Extra notes about Chapter 32 – Sex and Eros – in the book
The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent.
Chapters 31-39 are not in the original book.
They can be purchased here.
More notes from other chapters here.
Books:
Jack Morin: The Erotic Mind
Sam Hamill: The Erotic Spirit: An Anthology of Poems of Sensuality, Love and Longing
Mary Roach: Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
I don’t talk much in this book about self-pleasuring, but here is a great resource: Sex for One, by Betty Dodson.
Quotes
It’s a good thing nature put a really strong urge in us – or we’d just all say – to hell with this!
– Mallory Austin
If there’s anything more awkward than sex, it’s the way we handle the way anybody else has sex.
– Jon Stewart (on a Daily Show episode years ago)
If you’ve been sexually active in America, you’ve got battle scars. If you’re like most people, you work around them.
– David Cates
Our sexual energy is like a spaceship which can transport us to beautiful and interesting new worlds where we can bring back incredible treasures; but most of us use our spaceship to go down the street to pick up a loaf of white bread.
– Ki Bournes
Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.
– Butch Hancock
Tip: Variance is the norm when it comes to human sexuality, so “Is this normal?” is almost always the wrong question. Here are some much better ones: Is this consensual? Is it safe? Is it mutually pleasurable?
– Dan Savage, Facebook post, 12-3-17
My upbringing taught me certain things about sex: never do it by yourself; never do it outside of marriage; always do it with a female; and always, always, always remember, God is watching wherever and whenever you do it.
– J Drew Lanham, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature
“When your client comes, you must always groan as if you were having an orgasm too. That guarantees customer satisfaction.”
“But why? They’re just paying for their own satisfaction.”
“No, that’s where you are wrong. A man doesn’t prove he’s a man by getting an erection. He’s only a real man if he can pleasure a woman. And if he can pleasure a prostitute, he’ll think he’s the best lover on the block.”
– Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
About Eros
Our erotic imagination is an exuberant expression of our aliveness, and one of the most powerful tools we have for keeping desire alive.
– Esther Perel
We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.
– Audré Lorde
Walking barefoot on the earth; drinking a cold glass of water; eating a fresh summer peach; breathing in warm air – these basic, often unconscious daily acts are not in fact mundane but are sublime and sensuous eco-erotic connections to the more-than-human world. If we truly felt this, in our guts, in our cells, would we continue to poison our soils and water? Mine our mountains? Genetically alter our seeds? I think not. The metaphysics of eco-erotics teaches us that we are related to everything through a visceral kinship and that our cosmo-genealogical connections to all life demand that we treat our relatives with great reverance and appreciation.
– Melissa K. Nelson
Poetry
Ours is the true, the authentic, the naked Love, and beneath us,
Rocking in rhythm, the bed creaks the dear song of our joy.
— Goethe, Roman Elegies III
When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep.
Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.
– Rumi
Winter skies are cold and low,
With harsh winds and freezing sleet.
But when we make love beneath our quilt,
We make three summers months of heat.
– Tzu Yeh (4th century China, translation by Sam Hamill (Midnight Flute, Shambala Press)