EA012 - Erotic Awakening Feature 1
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Dan:
Today on Erotic Awakening with Dan and dawn, erotic educator Lee Harrington.
[music intro]dawn:
Welcome to Erotic Awakening with Dan and dawn, a weekly view of all things erotic from BDSM to erotic spirituality, from swinging as a lifestyle to simply fun kink. Each week, we bring you a diverse offering of erotic and alternative lifestyles in its many forms. This podcast includes frank discussions of highly sexual topics. This podcast is intended for consenting adults over the age of 18. If you are offended by this type of content, we recommend you stop listening right now.Dan:
Hi, dawn.dawn:
Hi, Dan.Dan:
Good morning.dawn:
Good morning. I see I've got something new sitting in front of my face this morning.Dan:
Yes, that is a new microphone. It is even more phallic looking than the previous microphone.dawn:
[giggling] It definitely is.Dan:
As a matter of fact, with the little mount that comes with it, if we end up with no material for our show, we'll just have you mount it and see what that sounds like.dawn:
That would be interesting.Dan:
Today, we are bringing a part one of a two part interview with Lee Harrington, a fascinating person and a fascinating interview. One of the really neat things for me, and I guess this is my lifestyle coming of age story, so to speak, or at least one of them, was I remember we were in an event in Maryland that Lee Harrington was presenting at. And we were sitting outside and it was a beautiful night.dawn:
Oh, yeah…Dan:
And there was a barn nearby and there's some people fucking in the barn, and they were having a wonderful time. And I think it was the sound of their fucking that drew us in that direction.But we ran into Lee and another friend out front. And we sat there and we talked for what felt like hours. And it was just really interesting to sit there and talk with Lee and get to know him, [cat meows] and it always struck me as funny that that was more interesting to me [cat meows] than, you know, with 20 yards away, there was some sort of [cat meows] group sex activity going on. And I can recall thinking, “man, it sounds really hot, but I wish they'd keep the moaning down, this is a great conversation.” [cat meows]
dawn:
Just a little odd. So today we have the first part of that interview with Lee.Dan:
Yeah. Lee talks about all kinds of really interesting things in there. He talks about the community some. And about how the lifestyle, the bond of people in the lifestyle. And then we jump over to gangbangs, and then multiple facets of humans in general, and intimacy, and just all kinds of neat stuff.And the interview went on longer than I normally do interviews. I like to keep this show a little tight. I like to keep it at about a half hour range, but it was just such a wonderful interview. It went well beyond, well beyond an hour or so. So we're going to chop it in half. Half of it in this show, we’ll present the second half in the next show. And I think you will really enjoy it. I certainly did. We had a wonderful time interviewing Lee, and I've had a great time listening.
As a matter of fact, editing the interview was difficult because I found myself listening and enjoying the interview instead of listening to it with the critical ear. Which I'm supposed to do on occasion, they tell me.
dawn:
So it was just so great that we just let it go and go. So like Dan said, lots of good stuff.[music]
Dan:
Other than that, here we are sitting in…dawn:
…a hotel room in Saint Louis.Lee:
[laughs] At beautiful Beat Me in Saint Louis. Which I think is it's in my top two as far as most clever event names ever. It's either Kinko de Mayo or Beat Me in Saint Louis. Like, I can't not smile when I say the event name. You know?Dan:
Those are great event names.Lee:
They’re great event names.Dan:
We're sitting here with Lee Harrington and in a beautiful hotel that they've got us at, upstairs right now. There's about 350 people spanking and beating each other in the dungeons.Lee:
And also flirting and socializing and getting to know one another, which to me is just as impressive as the rack ‘em smack ’em kind of stuff, where it's just about getting people, people getting their play on. One of things I love about events like this that actually… ‘cause a lot of events I go to as far as the generic hotel events, as I refer to them, you'll have people, you'll have space for you just you have the dungeon in the evening. And so you have people crammed in the corners trying to have conversation and or you have people who have already established play, who go into the dungeon to have their scenes.And I love the fact that events like Beat Me in St Louis have the space to just go out into the hallway and there's you know… You can get beverages and you can sit down and talk with people and, you know? There's midnight snacks and things like that, where you can just be social with other human beings, and flirt and meet new people. You don't get to do that at all the events in our community.
