AN EXPLANATORY INTRODUCTION
A pious Christian once said to me: "I find it hard to reconcile sex with the purity of Providence." He never could understand why God arranged for sex anyway. Why something else might not have been done. Why children might not have come in some other fashion.
Look at the harm sex has involved. Most all the deviltry of history that was not done for money was done for sex. And even the deviltry that was done and is done for money had, and has sex back of it. Take sex out of man and you have something worth while. God must have been short of expedients when God, in sex, conceived sex. It certainly looks as if the Divine fell down this time. As if infinity was at the end of its tether. As if the adept creator for once was caught napping, or for once botched a job.
So we had my pious friend. And we had medievalism. And we had the ascetics. And heaven knows what else. Too much sex some places. Too little sex other places. Some people swearing on and some swearing off. The prostitute giving away that which was meant to be kept. The virgin keeping that which was meant to be given away. A force contending with a force. Drawing in opposite directions when they should be pulling together. Through it all, motherhood misunderstood. And fatherhood misunderstood. The body cheapened to the soul. And the soul cheapened to the body. Every child being a slap in the face of virtue.
Have you ever tried to see what this came from and goes to? This philosophy of vulgar denial? This philosophy of wallowing surrender?
The Christian stream has been polluted. It has gone dirty in the age of hush. We are supposed to keep our mouths shut. We are not to give sex away. We breed youngsters in fatal ignorance. They are always asking questions. But we don't answer their questions. The church don't answer them. Nor the state. Nor the schools. Not even mothers and fathers. Nobody who could answer answers them. But they don't go unanswered. They get answered. And they get answered wrong instead of right. They get answered, smutched instead of washed. They get answered blasphemously instead of reverently. They get answered so that the body is suspected instead of being trusted.
A boy who knows nothing asks a boy who knows nothing. A girl who knows nothing asks a girl who knows nothing. From nothing nothing comes. Men who have been such boys know nothing. Women who have been such girls know nothing. From nothing nothing comes. They have become familiar with sex circumstances. They are parents. They have done the best they knew how. But they never learned sex. They never realized its fundamentals. They never went back to, or forward to it. They were lost in a wilderness. They existed without living. They took sex as they took whiskey. They breathed an atmosphere of hush. They had got past the ascetics. But they had not got to be men and women. They didn't refuse sex. But though embracing its privileges, they still seemed to regard it as something not to be gloried in. The least said about it the soonest mended. Mothers and fathers would say to children: "You'll know about it soon enough." Teachers would say: "Ask your questions at home." Home would say: "What ever started you thinking about such things?"
The child goes about wondering. What's the matter with sex that everybody's afraid to talk about it? What's the matter with my body that I dare not mention it? My body seems very beautiful to me. I like to look at it. I like to feel it. I like to smell it. But I'm always hurried into my clothes. My body is so mysteriously precious I must take care of it. But how am I to take care of it if I don't get acquainted with it?
I find that having a body has something to do with being a father and a mother. I want to be a father. I want to be a mother. But how can I be a father or mother if some one who knows doesn't tell me what precedes fatherhood and motherhood? I should prepare for it. How can I if all the books are closed? How can I if I am blanked every time I express my curiosity? Is there no one anywhere who'll be honest with me?
If I look at sex right out of my own soul, it seems like something which God didn't fail with, but succeeded with. Like something not polluted, but purified. Like something having everything, instead of only an occasional thing, to do with life. But the world shakes its head. The world is nasty. But it puts on airs. The world has eaten. But the world says it's best to starve. Folks will say they've got to be parents. But they say they will regret it. They say sex is here. They say we're up against its mandates or its passions. But let's be as decent as we can with the indecent. Let's not linger on its margins. Let's not overstay our dissipation. Sex is like eating. Who would eat if he didn't have to? To say you enjoy a meal is carnal. To say that you derive some sense of ecstasy from paternal and maternal desires is a confession of depravity. Sex at the best is a sin.