Fever! when you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.

Listening to Michael Buble (bask in the smooth silkiness), Fever to be specific. I'm thinking of using these classic swing/jazz tunes for Midsummer Night's Dream - sort of Love's Labour Lost a la Branaugh for MND. I'll get to play with a new form of choreography and the actors won't have to sing! Very inspired by LLL, the Romeo and Juliet that Hudson High is doing, by As You Like It commentary a la Homer Swander, and my on-going love affair with music in plays. We'll see if it pans out. But I think it'd be fun! I'll have to do some judicial cutting of MND, but I doubt that Shakespeare would really mind. Now, some of the travesties I saw in England.... ;)

So, a few thoughts as per usual before retiring:

1) Any new (to me) Terry Pratchett is nearly impossible to put down (aka Good Omens). Apparently, I'm not the only one so affected: my father is as well. He's reading the book inbetween my reading of it. Makes me laugh.

2) Loverly to hang out with Jill today. Took video of autumn leaves, of the little castle thing in Framingham, and of Jill opening her eyes and resurrecting and looking miserable over her correspondance with "The Shadow." Watched the tango (see below). Swapped stories about her Vampire novel and about MND. Mucho fun. Been far too long. (Oh, and saw Runaway Jury - typical P.C. moral, but great movie. I kept watching the editing - d'oh!)

3) Despite myself, I enjoyed watching the second half of the eighth inning of the baseball game. Shoot - are we turning into baseball fanatics? However, I really don't mind it (as I would mind football infiltrating). And Peter and Mom are really getting into it, Jules, too! Interesting. Velly velly intellesting.

4) Can I say how much I despise pornography? And can I say as well how much I despise, loathe, and violently detest the ease of internet porn? I hate that I open up my mailbox only to find boatloads of porn ads with pictures. I hate that I've been forced to change my e-mail addy because of porn and now my new addy is getting hit with porn! I hate that perfect innocents (or as perfect as fallen human nature allows) are given free access to, are encouraged, are not admonished for watching porn. I abhor that Jennifer Jamison was given THREE WHOLE PAGES in Entertainment Weekly about how great she is, and how porn is so wonderfully everywhere now, and how it's horrible when people look down on her, and see see the hobbits know her, and....

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

I am going to puke.

You know why I hate it? Because, just like sound, images go straight to the brain. It bypasses the ego if you will and goes straight to the id. It bypasses the conscious and lodges in the subconscious rather permanently like fatty tissue. And that's what internet porn is - think of it as intellectual fatty tissue. As the cholesterol of the soul. The hormonal virus.

I'm not immune to that bypass of the conscious. My libido is alive and well, thank you. (As opposed, apparently, with "porn star" Jessica Jamison who views sex as a rather dull and repetitious job. Thank you but no. I'll keep my sex drive in tact, if it's all the same to you.) If explicit pictures are placed before me, I stare in horror and fascination. My animalistic self, the bit that keeps being interfered with by the blessings of the intellect and the soul, perks up and shoves all thought and conscience to the side. It's like watching the proverbial train wreck.

I want to stay pure. I want to - as I said - keep my God-given hormones in tact. I don't want to dull them. I don't want to be ruled by them, addicted to arousing them. I don't want to enter marriage with my brain full of these impossible images, my mind on some picture that was spammed to me constantly comparing my husband with a product of steroids. I don't want to be afraid and ashamed of myself and basically inhibited by what I have seen. I don't want to think less of myself, and I don't want my future husband to feel less of himself. I don't want anything, ANYTHING to come between myself, my future husband, my God, and our happiness.

Porn does just that. It kills something precious. And even worse, society promotes it and then laments the divorce rate and out of wedlock pregnancies and rising abortion. Even worse, porn is sent to our mailboxes under legal jurisdiction. It has been made accessible and so by quietude permissible. But because something is prevalent does not make it right. Sin has always been prevalent, and it has never been right. Sickness is prevalent, and we have never welcomed it. Pain is prevalent and we avoid it.

