Love Affair with Language and Eros

I. What Matters to Me and Why: Logos and Eros

What matters to me most is what makes us human and what is at the core of the humanities: our capacity for language and our capacity for love, or what the Greeks called logos and eros. The realm of the word and the realm of the erotic: Both are creations of the mind and the imagination.

For me the real world is not just the world of GNP and GPA, or whatever we read about in the Wall Street Journal, but the world of the imagination and the bonds of union we create with our words and our hearts.

Our need for communion by the word-for verbal intercourse, for the sharing of stories, for the give and take of talking and listening-is as vital to us, if not more so, than our libidinal need for sexual intercourse.

It's the power of logos and eros that fascinates. "The perfect writer," Walt Whitman claims, "can make words sing, dance, do the male and female act, bear, weep, bleed, rage, steal, fire cannon, steer ships, sack cities, charge with cavalry or infantry, or do any thing that man or woman or the natural powers can do."

Words can make war; words can make love. Words can divide us; words can create more perfect unions. I love to celebrate this capacity of words to bond us together, to link us together, to do the male and female act, to create communion.

Here are some reflections of mine about the reciprocity of logos and eros.

II. On Eros

I love the sex that combines the erotic and the romantic, the playful and the passionate: the sex that makes us so thankful that we are not just creatures of biology, driven by scent to reproduce, or just creatures of lust, driven by impulse to fuck fast with no feeling, but creatures of play and curiosity, inspired by the erotic.

Henry James writes beautifully about language in an essay entitled "The Question of Our Speech" (1906). Here's an excerpt:

"All life therefore comes back to the question of our speech, the medium through which we communicate with each other. These relations are made possible, are registered, are verily constituted, by our speech, and are successful...in proportion as our speech is worthy of its great human and social function; is developed, delicate, flexible, rich-an adequate accomplished fact. The more it suggests and expresses the more we live by it-the more it promotes and enhances life. Its quality, its authenticity, its security, are hence supremely important for the general multifold opportunity, for the dignity and integrity, of our existence."

For me, so much of life comes back to questions of our speech and its relationship to eros. Can we extend, explore, and advance the language of eros, making it more beautiful, more nuanced, more expressive?

III. Reflections on the Reciprocity of Logos and Eros, or Metaphors We Fuck By

Desire-even primal sexual desire-can be shaped by words; this is what distinguishes us from the animals; this is what makes possible the erotic. Animals are driven by a scent; their coupling is chemical. Fortunately, humans are not so constrained: our fantasies can inflame desire; our words can seduce.

We live by language and we are governed by metaphors, say linguists and literary theorists. So then what are the metaphors that we should fuck by?

For me, erotic sex can be like a great jazz combo improvising together, performing a music that transcends the limits of a solo or duet: it can be a man and a woman playing together, taking turns, combining, making music that lasts far beyond midnight as we strum every string of the bass, as we riff up and down our bodies with our tongues, as we finger every key of our bodies as if it were a saxophone, making us wail and bleat in the orgasmic crescendos of a Charlie Parker hitting over and over again the highest and most soulful notes on his sax.

[See below, sections VII and VIII, for literary and film metaphors for sex and orgasms]

IV. Love Me Three Times: The Before, During and After of Logos and Eros, Word and Act

Researchers studying relationships and marriages say that one of the most significant keys to whether couples have a satisfying sex life together is the degree to which they feel open and free to talk about it honestly.

One advantage of a long-distance relationship is that a couple will probably spend more time sharing about sex in a reflective way. Words lubricate and moisten the mind and imagination. We all know how visualization and verbalization of sex before lovemaking can act as the most potent foreplay, enhancing our longing and anticipation of it.

Here I want to stress the significance of sharing words about sex not just in foreplay but afterplay: Yes, take me with words before, and talk to me during, but also love me three times by writing about it in retrospect

A writer, they say, always lives an experience twice: the first time in action and the second time through words. As something of a historian, I love considering the significance of talking about the past and trying to learn from it.

This concern was heightened for me in my desire to reflect on the end of a long marriage, which is also when I first began making contributions to Literotica. In my first marriage, we seldom talked sex before, during or afterwards. Sadly, we just did it. In the relationships that followed, I made up for my stupidity and shyness. I talked about sex a lot: before, during, and afterwards (aided and abetted by the internet). It was sex that thrived on new relationship energy, but it also thrived on us writing about sex as foreplay and afterplay. It was like being taken two or three times: the sharing of words as preface and afterword.

