A beautiful erotic image...and one of my favorite positions.
When I was younger, I was a very devoted, orthodox, serious Catholic. I wanted to devote my life to God. I wanted to lead a pure, sin free existence. I tried. I prayed every day. I went to Mass daily. I prayed to be free from all those sinful thoughts and desires that plagued me every day. I fasted. I disciplined my body. I did everything I was supposed to do in order to find purity. There was one problem though, something that I was not expecting or even wanting. But it was a problem I had to confront each and every day of my pious filled life: my penis has a life of its own.
Yes, my pecker is a quite the devil. I swear. The SOB would just not follow my desires for a religious, orthodox, Neo-Traditional life (even though the Neo-Traditionalist were not so named back then). After an entire day of praying, fasting, sitting before the Blessed Sacrament, and legitimately reaping the spiritual rewards of those exercises, once I went back into the world I would be surrounded by the lovely sights of all those beautiful, sensuous, and hot females all over that same sinful and corrupt, fallen world. An hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament, praying for a deliverance from my sexual desires, would be instantly erased when the first hot girl in short skirt and tight shirt walked by. Then another would come by. And another. By the end of the day I was a mess of conflicted religious and sexual desires. I could feel my penis scream out for attention at each lovely image of female beauty. The summer, with its sultry heat, was the worst time for such sinful thoughts.
Then, to make matters worse, when I went to bed, and sought some sweet release from my sexual desires through sleep, my damn pecker would not leave me alone. All throughout the night he would become hard, begging me to caress him and release all those gallons of pent up sperm, and he made my sleep most difficult. What was I to do? When I woke up in the morning I felt my body filled with all those lusty thoughts, and desires, and my mind filled with fantasies. Perhaps I might have even had sexual dreams throughout the night. They were pure torture. There is nothing worse than dreaming about fucking a girl you want to fuck, thinking you are actually fucking her, and then waking up to find out it was only a dream, with the added insult of your dick staring straight back at you, as if he were some malignant sex demon laughing at and mocking your plight. “Yeah, so you really were not getting laid, huh? Well, here I am anyways, standing erect and wanting some attention. So at least stroke me, damn it! Your balls are full of cum and need to be cleansed out!” I swear I could hear my perpetually erect penis laughing.
The biology of sex: sometimes the penis just needs release, whether someone else does it for you, or you do it for yourself. Even primates and other mammals masturbate.
And of course eventually, despite my most ardent efforts, I would succumb to this demon’s desires. The little head rules the big head, or so the saying goes. And thus would I begin a long, compulsive spiral down into a neurotic battle between sexual desire and sexual repression. Over the course of time it would go something like this: sexual desires, masturbation, guilt, repentance, confession, then followed again by new sexual desires, masturbation, guilt, repentance, confession, over and over and over again, day after day, month after month, year after year. Perhaps there was some porn here and there, and lusting after girls, and, if I were really sinful, I might even fuck a few girls, or take on a few lovers, which would make my guilt only that much more ballistic. I knew God had forsaken me for liking sexual pleasure and being a sexual person. After all, it says in the Bible that unrepentant sinners are doomed.
Finally, after many years of trying to be pure, I simply gave up on trying. I came to believe that there is nothing wrong with masturbation, or sexual desires, or finding some outlet for those. I came to believe these are perfectly normal things, even healthy things. And I also came to believe that you can still believe in God, still have a deep faith, and still be a sexual person outside the strict bonds of traditional Christianity. I have come to believe that in the area of sex, Christianity still has a lot of growth to do, based on the science of human biology and psychology, as well as in theology. In short, why do so many Christian denominations still base their understanding of human sexuality on rather medieval notions of the human body, without considering the role of biology, of human hormones, ect, in sexual desire. Even animals, such as primates, masturbate because they need to. But then again, as most Neo-Traditionalists believe, science is the religion of secular humanism, and therefore a bad thing. The earth really is not round or revolves around the sun after all, and that damned Galileo was a flaming liberal for thinking so. If only we could get back to the good old days of a religiously dominated society where all thought is ultimately channeled through holy religious institutions for approval. Well, that is at least what Opus Dei would like, as well as places like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Most people masturbate, even women.
I just got sick of the secret, hypocritical world of sexual desire that exists within so many religious organizations. My own life was damaged by trying to follow too strictly these traditional notions of sexual purity that is replete with Catholicism. Why must there be so much fear of sexual desire within so many religions? Why must there be so much fear of erotic beauty? Did not God create the world, make us flesh and blood, and give us the desire for beauty and erotic pleasure? Is it not part of the whole mystery of love? The news is replete with sexual church scandals, because the complete prohibition on all sexual expression outside of marriage is ridiculously strict for 99% of most people. For those who pursue a pure, strict, complete and absolutist celibacy with joy and spiritual rewards, there is nothing wrong with that. I commend you. For the rest of us, we need some kind of sexual life even if we are not married.
I enjoy images of erotic beauty, such as a woman undressing.
