Moving forward using all my breath

Making love to you was never second best

I saw the world thrashing all around your face

Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace

I’ll stop the world and melt with you

You’ve seen the difference and

It’s getting better all the time

There’s nothing you and I won’t do

I’ll stop the world and melt with you

(Modern English)

Touch is the essence of bonding between lovers. The deepest and most profoundly erotic moments might be the ones we may not realize as such. It might be the way our skin feels against each other’s during sleep, or a kiss along the back of the neck. Their finger hooked into the crook of yours during a walk together. The scent of their skin remaining on the neck of a shirt. It might be more erotic to discover how much your mate loves his or her feet rubbed during a loving foot massage, when you can allow them to fully let go without expectations. Kissing and licking their toes can be highly erotic in such cases, and chances are good that kissing the arch of their foot expands the horizon on foreplay.

Bonding and intimacy are enhanced by caressing, touching and being together. Touch itself  doesn’t need to involve anything more than just the touch of skin together. Eroticism can be found in the familiarity of our lover’s scent, the tone of their voice or their heartbeat to our chest. Eroticism is discovered when we are being present. Being aware of our senses allows us to open to any state of pleasure. Stopping the world to melt together is pure joy. The pleasure of the discovery of each other can be unlimited.

I’ve been reading a few articles on pair bonding— neurobiology has it that we bond through affectionate gestures like any other pair bonding sort of mammals. Caressing, grooming, cooing, sighing, and eye contact keep us together but not the act of sex itself. So in other words, penetration isn’t the main course of sex and bonding, but touch is. Oxytocin, the “love” hormone, is part of this magical state of being.

When oxytocin is released in our brains and bodies, we feel like we are softly melting. We are high on oxytocin. Oxytocin makes us feel contentment, reduces anxiety and increases good feelings around our mate. Studies have shown that oxytocin levels increase after orgasm and are part of sexual arousal. This does not surprise me at all. Each time I was pregnant and ready for birth, nipple stimulation during active childbirth helped the delivery along. Nipple stimulation produces more oxytocin, which is necessary for increasing uterine contractions. Sex is enhanced by oxytocin and so is childbirth. And so is love.

Oxytocin helps us orgasm too.

Brain chemistry alone isn’t enough. We have that mysterious aspect of us that we call the soul. Our souls must feel safe, secure, cared for and, in the words of Thomas Moore from his book The Soul of Sex, “Like everything human, sensation cannot be separated from the imagination.” Our lover’s body, face, scent and touch inspire us to let go and we succumb to the pleasure of love and loving, of being loved and giving love.

Our minds are also  full of all that buzzing and bubbling chemistry and electric neurological magic. Erotic love is a shape-shifter. It comes alive in the imagination. We can imagine anything we want to during sex, about sex. Erotic fantasies are the playground for our deepest desires and lightest whims. If we want to imagine an orgy in which we are the central focus, perhaps that fantasy satisfies something in us that we need or attentions that we require. But fantasy doesn’t have to mean something psychologically deep either. It can just be a fascination with orgies and a curiosity that we wouldn’t play out in our reality. It can stay in fantasy. The fluidity of erotic fantasy is like dreaming.

Being present with our lover enhances our bond with them. There have been a few times that the idea of only kissing together was discussed with my lover. We tried it a few times. Just caressing and kissing — even in the car. Well, I have to admit, we gave in to having sex in the car. But, it worked. Kissing was powerful foreplay for us.

Kissing is actually highest on the charts for both men and women as the main thing that turns them on the most and brings them together. Men, according to Your Tango Tokii survey, put kissing at the top of the list for foreplay, and 57% of men say “yes” to kissing. So, pucker up and smooch away. Men love it more than you think. They love it even more than women do, supposedly.

 “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty ‘yes’ to your adventure.” 
~ Joseph Campbell

Sex and love. It’s an adventure. Be present. When we are solely focused upon reaching orgasm we can lose sight of being present. We seek that climb toward ecstasy rather than simply losing ourselves in our lover’s eyes and dissolving into the other. We are preoccupied with orgasm as the goal— for some men trying to hold back from orgasm is the distraction. For some women, trying to have an orgasm is the elusive goal. And when we are yearning too strongly for that marvelous feeling, it becomes the antithesis of letting go. We can try too hard or focus too much on that one moment. Thus, we aren’t being present. We strive for that feeling that will lead us to a better sensation, and then even better: orgasm. If it happens effortlessly, then the beauty of sex is breathing through us naturally. The flow of erotic touch inspires us. There are many women who cannot achieve orgasm at all. Psychological blocks, physical problems, and difficulty staying erect and/or achieving orgasm due to age, along with hormone changes, can all affect a man’s ability to orgasm. Anorgasmic men exist as well.

