Lousy Sex: Creating Self in an Infectious World

Middles: Childhood’s End

57 Middles Childhood’s End Now that we, from mud and starlight and chromosomes and bacteria, have assembled rudimentary selves, where do we go from here? Only death ends the artistry of self-creation. As we move from childhood toward another phase, “I”s must often adapt or disappear. The Fisher King’s wound, Beauty and the Beast, and perhaps all fairy tales speak of the loss of the child’s world and the hard slap of reality. For many reasons, children’s eyes see another world, one where anything and everything is real, one filled with chiseled princes and crystalline princesses, benevolent wizards, and one where human eyes, like windows, open onto a complete world. As we teeter on the lip of adulthood, new cracks appear and old ones widen. The reality created for us crumbles and the new “I” must find a way beyond the lies. l o u s y s e x 58 The sudden sensation of sex challenges us. When I ask people to tell me something about themselves, nearly always each begins with a statement about his or her sex. Likewise, each of our lives begins with a statement about sex. “It’s a boy” or “it’s a girl,” but the real meaning of that first statement usually doesn’t strike us until puberty. Then, we have sexes, and suddenly all the whisperings of televisions and movies, of magazines and mothers and fathers mean something. Most of the time, we yield to those whisperings. They tell us what to wear and what to say. They tell us what to expect from one another. They tell us who we are, men or women, and that there is nothing in between. Therealityisthatstoriesaboutsex,likestoriesabouteveryotherhumanthing, are rotten with human wishes and human imaginings. In truth, the simplicity we wish for isn’t to be found in the ways of sex. For many that is a hard truth to swallow and it can shake the roots of “I.” For others, it is just another beginning. At childhood’s end we expect the good wizards always to appear when we need them. Truth is, wizards are rarely good. And the wizards of “I” can do great harm. Throughout our childhoods and beyond, the world tells us that only the weak fall ill. Human health is the noblest and commonest way of life. Of course, that isn’t true, but we wish it was. So we live as though it was true. Until something , like a car wreck, snaps us out of that silvery mist. Then we must seek the wizard. What we hope the wizard will gives us is healing and a return to our old “I”s. Deep down, we suspect that isn’t possible. But we know that the wizard will do his best and expect benevolence and the focus of his heart and mind. My wife and I discovered otherwise. Regardless, we still have the world itself and the truth of that world. As long as we’ve had thoughts, we’ve known that the things we see and hear and taste and touch and smell are real and all of the real that there is. Those five senses have given each of us big pieces of our “I”s. Regardless, we are nearly senseless. The crisp clear edges of a child’s reality give way to the blurriness of an adult world. But not just in the sense that our world holds more grays than black-and-whites. Worse. M i d d l e s : C h i l d h o o d ’ s E n d 59 Most of what happens in our lives completely escapes our senses, and not just for lack of attention. Things we cannot sense, like motives, darken. Things we sense aren’t what they seem. And if we look at this world through the lenses of science, we find a disturbing truth. The world we perceive is not the real world. Elephants are guided by songs we cannot hear and bees follow paths we cannot see. The movements of mountains and the meanders of canyons are not for us, nor are the motions of continents or the mysteries of the Milky Way. From the mind of a child come the dreams and fears of the blind. Aphrodite, the mother of Hermaphroditus, caressing a swan ...