Not a day goes by that I don't feel barraged by stories and exhortations to take certain sides on the question of sexual morality. Extremists on the right want to monitor my bedroom and cross check what I'm doing against a list of approved practices and extremists on the left want me to let anybody in my bedroom and let them do everything they can think of with and to me. On one side hangs the balance of civilization and the right to have two SUV's and on the other the promise of freedom from out dated and outmoded moral restrictions that are inhibiting me from enjoying the true life.
I'm starting to take this personally. After all, my sex life is a personal matter to me.
One of the first things that crosses my mind is that the question of morality is in many ways irrelevant. First, I need to understand what I want out of life.
To explain, let me tell you how I got involved in the sex life of a peach tree.
Many years ago, we moved into a home that had two peach trees in the back yard. One a cling stone and the other a freestone. I had never had a peach tree before and this was perfect, both trees were adult semi dwarfs which meant no waiting for peaches. But the trees did not look very good and and I had little confidence that they would bear very good, or very many peaches.
Fortunately, I knew someone who had grown up in the Yuba City area in Northern California. There, thousands and thousands of acres of peach and almond orchards are grown commercially with just any other kind of fruit bearing tree that will grow in that part of the Sacramento Valley. Since he had grown up working with his father and brothers caring for hundreds of acres of peach trees I asked him about my two trees. No problem, he came right over and proceeded to explain to me exactly what needed to be done.
First, he took my long handled pruning shears and proceeded to ruthlessly prune the trees back. It was breathtaking and frightening the way he could effortlessly shear off a branch that I would have thought would take a chain saw. Then he patiently explained a few basic facts about peach tree cultivation that turned out to be the way that I could manipulate the sex life of the peach trees to get the best peaches that they could produce.
It was simple. Now that the trees were pruned correctly I was to wait for the blossoms to come, you know, those sexually active parts of many plants that we love to touch and smell, sometimes eat and even brew as tea. I was to watch for that time when the blossoms had had their sexual awakening and began to produce babies. Now this was the hard part. He said very sternly, “If you want great peaches you must nip off at least two thirds of all those newly forming peaches just as they begin to appear.” That first year I hated pulling off hundreds and hundreds of tiny new peach babies, but I did. The result, the tree had exactly the same energy to make the babies grow, but there were far fewer of them and they were great. The next thing that I learned was to never pick a peach before it was really ripe. Simple.
But this is what really happened. Over the years I developed a close and personal relationship with the peach trees. I took good care of both of them, but the freestone and I were really on the same wavelength. I learned that certain branches and parts of the tree always produced the best fruit. I learned when the fruit on various parts of the tree ripened to their fullest. I learned that when birds pecked a peach near the top of three that that peach was perfect, just cut off the part that had been pecked and that even ants would only go after perfectly ripened and tasty fruit. Wash them off and cut off any damaged areas and there was a peach of a stellar quality that most people have never experienced. The peaches were not only incredible tasting, but they were also huge, often the size of a softball. I have pictures to prove it.
So I learned to look at the trees in the winter to see their shapes and decide where to prune. I learned to feed them and how to water them and when not to water them. I learned how to know how many little peaches to leave on and which to take off. I learned how to gauge when a peach was about to fall off the tree in complete ripeness, that moment when simply putting my hand beneath the peach and gently touching it would cause it to fall right into my palm. I even learned that a peach that did fall often tasted too good to be true, just cut off the part that had been smooshed where it hit the lawn.
I learned that I treasured my relationship with those peach trees and the freestone tree in particular. It became a personal, spiritual experience, taking care of the tree, understanding it and caring for it and getting those marvelous peaches in return. A quality of peach that I have never been able to find in a grocery store or even in a farmer's market. The truth is simply, that a fully ripe and ready peach cannot be transported in bulk, that a quality peach will not survive a trip to the farmer's market and would be just a soggy mess by time it got to a grocery store. There is no other way to get such a peach without knowing the tree, accepting a deep relationship with the tree and treasuring that experience. As a result, I almost never buy peaches. They never have the taste, the size and the texture that I have grown to love in a truly ripe and well cared for peach. Occasionally I will buy an organic peach if I'm going to use it in a smoothie, and usually I taste it before it goes into the blender, and, yes, they are never the same – smaller, far less flavor and an, “I was picked before really ripe so I could be transported,” texture.
