Corn Over Porn

This article was first published in my Substack.

I had a brief relationship with a man who’d been addicted to porn. By the time we were together, he was practicing semen retention and hoping to manifest and marry a virgin.

This man, who was eleven years my senior (fear not: I was 30 at the time) was my first peek into the Manosphere, which I didn’t yet know existed. He called promiscuous women whores (which he stopped doing at my behest…at least in my presence), and the first time he touched me, he guided the tip of his finger into my flower just to be sure, a look of awe and reverence on his face when my virginal status was confirmed. He never tried to penetrate me again.

This man was a series of contradictions: he owned a guitar shop but did not play guitar (lame); he said he wasn’t Christian but read the Bible and worshiped a god named Yahweh (who is the Christian/Abrahamic god); and he had a history of promiscuity but only wanted to be with a virgin.

He also had an incurable STD.

My best friend from high school told me that one of her college besties had been given an STD on the night she lost her virginity at a party—either genital warts or genital herpes.

This man had genital herpes.

He’d told me one morning after stopping by impromtuily and struggling to get through a bowl of my spicy lentil soup; he’d bitten a hole into his tongue at his jiu jitsu practice the night before and the spice was searing his open wound. I’m unsure why he insisted on eating through the pain, but we were vastly different people.

Our main similarity was our alignment with more traditional roles in relationships. He opened my door for me whenever I rode in his F-150; he came and changed the batteries in the beeping smoke detector neither my sister nor I could reach. Interestingly enough, the thing still let out its high-pitched beep after he did this, so we stacked a stool on a chair and unplugged the detector entirely. “We” being me and my sister.

I’d cook for this man and send fresh sourdough for him and his teenaged sons—two boys with two different mothers.

“I’ve got two baby mamas,” he told me.

Mind you, this was coming from a white man.

He’d been born in this tiny Rust Belt town and had never lived anywhere else.

I grew up in the Hudson Valley, went to college in Philadelphia, spent months in France and England, got my dad to pay for a studio in San Francisco for a month so I could apply for jobs, continued south to LA, jobless, to crash on my sister’s best friend’s couch before hightailing it to France once again. I’d run away from home with my sister during the height of the Pandemic to share a 1br in the Oakland Hills, and before that tumultuous time, I’d lived in a 5^th floor Harlem walk-up during my tenure in grad school at NYU.

To say we were incompatible is the complete and utter truth. This is why, like middle schoolers, we broke up every week and ultimately didn’t even last a month.

It was my first relationship, and it taught me to see the ways I’d been searching for a father in any man I could get.

Maybe that’s the reason George Michael’s Father Figure was one of my favorite songs growing up.

I grew up without one lick of masculinity around me. My father, a doctor living in the city, had taken the punitive route in his divorce from my mother, which happened when I was two. My sisters and I saw him at most once a month, and we’d do the same routine each time: go to the mall, watch a movie, and eat at whichever chain restaurant my sisters and I desired. The only deviation to this routine was in the summer, when he’d take us to Rye Playland and we’d get stuck on the ancient and decaying Dragon Coaster.

Because he was more financially stable than my mother, with my father I felt like I could have the world: candy at the movies, drink refills at the restaurant, and no pit in my stomach whenever the bill came.

I didn’t have any brothers, and my male cousins were older and had better things to do than entertain us whenever we’d come to their house.

It wasn’t until grad school that I made my first male friend, Sean: a 6’4 gay man from the suburbs of Ontario who wrote lyrics that made us all swoon. Sometimes we’d sit together in one of the practice rooms (we were in a musical theatre writing MFA program) and improvise songs together from poems I’d pull up on the web. Sean would play piano and I’d make the melody up as I sang it.

Then there was Kyle, an afroed gay man with a fierce devotion to veganism and a commitment to writing pop-style lyrics even if most of our classmates ripped into him for it during critiques. Kyle had a hard copy of Chani Nicholas’ You Were Born for This, and we sat in Riverside park and read each others astrological profiles while passing a canna-vape between us and our friend, Morgan.

Kyle and Sean were the first men I had ever loved, apart from my father.

But they weren’t the type of men I wanted to be with.

Creatively speaking, they fit the bill, but romantically speaking, one must fall for men who have a prayer of loving you back.

In a romantic partner, I wanted someone who oozed “straight man masculinity”—a man who would help with things around the house, open doors for me, and pull out his wallet when we were at the grocery store together.

In other words, I was looking for a chivalrous provider kind of man, and I found it in that first boyfriend of mine. But because he lacked—among other things—a creative vitality that could match mine, I could never fully respect him.

He’d built a recording studio above his guitar shop (a wise investment) and we convened there one morning to record a podcast together.

His youngest son, a “greasy Italian” as he jokingly described him because of his mother’s Italian-American heritage, was the tech whiz behind the operation.

As we waited for his father to finish up a task downstairs, I asked him if he planned on ever going to Italy. He’d said no—he didn’t see a point in traveling the world.