So love me three times: Imagine it before as a poet or novelist, talk to me during it, and write to me afterwards as a historian

V. The Philology of the Orgasm: How to Come in Different Languages

Curiosity has me biting into the apple to see what we can learn about orgasms-and about differences of culture-by considering the word or phrase used for it in the various languages of the world. Might such a philological investigation offer us some different angles of vision on this fascinating subject?

In English we talk about "coming" to describe an orgasm and many prefer to give advanced notice: "I'm going to come."

The most common Chinese term for female orgasm is gao-chao, literally 'high tide,' a poetic image that evokes the metaphorical association of orgasm with the ocean and waves.

In Spanish, I'm told, the word "correr" (literally "to run") describes the orgasmic release.

In Latin, it's the infinitive "festinare" (to hurry), which comes close to the Spanish verb "correr."

The French colloquial description of the orgasm as "la petite mort" seems most disturbing in its suggestion that each orgasm takes a little bit of life out of people.

The Russian language emphasizes the finality of coming: The infinitive "kahnchat," which means "to end," is the term used. (What effect would it have upon those not fluent in Russian if, in the midst of sex, the woman cried out, "I want to end"?)

I welcome corrections and supplements to my philological investigations, my preliminary studies in the comparative linguistics of sex.

I'm also curious about how different language translate or express the expression: "I'm so horny."

I've been told that in Chinese, the expressions are: "I'm green" or "I'm ripe."

VI. From the divine Anais Nin on "The Gong of Orgasm"

"The entire mystery of pleasure in a woman's body lies in the intensity of the pulsation just before the orgasm. Sometimes it is slow, one-two-three, three palpitations which then project a fiery and icy liqueur through the body.

If the palpitation is feeble, muted, the pleasure is like a gentler wave. The pocket seed of ecstasy bursts with more or less energy, when it is richest it touches every portion of the body, vibrating through every nerve and cell. If the palpitation is intense, the rhythm and beat of it is slower and the pleasure more lasting.

Electric flesh-arrows, a second wave of pleasure falls over the first, a third which touches every nerve end, and now the third like an electric current traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm.

There are times when a woman feels her body but lightly played on. Others when it reaches such a climax it seems it can never surpass. So many climaxes. Some caused by tenderness, some by desire, some by a word or an image seen during the day.

There are times when the day itself demands a climax, days of which do not end in a climax, when the body is asleep or dreaming other dreams. There are days when the climax is not pleasure but pain, jealousy, terror, anxiety. And there are days when the climax takes place in creation, a white climax. Revolution is another climax. Sainthood another."

I love the way Nin gives us climaxes of creation...her prose-poem creations such as the paragraph above.

VII. Literary Metaphors for Orgasms

Which is the best metaphor for orgasm? What other images might you use to describe your favorite orgasms?

"Liquid light."

"Coming out of a long dark tunnel into the noon sun."

"A tuning fork in the sky struck by a double rainbow."

"Popcorn popping inside you."

"Honey flowing up into the combs all over inside you.'

"1,000 butterflies fluttering."

"The taste of a wild strawberry."

"Jimi Hendrix at Monterey Pop, 67'"

"Cognac on a cold night."

"Champagne at a wedding."

"Saxophone followed by flamenco guitar followed by lute music"

"Bodysurfing the perfect wave."

"The iridescent fire of the black opal."

"Shakespeare's Midsummer Nights Dream"

"The Song of Solomon"

VIII. Film Metaphors for Orgasms: What is your favorite allegorical or indirect representation of an orgasm in a film?

The beach scene in "From Here to Eternity" (waves washing over lovers)

The spontaneous combustion of the 'interior' candles at the end of "Like Water for Chocolate"

The blowing of the trumpet by Clark Gable in "It Happened One Night"

The look on Scarlett O'Hara's face the morning after Rhett sweeps her upstairs

The lighting up of Manhattan from a blackout at the end of "Shortbus"

The bomber planes "copulating" at the beginning of "Dr. Strangelove"

Lara's theme in "Dr. Zhivago"

The deep octave voice of Dr. Love (Genevieve Bujold) in "Choose Me" after a memorable night.

Meg Ryan faking it in "When Harry Met Sally"

Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway smoking cigarettes in bed in "Chinatown"

Cher's hairdo in "Moonstruck" after she begins her relationship with the Nicholas Cage character.

IX. Confession:

I have had a long love affair with language and storytelling and the potency of words. My thanks to any reader who has gotten this far.