I miss my peach trees. They symbolized the kind of life experience that I really want – I was totally involved in a personal and intimate way in the mysterious process that takes the elements and the sun and makes a peach. It was not an impersonal, synthetic, mass produced experience. Over the years, I moved into a world of intangible and unexplainable knowledge and interaction with those trees. I knew them and they knew me.
Commercially grown and sold peaches have absolutely no allure for me. I know what a true peach is like, so why would I settle for something that is far less? And please don't misunderstand, I don't mind that peaches are grown commercially and that people buy those peaches. I don't mind that most people, even those who buy high priced very high quality peaches think they're getting the best of the real thing when its not even close.
A few years before we moved into the home with the peach trees my wife had a serious health problem. She began developing tumors, the first one being like a small loaf of bread. That tumor was surgically removed from her hip, above the ball joint. When she told me that she could feel more tumors forming after the surgery we did two things. We went back to the orthopedic surgeon who had a CT scan ordered and after that was done, but before we got the results, we went to an alternative practitioner. That practitioner told us, without scans or x-rays that there were, in fact, many tumors growing but that we could do things to help the body to suppress them. I was a little skeptical but when we drove back to Sacramento and got home, there was an excited message from the surgeon stating exactly the same thing. When we talked with him he explained that he would have to remove most of the muscles around her hip joint, her leg would be shorter and she would basically be moderately crippled as a result.
Of course, she opted to try the alternatives first and was successful in controlling the growth and spread of those tumors. That started us on a long journey of progressively studying and becoming more and more aware of our own bodies and health needs. Eventually, I became certified in some of these areas myself primarily so I could help her when it became apparent that this was going to be an ongoing process. My wife had evidently been exposed to certain toxins when she was a young child and continues to be affected to this day in various ways. While I was going through the training and certification process one of the other, experienced practitioners asked if I realized that my hormone, endocrine and other body systems were being effected by the fluctuations in my wife's. I had never thought about it before but as soon as that was pointed out to me a lot of things became clear.
This effects us in many ways, but since I am writing about sex, lets talk a little about that.
Eating, drinking and a lot of things that we do are simply at their core a response to the call of nature. Sex is one of those things. Dogs, butterflies, squirrels, pigs and any number of creatures have sex. I suppose they enjoy it, but I can't say for sure. I just know that when a female goes into heat, males of her kind will fight and kill to mate with her. They must be getting something out of it that they like. I think the same can be said of eating, sleeping and a host of other activities that we and most animals do. But there is one major difference that seems very important to me – as humans, we may have to eat, for example, but we get to choose what we will eat and what we will not eat. We can eat fast food and junk food and really enjoy it, or we can eat healthy and real foods and enjoy that too. We get to choose. Most people don't really think about it. They eat what is common and available and think little about it, except that they know what they like and what they don't. Unfortunately, most people don't exercise the one thing that clearly sets us apart from dogs and pigs, that is, they don't exercise any real judgment in the choices that they make. It is a mindless process that has been determined for them by the society or culture that they happen to grow up in. No matter that heart disease, cancers and many other conditions may spring directly from those mindless choices, they just do it.
As I think about the way my wife's body and mine moved into harmony or synchrony I realize that this is a fabulous gift. One of the deepest ways that we can communicate that is not based on words is sex. Much more so than my relationship with that long gone peach tree and it's reproductive cycle, I am able to feel, be moved by and respond to my wife's inner feelings and desires in a way that my past experiences, exciting and pleasurable as they may have been, tell me is impossible with anyone that I do not know so well that when their hormones change, mine change, that when their limbic system responds, mine responds and on and on. No doubt, sex with a stranger can be exciting, but anyone who has had a deep and loving relationship with someone who they love deeply, live with, eat with, sleep with, are in close contact with on a daily basis with for years on end knows that that level of deep human communication cannot be reached with anyone else and we definitely don't need someone there to monitor our activities.
Unfortunately, many people destroy a great deal of that closeness by touching too many other people. No doubt, touching other people as deeply as we are touched when we have sex blurs and distorts the close internal bonds that two monogamous people can develop. Whenever I'm in the presence of two people who do have this kind of bond, I feel it immediately – they don't have to say anything, and seldom do. What's to say?
