Spiritual Eroticism: Part IV

Old People are Sexual, Erotic, and Spiritual

I am eighty-four years old, will be eighty-five on September 11, 2005. I am onanistic by necessity. There are several reasons for this. First, very few men survive to be my age. Second, very few of those are gay, and none of them live in Lancaster County, PA. Third, if they do live here, they are afraid to come out and play.

Contrary to popular opinion people my age are sexual. Yes, Virginia, there are little old ladies and little old men by the millions who are fantasizing about having sex this very moment. Many of them are also punishing themselves for being sexual because our culture tells them they should not be. I’m not one of these last. In fact, some of the best sex I have had, took place after age fifty-five, the age at which our society declares we are old, useless, burned out, and less than one step away from death. I think many of us let ourselves go physically by age thirty because we have been culturally programed to self-destruct. It is impossible to be a youthful thirty something (much less eighty something) without others thinking we are immature. On my worst days, I do feel as though my twenty-five year old self is trapped inside this eighty-four year old shell that is falling apart despite my best efforts to keep it from doing so. Notice too how I am speaking of “IT” as though I am not IT.

But, I am my physical self, and so much more!

I am an aging animal, and my physical self is not functioning very well. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not complaining. I’m much better off physically than most of my friends and acquaintances here at THE BIG NEEDLE (Pine Needle Retirement Home). Be that as it may, my God given physical body and I are both parts of the same being. I believe that way down, deep at the center of my thoughts, there is a point at which my physical self, my sexual self, my intellectual self, and my spiritual self, are one and the same. I doubt that point is recognizable to me as ME, since such unity implies the presence of something higher and more complete than I am. Perhaps, it is the presence of God , that contact point that is open to us all if we wish to use it, and be used by it. There is that word again, “IT.” My own words imply the unity about which I write.*


* (This is your cultural / religious implant speaking, “Blasphemous Man! How can God be inside you?” To which I reply, “Why not? It would be such a blessing to each of us, and to all of us at the same time if “IT” were.”)

*

Martyrdom of Sebastian by Jorge Posada

As part of this series of articles about spiritual eroticism, I am looking at a group of religious art works because these chosen across time, but of course, universally Western, explore a connection between spirituallity, sometimes ecstacy, and eroticism. More often than not, the subject is gay eroticiism because I am a gay man.

* Jorge Posada, “Martyrdom of Sebastian I,” oil and pencil on paper, 50” x 38” (1998), Cronos Art, “http://www.cronosart.com/cgi-bin/catalog.cgi?cat=4” (viewed Monday, July 26, 2004, 9:48 AM, EDT)


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