Lipton’s Journal/February 1, 1955/405: Difference between revisions

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I may have a clue to the lack of sexual drive in the three-quarter saint. As I have gone through my self-analysis, perversions which once gave me great excitement now give less. They seem less dirty, more natural. Along with my general exaltation goes less sexual heat and less depression. It is the thing which has been worrying me. My sexual urge now seems to come out in the flow of ideas and the release of emotions. I don’t believe this is totally natural nor totally healthy, but it may be that all of us who were born under the weight of a society which denied sex except as the dirty, can feel saintly emotions—as occasionally I do—only when we have purged ourselves of sexual guilt. But we bear the scar.  
The Catholic would argue, “You see, you admit a three-quarter saint who can do without sex. How do you account for that?” To which I would answer that it is a riddle although probably not insurmountable, but that it is certainly less of a riddle than that there is a God who gave Life{{refn|An early, rudimentary statement of {{NM}}’s belief in a divided universe, a semi-gnostic vision discussed at length first in a 1959 interview, “Hip, Hell and the Navigator” (collected in ''[[Advertisements for Myself]]''), and most fully in a series of conversations with J. Michael Lennon in ''[[07.39|On God: An Uncommon Conversation]]'' (2007).}} but immediately ceded the dispensing of life and the life energies over to a Devil. That is the total contradiction on which {{LJ:S}} rests, but it is so exhausting, so static, that until {{LJ:H}} began to express itself as Reason in the early Renaissance, Western slumbered in shit—giving snores of torture.


Sexual guilt was the catalyst which opened sex to us. In other words, in the process of growing up, the dirt-sex identification became so engraved upon us that to wash away the connotations of dirt was to wash away much of sex. Perhaps that is the answer to the three-quarter saints. They could accept the whore, they could accept the dirt, and so sexual urge diminished, perhaps even vanished. But the real saint, the saint-who-has-not-yet-appeared, would not even bear the scar. His sexual urge would be joyous, and how joyous. Once in my life I had a taste of full orgasm. It was my first, and it was incredibly lovely.
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[[Category:February 1, 1955]]
[[Category:February 1, 1955]]

Latest revision as of 10:41, 12 April 2021

The Catholic would argue, “You see, you admit a three-quarter saint who can do without sex. How do you account for that?” To which I would answer that it is a riddle although probably not insurmountable, but that it is certainly less of a riddle than that there is a God who gave Life[1] but immediately ceded the dispensing of life and the life energies over to a Devil. That is the total contradiction on which S rests, but it is so exhausting, so static, that until H began to express itself as Reason in the early Renaissance, Western slumbered in shit—giving snores of torture.


note

  1. ↑ An early, rudimentary statement of Mailer’s belief in a divided universe, a semi-gnostic vision discussed at length first in a 1959 interview, “Hip, Hell and the Navigator” (collected in Advertisements for Myself), and most fully in a series of conversations with J. Michael Lennon in On God: An Uncommon Conversation (2007).


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