How to be Endlessly Erotic

Thank you, darlings, for being so endlessly patient while Pretty Lady revelled silently in the atmosphere of Home. She feels Restored, after sitting for hours upon her favorite dam in the Trinity, occasionally dunking her feet, and watching the autumn leaves course through the sparkling torrent. She has inhaled the particular wild, dusty aromas of dead grass, random cactus and tangled oak leaves; she has contemplated the pink skies and thorny underbrush of her homeland; she has sat long and long with uncompromising western winds rippling through her hair, watching the distance shift from hazy rose to gray-blue to midnight indigo. She has allowed her aura to decompress, expand, and mingle with the laconic expanses and infinite skies of a land which she has never thought to miss or regret, but which flows within her blood as unthinkingly as oxygen. Hmmmmmm.

So, then, Pretty Lady has high hopes that this recharging of batteries will enable her to tackle forcefully the topic of How to Attain a State of Perpetual Mind-Body Orgasm, which we venal human creatures are so endlessly pursuing, either covertly or right out in the shameless open. She knows that her competition in this arena is fierce; moreover, she suspects that she will lose a great deal of her prospective audience right off the bat, when she bluntly declares that Pornography is Not It. Additionally, running one's dating life as though one were auditioning for a porn film won't do it either. Indeed, these things are some of the most potent blocks to living a life of rampant, joyous sensuality; Pretty Lady hopes that her proposed screed will assist, in some small way, toward thrusting the kinky magazines and exotic photographs back into the fleabag alleyways where they belong.

Pretty Lady is ever optimistic.

Now, before you get all exercised and turn away from Pretty Lady's naive rhapsodies in sophisticated disgust, let it be known that Pretty Lady has, in actual fact, seen Debbie Does Dallas. Or at least, she's seen part of it. It proved impossible to view the entire thing before Pretty Lady and her then-lover succumbed to the power of overt suggestion and lost interest in the flickering screen, in favor of the pursuit of more concrete endeavors. Later on, her lover remarked, "It looked like they were having fun." Even now, Pretty Lady has only to think of the phrase, "Roberta, we have a favor to ask of you," in order to get all flustered. Pretty Lady has always been an inexpensive date.

However, when this same adventurous lover took the step of acquiring some more recently-manufactured, sophisticated films via brown-paper mail-order, results were not nearly so scintillating. The stars of these latter artistic productions did not look as though they were having fun; they looked as though they were auditioning for some sort of banal, generic Fame, which made the camera a more significant object by far than either their lascivious actions or their partners. It reminded Pretty Lady of a video she once viewed, of Karen Finley performing: 'oh! It's time to get naked now. It's time to pour the chocolate frosting. It's time to stick the finger up the...' and so on. It was more a semantic gesture than an act imbued with erotic significance.

After viewing that film, Pretty Lady and her boyfriend wrapped themselves in flannel bathrobes, made some Ovaltine, played checkers and fell asleep. Which was fine, in its own pedestrian way.

You see, darlings, Sex as Parts can only go So Far. When one amputates the Sexual from the Personal, the Emotional, the Mysterious, the Particular, the Spiritual and the Intellectual, one hasn't got much left to work with. One has, merely and literally, a Dangling End. This creates two unavoidable problems; first, one has to keep upping the erotic ante to maintain even a semblance of titillation, and one becomes increasingly stringent, in a narrow sense, and critical of one's partner's End. Which can lead to some extremely tacky conversations, not to mention a plummetting sense of self-worth, as one's own End approaches, inevitably, the ground.

The erotic is like a pinch of asafoetida, or perhaps truffle oil, if one is not so fond of Indian food. A very little goes a very long way, imbuing everything it touches with a musky depth; a great deal of it will totally annihilate the senses. Additionally, undiluted and impersonal Sex is quite literally dangerous; it leaves one physically and emotionally vulnerable, to such a degree that the only possible response to casual Sex with a relative stranger is to Shut Down. In men, this Shutting Down response is hard-wired and automatic; in women, Pretty Lady suspects, it is defensive and acquired. The more casually Sex is treated within our culture, the more we all develop Teflon temperaments.

