while my other senses had been starved. I had not touched, smelled, tasted, or listened to them in all that time. Nor had our minds merged. We were definitely on the threshold of the eroticum, but there seemed to be no way to cross over into it.
I considered the situation more fully, and saw that I had, out of habit, fallen into the old trap of evaluating the quartet in sexual categories: two men, two women, two pairs of bonded couples, homosexual-heterosexual-bisexual combinations, and all the conceptual paraphenalia which is not relevant to the metasexual realm. But as soon as I translated the situation into energy terms, and saw that the problem was simply one of sensory deprivation, the block to further flow dissolved. We were not allowing ourselves full sensory communication with one another.
I mused on the fact that our erotic lives are often so strained because we do not, in our day to day living, experience one another with more than our eyes and our ears. I can't count the number of men and women I have been to bed with only to discover that I had wanted little more than to touch or taste or smell a part of them, much in the way that two dogs will greet one another with sniffs and licks. This problem has ramifications outside of the eroticum, but it is the eroticum which is most crucially affected. Without full sensory freedom, metasex is stilted and sex is improverished.
If we lived in a civilization where we did not operate like automatons, our sexual activities would lose their vulgarity and our metasexual encounters would shed their air of preciosity. If I can smell a woman's cunt, I may not have to fuck her. But if I have to fuck her just to get to smell her cunt, the erotic act is demeaned. Actually, one might define the eroticum as that which occurs when people have had their sensual fill of one another, and find an energy which at once subsumes and transcends all the senses.
At the swimming hole, able to sluff off the murkiness born of faulty designation, I found the vibration of the atmosphere changing. There was no question of whether or not we would have sex, but rather, would we be able to find a mode within which to enjoy a bit of metasexual play? Metasex, involving perception, sensation, emotion, thought, instinctual movement, and muscular coordination, is a unitary activity. And as so often happens, once I saw that, the mood relaxed. We swam together, and afterwards ended by sitting in a circle on the grass. I looked at the people around me and let my hands find their own impulse. I touched Susan's breasts, Jack's thighs, Luanda's mouth. The touch was simple information gathering, the satisfaction of tactile curiosity. From there, the rhythm began. We started to caress one another, to smell each other's bodies, to lick one another's skin. Subtly, a change came over us, and without any formal announcement, we sank into the sweet embrace of metasex.
The rest of the afternoon brought about the standard developments: the fucking and sucking, the fingering and stroking, the clutching and writhing. At such moments it is irrelevant who does what to whom or how. And to classify what we did as an orgy is to lapse into stale terminology. We gave ourselves sensory freedom, and from that release flowed warmth, joy, excitement, and pleasure. In such a circumstance, it was of no importance whether I held a cock in my mouth or a cunt in my hand, whether the penetration into my anus was Jack's cock or Susan's finger.
In a few weeks, Lucina and I continued our attempts at pregnancy, and discovered deeper changes. Since the ejaculation of sperm is intended for procreation, then when insemination is not the issue, ejaculation is superfluous. I came to the conclusion logically, but it also operated spontaneously within me. More and more often during her non-fertile periods, we fucked without my ejaculating. It was the entrance into maithuna, or tantra, or Taoist yoga. And it produced in astonishing revelation: that I, as a man, could have many orgasms which had nothing to do with the shooting off of sperm. I found that I could come emotionally, or psychically, or through a peaking of sensation, or as a result of a sympathetic vibration with her. For years I had envied women the capacity for multiple orgasm, but was blind to that ability within myself (except when being fucked myself and experiencing anal and oral climaxes) because I was confusing the sexual orgasm, which indeed does require ejaculation, with the metasexual orgasm, in which ejaculation is not a necessary component.
IV
Given all this, we find that nothing changes. Everyone will continue to do what he or she pleases, or is driven to. The only claim for this paradigm is that it will remove all confusion as to what precisely what one is doing in the eroticum. To give one example, the problem of jealousy is so difficult to deal with because we don't distinguish between real possessiveness and neurotic clinging. Between a man and a woman having sex, that is, trying to have a child, jealousy is a natural feeling, evolved in our animal nature. Between those having metasex, however, to be jealous is to be immature. Knowing that as a fact is the first ste
p toward dealing intelligently with the syndrome.
