Amy Rose Spiegel - Action: A Book about Sex

Love and do what you will is the only inflexible truth I can tether myself to, belief-wise. Restated, it means: Be kind, and you cant be wrong. Another of Augustines life-defining ideas to which I fervidly subscribe: the pursuit of sex, which he famously prioritized in his lifeand felt mad conflicted about. Augustines tail-chasing career was truncated when he buckled to contrary opinions held by his religion about what sort of behavior qualified as holy (turns out boning is pretty much the opposite of Christian divinity, in their literal book), but I think he was right the first time around. One can absolutely treat sex as a conduit for connectivity with the world.

Biologically, we are configured to want and be with one another. Sex accounts for such a sprawling part of what I consider sacramental because its also the hardware of my genetics. Sex is high and low: the nexus of culture-shaping religious rites, elemental science, and the visual motif of a lot of the best music videos as yet committed to the canon. I notice how it structures the highs and lows of my life, too, and how that framework overlapsor notwith other peoples blueprintsand whether I should totally bone them, if our schematics work together interestingly.

Every person I sleep with is a new machine, albeit one with the same set of instructions: Be loving in a new way. Love like you did not know how to love before. My sexual partners each show me new forms of communicating Augustines kindness, the most airtight definition of love that I know.

This is not to say that Im conflating sex and love. HA, can you imagine? Youd close the book here, like, No thanksI think were alllll set for today, and youd be right. But I do clock private information about a person from the way they have sex. Seeing and becoming involved with someone in a fuck-based capacity evinces new things about themand about meeven if those truths are only true right then and there, and neither of us ever have a similar experience again. Personal details pertaining to sex are not necessarily secret, but theyre usually more clandestine than most other biographical compositions, and I feel lucky whenever anybody lets me in on theirs. Even in the most easygoing arrangements, a person who is undressed in a bedroom (or wherever) is vulnerable, physically and psychically. They are also redolent with a specific kind of power, and, I hope, about to have a hell of a lot of fun.

A lot of the time, I have sex in order to see whats possibleto become an updated version of the person I thought I was. I want to traverse as much as I can of the unending range of what I and other people are capable of enjoying (together). I love having sex with someone if I can feel that were changing togetherbeyond the basic marching ever closer to hanging out with the Grim Reaper parade. (Isnt that the point of the processional?) These alterations can be smallas in, I have never slotted a hand down the pants of this particular personage, at this particular date and time, before RIGHT THIS INSTANT! Man, I am ALL-NEW! In other cases, theyve felt more revelatory, like, Whoa, I guess I love sleeping with women, when I did not suspect that to be the case previously! Becoming ALL-NEW does not mean that anything you do is reflective on any part of your overarching identity in lifeunless you want it to be. In the moment, you are still you, regardless of what you do. Imposing broad, uncritical rules on sex rankles methis is right; this is wrong. I prefer to think, Yo! This is possible? Fascinating! (And then maybe fantasize about it later, if the memory of it rustles up that impulse.)

I love talking and thinking about sex as much as I do having it. Speaking about sex comes, in part, from the attendant preference for wanting to listen to how others feel about it, too. In this book I have tried not to mistranslate and express ownership over experiences that are not mine, which is exactly the behavior that leaves people feeling overlooked, erased from the record, and socially shut down. All I can do is recount how sex has featured in my life and how that has felt. Im not a doctorI am equipped to write about sex only in that I am a person who has a pretty normal life that (mostly) does not include anxiety meltdowns about sex i/r/t identity. If I am qualified to be honest about my whole sexual deal, of course you are, too. No academic degreeor degree of skankitudecan imbue someone with the grand and lofty ability to know what feels good for them/fuck like a maniac; youve already got that (if you want it).

I am trying not only to talk about sex, but also putting forth mad ideas about how to get your partners to talk back (remember that whole fun listening gambit? It pays off!). I am a single person, albeit one who happens to have been with many others, so this book cannot even come close to encompassing the boundless interactions people have with their partners. (Im wild grateful for thathomogeneity is boring, and premature death.) I do not expect you to agree with me throughout all of this. Id rather you observe the aspects in which you are unlike meand make up your own mind about how