Nor can it be argued that porn doesn't harm anyone. Porn has harmed me. It has stolen my innocence. It has twisted my brain around to wonder, to probe, to question - and then to feel inadequate, to feel insecure, to feel tempted, to become obsessed. And I'm hardly a purveyor of the stuff. If something so small can affect me, how must those who are addicted to porn be suffering? I say suffering although they may not be aware of their suffering, in the same way that the man with a hangover drinks to feel better. Repetition of the addiction does not remove the addiction, it feeds it.

So, let's look at our sex drive, ladies and gents, shall we?

OK, first, as has been stated elsewhere, each organ that we possess has a specific purpose, meant only for that purpose and no other. Once we start attempting to change that purpose, we fall apart as humans. So, in the case of the stomach. It digests food products, breaks them down and redistributes them to keep the body "fueled" properly. If we swallow a penny, the stomach is unable to digest that, and passes it out in the only way possible. If something truly heinous gets into the stomach, I imagine one would die through some sort of internal complication. In a lesser degree, the consumption of excessive fat, or lack of simple sugars, or too much this or that will also affect the body and make it sicken. Consequently, we're all pretty much agreed - even if we don't practice what we agree with - that to be healthy, one ought to keep away from swallowing pennies or trucks or Barbie dolls or whatnot, and make sure we eat three balanced meals a day and drink our water and get our exercise.

So, let's look at our reproductive organs. First, as Steve Greydanus so succinctly said, they are the reproductive organs, not the "orgasmic organs." Their sole, medical purpose is to be the means whereby new life is created and brought into the world. Nor are they meant for obscure practices of putting them in clamps (would you want a clamp on your stomach?), putting them in places where the sun don't shine (really rips that area, BTW, very unhealthy for more than just the reproductive organ), stuffing foreign objects up them (apparently there really was a case of a prostitute rushed in the hospital who needed a jar of peanut butter removed - the strange things one learns in a medical insurance claims job), by pleasuring ourselves (again, that's about as useful as Peter Pan's "neverfeast" when they pretend there's a banquet in front of them - to continue masterbation is to become sexually gaunt), or using means of barring their purpose (contraceptives tend to work either as a form of sexual bulemia or anorexia, really). If we are to be truly, intellecually honest, we'd all have to admit the primary purpose of those organs, what their purpose is, and what the most healthy use of those organs is, then. If anything, in our craze to be "natural" we ought to comply quite simply with nature. Anything else is the Emporer's New Clothes.

As with many human organs, the reproductive organs have emotional, mental and spiritual ramifications as well. We are not merely beasts. We are unique in our possession of an especial trinity - the body, the mind and the soul.

Physical Aspect: When engaging in the marital act, our reproductive organs are engaged in the means of creating a new life. Awesome stuff!

Emotional/Mental Aspect: When engaging in the marital act, a bond is created; a bond meant to be indissoluable.

In fact, our whole bodies are created in such a way that each level of intimacy draws us closer to that other. A hug, a hand-holding, a kiss on the cheek, a leaning on the arm, a sitting side by side, a linked arm, a dance, a shoulder to cry on, a pat on the back, a touch on the brow, a handshake, a high five - all these draw us closer to each other, whether shared between mother and daughter, brother and brother, friends, mentor and protegee, teacher and student, colleagues, teammates - even between humans and animals. (We become attached to our dogs because we can pet them. Even I, who am not an animal person, have been known to "give in" when a *very* docile cat/dog is placed on my lap. That's what nerve endings do. Nothing wrong there.)

But that final step of intimacy, that marital union reserved especially and sacredly for a man and his wife, is the greatest form of human contact, and creates the greatest bond. A handshake might be considered something like drafting tape. Sex is like super-industrial crazy glue. And no wonder - sex is actual penetration, is physically entering and allowing the entry of another person, without masks, without concealment - it is the greatest intimacy both physically and metaphorically. And man is nothing if not a creature who deals in metaphors. In fact, this act is so great, so immense, so personal (and so comical if you really sit down and think about it), that to fully give and receive it intact, then it must be shared only with one other person.