There are some men that fear that they won’t remain as virile or as hard, and if they can’t then women (their wife, their girlfriend), may not be satisfied. A myriad of worries can run through their minds. What if I can’t stay hard? And, what if? Then what? Will she want another man? What if I can’t please her? Well, women are very forgiving, generally. There are other ways to stay connected and give pleasure. Kissing, touching, oral pleasure (for both— even if he can’t stay hard or orgasm— go for it anyway), caressing and fingers work wonders. Giving each other a massage, pillow talk, and laughter can be satisfying ways to bond and stay bonded.  Believe me, just kissing while naked in bed is really fun. And so is watching your lover’s favorite sitcom while snuggled together in the nude. Do it once, and you’ll feel like teenagers in love again.

The psychological and emotional satisfaction levels increase when we are touching each other with affection. The pornographic internet-generated depictions of sex and its one-dimensional façade is junk food compared to the poetry and art of intimacy: the richness of a lover’s kiss, the soulful expression of their eyes, the sigh of their chest when love fills them with emotion, the tight embrace and the feeling that you just cannot get close enough. The meaningful experience of sex can be discovered before and beyond penetration. In fact, penetration, although satisfying in its own right, isn’t really necessary when all the ingredients for soulful sex are present. It becomes superfluous. Yes, that’s right, I said it. Penetration isn’t everything. Don’t read that as if I don’t enjoy it. Oh, I love it. What I’m saying is, penetration is part of, but not the whole of, sex.

Intimacy is delicate; a vulnerable spot in the heart of our erotic selves. We want and crave the closeness. For women (and I say most of this without any scholarly study, just my experiential references), could it be that the weight of their lover upon them echoes an instinctual craving to be taken, to surrender, to be mated with? Male lions grasp the nape of the female’s neck with their teeth while they mount and mate with them. I found this intriguing and it sounded pretty nice too, the whole act. I love my neck bitten, don’t you? The female instinct to surrender is part of the mating dance.

 Then, the Eastern wisdom of tantric sex and all its mystery lifts its veil. The pleasure of receiving expands our awareness, the height of erotic transcendence.

Ancient Chinese Taoists believed ejaculating depleted a man’s vital life energy, or “chi,” so men were taught to preserve their sexual fluid in order to build their vitality.

In Taoist sexual practices, women are encouraged to have frequent and multiple orgasms. This gives the man even more vitality so he can also stay within the woman for as long as possible in order to absorb the woman’s vital life juices and powerful energy, or “yin essence” (“yin essence” is also a euphemism for “sexual fluid”). Well, it makes me want to be a Taoist.

When I am making love with my man I often, and sometimes with mixed emotion, wish that he would just suddenly come inside of me. (Remember, I’m the one that said “penetration isn’t everything?”) I want him to come because I love him so much; it’s instinctual and in that moment I want him to make me pregnant. I want it down to my bones. Love is made of such dreams. I want to melt with him.

So, yes, I’ve been dreaming about it as well. One dream made me smile during sleep. He was awake and watching my face. He asked what I was dreaming of. In the dream, it was so vivid: I was in a hospital recovery room and I had just given birth. Next to me, my lover’s mother cradling our newborn child. She, his mother and the new grandma, hummed a song and rocked the baby softly. The warmth of the dream, the sweet feeling it gave me inside, radiated through my face while I slept. As my darling caressed my face and asked softly what I was dreaming I just smiled a sweet, happy smile. It was a soul deep happiness and a feeling of wholeness in my relationship. I felt belonging. I felt like everything was right.

Not just for my own pleasure do I want to melt and belong to him, but I want to satisfy his desire, his instinct. We make sex complex when sometimes the instincts are just so true to our human nature. I long to feel his slick come inside of me, hot and milky, smelling like springtime and freshly cut grass. That beautiful tenderness overwhelms me when he gives me so much pleasure. I want to feel him fill me with the pulse of his orgasm, the flood of his ejaculation and that dripping tickle when it runs out from me. When I stand up I want to feel his come trickle down my thigh. Sometimes what brings me to orgasm is the notion that he is going to make me pregnant. When he gazes at me when we are making love, I wonder where he is taking me or how far into me his eyes are going. What does he see in me when he gives me one orgasm after another? It’s an adventure, this tantric kind of sex. In a way, we have transcended to another level of sexual pleasure together.