We will go on, as a species, playing out whatever script we write for ourselves, within the bounds enforced by our limitations as creatures. There will be men who prefer men, women who prefer woman, men and women who prefer the opposite gender; there will be threesomes and wife-swapping and orgies; there will be flagellations and people being pissed on in public urinals; there will be tender hand holding and forceful fist-fucking. But within this new model of sex and metasex, we may make peace with our proclivities. Those who take it upon themselves to propogate the species will do one thing; the rest are free to choose their own form.
Ultimately, we may rid ourselves of false notions of perversion. Sexually, the only perversion is to fuck without reverence and responsibility; metasexually, the only perversion is to fuck without compassion.
As of this writing, the child has not been conceived. But if it is, I find it imperative that it be born in a world where the problems of sex, the ancient stumbling block of Adam and Eve, be perfectly distinguished from metasex, a rather different aspect of the human condition. To accomplish this, more is required than scientific research, although the work of people like Kinsey, Johnson, and Masters, is of immense value; and it requires more than political activism, although the liberation groups have performed an indispensible service; it requires more than pornographic liberty, although that has helped expose the fantasies of a nation.
Beyond all that, it is necessary that we understand, that we grasp, the very nature of the division between sex and metasex, that we change the language we use to talk and think about the eroticum, that we realize the implications of this new paradigm for every facet of our behavior, going from marriage through promiscuity, from puritanism to debauchery, from chauvinism to real affection.
Then we might have sex which is austere and grand, and metasex which is as beautiful as a rainbow. And we might begin to sort out the murky legacy of lust which is such a large part of our heritage, and turn our faces toward honesty, survival, and true human dignity.
Many are Chosen but Few Spend the Night
A working model of promiscuity
After my recent divorce, I entered a period of sport-fucking, that already well-documented effort to burn out all traces of the previous partner and re-establish one's identity as an autonomous being. But within two months, the fever passed, and my delirium subsided into the dull ache and phantom-limb phenomenon reported by amputees. It was as though in losing my wife I had lost an arm, but was now learning to live without it.
When the flurry of heated exchanges died down and the bedsheets were returned from the laundry, I found myself settled into a pattern which contained all the drawbacks of marriage and none of its advantages. One of my many ladies had installed herself as a personality in my life and assumed the role with savage tenacity. Another woman was struggling for fiancee status. And my male lover wanted me to spend a summer with him in the country. This left little time for my work, solitude, or erotic explorations outside this self-appointed triad.
Since I was not a candidate for celibacy and did not yet want to marry again, I was forced to examine my condition with an eye to defining some kind of new order against the tension of conflicting demands. My therapist's injunction to "feel" the reality took me only so far; it became necessary to erect a new conceptual framework to serve as a map, or guiding principle, for what would otherwise remain a mere interface space between marriage and celibacy.
Behaviorally, I was promiscuous. But that word is drenched with such negative connotations, conjuring images of one-night stands, single's bars, indiscriminate and evasive couplings, that I was loathe to apply it to myself. Yet a word is the property of all, and I was impelled to rescue this one from the miasma of imprecise and prejorative meanings which have enveloped it, and to infuse it with fresh life.
The common cultural judgement on the state gives it at best a transitional status, a rather low-grade condition appearing before or between marriages; it is seen as something for the young, the immature, or the immoral. Conversely, it is secretly admired as a kind of paradisical lifestyle, offering the excitement of chase, conquest, and a progression of new bodies. The myths of the Playboy pad and the Cosmopolitan cunt are as viable for one large segment of the population as the special divinity of Jesus is for another.
The first step in my re-evaluation of promiscuity lay in understanding that it is neither the edge of erotic revolution or an erotic garbage dump, but rather a model of feeling and behavior which stands alongside of marriage and celibacy as a means of dealing with the endless conflict between fucking and the rest of human activity. It is no more or less than one of three valid paths available for understanding, ordering, and predicting change and recurrence in the movements of erotic energy. This means accepting that the state has its own structures, laws, etiquette, pleasures, sorrows, and stretches of boredom. Re-defining promiscuity involves a conceptual adjustment, a change in basic vibration, and a radical metamorphosis of inner identity. As I was later to learn, it also entails a terrible austerity, the wielding of an erotic Occam's razor which requires the compassionate cruelty of a surgeon's scalpel.
