The Garden Salon

“… this internal requirement toward excellence, which we learn from the erotic, must not be misconstrued as demanding the impossible either from ourselves or others, because such a demand incapacitates everyone in the process. For the erotic is not a question of what we do alone; it is a question of how acutely, how fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors brings us closest to that fullness.”

Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

I was the first person to give myself an orgasm. I’m the only person to have tasted my tears. These sensations are different vantage points on a hike: a southern exposed clearing over the cliff or a cold creek flowing down to a river in the heart of the woods. I live in a society that is addicted to creating the illusion of binaries and opposites. People claim to hate labels here too, but it can be good to know what we are feeling, holding, hating, loving, or afraid of. Crying or cumming exists on the same journey and offers a lesson: Feel.

On a summer night in 2010, my sister, our friend, and I sat parked in the Cookout parking lot of our hometown. Up too late with nothing to do, I told them about an interactive erotica story I’d found online. The story featured a Black lesbian – which was hard to find then it seemed to me as a novice to the genre. But what I really loved about this story is that you could choose her actions to determine what happened next. I found it fascinating, intriguing, and arousing of course. I mainly wanted to share because of the creativity of the process. Without having the words at the time, I found the power of the erotic in the presentation of this story more intriguing than the hinting at and allusions to sex (it was a mildly spicy story not very graphic at all.)

Our friend pulled up the site on his phone and we all took turns choosing an option when the protagonist arrived at a fork in the road. It was drizzling outside, and I felt safe to explore this taboo subject with them. Our friend and my sister did not seem as intrigued by the interactive aspect of the story. I thought perhaps since he was gay, he didn’t care for the “irrelevant” subject matter. I assumed my sister was just being negative which was typical at the time. I appreciated that we got to the end, but it didn’t feel like they were as impressed with the delivery of this narrative as I was. I never asked them about it later, I just decided to maybe keep things I liked to myself. I wonder now if they were looking for more explicit content, and that makes me laugh. I was nerding out about the game like aspect of this soft-porn. Whereas, they probably wanted to “see some action”. This experience did, however, help establish a standard of security and curiosity in talking about sex and play as something I should be able to do with friends and people. Albeit, I’d like to have reciprocal pleasure in the process, mechanics, and craft of the erotic.

In her essay Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, Audre Lorde illustrates how systems of oppression extract the erotic value from every aspect of our lives, even sex. This drain of erotic power renders nearly everything pornographic. A degrading transaction, rooted in capitalism and and white supremacist norms. How sustainable is this kind of relationship to sex, to life, to self?

Taking back our erotic and re-establishing our right to our erotic from the systems designed to steal it from us, is a personal and communal act of resistance. On the mention of the erotic, many minds go toward the act of sex or something sexual; this is the very reductionist thinking Lorde talks about in her essay. Her words grant us the keys to the shackles; which of our various life endeavors bring us closer to that fullness.

I raised a husky a few years ago and he taught me so much about prioritizing pleasure. This dog did what he wanted, when he wanted, and most of his desires were not sexual. Our inherent erotic power is a testament to our animalness. How do we stop complying with rules and standards that rob the erotic power and diminish our opportunities to explore what feels exciting, fun, fulfilling, delightful, and satisfying? Why do we so often believe these are things we must work for and earn?

I worked at a day camp when I was 25. One day in the computer lab, a camper popped her head up from her cell phone and inquired of the group, “Y’all want to know the most important thing you can do in a relationship?” No one responded, she was annoying. After a beat, beaming, she said, “Compromise.” Her mic-drop moment mortified me. My first thought was who taught her this?

I asked her how old her boyfriend was. She told me 15. I hope that’s the truth, some girls are forthcoming when they are “with (read as being groomed by)” an older person. I was still disturbed. A fifteen-year-old girl believing her highest function in a relationship is to compromise with a fifteen-year-old boy is deranged. Compromise what? Whether or not to leave the crust on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

For someone so young to not only believe this but to also proselytize to other girls what they must give up to maintain relationships was concerning. What’s even more concerning is how many people never grow out of this ideal. Adults teach this to children, through (trans)actions, misnomered as relationships, and the cycle continues. Meanwhile, boys are rarely raised to consider what they ought to concede in order to please or keep a girl around. And the cycle continues.

A relationship with the erotic can not only interrupt this cycle, but abolish it. Abolition being removing what doesn’t serve us and planting something new and delicious in its place. Invoking the erotic in this recalling does not mean I am sexualizing young people. This story shows us how early beliefs and values perpetuate transaction and settling, especially for girls. Transactions especially more expensive for girls and women.

A youth moving in her erotic power might focus on learning about herself and what brings her joy in a relationship. Rather than what parts of herself to smother or destroy to keep a relationship. She may say something to her peers like “The most important thing in a relationship is being able to share interests, to feel safe enough to try things, to ask questions that help each other open up, to be curious.” She may not speak in absolutes about the significant roles and functions of a relationship at all. She may question the prioritization of romance with the opposite sex in a society that is teaching him to dismiss her as human being and expect parts of her body and all of her labor.

A teenager, a child, or an adult able to access their erotic self authentically may not rely on the sexual at all to deepen connection to self and others. Perhaps they find fullness in so many things that they rarely fall into the traps of power struggle or doctrines of sacrifice that our binary-obsessed society loves to project.

An erotic awareness does not ignore the sexual, it includes it in a holistic understanding that living and existing has so much to offer by way of feeling and being. I encourage listening to and reading Lorde’s essay because it’s fucking great.

The erotica writing sessions offered at the Garden Salon are designed to build that erotic awareness through play and writing. I dream of us all taking back our erotic power until the cups are full and we are free of the constraints of a system that reduces living to extractive transactions. The pornographic, wage slave suffering, and dismemberment in exchange for the pretense of partnership are false realities we do not have to stay in or agree to.

We are beings, not objects. We arrived worthy and whole to this life. We deserve to find out what endeavors get us to that fullness. It would be an honor to remind you and explore with you in the Garden Salon.

Dembe knee-deep in mud, looking right at me.