song of the day: voices carry / til tuesday
word of the day: Eunomia / A political condition of good law, well administered.
we wrapped up the drums today with Brian, he knocked out five full songs today like nothing. it's a treasure working with this kid, he doesn't know how good he is yet, he's 23 years old, fresh out of boarding school, first time at camp, a knave in the conclave of the depraved still learning how to misbehave. and that brings us to todays subject.
of course, like almost everyone who hears my new song Innocent 3-Way, Brian wanted to know "did you really have a 3-way like it says in this song?" fair question. like i do with everyone who asks, i put my hand on his shoulder, leaned in a bit, and said..."suck my dick and i'll tell you."
he declined, so i'm telling you instead.
the TRUTH about this song is that, no, i did not have a 3-way like this song describes. i had a 4-Way between me and three girls at one point in my life. it was what it was, i have no regrets. that actual historical event was in large part the inspiration for the song 3-way, but of course "3-Way" works a lot better as a song title than does "4-Way", and feels more accessible. however, a large part of 3-Way was also inspired by a night my wife and i spent on the town in Boulder. we go out every six months and just party our fucking asses off, cuz truthfully, 363 days a year we meditate, excercise, and act as responsible parents, and we think it's a healthy psychological valve release to party twice a year and just blow off steam. so one night, we're out partying on the pearl street mall, and my wife turns to me and out of nowhere flatly states: "I'd have a 3-way with another girl if you wanted." i did not say ANYTHING. i just stared blankly at her, and looked interested, but not TOO interested, you know? i looked pretty composed until my sudden boner broke the sound barrier and slammed into the underside of my jaw, knocking me unconscious. when i came to, we continued bar hoping.
at the next bar, my wife looks at our waitress and goes "that chick is hot." the chick comes over, and my wife is like "you're hot. what's your name?" the waitress is like "sasha." SASHA? are you kidding me. my wife was hotter, but Sasha was no mutt, i'll tell you. and she was wearing black fish net tights. my wife goes "if we have a three way, i'd want it to be with you." i'm waiting for Sasha to go "i'm going to have to ask you to leave" or "that's way out of line." but she goes "yeah. three-ways are tricky. people's feelings are delicate, you know. it has to be all about the woman. (referring to my wife)." i already felt obsolete. i mean, my wife and this chick has it all light up, and it looked like i might just be an alternate if they got bored with each other. anyway, my wife invited Sasha to my show, and she never showed up, and that was that. i combined those events with the events of the 4-way earlier in my life (long before i was involved with my wife at all, and i was single and in an exploring phase. stage. EPOCH.)
brian thought this story was great, and he and Andy and i started talking about sex the way dudes do when they're in the studio. you just start talking about the naughty stuff, cuz you know, you're doing a lot of really precise, intensive work, and it helps to release and keep things bouyant if you openly share the most personal aspects of you life.
actually, that's what's funny. what do you consider personal? i don't really feel protective or private about my previous sexual escapades. i spent several years having sex with many, many women. it doesn't feel terribly personal. my sex life with my wife is private. my LOVE and relationship with my wife is private and i feel incredibly protective of my family's privacy. but talking with andy and brian about sex and stuff, it came out that i had slept with about 200 women. actually, the number might be as low as 150, but it depends on what you consider "sex". i consider "sex" when a penis penetrates a mouth, butthole, or -and this was always as a last resort- a vagina. ;-) the number is probably 150 and change. whatever. some of you reading this may find that number high, Brian and Andy did. they thought that was a lot of women. but, i have to tell you, i do not think it's a very remarkable number at all in the music world. i know people who aren't musicians who have slept with 500+, etc, and they're just normal dudes who hang at the bitch and shit. then you have atheletes, real rock stars, and so on, who literally copulate with THOUSANDS of women. they really do. and if you take 150 women, and divide it by the number of years i was sexually active (before i was involved with my wife), then it's like ten women a year, less than one a month. i lost my virginity at the age of 13 (behind a school bus, outdoors, on the wet grass, it lasted about 30 seconds at the most), and was sexually active for about 17 years before my wife and i went monogamous. that's actually like an average of 8 women a year, about one every month and a half. that is not wacky. that is not a crazy average. that's a DATING average.
however.
about 100 of the women i slept with occured in a period of a couple years. about one new partner a week for a couple years. just an average.
