I’ve been struggling with the blog topic of pleasure because each time I start to write about the yumminess of it, what swings in bombastically and unannounced are the injustices and wrongs of our time, the many tasks I need to attend to, and all the things my monkey mind tells me are more important. This has been the case while trying to write this post but also with enjoying the things that cultivate pleasure in my daily life. 

“You don’t have time for this,” the monkey says in outrage. “You should be working on something that will make money or doing something that’s actually making a difference on the planet. I mean just look at this place! Don’t you see what’s going on?” 

“I do see what’s going on, monkey,” I reply. And I wonder, is this not the exact tactic of how extractive systems bend us to their dominance and power-over ways? Somehow their monkey has co-opted my own, and in cahoots with each other, they derail my own ability and efforts to slow down and melt into a pleasurable moment, be it jerking off, making a meal for myself, or taking time on my walk to put my nose into the spring flowers and inhale deeply. 

Yesterday I finished my qigong class and immediately took to the bed to masturbate. I didn’t have long so I employed my dirtiest surefire fantasy and the first orgasm pulsed through me quickly. But I needed more so I kept going. As I stroked my body I mentally took things off my morning list that weren’t absolutely necessary. Then spontaneously, instead of deliciously nasty fantasies, I wrapped an arm around my ribcage and began speaking to the deep inner self that only I know.

“I trust you,” I said out loud as I rocked my hips. “I trust your signals. I trust these good feelings. I’ve got you and I’m not going anywhere.” And when I came again it was with tears and loud sobs. The release was one of heartbreak, and the present moment I’d been avoiding rushed in as pleasure but also as grief. As my back arched, honesty and delight exploded from some deep place within that has no name and flooded my cells. And the things I’d been pushing away in an attempt to feel better no longer had power over me. My ears buzzed and either the room or my own head filled with a hum similar to the sound of being on a journey with the mushroom people. 

Pleasure is simple, it’s all the other stuff that’s complicated. Pleasure is radical and it is through it that we can do our part to tear down the current obnoxious but decrepit system, to help it along in its death throes even, and become bridges for a new story, one that holds aloft pleasure in equal parts to a job well done, and a good honest day’s work. That I have a body, and an organ solely dedicated to pleasure, means that I belong to pleasure and pleasure belongs to me.

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