One day we spent the entire day making love. This sounds exaggerated, but really, the entire day just making love. Parts of “making love” involved him making an omelette for me, some tea for us to share, but still we had sex numerous times and the resting moments in between were still “making love” as far as I’m concerned. Because my body was so attuned to his and I had multiple orgasms each round of lovemaking, the last time we made love I came so intensely I felt an energetic flood of orgasm begin in my sex, radiate through my body going upwards through my belly, through my breasts, nipples, and up further out the top of my head, simultaneously—- I felt this orgasm move through my hips, my legs and down through my toes. I was tingling and shaking. That, my dear readers, was a veritable “full body orgasm” without question. That is what tantric sex is all about. Gosh, everyone should experience that in life. I was so high from that orgasm, I felt it tingle through me for hours. Hours. I was giddy, giggly and completely goofy.

“Love is touching souls.” ~ Joni Mitchell

I already have children and I am a mother; happy with my three children, not wanting anymore. Besides, I’m not young anymore or young enough to handle more pregnancies. I know the dream of becoming pregnant again is just a dream. But something else penetrates me when we make love. I become one with him. It sounds corny, but I feel like we are together when we are apart. I believe in soul mates, and I believe we are part of each other when we love deeply.

“Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual.” ~Octavio Paz

Surrendering to another person is an exquisite feeling. It is also terrifying. It’s been a part of my psyche and played its role in my soul’s growth. Being a submissive type of woman— only when I’m in control of that, mind you— I take pleasure in relinquishing all. In most cases, romantically speaking, I’ve been the one that’s sought after, desired, and taken. In the moment of the taking, I delight in the feeling of giving myself over to the passionate experience of love, lust or whatever you have in mind. Only once did I ever pursue and aggressively ‘take’ a man (to bed), and it was not exactly the kind of experience that suited my needs. You see, I love to surrender. (I do have a funny story about that moment, but that I will save for another time.) There is a deliciousness that builds from sexual tension. The surrender, then, is blissful, yielding, opening.

“This hunger of the eyes, skin, of the whole body and spirit, which made others criminals, robbers, rapers, barbarians, which caused wars, invasions, plundering and murder, in Djuna, at the age of puberty, alchemized into love. Whatever was missing she became: she became mother, father, cousin, brother, friend, confidant, guide, companion to all. This power of absorption, this sponge of receptivity which might have fed itself forever to fill the early want, she used to receive all communication of the need of others. The need and hunger became nourishment. Her breasts, which no poverty had been able to wither, were heavy with the milk of lucidity, the milk of devotion.

This hunger. . . became love.

While wearing the costume of utter femininity, the veils and the combs, the gloves and the perfumes, the muffs and the heels of femininity, she nevertheless disguised in herself an active lover of the world, the one was was actively roused by the object of his love, the one who was made strong as man is made strong in the center of his being by the softness of his love.

Loving in men and women, not their strength but their softness, not their fullness but their hunger, not their plenitude but their needs.”  ~ Ladders to Fire, Anais Nin

Surrender is ecstasy when you allow it. The loss of control, letting go of everything, and giving over to something or someone is a kind of freedom. When I gave birth the second time, I had to learn how to let go. Birthing is the biggest letting go one can do. My first childbirth experience was not like that at all. I refused to let go, and I suffered. So, the second time I gave birth I practiced the art of letting go. It was a psychedelic experience. My body knew what to do. The body itself has an innate and supremely ancient wisdom. Letting go is all about trust. Tension causes pain. I learned this the hard way the first time. The second and third time I gave birth, pure joy. By completely letting go and surrendering to the experience of childbirth, I saw everything sparkle. Colors were vivid, and I had a big “a-ha” moment. As I was about to give birth, I looked at my birthing doula and laughed quizzically, “I don’t know.” She smiled, seemed amused, and said, “What don’t you know?”

I laughed, “I don’t know.”

This was the funniest thing in the world, at the very moment of birth, I had no idea about anything. It was a riddle, and it was an answer. It was everything and nothing. It was complete surrender. Joy, of course, came after.

Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips. 
~Percy Bysshe Shelley

Kissing is surrendering to another. In the first moment of giving in to a passionate feeling, the kiss opens us. We are tender, full of emotion. There is an eroticism in being vulnerable. Surrendering to passion is giving in to the moment of desire, letting it sweep you away. Being taken by emotion, the yielding is what happens, opening ourselves— mind, body, and soul. Being psychologically penetrated is a kind of surrender. Opening one’s mind to another’s—sharing experiences, telling tales and stories about one’s life— is a form of surrender. Letting another into our metaphorical hearts, there is actual physical pain in the center of one’s chest. It’s not pleasant; it feels like standing on the edge of a balcony looking downward— falling in love— and just may be equal to the sensation of jumping out of a plane. For some. For me, at least.

The feeling of opening one’s self, whether it be all at once or over a period of years, is surrendering to love. And what if the parachute is broken? Then what?

“Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.” ~Albert Einstein 

Ah, the mysteries of sex. Like a labyrinth, the mystery of erotic love is an adventure that takes me deep within my soul. There’s no reasoning, no logic. Life takes on a mythical and magical quality. I discover and decipher. I feel fine-tuned for creative energy. I see things clearly; I feel intensely. Alive, full of fire, music and the elemental and invisible wonders of life. During a passionate moment, I have seen the most beautiful things within my lover’s eyes. The invisible becomes visible within the heart. Sweat from his body smells good. I can’t kiss his mouth enough, and I want him like nothing else in the world. I want him, desire him. I feel it deep in my bones. There are no words. Everything that comes out of my mouth sounds cliché. The only thing I can do is express this feeling with active affection and passion. Grasping his hair during sex, squeezing his body against mine, biting his shoulder, kissing his mouth— hunger, fire. I write poetry, I paint, I write. I am in the moment, and I feel alive. Inspiration comes from the darkness. From the invisible threads woven through my chemistry, the power of sex is the seed of creativity. Sex becomes a spiritual opening, a doorway to the mystery. A passage through the labyrinth with a thread of red fleece. The pleasure of yes is surrendering to love, surrendering to passion and desire.

“I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he
 asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first
 I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so 
he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was
 going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
 ~James Joyce

James Joyce wrote this letter to his beloved Nora:

My dear Nora,

It has just struck me. I came in at half past eleven. Since then I have been sitting in an easy chair like a fool. I could do nothing. I hear nothing but your voice. I am like a fool hearing you call me ‘Dear.’ I offended two men today by leaving them coolly. I wanted to hear your voice, not theirs.


When I am with you I leave aside my contemptuous, suspicious nature. I wish I felt your head on my shoulder. I think I will go to bed.


I have been a half-hour writing this thing. Will you write something to me? I hope you will. How am I to sign myself? I won’t sign anything at all, because I don’t know what to sign myself.

(James Joyce)

Passionate love overwhelms the senses. The lover is on fire. When in love, I can’t think. I can’t do anything but crave my lover’s touch, hear their voice, and, even in the daily routines of life, I am consumed by the flame of desire.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. 
In the beginning a flame, very pretty, 
Often hot and fierce, 
But still only light and flickering. 
As love grows older, 
Our hearts mature 
and our love becomes as coals, 
Deep-burning and unquenchable. 
~ Bruce Lee 

Fire is a common thread among lovers past and present. When experiencing the feeling of falling in love, I have also felt the fire of passion wildly burning inside of me. Erotic love and all the colors of passion are full of fire and symbols of transformative yearning.

A letter by Napoleon Bonaparte to his lover Josephine:

I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil. Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart!

Are you angry? Do I see you looking sad? Are you worried?… My soul aches with sorrow, and there can be no rest for your lover; but is there still more in store for me when, yielding to the profound feelings which overwhelm me, I draw from your lips, from your heart, a love which consumes me with fire? Ah! it was last night that I fully realized how false an image of you your portrait gives!

 You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours.

 Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.
 (Napoleon Bonaparte)

Napoleon mentions that “a love which consumes (him) with fire” and that Josephine’s kisses “set (his) blood on fire” so he asks her not to give any kisses in return. He is already burning.

Another love letter by Victor Hugo to his amor:

My dearest,

When two souls, which have sought each other for, however long in the throng, have finally found each other …a union, fiery and pure as they themselves are… begins on earth and continues forever in heaven.