Dan:
I completely agree. I think that one of the interesting aspects of finding these erotic awakenings, everyone thinks that these type of events, or swingers’ events, or any of these kind of events where adults come together to explore, are about the activity specific to the dungeon, specific to the bedroom, all that kind of stuff. And you hit on a really important topic. We also just communicate with each other as people with the same ideas.Lee:
Absolutely. And also the number of times I've been to events and just met friends. Right? That - meet folks like yourselves, that like, I'm happy to see every time I get together and we keep up with each other through the bazillion ways we stalk each other on the internet, or whatever.I like the idea that in finding commonality in our sexuality, or at least finding acceptance in our sexuality with other individuals, that we find people who are accepting of us as humans. Right? Because that's sort of, kind of tricky to find sometimes when you feel like you have to hide part of who you are. That if I meet people at … because I do roleplaying games, for example, you know? Dungeons and Dragons, board games, all that kind of stuff - actually more I tend to play White Wolf and Shadow Run. But anyway, that's all moot.
For me, at those kinds of events there are some people that I can share all of my life with. But people ask me, “So what do you do for a living?” I'm like, “I'm a sexuality educator.” Right? That's all I can say. Well, while here people know what I do for a living already. People already know that I'm into kinky freaky stuff. And I feel at least, it's easier, there's a higher percentage where I can share my vanilla world with them, too. And say, “And I'm also a painter. And I also love doing performance art. And I also happen to, you know, have some leanings towards libertarian politics. And I also like world travel.” The likelihood of me finding like minds tends to be higher in these communities. And so I end up finding more of my friends here.
Dan:
But that's really neat though. We are… dawn and I are also involved in the variety of RPGs and LARPs and other geek type stuff. And the communications we have with our geek friends are not necessarily to the level of where we're reaching great depths with each other.Lee:
Right.Dan:
Certainly you have deep friends.dawn:
But I'm afraid of scaring them.Dan:
There is that. Do you feel like, though, when we've shared a time together in an intimate situation, being a dungeon, being a bedroom, being any of the types of intimate realities that we share with each other, it becomes easier to allow yourself to be vulnerable in other parts of your lives with people.Lee:
Oh, it depends. I'd say for a lot of folks I know, yeah. But it's also about whether your intimacies, right, whether it's in the dungeon, in the bedroom, on a washer and dryer. Right? Don't care. But whether you're -[all laugh]
dawn:
I like the visual.Lee:
It's a good visual. Whether your intimacies are something you are doing for the activity. Or whether it’s something you are doing to bond with another human being. Because there's certainly some times… Were you guys in there? Rita Seagrave did a class today on gangbangs.dawn:
No. We didn't see that one.Lee:
Okay, So she did a class today. Rita Seagrave is an amazing educator, for people listening, and I love her to pieces. And she also has charm out the wazoo, just an absolute charm, and is a beauty on top of that. And so she did class on gangbangs and it's about how do you figure out what if this is a fantasy of yours?How do you figure out what you really want to make into a reality? If it's stuff that you fantasized about? How do you know if you're ready for it? If you're ready for it, how do you make it happen? If your partner wants to do it, how do you weigh out your emotions around it?
If you're going to do it, how do you decide, you know, what your STD protocols are? How do you figure out what parts are important and what parts aren't? And I was thinking about it in that for me, my gangbang fantasies as the bottom, as the person being used as the person, and that's how I think that is used.
Right? Some people think of gangbangs and it's like, this is about pure hedonism. For other people it's about the idea of receiving the love and attention and connection. From 40 people or four people, right? For some people, gangbangs are about just being a body, being fucked and filled by the train that comes along.
And for me, I realized that the bulk of my group sex fantasies, when they are triadic, right, when it was me and two other people, it was about connection, right? It was me connecting with a couple, because I tend to not all the time, but I tend to be attracted towards power couples, right? People who are like, you know, whether they're a dominant and submissive or just two people who just - they're amazing - together.
They're both individually amazing human beings, but together they shine. Right? There's something that draws me into it, and I want to connect with both of them and them as a pair. So my triad fantasies tend to be about connection, but my group fantasies? As a person, especially as the person in the center, tend to be about being used and fucked and filled and all of that kind of stuff.
It was really interesting when you brought up that question of, Well, you know, isn't it about, you know, that you get to have these friendships later? That it depends on how I connected with the people, right? If I had somebody come to me and say, Well, I just want you to tie me up, I might not connect with them at all.
I might not want to have a friendship with them because they didn't - you were talking before, we were talking before, in a different conversation, about getting the energy back. Right? And with those people, I don't get the energy back. I feel like I'm dumping into a black hole, my skill sets, and they're gobbling it all up.