(And yes, with a spouse of the opposite sex. We are a broken people. We feel this brokenness. And we also see both factually, scientifically, medically, emotionally, mentally, physically, and metaphorically that to become WHOLE is to join completely to the gender that compliments our own. Not to mention, again, that this is the only way those organs are fulfilling their function. One can argue that those organs don't NEED to be fulfilled perfectly, in the same way that one must eat perfectly in order to survive. I would counter that one can live on an improper diet, but not live WELL. Beyond which, I can put a piece of celery in my ear: my stomach won't digest it. The natural order of the organs naturally orders their use as well.)

Let me give you a story of how crucial physical acts are to the emotional state. I've only dated a handfull of times, and have only had one longish relationship. That was in college, with a fellow named Kurt (God bless Kurt) who I really oughtn't have dated for a number of reasons. (Whatever. There has been good that's come out of it, but it's in the Bearenstein Bears way: "This is something you must not do," as Poppa Bear goes off the cliff on the bicycle.) I attended Franciscan University of Steubenville, one of the marvellous meccas of orthodox Catholicism. At the time I was dating, the rage was to save kissing until engagement - or preferably marriage. Well, I was caught up in that idea (I don't know if I still am - a romantic part of me gets all starry-eyed at the notion; the pragmatic part of me says, "Oyveh!"; the hormonal part of me has been sulking for years), and so informed Kurt (you can see where half the problems of our "relationship" formed!) that I wanted to save kissing until I was engaged, so I'd rather not kiss. This is not to say that Kurt didn't try on several occasions regardless (including one memorable attempt when he was sick but showed up for part of a dance and I was as per usual muffled against his chest and then I look up to - gah, I was such a moron - frankly, "look sexy, brooding and romantic," and the boy leans down his head to kiss me and I turn my head to the side and he gets somewhere in the vicinity of the top of my ear).

At any rate, we officially dated for seven months - although things were going downhill rapidly after, oh, week three. On Valentine's Day, we actually got ourselves a date and watched Goonies together in his household common room. At one point, he put his arm around me, touching some part of my arm that - I remember this quite vividly even to this day; sense-memory is an amazing thing - sent a literal chill from my arm to my spine to that part of me that my sulking hormones sulk the most about. I'll never forget it. I sat upright for two seconds, and then relaxed back into his arm. My only thought was, "Oh! I didn't know I had that nerve!"

Fast-forward to May of 97. He's graduating, I'm not, I'm bugging him for a decision: are we staying together or what? I want an answer. When are you going to give it? He named a date he'd tell me. The date came. An evening. Our largish group of friends was throwing a farewell party for the seniors. Tensions were already high because it was May, one of my household sisters was furious at another for not being at the party, and Everyone Knew that Emily was Waiting for an Answer. I walked into that room in the student center. I tried to be polite. Someone asked me if I was OK. Or something...memory is fuzzy...but next thing I knew I was bawling. And you must understand, that I didn't cry at that time. I prided myself on it. I didn't allow myself to cry about anything until just a few years ago. But I absolutely broke down, and my great friend, Anthony, locked his arms around me like a vise, and his girlfriend (now his wife), my household sister, Becky, put her hand on my back. It hurt to have Anthony's arms around me. But it was the best hurt in the world. His arms didn't let me go until all the wracking sobs were out. And all the time Becky kept saying, "It's OK. It's alright to cry. You're allowed to cry." In fact, those words have stuck with me even to this day and changed me quite a bit: You're allowed to cry.

The door opened. I knew because of the sudden deepening of the silence around me. I could feel Kurt behind me. I thought I was going to scream. I thought I was going to fly into a thousand pieces. Anthony's arms were the only thing keeping me together. And then Becky's voice stopped, and her hand left my back. Anthony's arms left me. I straightened; wiped my eyes; turned around. The entirety of my friends stood as one and sidled through the door. They left the cake in the room. (Apparently, I found this out afterwards, they tried playing a game the student center had - Trivial Pursuit or something - and then one of my guy friends crassly asked if he thought it'd be OK to go back in and at least get the cake, for which all of our friends turned on him, denouncing him for a boor. Poor guy. Starving.)