This union is love, true love, … a religion, which deifies the loved one, whose life comes from devotion and passion, and for which the greatest sacrifices are the sweetest delights.

This is the love which you inspire in me… Your soul is made to love with the purity and passion of angels; but perhaps it can only love another angel, in which case I must tremble with apprehension.

Yours forever,

Victor Hugo 

The transcendent aspect of passionate love is an erotic exhilaration for the soul. The eyes, the voice, the smell, the taste, and every bit of the beloved sends the lover into a rapturous moment. Delicious passionate sex, open-hearted and orgasmic, bring two people closer to the gods and goddesses of myth and legend, to angels, to transform them into fire and blaze into ether, where they return into the stars and the universe.

“At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.” ~Plato

In the floating world where all things change

Love never changes by promising never to change.

(Geisha song)

Courtesans, Prostitutes, & Geisha

During Edo-period Japan (1600-1867), the yujo were the highest class of all courtesans. These sex professionals were trained in the bedroom arts from the time they were young: blossoming into womanhood, mastering the erotic arts, flourishing as a prostitute of a high order. Prostitution during that era of Japan was legal, but carefully licensed. One such ‘red lantern district’ was Shimabara, the Pleasure Quarter of Kyoto. Another was Yoshiwara, the Pleasure District of Edo (Tokyo).

The yujo were not geisha. They were the royalty of prostitutes, the refined artisans of erotica and lovemaking. Seduction was their art form from the way they used their harigata (dildo) to how to pleasure a man (shakuhachi しゃくはち or fellatio). Yujo knew about aphrodisiacs and the exotic practice of kissing (seppun). The Yujo women were “love artists.”

This romantic era of Japan was called Ukiyo

(Japanese: 浮世 “Floating World”)

From the Wikipedia resource, this Renaissance period of art and pleasure described the Edo pleasure district as:

“Yoshiwara, the licensed red-light district of Edo (modern Tokyo), which was the site of many brothels, chashitsu tea houses, and kabuki theaters frequented by Japan’s growing middle class. 

People involved in mizu shōbai (水商売) (“the water trade”) would include hōkan (comedians), kabuki (popular theatre of the time), dancers, dandies, rakes, tea-shop girls, Kanō (painters of the official school of painting), courtesans who resided in seirō (green houses) and geisha in their okiya houses.

The courtesans would consist of  yujo (women of pleasure/prostitutes), kamuro (young female students), shinzō (senior female students), hashi-jōro (lower-ranking courtesans), kōshi-jōro (high-ranking courtesans just below tayū), tayū (high-ranking courtesans), oiran (“castle-topplers,” named that way for how quickly they could part a daimyō (lord) from his money), yarite (older chaperones for an oiran), and the yobidashi who replaced the tayū when they were priced out of the market.

In addition to courtesans, there were also geisha/geiko, maiko (apprentice geishas), otoko geisha (male geishas), danna (patrons of a geisha), and okasan (geisha teahouse managers). The lines between geisha and courtesans were sharply drawn, however – a geisha was never to be sexually involved with a customer, though there were exceptions.

The term “water trade” (mizu-shobai 水商売) is the “floating world” which is metaphor for floating, drinking, and impermanence. Sex was like water. Water was “yin” and feminine, and, conversely, a man’s sexual energy was “yang” energy. Sex during the Edo-period Ukiyo life was imbued with poetry, art, and dream-like desire. Longing and secrets, mystery and lust.

Waiting anxiously for you

Unable to sleep, but falling into a doze—

Are those words of love

Floating to my pillow,

Or is this too a dream…?

My eyes open and here is my tear-drenched sleeve.

Perhaps it was a sudden rain.

(Geisha song)

Geisha were not permitted to have sexual relations with the yujo’s customers. The term “Geisha” means “Artist” and the art of Geisha was entertainment— dance, shamisen playing, and flirtatious conversation. The yujo were the sexual artists, great lovers, and ladies of pleasure. They were elegant enchantresses of the pillow.

Within the shoji screened worlds of tea houses, brothels, and the theater, geisha and yujo were not the only women of pleasure. There were varying levels of class and status within their own floating worlds— the Shiro (white) Geisha that entertained and flirted, the Joro (whore) Geisha were the tawdry types, and the Machi (town) Geisha were former dancing girls (odoriko). Lower class prostitutes and amateur whores were illegally working the towns outside of pleasure districts.

