I Asked About His Belly Button: Words & Sex

i don't like cheap sex, even in words. i don't like touching bodies that i can't write poetry about. and i think that's because these are largely two ways of doing the same thing. if they aren't then they are each one way of engaging in something that i don't want: cheap sensation.

this may seem obvious or idealistic or irrelevant. "sex is sex," you say (perhaps with despair, perhaps with indifference, perhaps with a rising libido). but nothing about sex became obvious to me until i'd done it (or come terribly close to doing it), thought about it, written something about it, forgotten everything (on purpose?), realized i'd done it again, read what i wrote and finally decided i wanted to be fully present as myself the next time.

oh, but there are terrible costs to being present. it makes you "erotically at risk" (as Adrienne Rich wrote). and this because bodies ask relentless questions that minds don't often like to hear.

Exhibit A: i once asked a man laying naked on my bed about his hands because his hands kept asking questions of me. they were lying (spelling intended) there next to him, then they were dancing over me, then i was using my hands to ask them about their childhood. then i opened my mouth and said something about fingers and truth. well, i soon found out that i'm not "supposed" to do that. that i'm supposed to just "do it," without words. i found out because he left and stopped talking to me altogether.

i thought about that (which was difficult because when he left i was still horny), then i wrote about it, then i forgot it.

Exhibit B: a year later i fell for portuguese (oh, what a body of language!). my tongue never got very familiar, but fumbling words have never stopped me from trying to say what my heart means. i would say something with my head on his shoulder and then a word from my mouth when the shoulder went rigid and cold, speaking what i felt with my body. but no one appreciates amateur translations!

think, skip the writing, go straight to forgetting.

finally, i stopped believing that the tongue is an organ among organs and began to reluctantly accept that the tongue should not ejaculate or shudder. that is, i made the ultimate act of forgetting: disagreeing with my own beliefs in such a way that they appeared to me as though they came from outside.

flash forward (that happens a lot when you are actively forgetting). i find myself in bed with someone who doesn't ask questions at all. his body silently watches me from afar (proximity, my friends, is not the same thing as presence). we do not ever touch, really. the hand, the legs, the teeth, the mouths, the sphincter, penises make contact, but they are watching, not touching. when the heat got going they did, of course, talk...alot. we were verbose bodies--chattering, gossiping, gregarious bodies--but not bodies that asked questions. it was only cheap sex-words.

afterwards i remembered (inevitable) and i read what i had written years ago about hands. i dreamt of hands. my pores opened and closed asking for hands. i wrote poems about hands of all kinds. i decided that i want my words and my hands to be equally apt at asking questions. of telling secrets. not clever, not suave, but honest and slightly shaking from anticipation (or ecstasy). i decided to be present next time. to ask all sorts of body-word questions.

so i'm at risk again "because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger" (guess who said that). who knows what could happen? i'm scared that i will never meet anyone who sex-speaks and body-asks the way i do. but now i know that the sexual act without the sexual questions is empty for me. so what else is there to do but be honest?

i could try to forget again. but even that is hard to do these days. working at a seedy hotel i've been getting frequent propositions for blow jobs and anonymous sex. but despite the fact that this is supposedly every man's dream (especially every gay Black man, who is defined by sex, and is sex) i've found myself turned off. i want to know what they see in me (not just on me). what makes their eyes shine as well as what makes their thighs quake. and so far men have been stumped when they ask me what i'm "into" and i say things like this, since they expect a simple answer of top or bottom. there's no going back, only forward.

but there is hope. a few days ago i sent an email to someone who likes my words. i asked about his belly button. i don't even know him. but i would like him to know that i already have questions...