I'm sure that some people are just not capable of being this sensitive to someone else. Certainly, our Western Culture does not encourage this kind of sensitivity, not the right, or the left or the in between. This is something that people have to find for themselves, in themselves. Even people who have sex regularly with each other but do not live together and are not committed to each other do not reach these deeper levels. And certainly, people who are married and have another lover don't quite understand what I'm talking about, even if they pretend that they do when they are with their lover or with their spouse.
Often, these are the people who are the most insecure about sex. It becomes, not so much a way of expressing love, but a way to compete, to prove self worth, to be the sexiest person you've ever slept with and finally, a way to wield power over someone else, as in, I'll dazzle you so much, you won't be able to live without me, but you can't really have me. I'm sure the list goes on and on and can be balanced by a list of people who are together simply because they are afraid to try to be with someone else. Just being together isn't enough either.
As the Scottish Psychiatrist, R. D. Lang, helps us to understand, when you live in an insane society, it is impossible to be sane.
Oddly, the automotive columnist, Eric Peters, makes the same point in his article on road rage. Well, maybe that's not so odd when we consider that both make the same valid point.
How are people expected to make and maintain loving, deeply felt and sensitive relationships when we live in a time that mostly defines human interaction as so much commercial traffic? As with my experience with the peach tree and those peaches, I expect that the most common response to this will be bitter denial. What else would I expect?
For myself, I don't want my sexual experience in life to be just another answer to a call of nature like going to the bathroom or eating whatever is commonly available. I want much more than that and there is really no other way for me to get it without the kind of deep interpersonal connection that I have with my wife that goes far beyond any conscious, rational or verbal communication. There is no shortcut to that kind of bond. It cannot be fabricated or rushed. It is fragile, delicate, perishable – easily damaged, destroyed or stunted. It makes me sad just to think about it.
Finally, do not think that I am saying that I have a perfect relationship with my wife. Some areas are quite difficult. Most people who are together for decades would probably say the same, even when they understand intimately what I am talking about.
None of this is about morality. It is about the quality of life that we choose, not just in sex, but in everything that we do. I have tried to develop and maintain deeply personal and moving relationships with my children, their childhood was truly a golden period of my life, I have had similar experiences as with the peach trees in many other ways, I think now about my keeping bees and knowing them and watching them learn to know me, there are so many ways... None of this is about me telling you what you should or should not be doing. Really, that is none of my business. In a very different spirit, I believe as did Arnold Amaury, when his knights were overrunning the town of Bezier and he was asked to give orders as to who would be spared and answered - "Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius!" Slay them all! God will know his own!" - well, I am not going to slay or persecute anyone over this, what a gross thought, but for those who do believe that this is an issue that God is involved in then rest assured, no doubt, He will know his own when we get right down to it, whatever it is. Where is your faith?
Even here, there must be room for forgiveness and redemption – Look at King David and Bath - Sheba. Not only did he steal Uriah's wife, screw her and make her pregnant, he then tried to cover it all up and when that didn't work, he ordered that Uriah would be sent into the heaviest part of the next battle and then be abandoned on the battle field to a sure death. Can anyone spell the M word here? Does it get any lower than that? Yet, according to the Bible, David retained God's blessing, lived a long and fruitful life as a “Chosen One” and even had a hot young babe assigned to sleep with him to keep him warm when he got old and weak and, I suppose, when Bath - Sheba was too old and week to serve the purpose. Actually, I would not want to be like David in most of these instances, I don't want to kill anyone, I don't want to steal anyone's wife and kill them in the process, not my idea of a good way to live. Still, we must admit, that unlike today's leaders, rather than send others to war, he often lead the way and took his chances with his men.
Increasingly, I find myself lost in a world where superficial experience is replacing deeply felt reality and it makes me increasingly uncomfortable. I meet people who I like but know that I can have no profound connection with, that at best, it will be that synthetic, artificial commercial veneer that is slowly suffocating the real quality of everything that exists on this earth. This endless posturing about the value or non value of morality strikes me as just another manifestation of that, just another way to distract me from looking inward, then outward to face the real question of what I want out of my life in an increasingly absurd, superficial and unreal world.