Even further into darkness were the unmentioned girls and women that came into the world of prostitution without a choice. Girls sold into brothels, not the beautiful sort of life that the yujo and geisha led. The Yoshiwara district alone was home to about 1,750 women in the 18th century.

Geisha embody the extreme feminine allure in Japan, as opposed to the wife’s position in Japanese society. Geisha are witty and elicit fantasies; they intrigue and delight. The wife at home may appreciate the geisha’s art of entertaining her husband, relieving her of such matters. The wife ruled the domestic household and her husband’s finances, raised children, while the geisha entertained, flirted, and enchanted.

Artists of the Floating World: Erotic Paintings

Shunga-e paintings were the erotica of the Edo-period, and the artists that created shunga-e were sometimes the same as those who made the famous Ukiyo-e woodblock prints— famous artists of Edo were also the creators of erotic prints and pornographic fantasies.

Artists of the Erotic Shunga-e were also great artists in general. Such as Katsushika Hokusai, who created Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景 Fugaku Sanjūrokkei) and the famous image The Great Wave off Kanagawa (神奈川沖浪裏 Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura).

Hokusai’s erotic art was also made with great talent. Most notably, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife

(蛸と海女 Tako to ama, Octopus and shell diver).

Making love with you

Is like drinking sea water.

The more I drink

The thirstier I become,

Until nothing can slake my thirst

But to drink the entire sea.

(Marichiko)

(Hokusai ~ Exhausted Lovers)

Romantic & Erotic Love in Ancient Japan

Romance and courtship in Heian-period Japan, pre-Edo times set in ancient Kyoto (Heian-kyo), painted the landscape for lovers brushing their hearts out in calligraphy into fervent love letters. Poetry was the vehicle of erotic love, longing, passion and desire. Lovemaking etiquette was such that even the ladies of the court and their noblemen were hot for sex and romance, writing poems to pursue, to enchant, and to express their innermost secrets of their hearts.

 An excerpt from Lesley Downer’s book, Women of the Pleasure Quarters: The Secret History of Geisha:

“But what made Heian period most extraordinary was the way in which art and the cult of beauty were bound up with love. For more than sexual desire or gut-wrenching passion, love was an art form, an opportunity to put brush to paper, to immortalize the moment in a small literary gem.

Having heard that a certain lady was very beautiful or, even more titillating, had beautiful handwriting, a nobleman would sit down to compose a waka, a thirty-one syllable poem, and brush it, in his finest calligraphy, on delicately hued scented paper. When she received it, the lady would assess the handwriting and color of the paper as well as the wit and appropriateness of the poem before brushing a reply. The nobleman would be waiting with bated breath to see whether her handwriting and poem lived up to expectations.

If the exchange of poems was satisfactory, he would eventually assay a visit. He would creep in at night and immediately, in the pitch darkness, remove his clothes, lift the silken counterpane, lie down on the hard straw mat next to the lady and without further ado consummate the relationship. Slipping away before dawn, he would then brush an eloquent morning-after poem, bewailing the rising of the sun or the crowing of the cock announcing the hour of farewell. The lady in her turn would brush a reply. Thus through poems they communicated their decision as to whether to continue the affair or not.”

Erecting like

The upwards curve of a

Threatening shakuhachi

The shakuhachi is a flute, and ‘shakuhachi curve’ suggests a strong penis. The phallic symbol of the instrument allowed Edo-minded lovers to playfully muse about fellatio. As provocative as blowing a flute was to the lustful minds of Ukiyo era, the flute was used in many woodblocks prints to suggest the oral pleasure. Other slang terms for sex and sexual innuendos were “jade gate” for a woman’s sex and “jade stalk” and “matsutake” (or mushroom) for a man’s penis, and “selling spring” was to suggest selling sex, as the season “Spring” was utilized in poems and the sex trade as a multi-purpose term for sex.

I hold your head tight

Between my thighs and press

Against your mouth and

Float away forever in

An orchid boat 

On the River of Heaven.

(Marichiko)

Geisha & Prostitutes in Love

Geisha were not allowed by their very nature to fall in love. Neither were prostitutes. It was the danger of the heart that neither sort could manage. It would mean disaster for their very existence as temptresses. To pretend to love was one thing. To fall in love was another thing entirely. Flirtation and courting was full of sexual desire— the art of seduction was a play, an illusion. So then, what happens when the geisha or the prostitute falls in love?

