Sacred Intimate / Sacred Whore
Sacred Intimate – sounds righteous, no? That’s what I am, and that’s what I tell most people, but to myself, I’m a sacred whore. I love that word. I wear it proudly. Whores will do things that most people only wish they could, only wish they had the guts for. Which is, perhaps, why I love it. Whores are not afraid to say yes and to say no, even to say fuck off. Whores understand that you are a sexual being. You don’t have to hide that from a whore. Whores are not afraid of naming the connection between sex and money, sex and power, and between sex and nothing but itself. It doesn’t have to be connected to anything special or sacred or transformational or anything at all in the ‘higher planes’, whatever that is. Sex for itself is just fine, and quite a good enough reason, thank you very much. Whores don’t need any other excuse.
I didn’t always feel this way.
I remember, in my protected working class middle of the road straight family, sexuality was barely on the radar. It was there, but not celebrated. I recall my mother saying that anything two married people did in private was ok, as long as they both agreed. Damn – that’s incredibly wise, actually! Though I can’t imagine that whips and chains ever entered her mind. Heck, latex hadn’t even been invented yet!
And being a nice, white picket fence kinda gal, I was, of course nice – as in – there are nice girls, who ‘don’t’, and good girls, who ‘do’. So – how did I know I was missing something? Instinct maybe? Fantasies? The lump in my throat when I saw the lump in his pants? Somehow, I just KNEW there was another side to this fence.
Still, the dichotomy persisted – I was a really nice girl! – until, I’m embarrassed to say it – my early 40’s. Oh, I had some fun along the way, especially those hippie years – hell, I was screwing everybody who made a pass. But here’s the thing – I was still being nice about it. I remember a lover telling me, when I was a relative beginner, ‘move your hips up, honey, like this . . ‘ (he was right).
The other part of being nice was responding to everyone else’s desires – which, since I had world-class tits, were plentiful.
Back to the dichotomy – because I was across the fence from the good girls, I had to look over it, and the whores – just the thought of them! – were about as far over it as you could get. So of course I was fascinated. Not that I would ever DO that, mind you, but fascinated. There’s just something about those people!
My 40’s brought a divorce and a liberation and a discovery. A discovery that my sex was mine, mine, mine. A discovery that I had desires of my own. A discovery that sex might, could be, might even really be, connected to my spiritual path. Huh? That is, my physical, erotic experiences produced feelings of, well, connection with my heart, my meaning, the universe as it is. I began putting the disparate parts of myself – the good girl and the nice girl – back together again.
My goddess, there is far more to this story than that paragraph, but I am too bleary eyed tonight to recount it all. I will do my best to come back to it.
Later, as I began to inch my way towards doing this work more overtly – by learning about myself and my desires, by exploring with friends, by gradually becoming more open and direct in talking about it - I tasted the empowerment of the whore. And with that, my liberation, my freedom, my life. I met some extraordinarily ordinary regular whores and their stories touched me. I read “Women of the Light” and recognized myself.
So, I didn’t always feel this way. But I do now.
Next time – what’s ‘Sacred’ got to do with it?