I was reading Angels In America during my lunch break today. It's a quick, two hour read, and is soaked through with the author's political opinions, but I do love the characters and the views they bring to the table.

There are several amazing quotes in play. Some long, some short, but things that make you stop and think. I had several I wanted to post here, but I don't have the book by me at the moment, and only one has really stuck with me today.

"The body is the garden of the soul."

That can be interpreted in a number of different ways.

And it's a common sentiment I've heard expressed many times over the years in various fashions.

I've noticed that the people who usually bring up their own variations of this line have fairly similiar ideas of what it means.

On one hand, you have your health nuts. I don't mean that in a negative way, but as that stereotype that it brings to mind. People very dedicated to keeping their bodies in good shape, keeping them healthy, not polluting them with junk food, alcohol, drugs, whatever they deem unhealthy from whatever health philosophy they have picked up.

On the other hand, you have the people that say the state of the body reflects the state of the soul. That a person who does not take care of themselves, or does not appear to take care of themselves, has some sort of unresolved mental issue(s), and those that take care of their bodies are healthy individuals without that inner damage. I can quite easily bring up individuals that both support and refute this claim.

On the third hand (yes, this is a multi-armed creature), you've got this odd combination of the two that comes together in this moral/sexual beast.

Maybe that last sentence should have started with "but in the chest cavitity".

Which sounds amusing, but if you look at it as a centerpiece-combo between the two ideas and then really nail it in with idea idea of the heart being the soul, it makes perfect sense.

Those that believe that, when a person engages in sexual activity with a person they aren't married to or do not love or do not have intentions of marrying, they are soul-damaged, and they are doing further damage to themselves by miring their being in the degradation of their bodies.

That this sexual activity that is not based on love and/or commitment is, essentially, trampling one's garden. A sign of mental dis-ease. No, not disease. It's like "unease" but even better.

So you get the girls that are looking for validation, the girls that hate themselves and are trying to hate themselves even more, the wild girls that will bone anything that moves just to have a distraction from the distaste they have for their lives, or the girls hoping that one night with one man, any man, will keep them feeling not so alone.

This is where I say that I do not believe it is the activity itself that causes the damage, but the social framework we are raised with in regards to sex.

Which means it is not sex that is inherently damaging, but the social values that our social institutions place on sex.

Which, in turn, means that as long as a person finds sex to be morally wrong, a sin, something that gives them value based on desirability, something other than what it is: a physical act, then engaging in sex that does not fill the parameters that a person has for it to be "okay" will have a negative impact on the person engaging in the behavior.

So, if the body is the garden, then it is the "soul" that dictates what grows from what we plant.

The guilt.
The self-loathing.
The internal conflict.
The anger, which flows internal and external.

It is our beliefs, given to us at childhood, that carry this.

It is so easy for some of us to toss off the religion we were raised with because the world has many religions, many belief systems. It's not "dirty" to talk religion. It's not "dirty" to experiment with different spiritualities to find what works for you.

But to question sexuality? To engage and try new things?

Your culture is telling you what is acceptable for you to do with your body, and if you do otherwise, you get poisonous plants springing forth inside your own head.

Saturday night, I was concerned that I was making an unhealthy decision. That I was hiding my hurt over GV8 from myself, that I was looking for that validation, that indication of desirability from two men. Something more. Maybe that I was damaging myself.

And then I realized, afterwards, that I wasn't.

There was no feelings of shame, no feelings of regret, no soul-dirt, no bad aftertaste lingering in my brain. I did not feel dirty or used. I did not feel as though I had done something immoral or gone too far.

I simply felt at peace with myself.

I felt at peace with the act of sex.
I was perfectly content, even happy, with knowing that I had been doubly penetrated by two men.
I was relaxed and okay with knowing that I could have been any of a series of interchangable women for, at least, one of them. Just a set of holes.
Wondering how much effort of logistics it would take to do a triple-p.

Zen. Untangling those last few webs that haunt my garden's corners. When the value of sex comes not from the society around you, but from yourself.

Gorgeous bliss. Finally free. My reality has solidified.




This is who I am. This was always who I was going to become.