INTRO EROTICO

It is said that experiencing orgasm is like experiencing death. La Petite Mort. During the climax of arousal, we transcend our bodies and come to know the Hereafter. I ejaculate in order to communicate with God. This is how I come to understand myself. By thrusting my convulsing body into His hands I satiate my carnal desires and further explore my own soul. I know that I am God. I know that orgasm is part of my autolatry. This is an exploration into the mystery schools of my own consciousness.

If mainstream pornography can be compared to a major religion, then what I intend to uncover are the esoteric mysteries of that orthodoxy.

The growth of the sexual being from birth until adulthood is what I intend to study. This is comparable in many ways to the growth of the Christian church. From infancy to the age of around twelve(early adolescence) our manias are a melting pot of fantasy and imagination, we worshipped many things, many different people. We could feel beyond what now know, purely because we had no ties to any sordid realities or conventions. Romance could be felt but not quantified, it wasn’t material. Love was in abundance. A parent plays the role of the Messiah, bringing an ideology to our infant hearts. The concepts of relationships and families, monogamy and dedication are introduced and begin to germinate. The message is clear; Love, untouchable, all consuming love is message, the common goal, the aspiration, and with love comes the arousing spiritual connection between people. It is erotic, but not in the sordid way we assume. It is metaphysical erotica. It is a spiritual stirring, a movement of stars.

But then comes the fascist institutions of commercial pornography to give us new direction, new meanings for love. If our infant souls exist in the realms of early religions and cosmic mysteries, then commercial pornography plays the role of the Roman Catholic Church, taking a message that was preached to us by a messiah and twisting it for its own ends. The Roman Catholic Church seized power by taking elements of what we knew and suspected and believed and contorted it all together, making it one of the most powerful institutions the world has ever known, much as commercial pornography has. It provided us with a new mania, that of sex, carnal, animal sex.  Now this in itself is not unjust, or reprehensible, but we begin to invest too much of ourselves in it. Catholics preach love, forgiveness, loyalty, all admirable qualities, but with it comes dogma, close mindedness and hatred. Commercial porn teaches us to explore our own sexual beings, it lets us know we are not alone in the world of erotic thought, and gives us access to a higher form of fantasy and arousal, but it also breeds forms of sexism, increasing senses of entitlement and dissatisfaction, and above all, it limits us. When one practices the act of masturbation to excess, one becomes less reactive to the touch of others.

To become truly enlightened of our sexual selves, we need to take the higher forms of self awareness we get from pornography and mix it with the esoteric ideologies of love and connection from our youth. We can form hybrids of dream, erotic fantasy and memory and access more than we ever dreamed possible. This way we can create newer and higher form of fantasy and can transcend ourselves and know our true Gods; ourselves.

In my generation, the pivotal role of Emperor Constantine was filled by computers and the Internet. Computers were created to allow us to have easier lives, to unite us in the way that Constantine did. The Roman Catholic Church used Constantine to spread their own dogma throughout the known world, he was their medium. The internet spread pornography everywhere and made it one of the most accessible forms of visual culture ever known.

Through images I will fuse together fantasy, memory and performance and compile a dossier of esoteric erotica. By this, I mean images that stir some arousing chord within me, despite perhaps not being overly sensual to others.

As an adolescent, being a transvestite opened many doors to me. Strange bars and nightclubs across Europe opened their doors to me. The clothes I wore were ridiculous; silk night dresses with high heels three sizes too small, so much mascara I could barely keep my eyes open. Middle aged men fell at my feet, offering up money and alcohol as though I was a deity. I felt that I knew what it was to have Power. I had power over these men because my body was unlike theirs. I was young, I felt I was free, I felt I was beautiful, and these twisted, gnarled old creatures wanted to drink in my youthful sexuality and feel rejuvenated, reborn. I was the new messiah, I became God.

Together we shall explore the mysteries of the flesh, the flagrant consumption of our own bodies.

Much like the doomed and virtuous heroines of the Marquis du Sade, this book follows the faltering steps of a young male ingénue into a world beyond his comprehension, culminating in his total surrender to la petite mort. From initiation to immolation, he is besieged by different mystery schools, each expanding him in mind and body until he comes face to face with the carnal gods.

The journey he takes is a mixture of memory, fantasy and erotic thought. May we make this voyage together and come to love ourselves as no other person could.