anyway, in discussing this with andy and brian, they were thinking i was a slut, kinda' a bit loosy goosy. didn't i get syphillis, aids, ghonnorhea, or something? here's where i think things DO get a bit freaky. i NEVER used a condom. never. my policy was; i'd rather not ever have sex again than use a condom, and i simply would say every time, let's just do nothing if it's an issue at all. i admit that's fucked up. but 99% of the time, we would just go all the way anyway. the wild thing was, i never contracted any sexually transmitted disease. NOTHING. i've been tested for everything, multiple times. not aids, not warts, not crabs, not syph, not ghon, not anything, ever. one time i did think i had caught something, and it turned out to be a bladder infection. the doctor was like, "well, i really doubt it's a bladder infection. it's gotta be the clap." i agreed with the dude. i had been with like six women that month. but you know WHAT? it WAS A BLADDER INFECTION. men hardly ever get them, but scientific testing conclusively proved, i did not have any STDs, and this was a bladder infection. weird.
i even became so wigged out by what i thought was the mathematically odds in this, that on two occassions, i submitted myself to STD testing that included the nurse shoving metal wires with prickly fiber-glass like stuff on the end INTO MY PEE HOLE. once inserted, the maddening device was rotated in the pee hole, a spinning miniature spear of white hot agony shredding the most tender tissue and never endings in my body. the first time this was done to me, the nurse was actually an intern, who didn't know what she was doing, who was scared to death she was hurting me, and OH MY GOD was she hurting me. i literally fucking squeeled like the trauma victim i WAS, with good reason, i also literally pissed blood for two days. the dick doesn't lie, if it's pissing blood from a pee hole procudure, something really, really hurt. but the tests all came back, and NO STDs, no VD. wow. the doctors were like "yeah, well, you don't have anything, but please stop having unprotected sex. wear a condom." no way, no how. i went back into the same behavior immediately. months later, i was back in the clinic, repeating the entire process. weird.
there was a good deal of promiscuity, but the thing that i think gets left out or goes unknown is that i went to great pains to behave in a manner that i felt was ethical. ethics, of course, are the rules of good conduct observed (or not) in any of potentially innumerable "WE" relationships. ethics are the ways we agree (or not) to behave in relationship, that could mean a marriage, a relationship, a culture, a religious system - but basically any social system with intersubjective dynamics, numbering from two people up to six billion. there are countless modes and types of ethics. what is Ethical for a one person might be unethical to another. for instance, to some Christian radical conservatives, using stem cells to conduct research is a violation of the sanctity of life, and is tantamount to abortion, or even murder. in THAT social system, it's unethical. from MY perspective, howver, which is shared by a community of people as well, NOT performing stem cell research, or preventing the stem cell research is highly unethical, and is tantamount to increasing suffering of innocent people (those stricken with the afflictions that could be remedied by stem cell research), and condemning countless thousands to death and disease. it is possible for each of us to live according to diametrically opposed perspectives, and for both of us to be completely ethical (within our respective communities).
and back when i was sleeping with so many people, i wanted very much to be ethical. so, i went to great pains to be totally honest, open, and transparent with everyone i slept with. i didn't sneak around, i didn't lie to girls or women about my availability, interest in relationship, my sexual history - i made every effore to be totally up front. so, before we got into it physically, we always had "the talk". i would answer any questions they had, and i would ask them all sorts of questions to make sure they weren't being mislead, deceived, or manipulated in any way. the talk varied depending on the girl and the situation, but the standard points i always wanted to make unmistakably clear were; 1, sleeping together was not an indication in any way that i would be available for a romantic relationship, or any kind of regular contact 2, i was not going to use a condom, and i had slept with lots of other people, the last time i had been tested was on such and such date, and the results were yadda yadda 3, i would be seeing other people.
now, as fucked up as it may sound to some, this was my sincere attempt to remain in integrity with myself, the other person, and most importantly, the Dharma. i felt that if i wasn't being manipulative, and i was straight with everyone, it would still be ethical for me to have sex with as many people as i wanted to. so why did i stop having sex with women? why did i stop with the promiscuity even before i was with my wife?
because it wasn't ethical.
the problem, in my view, is the Dharma. the ultimate ethical fact, according to my interpretation of being a practitioner, or for that matter a human, is that the PRIME directive of being is to awaken for the sake of all beings. in the loosest sense, what is ethical is that which cultivates, supports, or increases awakened consciousness in self, others, and the Whole. Ethics is the code of conduct which a practitioner in Mystery must observe in order to serve Love, which is synonymous with Awakened awareness, or that which simply IS the Reality behind the appearances.