Inside, Kurt and I made our way to one of the couches. I had gone dry, sandpapery, cold. Empty, hollow. I could feel the rings around my eyes and around my soul. I saw Kurt as someone stripped. As just a person. I saw him with distaste - or rather, with no taste as well. He started babbling. Something about how he hated the words "breaking up," how of course it wasn't a breaking up, it was really just friendship, which we'd always had.... More on the same. Ten minutes or so of the stuff. I looked at the clock. I looked at the floor. I looked at the abandoned cake. I looked at my hands. I wanted to scream, "Fine. We're done. Well done. Shut up. Just say the stinking words. There're only two of them. Even you can manage that." All the bitterness I had at my disposal filed itself into one great ball of bile that rested damply in my breast. He said something concluding, and I finally turned to look at him straight on.

Now, we had not had sex. We hadn't kissed. We'd held hands a few times. He'd put his arm around me a few times. We'd danced a few times - mostly posing on my part to look pouty or something, I'll admit. He'd kissed my brow (I hated that, BTW. Mainly because it became more and more distant and patronizing. I had real issues as you can tell! %). We'd hugged any number of times. He'd swung me off my feet thrice (I remember each because I had thought myself utterly unswingable, unflippable, and undippable. He proved me very wrong). I'd been immensely aroused in that one innocent moment on St. Valentine's Day. But by anyone's standards, my own then and now included, we'd been anything but erotically intimate.

Which is why the following thought so completely took me off guard. He was wrapping up his "we're-not-breaking-up-we're-moving-on" speech, when I looked at him. Looked at the guy I'd crushed on for months before. That I'd finally snagged and botched. He is a handsome man, and was no less so that night - although I wasn't feeling particularly tender towards his looks at that moment. I felt very distant. Sound was muffled. I examined him. I knew I didn't want him. My girlish crush had been exposed months before for being no deeper than that. And yet....

"I wonder," I thought, with all the dispassion only break-ups can muster, mixed with all the hormones of a chaste twenty-year old body, "I wonder if I kissed him right now, passionately, on the lips - I wonder if I could keep him a little longer. Make him mine."

It was a thought from my desperately failing glands. It was a thought primaeval. It crept out from that part of me that has kinship with the animals, but even more, it was a thought from that emotional center that bonds completely in the marital act. Curiously, the various parts of my mind were in one concord for just a moment. Libido, pragmatist, romantic, theologian, author, all looked at his lips and answered, "Yes. Yes, if you kissed him now and put all yourself in that kiss, you could keep him."

I didn't kiss him, though. Because just as soon as I realized that I had that power, I knew I didn't want to use it over him. I didn't want to use it over me. If a touch upon the arm, if a held hand influenced my body to such a degree that I was ready to jump the poor boy were I only an animal and not a human with a soul as well as a body and a mind - then I knew I certainly didn't want to kiss him. Because then I would be shackled emotionally to one I knew I didn't love, because of what my body had done. The bond of emotion runs very strong, indeed.

Spiritual Aspects: There is a promise in intimate touch.

There is a promise of eternity in such intimacies that should not be underestimated. And if there is such eternal promise in the simpler intimacies, how daft can we be to ignore that the ultimate intimacy of the marital act is meant to bond us together so that the great vow of "To have and to hold, to love and to cherish, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, from this day forth, til death do us part" is upheld, solidified, consummated by that physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bond. In my own "bad time" with Kurt, my body attempted to communicate to me that the means of solidifying my relationship was to increase the physical intimacy. Fortunately, my reason overcame my immediate physical response to say, "No. Not he. Wait, wait." But if I do marry, I am confident that the physical consummation will be the thing that helps get us through the bad times, and transform them just as Christ's suffering and death on the cross transformed our sin into His salvation.