The second step concerned meeting people who are themselves promiscuous, that is, who had attained the awareness I was just learning to articulate. This is difficult, for most women are so heavily conditioned toward marriage that their whole lives are often movements toward or away from that situation. More than a few I encountered exhibited the most reckless pregnancy need, unconsciously acting out old courtship scenarios, treating fucking as a favor women bestowed upon men. Another type retained the rhetoric of enlightened promiscuity but were merely alienated, incapable of dimensional relating.
Men posed a parallel problem. From a metasexual viewpoint, of course, the gender of the partner one chooses is not germane to any serious erotic consideration, and terms like bisexuality are too stiff and divisive to be of much use. Most men, such as I might meet in bars or at the baths, want no more than a brief fling, and fucking with them is pretty much like a wrestling match. Here, again, promiscuity is taken in its debased sense. Also, the marriage syndrome is quite strong beneath the surface manifestations, and so-called promiscuous behavior is often merely a false veneer covering a deep need for bonding.
After aligning my internal awareness with the condition of those I related to, I was able to discern the basic principle of the promiscuity paradigm. In celibacy, the primary relationship is to the self; in marriage, it is to the other. In promiscuity, the primary relationship is to the concept. Promiscuity, in a Duchampsian sense, can be considered "conceptual eroticism." In it, we serve one another as vehicles for the most perfect expression of erotic energy. As the celibate is committed to self-development, and the married undertakes the task of perpetuating the species, the promiscuate tends the flame of pure Erotic Idea.
The danger here lies in using the notion to rationalize an intrinsic dehumanization of erotic relationships. To avoid this, an extraordinary honesty, with oneself and with one's partners, is essential. If the relationships are themselves warm, tender, and compassionate, it does not matter that the metaphor which governs them is cold. Romanticism is no longer our reigning myth, and models drawn from cybernetics are clearly the thought-shapes of the future present. Even in the esoteric wing of human knowledge, the Gurdjieffian machine analogy provides the most compelling current of the century. Accepting a new model of promiscuity involves a new understanding of what it is to be human. This may be used, as many ideas have been used, as an instrument of perversity; but as with all human activity, the final arbiter is the individual conscience.
After coming to terms with general considerations, I began to chart the actual flow of my specific promiscuous evolution, and was able to draw the following diagram:
image:image5.png
At the center is the Defining Principle. The first circle contains a Wife Surrogate (WS), a Lover Surrogate (LS), and an Ad Hoc situation (AH). The oute
r circle holds a Lover-Friend (LF).
The Wife Surrogate is a woman with whom I have developed a steady relationship, reciprocal at all levels. The Lover Surrogate is a man with whom I share traditional romantic values, our energies going from chest to chest more than from genital to genital. The Ad Hoc situation is an open space, variously filled by vagrant episodes, occasional threesomes, and so forth. The Lover Friend is an ex-wife who I see a few times a year and with whom I always share good talk and warm fucking.
The single most important fact about these relationships is that they are structural rather than personal. They remain unchanged in texture, activity, and feeling no matter who happens to be occupying the space at any given time. Should the Wife Surrogate leave, the next woman to take that position would, from the very first day, assume the depth, complexity, and quality of that role, and continue in that fashion for so long as we maintained the contract. To define the rule: for the promiscuate, all individuals are unique, and no one uniqueness is given special prominence over any other.
With the passage of time, the diagram changed its form periodically. For a while it contained a Peripheral Woman (PW) who called me once or twice a week and with whom I slept once or twice a month. But I found the presence of that category too draining on my energy and deleted it. Of course, this description has both a universal and specific aspect. Anyone entering the state of promiscuity seriously will develop a structure like this, but the details will vary from person to person.
Once I was able to be clear about my condition, I could explain to each of the people in my life precisely where they fit in relation to myself and to one another. Some found the notion grotesque, and wanted no more to do with me. But more than a few, both inside and outside the circle, were grateful for the clarity. I was able to distinguish the true promiscuates from the closet celibates and secret seekers after marriage on the basis of which grasped the necessity for such a conceptual structure. The motto became, No Passion Without Paradigm.