Historically in such circumstances the geisha and prostitute were ruined, overcome by passion and desire, the longing too great for them to handle while luring and beguiling other men. Suddenly, the art of seduction she used for others is seemingly powerless, as her heart is unable to bear the games she once so artfully played, with her mind lost in reverie for her lover. She becomes overwhelmed by dreams of running away with her beloved. No longer can she play the seductress to the many men that pay her for her attentions. She is consumed by passion and caught in the great tidal pull of life’s mystery: Love.

Love me. At this moment we

Are the happiest 

People in the world.

(Marichiko)

And her art and erotic craft is love. Like the saying “live by the sword, die by the sword,” the prostitute and geisha, artists of seduction and flirtation, are the femme fatales, the unattainable feminine, for which men would do anything for, and therefore the power they wield is turned upon them. Longing. Heartache. Waiting.

Night without end. Loneliness.

The wind has driven a maple leaf

Against the shoji. I wait, as in the 

old days,

In our secret place, under the

full moon.

The last bell crickets sing.

I found your old love letters,

Full of poems you never published.

Did it matter? 

They were only for me.

(Marichiko)

In this world

love has no color—

yet how deeply

my body

is stained by yours.

(Izumi Shikibu)

There are many stories about geisha and prostitutes falling in love with their customers that are married and cannot change their lives or young and impoverished men that cannot rescue them out of their bondage or position. In such cases, the solution was death. Like Romeo and Juliet, the lovers were doomed to tragedy. Kabuki plays such as Love Suicides at Sonezaki re-enacted the true story of a double suicide in 1703 by the great Japanese dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724) known as the “Shakespeare of Japan.”  The story was about a beautiful courtesan Ohatsu that falls in love with handsome Tokubei, who is too poor to buy her out of her position as prostitute. He cannot follow through with his arranged marriage to another, due to his love for Ohatsu. His dowry already granted to him for his arranged marriage is then revoked by his uncle. The story continues and sorrow unfolds as the star-crossed lovers cannot be together.

 Black hair

Tangled in a thousand strands

Tangled my hair and

Tangled my tangled memories

Of our long nights of lovemaking.

(Yosano Akiko)

But sometimes, when lovers meet, the erotic desire flames their very souls. Even as a customer pays for sex and affections, whether pretended or not, it enters a realm that is human. It can be a source of inspiration. The nature of sex is union, when two lovers are as one. Regardless of money and position, sex is the essence of life and the mystery of our being alive. If sex and flirtation and the realm of erotic are the prostitute’s trade, then the question is — what does the prostitute do when she herself falls in love? How can she continue being a lover to many men, when she only wants to belong to the one man she loves? Like any other, she feels it ravage her very soul— awakening her, making her feel alive, passionate, and creative. The heart has its own reasons and mysteries. But how can she give her body to other men for money (her livelihood) when her instinct is to be devoted to the one she loves?

 Your tongue thrums and moves

Into me, and I become

Hollow and blaze with

Whirling light, like the inside

Of a vast expanding pearl.

(Marichiko)

 ”To fall in love is to play with fire,” Beautiful Eiko laughed. She had a tumbling mane of silky black hair, porcelain skin, and a mouth that tempted. She had many customers that adored her, dazzled her with gifts and exquisite kimonos. Then she met a man who had nothing but himself to give. He listened to her, understood her. For the first time in her life, she felt alive, inspired by love. But their love affair had to be secret. She was locked within the world of the prostitute’s life. This was unbearable for Eiko. When other men touched her, she felt only her lover’s hands. When other men embraced her, she longed for her lover only. When in the arms of her beloved, he became the only man in her world. She only wanted him, to belong to him, as her love was an all consuming passion, the very fire that awakened her soul and lit her aflame with desire.

No different, really—

a summer moth’s 

visible burning 

and this body,

transformed by love.

(Izumi Shikibu)

{References used for this article: Downer, Lesley, Women of the Pleasure Quarters: The Secret History of the Geisha, and Dalby, Liza, Geisha}

“Calixta,” he said, “don’t be frightened. Nothing can happen. The house is too-low to be struck, with so many tall trees standing about. There! aren’t you going to be quiet? say, aren’t you?” He pushed her hair back from her face that was warm and steaming. Her lips were as red and moist as pomegranate seed. Her white neck and a glimpse of her firm, full bosom disturbed him powerfully. As she glanced up at him the fear in her liquid blue eyes had given place to a drowsy  gleam that unconsciously betrayed a sensuous desire. He looked down into her eyes and there was nothing for him to do but to gather her lips in a kiss. It reminded him of Assumption.