and it was only too obvious that running through some fucking check list with women i wanted to fuck was my ego's way of utilizing a Loop Hole in the Karmic / Kosmic Ethical Code for practitioners. nice try, stu. but, the FACT OF FUCK is simply that EVEN when you run down the check list with people, and you're totally honest, and they know and fully realize what they're getting into, and they confirm their full cognizance to all the details, absolving you of any potential karma, blame, or wrong doing... IT DOESN'T MATTER, you are only having a conversation with their frontal structure, you are only making an agreement with the intellectual, cerebral part of the personality, and it DOESN'T KNOW SHIT. it will lie to you, agreee with you, and make incredible convincing overtures of every imaginable kind in order to enact the impulses of its sad, somnambulant karma.
like or not, an authentic practioner in the Mystery (notice i did not say "perfected practitioner" or "fullly realized practitioner", cuz i wasn't, and i'm not, but i am authentic simply in that i know my own heart, it is sincere and i do attempt to live in concordance with the codes of the Mystery) is automatically aware of not only what is going on the in personality of the person as they are shaking their head and saying "yes, yes, that all sounds good, i agree, now let's fuck our brains out", but you also get a reading what is going on their heart, their soul, and all the deeper dimensions of their being.
you see, my hope was, that if i had this disclaimer conversation with people i wanted to sleep with, they would be advised, informed, and the fuck session would be "sanctioned" by the Mystery, so to speak. it could even be illumed. but, sadly, what happens is that 99% -and i'm not just making that up, i'd say it's actually 99% in my experience- of the people you're getting ready to have sex with are only able to respond with their head, and their head is a traitor to their heart, soul, and higher self. maybe 1% of the people in my experience were actually in a place where they had command of their heart, soul, and were inhabiting their higher self, and their agreement pertaining to the sex was coming from ALL of those places. everyone else was being dragged around by their deep wounding, their pathologies, their unconscious, their denial of Divinity, etc. of course I WAS as much or more than anyone, cuz i was actually trying to manipulate the Mystery and the relationship by using this loop hole of no manipulation.
what is it to work in the Mystery? to serve the awakening of all sentient beings.
you can't simultaneously fuck someone who's unconscious, broken, damanged, lost (and THOSE are the people who are also most confident, engaging, charismatic, and brilliantly convincing that they ARE ready to show up this way) and also serve their awakening. i'm sorry -literally, i AM sorry, cuz wouldn't it be fun if we could just fuck fuck fuck and it was all cool? the 60's love flower bonanza? but, alas, if our Ethical Code is really the Dharma, or the Mystery, or Divine Love (same things), then we have to figure out a way to deal with the incredibly compelling drives and incliniations of our body, mind, and emotions in a way doesn't suppress or deny them, but doesn't hurt other people, or worse, inhibit their awakening.
this is the problem that i've long had with more sexually orientied spiritual teachers (those who fuck their students or get their students fucking), and it's just a hunch developed from my own direct experience in Ethics, etc. it's just exceedingly rare to find people who are awake enough or healthy enough to play in that arena and not have it fuck them up. and frankly, i am always, always suspicious of the teacher's true motivations.
let me get back to my point. was it fun for "me" to have sex with three girls at the same time? yes. was it in the highest interest of each of them and me? no. it wasn't. does that make me evil? no. unethical? ultimately, let's just say i decided it would be better to be MORE ethical.
this really depressed me when it sunk in. i realized the party was over, in my heart and soul i knew i could not continue bopping chicks AND become an authentic practitioner. so i stopped. but then the depression gave way to joy, freedom, release, transparency, and ultimately and opportunity to move into new sorts of challenges and miracles, and if i hadn't surrendered it never would have happened. any of you who read this blog or have listened to my music, etc, know that i really dig dirty, twisted, fucked up stuff. my sense of humor, art, and culture tend to celebrate the gutter and the heavens equally, and i do not wanna seem puritanical here at all- truly. if my wife and i can find someone to have sex with us in a 3-way and that person is awake enough, and we're all engaging from a clear enough space, and the set and setting are right, so to speak, then cool- THAT'S ETHICAL. that could happen. you never know.
but, i just don't think that's the gig in the Dharma very often at all. mostly we get pulled around by the white noise of our mind, the hallucinations of our emotions, the phantoms of our desperate, clutching ego which endlessly reinvents itself and hijacks scenario after scenario, undetected.
i don't regret any of my previous sex life, and i do not want to tell anyone what to do, who to do, or who to do them. one thing i know is that i had to go through what i went through and i had to do it the way i did. i NEVER could have taken someone's word for it, i had to learn the lessons, re-learn them, test them again, and it took years. i'm truly sorry for those who got hurt in any way on my clumsy, turbulent process. i'm still on that path, learning now with a wife, daughter, spiritual teacher, and a community of friends in the Mystery that i depend upon desperately to help me surrender and remain loyal to the ~?~.