And/or, if I'm bottoming to a stranger or if I'm, you know, if I'm being used in some way, it's about my dialog with myself. And they're just, they end up being an actor in my play.
Dan:
Right.Lee:
It's not me connecting with them. It's me interacting with their character. But for people - I would completely agree with you. For people that I interact with them. People who come to me and say, “Oh my God! I saw that thing you did. Can we talk about doing something now?” Not when people come to me and say, “Hey, could I be next?” Right? That's that's the rack ‘em smack ‘em logic, right? Can I be next? And I'm like, I sometimes, if I'm feeling like just using them, just having them be a character, that could be hot and fun. But it's not a way I build friendships.It's not something I'm going to want to connect with three months or three years later when I see ‘em at the next event. Or when I, if they drop me an email and say, “Oh my God, that was so amazing. Will you do it again? I'm usually like, “No. Not that keen. You didn't show me anything. You showed me a character. I don't - I don't know who you are. I don't know how you laugh. I don't know how you love. I don't know what you do.”
But if somebody says to me like, “I was so inspired by that one thing you did and this is what it got - it started to get the butterflies in my belly going, and that was so amazing. And can we talk about doing that?” The dialog is what builds - the dialog into the play, back into the dialog. It ends up, it's like opening up a space for the magic to happen, instead of just following a script.
dawn:
Right.Dan:
Very cool. Do you find the reverse then? Do you find that if you're building a deep friendship with someone, you know, of significance, I'm sharing my heart and soul type stuff, that you are drawn to include the intimate element into it, then?Lee:
Intimate element of my S/M with them?Dan:
An intimate element of any sort into the friendship, to build the friendship deeper?Lee:
Can you rephrase it? Sorry. I’m getting a little confused on how you mean that sentence.Dan:
Do you think that it's useful to, for you to build a deep relationship with someone, to bring in something sensual, sexual or that same into it?Lee:
I see. I see. For me, every human is at least a dodecahedron, right? We've got at least 20 sides.Dan:
Okay.Lee:
Every human that I have any friendship with or any real connection - one sided, two sided people bore me. Right? And so to me, what I tend to do is, I'll start off by meeting somebody with one side. I meet, somebody… I meet them at a writers conference, or I meet them at an art event, or I meet them at a kink thing, or we're talking online about surrealism art. Or whatever it is, right? Or it’s gaming stuff, or it's, you know, wardrobe interests. Or it's having traveled to the same place, right?We start with one of our sides. We start with one of our sides. So I start with one of my sides, and I see if they have a side that connects. Right? Can they interact with me on that side? I'm talking about world travel. Can they talk with me about world travel, or at least travel? Or about, oh wow, “I've never… you got to go to Turkey? I've always wanted to go to Turkey. This is what I love about Turkish culture.” Right?
Dan:
Right.Lee:
I hit that side. I go, wow, my dodecahedron ran into theirs. Don't know what shape they are. I flip to the next side, either later that night, or in conversation the next time I run into them. But what's the next one?I'll bring up the gaming thing. Right? Okay. Well, the first one was talking about world travel. Now we're talking about creative stuff with roleplaying and having different personas and characters. And maybe they don't play a board game or card games or roleplaying games, but they can say, “Well, I'm really into the idea of going to ren faires.”
“Oh neat!” We got a second side we can share. And so for me, bondage is another one of my sides, right? Sex is another one of my sides. Topping is one of my sides. Bottoming is one of my sides. Being a hedonistic pig is one of my sides. Being gluttonous is one of my sides. Being sensual is one of my sides. Being sadistic or masochistic is one of my sides.
And so I have all my vanilla sides. I have all my sexual sides, all my sensual sides. And suddenly I realize I'm a 100 sided giant rolling monster and I want 100 sided, giant rolling monsters in my life. And so for me, that idea is bringing the sex into it. I would say yes? As a way to see how many ways I can connect with them. But if I run into somebody that, you know what, I have a hundred sides and I could connect with them on 27 of them? And none of them have anything to do with my sex stuff, but they can at least do cuddling when we're hanging out, because I have a couple of friends of mine. Totally monogamous. Totally. You know, we have no shared things at all, on the entire sexual range of things. But are we still incredibly, deeply close friends who can hang out and be on the same couch and, you know, sit with all of our computers? Like, I had at one moment when I was visiting friends of mine in Maine who there is some chemistry with, but I was visiting all of them.
