Odd Couple

My Body and I

We’re an odd couple, My body and I: Craver and trammeled Dreamer

My body eats while I dream of eating.

My body breathes while I dream of breathing. My body feels while I dream of feelings. My body gasps while I fear the sheer drop of the cliff I now stand at. And my body laughs when soon or late I get the point of the a-mite-too-subtle joke.

My body smiles if another body smiles at it. Me, I might be surprised at both smiles.

In some ways — in many ways — my body is a flesh and blood mirror of what antics my mind is up to. Yes, it can grow hungry for food all on its own and it can relay that hunger to the mind — and whence to me — in no uncertain terms, clamoring for some productive action. Now, if you don’t mind.

Also, when a sufficient number of sperms have accumulated in the epididymis, sufficient to exert some internal pressure (like an expanding little balloon), the body knows precisely how to tell me, and does, that I should start looking for somewhere (someone) reproductively viable to deposit this load. Anything over eighteen in skirts, according to my body, should do just fine, thank you. Now get with it, as in going.

And this is a hunger hungrier than hunger. A thirst thirstier than thirst.

This is a craving that invades and commandeers even the loftiest, and (prior to this assault) most real dreams — sheer fluff, says the body, having no time for such dreamy frills, get with the program; and then opens the lust faucet.

Now I don’t know precisely what chemicals are involved in this assault, but I firmly believe that heroin has nothing on human lust (or that of any animal — they fight to the death, don’t they, at least some of them do, for the right to impregnate).

A compound consisting of pervading, expanding warmth and yes, I have at time recognized it very, very clearly: love as well. Not any love, but the love I felt for Barbro during and after our (and my) first kiss. I was sixteen then and hardly knew what true love might be about, but I knew this love, it filled me head to toe and back up again, stole my appetites for anything else, say such nonessentials as food or water (or sleep).

This love, this thirst for human (of the opposite gender) nearness, hovers either below or above or within this chemical compound that the brain and mind (cooperating nicely) interpret and describe and enforce as lust.

We humans have come up with the term infatuation to pinpoint this state — a nice word for this helpless-puppy love. Talk about the tail (of sorts) wagging the dog.

Now, I have extracted, bottled and submitted to FDA for approval this compound; it will make me millions, billions, trillions.

Once lust has grown claws it is a feeling, a sensation, very hard to stare down: it stares right back at you and dares you to try again. And if you do try again, it will rise on its hindlegs, bare its fangs and send you to the seedier side of town looking for working girls.

“Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet,” so famously prayed Saint Augustine who in the end actually did stare lust back into the epididymis by endlessly reciting verses from the Bible — apparently one of the few antidotes.

The early Buddhists, too, were highly suspicious of this creature, and in their code for monks very early on listed masturbation as one of the few offences that would result in immediate and irrevocable expulsion from the sangha (group of monks).

Even ejecting semen in your sleep was viewed by these early monks with (perhaps justified) suspicion.

Saints and Holy Men from just about any religion are as a rule celibate.

I believe the reasoning goes “If I am this helplessly at effect of my body, what business have I — or how can I expect any success — in pursuing loftier or spiritual goals.”

Good question.

Also, at least until recently, celibacy was also a firm prerequisite for priesthood in many churches.

For good reason.

It is amazing though that a chemical compound can so commandeer the entire physical being with part treachery, part force, part sheer delight, and part love.

And I must say that “part love” (that lovely craving for nearness, for human warmth) was a nice touch by whoever concocted this poison. Quite brilliant. Sex as a whip slash carrot has certainly stood the test of time.

Meanwhile, I insist on my right to dream, undisturbed.

© Wolfstuff

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