Chapter 10: For the Woman in the Bunk Next to Me, Part One

The woman in the bunk next to me told me she’s ashamed that she’s such a sexual woman. It was passing in conversation, the kind of admission meant to register as a simple, obvious moral failing—as if having that much current in your body is a defect, not a pair of wings the world is terrified you might actually use. These are the confessions the world trains us to believe are right and moral: that we, especially women, should be ashamed of our sexuality. Free from so much of the world outside, these rules still run deep here, even stronger. There is little room to say what I wish I could say to her: I believe that for those who have been chosen to carry it, sex is a grand responsibility—equal parts burden, capacity, and honor.

Do not listen to the grim, tight-lipped women full of scorn and judgment. They are frail from lack of power. Just as the expression of the sun is light, the expression of powerlessness is fear. Fear shows up as judgment, comparison, fixing. And if the first two don’t work, they will resort to the third. “Fixing” is garden-variety envy, the hobgoblin of a sexless mind. It masquerades as superiority. Remember that the best that unhappy people can hope for is position. Their anthem: “I may not be happy, but I am right. I am in control. I am on top.” They know not the delights of being at the bottom—of being on our backs. That position is for a person of noble birth, a person with not superior position but superior constitution.

We all enter the world as an expression of sex, and just like a real, bona fide orgasm, constitution cannot be faked or feigned. It holds up irrespective of condition. The difference between those who can and those who cannot climb to the top of Mt. Everest is not determined by money, fame, status, appeal, or intellect. The one who plants her flag at the peak has the constitution to do so—an invisible, unalterable quality given to those meant for flight at higher altitudes than the others gawking from below. This is why I’m asking you to recognize yourself now, to see that you are not cursed but chosen to carry the crown with your head held high. Others lack the spine to wear it without crumbling, without letting its weight push them into the ditches and gullies women fall into: holding themselves as victims, romanticizing men, criticizing women.

At the root of each woman is truth—the truth of her inestimable power—resting on the source that animates all power: sexuality. But in this world, it is not true sex or power that is displayed. It is their impostors: aggression and greed. We grow suspicious of sexual expression after having been so often deceived. The deprived and the depraved dare to extract, bastardize, and desacralize sacredness herself. They have no idea what they do, these women who would use this force to sell themselves like chattel to men—Buy me! Buy me! They think they can trade their souls for the enlightenment, the enlivenment they seek. They put on a show of “offering” themselves and “surrendering,” but it’s a ruse—extorting unwitting men who have bitten the hook and been dragged below.

The real communication happens under the table: “I own you now. Give me what I want, or I will use sex as a weapon to destroy you.” The Princesses of Powerlessness believe they should never have to be overt, direct, honest. The world should read their minds. Never mind that they are entirely ungratifiable. I digress. But you—my dear—with the slings and arrows in your chest, who continue despite yourself to pour and offer the sex that caused them to exile you, tomato stains on your dress: I’m sorry to say it, but you take it because you can. And because you can, you must, because you know it is the path your soul has laid out. Just as they are not meant to climb the mountain, you know you are meant to strive for its summit.

Sure, you could take yourself out of the game. You could marry the “good and decent guy” and descend into suburban slumber. But we both know that life would be built on a fault line, with the chronic, nagging fear of the trembling quake calling to you. Sooner or later you will need to feed—whether it’s the guy at the gym or your husband’s friend. You know a moment’s lapse in the hypervigilance guarding your tenuous peace could invite its collapse. Again, this is not your curse. It is the gods’ challenging endowment to you, the command to take your mantle. You are not permitted to play small in this life. You were born with a largesse, a grandness, a generosity that must be released from the cage of propriety.

For a woman like you, being “appropriate” is stinginess. You were born to pour onto this desert what they are not yet conscious they thirst for. Answering this call does not immunize you from consequence. It brings me no joy to say it. But I am here, next to you, in a Brooklyn prison, facing the consequences of being a sexual woman who taught others to free themselves from the shackles of projection—from the belief that there is something wrong with being sexual women at all. The world would rather condemn us as dangerous, conniving, manipulative. But sexuality is a primal force that exceeds the bounds of any confinement. It is not manipulative; it is ordered by natural law.

As you take on your mantle, they will be frightened of you and will threaten you in response. The threats will not be idle. I am forced to undress, bend over, and cough for the prison guards, and still I must see them with compassion while dignity is, shall we say, not made a priority. You, too, will get no worldly protections. This does not mean you are unprotected. In fact, you are well protected: Your humanity, compassion, and dignity remain untouched. Your eyes keep their X-ray vision. You can see them while they cannot see you—though somewhere deep down they know you are not taken in by their antics. They know, too, how desperately they crave and yearn for what they hope to find in their baby-girl movies and books about shades of grey.

They long to live by the nature they sense in you, to feel how you feel, to break free. Anchored to what exists within, you remain impervious to the world’s cruelties. The realization of the sex within you is clear-eyed compassion—the antidote to ignorance. It is equal parts peace, increase, power, wrath, and activity, and it carries the wisdom to know which face to wear in the moment. The road is hard, but the result is invaluable. In the end, you are given the ability to make love itself. No longer do you simply trade in love—you make it. You will make it out of the snide comments, the poison, the smog; from injustice, ignorance, and cruelty. You will have the resilience and capacity to transform it into love.

Neither bowing nor retaliating, you will love those who would destroy you in a third way: understanding. They will not have the final say, the satisfaction of taking you down—not because you fought, but because if they were to win it would be a loss for everyone, including themselves. In the end, you will make love of, and to, a loveless world. Please continue. We need you. I’m writing this and not speaking it to you because whenever two women gather to speak of sex—real sex, the sex that liberates—danger is near. We have enough of that now. I pray the day will come when we are free, not just from this place but free to express our deepest gifts in the world, free to fly the way we were made to.