Sculpture 1975

Sculpture 1975

When Promiscuity Masquerades as Sexual Liberation

Sexual need: easily gratified by your own hand

Sensual need: gratified by the slow hand of another

The swingin’ 70s gave women more opportunities than ever imagined to make fools of themselves while having sex with anything that moved. Gonorrhea showed up often as a reminder that free love isn’t always free. Unshackled from stereotypic expectations, we gleefully burned our bras and walked triumphantly down the street, hair on our legs swaying in the breeze. Time went on and the hoopla subsided, so we could take a closer look at who or what we had morphed into. Adjusting to a new, unadulterated self-image would take stamina, courage and time. But a delusion that sex would inevitably lead to love remained intact. I clung to hope that someday, maybe. I’d stop talking about becoming a sculptor and just fail or succeed.

My story isn’t about Eros and sexual desire. It is about sensual desire and the power of touch. Brought up with shame and guilt about my sexuality, I ran from those damning feelings, trying to defy their might by charging head first into a sexual rampage of hit-‘n-run farces. The running stopped only when my trembling hands touched clay for the first time…and my body was touched by the hands of the young man who modeled for me.

~

Coping with financial strain as a sculptor wasn’t as hard as coping with raw feelings that kept surfacing as I was learning my craft. The quaint Vermont village where I resided delivered pleasures in abundance but nothing could mollify some awful shots coming at me from my dark past. I was working on a self-portrait, painstakingly sculpting upper lip, lower lip, cheekbone to brow, but gradually seeing myself more from within. The person I had been running from was creeping out from the shadows. She wasn’t pretty.

It became apparent this journey with clay was making a U-turn. How was mud awakening my heart and soul? When I was younger, I had no clue I feared intimacy, whether as a hug or a shared feeling. Too busy with steady flings, I could ignore the fact I was choosing the kind of man who would guarantee me nothing in return. If a craving for more would gnaw at me, it was instantly blocked out. Running was disguised as exploring new cities, and new continents. Feelings of desperation and despair followed closely but were never granted access.

~

One morning I walked out of the village general store to head back to my makeshift studio when I noticed a very handsome young man sitting on the steps of the store across the street. He had been sitting there awhile, watching the cars go by and waiting, just waiting, it seemed, for some action. I was wearing a low-cut halter top, shorts and large gold hoop earrings that kept getting tangled in my long black curls. I sighed, reveling in his sculptured features. Alabaster skin, coal black hair, dark brown almond-shaped eyes and soft full lips. Like pictures of beautiful, perfect men that appear only on the covers of seamy romance novels. We stared at each other cautiously. I may have merely looked like the devil to him but I got the feeling I was what he had been waiting for.

~

The young man began modeling for me most afternoons, accepting payment with a beer and a pack of cigarettes. We hardly spoke once the armature was set up and the radio was turned on. The music eased the tension building below the surface. Carefully I studied his features while he carefully studied my body.

Real intimacy awakens the heart.

If I awakened my heart, I’d feel pain.

I’d feel anger. I’d feel shame. I’d feel hurt.

I would feel vulnerable

He and I did end up sharing my bed for three years, closing the door on my tumultuous past. I wondered if I needed his innocence as much as he needed my sophistication so we could both grow up. When his hands had traveled slowly over my body, it was as though he was discovering a woman’s body for the first time. Each tender caress, each lingering pause sent a cascade of pleasure rippling throughout my body. I never fully understood how his embrace could soothe and heal. The transformation led me back and away from unfulfilled childhood needs that had turned my heart to stone.

~

Words fail to capture the sensations that surged through me when I dared to swim nude in a waterhole hidden deep in that Vermont forest. Once my bare breasts met that icy spring water, the memory of hundreds of hands touching my helpless body slipped off to some nether place It wasn’t the lack of clothing that made me feel free as I dove to the bottom of the pool. It was the crumbling and dissolution of the wall I’d built around myself, guarding me from the horror of feeling powerless and worthless. In that makeshift baptism, accepting my need for emotional intimacy allowed my sins to drift away with the current.