This is why Pretty Lady maintains that it is erotically counterproductive to have sex on the first date. Even in the first month. In fact, Pretty Lady sometimes thinks that if the ultimate act were infinitely postponed, approached by incremental degrees in the manner of Zeno's Paradox, the forces of sublimated erotic tension would expand to such a degree that polluted wilds would be scoured clean, the national budget would be balanced, and Fermat's Last Theorem would be all locked up, by billions of minds in a constant state of high-wired sensitivity. But then, Pretty Lady is operating from a position of extreme femininity; it is a good thing that most boys would vociferously object to this situation, or the human race would die out in one, albeit infinitely productive, generation.

Think back, darlings, to the last time you were in love. If you ever have been. It does not matter if the object of your affections turned out to be a three-timing rat-fink bastard, as so often has been the case in Pretty Lady's experience; we are not concerned with that. We are only concerned with the effects of inchoate erotic affection upon one's immediate environment. Think back to how the world appeared; how every sunset was deep and intense and maudlin in a wholly cliché'd and embarrassing way, how one was prone to walk around the streets grinning like a fool, how one saved up the most trivial incidents of experience to bestow upon one's beloved, suddenly imbued with a radiance and specialness far beyond the gray banality of everyday life.

The world, when one is in love, is suddenly bursting with riotous poetry, profound significance, and tense, ecstatic sensuality. Is it not? So why waste one's time on anything else? Pretty Lady is here to tell you that it can always be that way.

Indeed it can, even if one has been single for so long that one cannot quite remember what actual intercourse felt like. It can be like this even if one has been married for decades; even if one's body is old and withered and never likely to appear in a porn film, even as comic relief. All it takes is a conscious decision to imbue one's everyday attention with the sort of reverence that is generally reserved for weddings, baptisms, funerals, and good erotic literature.

For example: Pretty Lady herself takes a shower nearly every day. A shower! Think of the possibilities! She begins slowly, thoughtfully, loosing her hair from its restrictive clasp, allowing it to cascade wantonly round her shoulders. Then she removes her shoes, those harsh, bulky things, and casts them to the corner. She reaches for the silver taps, arching her back like a cat stretching in the sun; she adjusts the temperature so that it is bitingly hot, just the slightest bit painful, peppery and invigorating. She exuberantly strips off her jeans, her soft, clingy cotton top, her foamy bra and her amusing little bikini bottom, exulting in de-elasticized freedom before bounding into the hammering spray.

Once there, she allows the sensuous jets to saturate her long, mermaid-like hair, falling dense and heavy over bare, silky skin. She basks in the steam and the spray for long, contented moments before reaching for the shampoo...

and we have yet to discuss the niceties of soap, razors, conditioner, towels, and the occasional sea-salt exfoliation treatment. Pretty Lady doesn't want you to get too worked up.

True eroticism, in Pretty Lady's view, is about an infinite, subtle opening up. In its most advanced stages, the mere sight of a bird coursing across the heavens, or a drop of rain tracing a whimsical path down the window, can contain an entire universe of wonder and delight. The catch is, that in order to inhabit such a subtly delightful universe, one must be Safe. One cannot be safely wide-open around rat-fink-bastards who treat the world in general, and you in particular, as so much Kleenex. In avoiding rat-fink-bastards, one must take care not to BE a rat-fink-bastard; this extends, quite logically, to the act of treating one's lovers with the sincere care and reverence of royalty, not with the casual indifference of a one-night-stand.

So if, after considered acquaintance, one cannot avoid feeling a certain contempt, loathing, boredom, indifference, or revulsion for one's companion--physical, intellectual, emotional or otherwise--skip the sex. It isn't worth it. Get a Haagen-Daas and go skipping in the rain instead.