“Do you remember– in Assumption, Calixta?” he asked in a low voice broken by passion. Oh! She remembered; for in Assumption he had kissed her and kissed her and kissed her; until his senses would wellnigh fail, and to save her he would resort to a desperate flight. If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate; a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against which his honour forbade him to prevail.  Now– well, now — her lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted, as well as her round, white throat and her whiter breasts.

They did not heed the crashing torrents, and the roar of the elements made her laugh as she lay in his arms. She was a revelation in that dim, mysterious chamber; as white as the couch she lay upon. her firm, elastic flesh that was knowing for the first time its birthright, was like a creamy lily that the sun invites to contribute its breath and perfume to the undying life of the world.

The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached. When he touched her breasts they gave themselves up in a quivering ecstasy, inviting his lips. Her mouth was a fountain of delight. And when he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life’s mystery.”

~The Storm, Kate Chopin

Vintage erotica captivates us. The passage by Kate Chopin titled “The Storm” is an sensuous excerpt full of passion in the stormy throes of desire. Kate Chopin was a Louisiana writer. Having lived myself in New Orleans for nearly five years, I could feel the temperature surge, smell the rain, and feel the electricity in the air as it does during a thunderstorm down in the bayou. This line in particular expresses the lovers’ moment so eloquently: “Her lips were as red and moist as pomegranate seed. Her white neck and a glimpse of her firm, full bosom disturbed him powerfully.”  You can feel her white bosoms swelling after that torrid sentence. Desire. What this excerpt leaves out is her (Calixta’s) husband and son are both caught in the heavy rainstorm, and they are delayed while going out. Alcée Laballière, Calixta’s lover, is also married and lives nearby. I didn’t include the entire story in the above excerpt. I think that if I had included it, it would lend more of the intensity to the moment of passion. If you are curious, then click on the link of the title The Storm and read the entire story.

As explained on a website dedicated to Kate Chopin:

American author Kate Chopin (1850–1904) wrote two published novels and about a hundred short stories in the 1890s. Most of her fiction is set in Louisiana and most of her best-known work focuses on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women.

Her short stories were well received in her own time and were published by some of America’s most prestigious magazines, including Vogue and the Atlantic Monthly. Her early novel At Fault (1890) was not much noticed by the public, but The Awakening (1899) was widely condemned.

Kate Chopin also wrote her short story “The Storm” in 1898. Because of its sexual content she did not publish it.

The story itself reminds me of her novel, The Awakening. The male character in The Storm from this passage, Alcée Laballière, is similar to the romantic man of the heroine’s desire in The Awakening (Alcée Arobin, a young man of fashion in New Orleans). It does make me wonder if there was a real Alcée in her life.

Although Kate Chopin was not an “erotica writer” per se, nor a “romance novelist,” she still was capable of writing a passionate moment with visceral and palpable grace. I enjoy reading Kate Chopin’s stories mostly because she has the ability to capture not just the atmosphere of Louisiana, but the elemental temperature of a woman’s suppressed sexual desire. The sultry heat and moisture of Louisiana mingled with the tension of social positions within the period, where women had “their place” as mothers and caretakers, with little allowance for their own needs and sexual hunger. Such a combination creates a storm of billowing passion that brews much like the dark tempestuous clouds of a hot tropical rainstorm.

Erotic literature was risqué during the 1900′s. Especially when written by a woman. Not just “erotic” aspects, but the subject of a woman’s emancipation and freedom also caused alarm. Kate Chopin’s stories, according to the website dedicated to her:

As the critic Per Seyersted phrases it, Kate Chopin “broke new ground in American literature. She was the first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction. Revolting against tradition and authority; with a daring which we can hardy fathom today; with an uncompromising honesty and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth about woman’s submerged life. She was something of a pioneer in the amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of woman’s urge for an existential authenticity. She is in many respects a modern writer, particularly in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the complications of freedom.”

{This vintage erotic photograph is how I imagine the lovers Calixta and Alcée Laballière in The Storm. Just listen to a heavy downpour while looking at the photo, and imagine the sexual storm while drinking a Hurricane cocktail}