“But it’s part of your heritage,” I said.

There was a flash of resonance on his face as he nodded. I hope he flies out of this town and makes it there.

Back on podcast-recording-day, we were making our inaugural episode on masculinity. I don’t quite remember what the exact topic was, but one of my contributions was to encourage men to stay away from video games, which I believe infantilizes and disempowers men.

“Facts,” his son said behind the monitor.

I learned later the very man I sat beside played video games.

When his sons were younger, he’d been addicted to “World of Warcraft,” choosing the avatar of a demon-esque villain who plagued this world and antagonized other players.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a dementor-looking figurine sitting on his shelf.

“That’s me,” he responded.

My stomach lurched as he told me all about the game.

Any ladies reading this, be warned: a man will tell you who he is just as clearly as he will show you; it’s up to you to listen.

It took me a few weeks, but I got there.

My problem was that I wanted it to work because he was the man I’d been the most physical with. Of course, we didn’t go all the way, nor did we advance past “heavy petting,” as my sister calls it.

It’s only after a man gets on his knees I’ll get on mine.

That is to say: I’m okay with saying “aah” before “I do,” but that’s a threshold I look forward to crossing after engagement.

I have a list of intimacy tiers I’ve written out so I am clear with what’s on the table for me during dating and engagement; everything is on the table and served as a buffet after the wedding.

I encourage all women to establish intimacy tiers they honor. Going back to my high school friend’s college bestie, even one sexual partner can shift the trajectory of your entire life.

Sex is not casual, nor has it ever been.

There is a cost to letting just any man inside you and there is much that men lose, too.

For one, they do not receive true connection and receptivity from the woman whose body they are temporarily inhabiting. In so few words, that old boyfriend said it’s like being in a beautiful house but no one is home. There isn’t any food in the fridge and the heat’s been left at 60 just so the pipes don’t freeze.

One Manosphere belief is that promiscuous women cannot connect fully to their partners in the same—I don’t know, wide eyed?—way a more inexperienced woman can.

Whether this is true or not does not detract from the fact that many men feel this way.

So what does any of this have to do with porn?

As we recorded the podcast—which I never published because that man had zero stage presence—his biggest piece of advice to men was to stop watching porn.

The mention of porn seemed to come out of nowhere, and I was transported back to my days at Penn, when I only knew how to access my spirituality through Christianity, the religion in which I’d been raised. It was my sophomore year and I’d joined the gospel choir even though I hated gospel. I’d been rejected from every a cappella group I’d auditioned for, and the choir was open enrollment. I’d missed singing with people and singing for God was an added bonus.

Early in the spring semester, we all went on a retreat at a church about two hours away. The choir director at the time was a tall, blonde senior who wore braids in his hair like the kids in Kriss Kross.

Black women made up 95% of the choir and I just knew we all were thinking: that boy could get it.

Anywho, one evening during the weekend retreat, this director led us all in prayer. I don’t remember anything he said other than a long, extended plea to God to end porn addiction in those who were struggling with it. My head sprang up and I looked around to see if anyone else was clocking this Freudian slip. Everyone’s head remained bowed.

This was one of my early signs that I really was a heathen in disguise.

Back in the guitar shop, my head sprung up as I listened to the man I was associating myself with show me that the best advice he could give to his brethren was to stop watching porn.

I don’t know what I was hoping he’d say, but it wasn’t that.

However, as a representative for the Manosphere, where many good men are hiding, this lets me know that many men do watch porn—even men of God. Even liberal men, who wouldn’t touch the Manosphere with a ten foot pole.

Even women.

I was in middle school when I first watched porn, having access to Cinemax and its late night specials. I liked to watch girl on girl because I found male porn stars scary and unattractive.

One of my best friends in grad school told me she liked to watch men together and was enjoying a male orgy when her older brother walked into the room, took one look at her screen, and backed slowly out.

In college I’d found a website that was founded by a Spanish woman who produced cinematic porn with the female gaze in mind. By then, I’d started spiritually awakening (unbenknownst to me), and even the most high vibrational porn did not sit right.

Sex Work Is Not Like Regular Sex

I watched a documentary on YouTube not too long ago where an OnlyFans starlet successfully endeavored to sleep with 100 men in 24 hours. Her only selection criteria was that each participant had to be over 18. No clean bills of health were required; she didn’t even sift through her options to choose men she found attractive.

After the hundredth participant left, she stood in a tank top and underwear talking to the film’s director.

“It’s not like normal sex,” she said.

She’d thought that it’d be different. Perhaps empowering.

She processed a little bit more before she started to cry.

This is the kind of behavior the porn industry creates. It deceives us into thinking that when we watch these people perform sexual acts, we are watching them have sex. When we try to go forth in their image, we perpetuate a false distortion of what sex really is.

The truth is: when we watch porn, we are watching people working. They are performing for cameras, for a paycheck, for their parents who never fully loved them. They are not connecting with each other, these performers, not truly.