A brief word on "ideals:" So, Jill used a phrase today that interested me and touches briefly on this subject. She said she had a friend who tried to hold to the same ideals as myself. It's a curious statement and not an uncommon one. But the very point is that using the reproductive organs to their fullest by saving them for one's spouse, for the purpose of solidifying marriage, and for full self-giving which unselfish, unconditional love is so intense that it actually becomes another person - the very point is that this isn't an ideal. It's common sense. Call it greediness for unmitigated happiness, if you will. But not an ideal: a necessity. This belief needn't be something regelated in the social mind to something "those religious fanatics do" - it ought to be something any sensible person realizes by looking at the facts. That it falls under the aegis of religion - particularly Catholicism - is not surprising: life falls under religion, and science, and mathematics, and psychology, and literature and.... But, it is true that religion - again, particularly Catholicism - is the only voice proclaiming common sense and refusing to budge away from the anchor of truth. But anyone of any creed who has eyes to see and reason to understand should be able to sit down in those moment when the glands aren't merrily going about their business of making sure humans continue to exist, and realize what is the best thing to do...and then to do the best thing, not just the most immediate.

Another Brief Word on the Wonders of Chastity: Mainly concerning my story above. I'm firmly convinced by my own experience, as well as talking to others, candid conversations with friend married and single, seeing my students who are all over the board in this subject, and by various other sources, that the best way to keep the "passion alive" is to be chaste. To be chaste means to use one's sexuality as befits one's station in life. EVERYONE is called to be chaste. Outside of marriage, that means that one does not engage in the marital act nor in those specific intimacies leading to consummation. Inside of marriage, it means remaining faithful to one's spouse, both in body AND in mind - no superimposing Johnny Depp's brooding features over one's husband!

So praciticing chastity before and within marriage (leaving celibacy - a vow to refrain from sexual activity forever - aside for this post, anyway), I guarantee will keep the sex life very much alive. Think of the connoisseur - he eats sparingly, slowly, fully...because he's really tasting the food. No McDonald's for him. Same thing here - to avoid the sexual equivalent of desperate supersizing that does little more than turn one into an unappealing lump, keep chaste.

I've never really kissed a guy. I've stage kissed and had a month or two of itchy kissy lips afterwards. I've had a kiss ripped from me by this disgusting man in Paris (yeah, I really did feel raped, BTW). But for that giving and taking? That self-giving kiss that is a mere prelude to the ultimate self-giving? Nope. But let me tell ya - if judging by conversations with some promiscuous colleagues is any indication, I'm the better for it. While in England, the only topic of conversation (other than our Shakespeare scenes) was sex. And foreplay. And more sex. And positions. And sex again. And partners. And sex. And fetishes. And sex. I contemplated propping buckets of cold water over each of their bedroom doors. I wondered whether it was illegal to neuter. And yet, as I listened, I realized that there wasn't any joy in their conversation. A sense of desperation, perhaps. Insatiable desire. Haunting sexual hangovers. Terrified loneliness. And, even more telling, when I would mention something about ovulation or that thrilling moment when Kurt put his arm around me - they looked alarmed. "Don't talk about that!" they actually said to me. Their problem with me? I was too sensitive. I felt things too much. And yet it certainly served me when it came to play Rosalind. I felt thrills merely touching my fellow actor's Adam's apple. Because I've held myself chaste, I've no doubt that chastity within marriage will be like intoxication with an ever aging wine.

You want passion? Be chaste. Become sensitive again. Relish everything about love and life. I dare you.

5) Right. Two ay-emma. Aie! And I to sleep. Loverly day. Grading papers tomorrow. And weather permitting walking. Perhaps a nice, long walk. Finish up tango. Start work on next bit. Maybe one of the short inbetweener bits. Possibly the wedding dance from Brigadoon for Tuesday's open house (they start in MY room, precious! My prettiful room! And I'm to tell lots and lots about drama. I'd like to have a disc to show on repeat. Certainly pictures. Hurrah!). Gute nacht. And Lord? Please prepare me to be a good wife, for You and for whomever my future husband may be. Please bless my future husband. Keep him safe, God. Watch over him. Amen.

Mood: Tired, but valiant
Music: Michael Buble
Thought: This is the reason I like to keep to the Fairy Tales. They know an awful lot about what's deep down true.