The word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, which translates to love or desire. The Greek god Eros symbolizes the personification of these sexual ideals. The origins of Eros in mythology vary depending on the source, with some saying he was a primordial god and others saying he was the son of Aphrodite. Having none to call his own, any myth that involved these concepts of love and lust essentially became one about Eros, the most famous one being Metamorphoses (AKA The Golden Ass) by Roman author Apuleius.
The princess Psyche was gorgeous, so much in fact that her beauty spawned jealousy from Aphrodite. She sent her son Eros, hoping to cause Psyche to fall in love with a terrible beast. Upon seeing her Eros fell in love himself and carried her off to a secret palace, becoming her lover. He refused to tell her who he was and forbade her from ever seeing his face. Psyche’s sisters, envious of the relationship, convinced her to look. Eros was furious at this violation of trust and abandoned her. Long story short they eventually find each other again, makes amends, and live happily ever after.
The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling…
Audre Lorde
Lorde goes on the describe the erotic as something that we are taught to question, something that we must suppress and devalue in order to be strong. We are taught that eroticism is for silly women, and that strength from a male’s framework is much more valuable. We break ourselves in two. We forget how important it is for us to not only do, but to feel.
I talk about feelings a lot because emotions are something that I have struggled with understanding for years. I judged myself for desiring the things that brought me joy, thinking they were bad or wrong in some way, believing myself to be dirty or perverse, and hiding those shameful parts of me.
How Does It Feel?
There is a point, which is different for everybody, where our pleasure turns into pain. It’s a universal feeling, one that we all share. We all feel deficient on some level. We try to cover over that with accolades, conformity, and/or vices. I often wonder what this world would look like if we gave ourselves permission to enjoy all the weird and kinky shit we are into. What would happen if we all stopped caring what other people think about us?
Indulging in my own sensuality simply for the pleasure of doing it feels like a personal act of rebellion. Feeling the pole dig into the cheeks of my ass, not caring what it looks like on film. Feeling the pull of my skin as I slide down that cold metal rod. Feeling fully supported on the hard floor as I do a full side body stretch on both sides. Feeling the sensations of my flesh jiggling. Feeling what my body needs and desires now in this moment. All of these are merely observations, of making a note of things and then moving forward.
The Unexpected Erogenous
Defined as the power of attaining direct knowledge without needing reason to discover it, intuition is the light that shows us the path to pleasure. It can feel like a pulling from the chest, like a cat perking its ears up, like a “Hell Yes!” Intuition is something that I have struggled with for years. As a woman we are taught not to trust ourselves. We are taught that those loud outside voices are more important than the quiet pleas coming from inside our own hearts. And like many other women I have come across, I chose to ignore it.
Intuition scares me, not because I went it for so long, but because dipping into this honey pot of self-realization has the potential to become something greater than I am comfortable with. It pushes me toward a space of the unknown, and yet at the same time I have this bashful desire to edge myself against it, this charcuterie board of pleasure. I find myself lingering there just a little bit longer, and it kind of turns me on.
Intuition is confusing because the more you think about it, the harder it gets. Some days it feels like I am on some downward spiral, like I am falling. I am beginning to understand this as more of a messy unraveling. This collaboration between me and gravity is a necessary step to get to the next chapter of my life, one that I am excited to see unfold.
The Cat’s Butthole
My cat will sit in the middle of the room, preferably in a sunny spot, and lick her butthole. She will stop, look at me like “What?” and then go right back to cleaning herself. She has no shame. In fact, she doesn’t even know what that is. Shame is a human emotion, one that has been used to influence our behaviors for thousands of years.
Shame is brutal. It forces us to hide parts of ourselves not just from the outside world, but also from ourselves. It makes us feel alone, when the truth is that we have more in common with each other than we think. Tapping back into these shadows of our lives and bringing them into the light helps us feel like less of an outsider. It’s also where our power lies, but first we have to learn how to play with it, how to flirt a little with those degenerate aspects of ourselves.
I am a flirt, an incessant tease. I do it outwardly, for attention, and that has gotten me in a lot of trouble over the years. Rarely has it ever occurred to me to give that same energy back to myself, to keep it for myself. To be honest it’s easier for me to give than it is to receive. Maybe it’s the recovering people-pleaser in me. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a switch who leans to the submissive side. Maybe it’s my praise kink, and the need to be told that I’m a good girl in spite of the filthy things that I do.
The Final Goodbye
We spend our formative years covering ourselves and those things that we don’t want to be seen by the rest of the world only to spend our adult lives learning how to unravel ourselves from those stories. Because that’s all they really are, stories we yarn together in the hopes that people will read those pages and not delve further into its hidden meaning. And I say this from personal experience.
There is a sort of rawness that comes out when we begin to strip ourselves from all those layers. We feel exposed, naked in the eyes of others. And that right there can be really fucking scary. It’s also incredibly beautiful both to witness and to be validated by those around us.
We wield this term vulnerability almost like an exclamation of success, and we use it like a commodity. Look at me! Look at how open I am! We forget that the vulnerability, that willingness to be emotional with others, is actually for us and not something to be put on display for the rest of the world to critique.
Bitch, We’re Back!
Some say our bodies are vessels for the Divine, something worthy of deep respect and wonder. At the same time we leave our bodies, sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of protection. We forget that our bodies are here to serve us and not the other way around. In order to respect our bodies, we have to find our way back into them, for it’s easier to respect what you know. This act of respect leads to genuine gratitude for for ourselves, one that can be held in a loving light.
We don’t learn how to love ourselves in one fell swoop. We do it rather like a jigsaw puzzle, picking up the pieces and putting them together one at a time. Much like staring up into a bright light, it takes patience for the after image to fade, it takes times for us to believe better stories about ourselves.
The key to this I am figuring out is to flirt with those light parts of ourselves, the ones we can easily hold on to and carry. Whatever we fix our minds to, that’s what we see more of in the world. We can choose to put out more of what we want to see, not only in ourselves but also in others. We simply need to change our focus.
It’s a Party Vibe!
Society tells us to be independent, to fend for ourselves, that the way is to the top, and that we don’t need anyone else’s to help us get there. It all sounds great on paper. It kind of sounds lonely. It also sounds epically boring.
Humans are meant to live in community with each other, to help each other, to befriend each other, to love each other. There is a delight that can be had both in sharing our gifts with others and in the witnessing of others joy when they share with us. It’s like when child who has to tell you about their favorite crayon. They get so excited, unable to contain themselves, with the simplest of things. We forget how to do that as adults. We are too ass deep in our calendars to even realize what we have lost.
This is not only about connection and vibing together, creating a lively togetherness. It’s also about finding out who you are.
We see things in people that we wish we could see within ourselves, sort of like a mirror reflecting an image back onto us. We don’t have to be an exact replica though. In fact, that isn’t even the goal. We can take things from others and sort of try them on for size, see how it fits. We then have to decide whether or not it feels right. This is about piecing parts together within ourselves. There is an array of options available to us. Take what you want. Leave the rest behind.
The In Between
We create art from the depths of our souls showing our true form in a way that can only come from us. Then it goes out into the world to be perceived. People see it and they come up with their own ideas of what it means, which may or may not be in alignment with the original idea. What happened in that space in between is something we humans have a very hard time dealing with. We have no control there. And we don’t like that very much.
Art, in whatever form that may be, is a robust tool for getting through the chaos of life. It helps us to celebrate all the facets of who we are, of where we’ve been, and of who we want to be. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes it’s turns out to be nothing like what was originally floating around in your head. Sometimes is turns out exactly as planned.
Mad love, Jenna