They are having intercourse, yes, but what we consume when we watch porn is far from the truth of sex.

What is Sacred Sexuality?

In its highest expression, sex is a sacred rite. It’s the coming together of two divine forces who consciously magnify their magnificence as their bodies bend and burst and unite as one.

In this state of ecstasy, we access our own creational power and, like gods, hold the universe in our palms.

We can create life in this act, like gods.

And, like gods, we can destroy just as easily.

“Le petit mort,” or “the little death,” is how orgasm is expressed in French. This speaks to the fact that when we cross over into the orgasmic state, a reset occurs beneath our quaking flesh.

When approached with conscious intention, we can harness the potent energy of this rite and use it to better our lives—and even the world. We can call into our unions whatever we desire, energetically so, at the time of orgasm. But to do this, we must be conscious.

My problem with pornography is that it glorifies unconscious sexual expression. It is easy to be a great lover: all one needs is conscious attentiveness. One must simply be present with their partner and attuned to their energy to yield a positively pleasurable experience for all parties involved.

But many women fake orgasms and this alone tells me many men are inattentive lovers.

They say our attention spans have been decimated in modern times, and it’s harder now than ever to focus.

By virtue of its performative nature, porn teaches its viewers that orgasm is, too, a performance. In reality, orgasms are an internal force, an energetic shift of divine proportions. You might hear the moans, see the eyes roll back in ecstatic, orgasmic bliss. But if a man has to ask a woman, “Did you finish?” he has come to climax alone.

Back to that old boyfriend of mine—

When he touched me, I felt there was little consciousness there (and I often found myself asking: are his eyes a little too close together?). He’d had a host of experiences before me, and yet I could—and did—please myself better than he could when I was in middle school.

A man who gets his pleasure from porn will always be lacking in lovemaking. Whatever porn stars are doing, no matter how delicious and kinky it might look, does not even penetrate the surface of the sea of depth one can experience with the sacred, conscious expression of our sexual prowess.

Corn Over Porn

In a genetically modified world, I eat 99% organic. And the one thing I will eat organic without exception is corn.

By now you’ve heard of Monsanto and the desecration this company has created to one of our continent’s most sacred foods.

Originating in the southwest of what is now Mexico, corn became the foundation of life for countless cultures throughout the Americas. Beyond being a vital source of nourishment, it was revered as a sacred gift, representing life, resilience, and harmony with nature. For our ancestors, corn was a symbol of identity, sustenance, community, and gratitude.(Source)

Identity, sustenance, community and gratitude.

Collectively, we are experiencing identity crises en masse, with Sephora Kids running in to grab the next hormone-disruptor they can mask their acne with or prevent premature wrinkles by using; women and men are filling their faces with filler and removing buccal fat to look snatched.

Miley, is that you?

In America, we are overfed yet malnourished, still.

Community has not been the same since Covid, and most people are thankful just to be getting through another day.

This does not have to be the way.

Just like we can choose to buy the most local and organic food, so, too, can we choose to partake in sexual experiences only when they are organic and “real-to-real:” when the person you call your lover truly loves you and exalts you for who you are instead of holding onto you because of who they’ll hope you will become; when you come together in conscious collision, knowing that in doing so, you honor the god-force within yourself and within your partner, too; when you’re real within yourself and your partner, too, is really real.

Sacred sexuality should not be fringe; it should be the only sex we’re having.

So I encourage you, dear reader, if you need the encouragement, to put down the porn and get yourself a nice bag of organic popcorn kernels. Put 1-2tbsps of oil in a sauce pan, add about a quarter cup of corn, cover, and let that baby sizzle, pop, pop.

Order up, buttercup!

Get comfy in your quietude as you unlearn all you’ve ever been taught sex has to be.

“There’s a reason it’s free,” that old boyfriend used to say of pornography, conspiring to say it’s been deliberately fed to us to distort our senses and diffuse our intrinsic power.

I agree.

Remind me to tell you why I can never watch “Sex and the City” again. Its cultural impact might be even worse than porn.

Until then, I hope you find true nourishment in all you do. That the people around you truly see you and that you have the courage to show enough of yourself to allow them to.

Remember: intimacy is a two-way street and people can only meet us as far as we’ve met ourselves.

I encourage my fellow singletons to use this time to get to know who you really are, outside of the masks you’ve put on to be accepted and loved.

Sean and I both agreed this was our best improvisation

The more we modify ourselves to be more appealing, the more like Monsanto we become.

We rob the earth of her true nourishment, for it’s from our authentic selves our most fertile and impactful offerings can grow. Our most nourishing ones, too. And definitely our sexiest.

Dear reader: I cordially invite you to say no to porn and similar distortions from our genetically modified matrix.

Transcendence awaits.

XO,

Spirit

P.S. In case you’re concerned, I have dug up my subterranean standards in love and I’ve exalted them once more.