I have learned that I can still have a deep faith in God and still be a sexual person, someone who enjoys the erotic beauty of life, and not feel a neurotic guilt over it. As a matter of fact, I feel much healthier being more open about my own sexual desires within the context of faith. I am sure the Neo-Traditionalists types, Opus Dei types, Legionaries of Christ types, and the fundamentalist, evangelical Christian types would say I am not really even a believer, but what I say to them is this: that is for God to decide, not you. I am happy where I am at, much happier than when I was a compulsively masturbating religious neurotic.
The Chase 
willcrimson said:
This puritanical strain is something that is common to all religions and cultures – be it Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Zen (of all beliefs), Taoism, Islam (who take prudishness and misogyny to places even abject stupidity won’t go), or Atheism. It seems strongly associated with patriarchal orders; and that associates it with misogyny. There is a certain kind of spirituality and religiosity that is fundamentally misogynistic (and I think I’ve mentioned this before in one of my comments).
You can say that it wasn’t misogyny, that it’s not that you didn’t like women but that you liked them too much, but that’s two sides of the same coin. Young men inherit misogyny from the culture and religion they’re raised in. You apparently did. You got over it while some men don’t. What’s worse are the men who who practice the sins they preach against: the men who rail against adultery while screwing the parishioner’s daughter, or the men who trumpet homophobia while sucking the parishioner off.
There’s no law of God or nature that says one can’t be spiritual and sexual. Some of my favorite Japanese and Chinese zen master/poets were rambunctiously sexual/spiritual people. They loved life, wine, women and song. There can be (and perhaps continues to be) a refreshingly enlightened attitude toward life in Eastern religion and thought – one that’s frequently absent in Western cultures.
willcrimson said:
By the way, I had some fun with sex and the religious milieu (so to speak) in my latest story. my latest story. You might enjoy it.
Racer X said:
Will,
Great observations. You are right when you say there is a certain degree of misogyny in many religions, and the sin of liking women too much is just another form of that and is similar to simply not liking women at all. They are indeed two sides of the same coin in certain religious contexts.
“There’s no law of God or nature that says one can’t be spiritual and sexual.”
Agreed. It is something I enjoy exploring on this blog.
“Some of my favorite Japanese and Chinese zen master/poets were rambunctiously sexual/spiritual people. They loved life, wine, women and song. There can be (and perhaps continues to be) a refreshingly enlightened attitude toward life in Eastern religion and thought – one that’s frequently absent in Western cultures.”
Interesting. Could you supply me with a few names or references so I could into that some more?
And I will definitely read your latest story. Thanks for letting me know.
willcrimson said:
You need only ask. 🙂
The greatest of them all, my favorite, is Ikkyu. You can easily find his poetry by searching at Amazon. He was a great Zen Master, famous and respected in his own day and equally famous, in Japan, to this day. “As a poet, Ikkyu was at his finest when writing about what he loved most: the unfettered Zen life and the joys of sexual intimacy. Ikkyu led the artistic life I most admire.” Here’s one of his poems:
Exhausted with gay pleasures, I embrace my wife.
The narrow path of aestheticism is not for me;
My mind runs in the opposite direction.
It is easy to be glib about Zen — I’ll just keep my mouth shut
And rely on love play all the day long.
From Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu
Here’s another from a different book (you’ll appreciate this one):
a beautiful woman’s hot vagina’s full of love
I’ve given up trying to put out the fire of my body
This book is full, stuffed, overflowing with poems like these.
From Crow with No Mouth: Ikkyu Fifteenth Century Zen Master
The Sixth Dalai Lama, 17th Century, (yes, Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhism) was a famous poet and lover of wine and women:
Was a girl born of a human mother
Or from the stem of a peach tree?
Her love blooms and as soon withers
As the fast blossoms of spring peaches.
Can you imagine any shriveled old Pope writing like that?
His poetry erotic poetry is much more difficult to come by. I don’t know why, except that maybe even the Tibetan Buddhists are a little embarrassed by him? I have a book and am glad to have it. These things seem to come my way. The name of the book is “Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama” by K. Dhondup. If you can find it, it’s worth owning.
There are many others. The place to begin is through two books:
Zen Sex: The Way of Making Love by Philip Toshio Sudo
And:
Lust for Enlightenment: Buddhism and Sex by John Stevens
Here’s a humorous piece of poetry by the Japanese Zen Master Gocho:
Up and down,
Up and down,
I’ve got a lot of
Endurance–
Doesn’t anyone notice my true purpose?
Here is commentary by Bokuzan, a Buddhist scholar of the Soto Zen school, left on a painting (this from the latter book):
Passions and enlightenment are the two sinews of life,
But if you are not deluded, they are one–
These elements exist together in daily life.
Cut the red thread and become Buddha!
evan said:
they don’t. religions place emphasis on the long view and doing what is best for the community. as anti-natal fucking does nothing to benefit the community and causes nothing but complications, it rejects it. repression is good. only an idiot is afraid of such scare words.
Racer X said:
“as anti-natal fucking does nothing to benefit the community and causes nothing but complications…”
Anti-natal fucking can be fun. It can also relieve a lot of pent up sexual frustration.
“repression is good”
I prefer to avoid repression in most instances. All you have to do is look at the hypocritical neurosis that religious sexual repression has created in most hyper religious societies to see the problematic nature of it. The hidden vast male homosexuality in Islam is a good example.