We had, you know, one of them on one side of me, and one of them on the other side. All of us had our laptops out, and our knees were brushing against each other. And occasionally one would like they would reach over and be laughing with each other. And we play with each other's hair and go back to coding. It wasn't sexual, but to me I do need for people who I'm going to connect with on a deep level, I need to have at least touch of some sort in my life. Whether it's hugs or kisses or…
dawn:
Eros.Lee:
Eros, yeah. It doesn't have to be. Well, I mean, Eros is a loaded word though, in Greek, but I mean, I haven't because… It's talking about more than… Eros is more than touch.It's talking about that, that sexual element to a degree too. So…
dawn:
Yeah, I'm thinking more of the sensual …Lee:
Yeah. The sensual side.dawn:
The sacred …Lee:
Yeah. Yeah.Dan:
That's really interesting though is that the... Again, and now we can play with words all night long. You and I don't have a classical sexual relationship, but I certainly feel that we have a sensual relationship.Lee:
Absolutely.Dan:
And an intimate relationship. Regardless of what Tab A is sucking slot B and that kind of stuff, you know? Or not.Lee:
Right. And there are people that have done Tab A with Slot B and it's like, “Okay, that was fun. And now what? If there's nothing left? We have nothing else in common.” Ugh. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.Dan:
So is the sensual aspect, the intimate aspect, was maybe three or four sides or was it just one more side?Lee:
You know what? I thought about that because I've had people who, the chemistry is amazing. And the play is amazing. And the touch is amazing. And they did not know how to spell. Right? I couldn't tolerate communicating with them over email or text messages or anything like that - because I loved them. I adored them. I was sexually attracted to them on all these different levels.And the fact that they couldn't have a…. They couldn't - not just communicate with me on the levels I needed to… I'm not, I'm not talking about being a word hound. I'm just, you know, when they can't figure out which one is which there is the i-e which one is the e-r-e? That's a problem in my world. I can't. I go crazy. So to me that's almost more important than the touch, right? Or when I’ve woken up in the morning playing with somebody that was like the hot “Oh My God!!” connection that I don't do as much as I used to. I used to do a lot more like one night standy kind of things.
And I've realized recently that I need a lot more than that, to have it be a satisfying experience. Or at least have one of the people in the room that I have that with. But I think there's something that's necessary about being able to have more than just the sexual and touch connection with people. That I need human beings who can at least keep up with my conversations, individuals who can and not just can, but are interested in knowing what's going on in my life, and have interesting stuff happening in their lives.
And I'm not talking about that they have to be crazy world traveling artist-educators too. But people who can talk about the fact that they're stay at home moms, but talk about the fathers of their kids are up to, and can be eloquent. Like that's just as important to me as the touch element is. But I think I've realized that I've turned into a bit… By being surrounded by so many amazing stars, so many amazing, glowing humans in this planet, by realizing how many glowing humans there are on this planet, that I've gotten a little bit spoiled. And I know I'm spoiled and I'm blissfully spoiled.
By realizing that I don't have to settle. Right? I don't have to settle, that just because I'm polyamorous and and have many loves and want to have many relationships, doesn't mean I have to - the first person that comes to the door and says, I'm okay with you dating more than one person doesn't mean I have to settle for them, right?
That I know as a fact there's other people out there. Sometimes it takes some searching, but I can have other human beings out there who can discuss Dada surrealism with me until 3 a.m. and then turn around and have hot sex with me. And then the next day, joke about being little kids while we watch the Gummi Bears or Yu-Gi-Oh! on television. And then later that afternoon, cook together.
I can have people in my life that have multiple facets. And I think the only reason I was able to figure that out was I realized that I had multiple facets. And I spent some time with me. And I think one of the things that I - actually I just think…. I know - talking with people who are in this world out there who haven't found their own shining-ness inside… I don't really think we can find partners who shine if we haven't found how we shine. If we haven't spent an hour, or seven, or 70 with ourselves going, “Okay, what's what's amazing and unique about me? What can I do with my life? How do I follow my bliss? How do I follow my passions?”
That's not just sex. It's, you know, it’s that, it’s that awakening piece, right? About having some awakening about ourselves, “What am I doing with my life? Where am I going?” And I realized I couldn't have good people in my world who were going to stay around until I realized I was a good person who deserved to stay around.
Dan:
Do you think, though, as an educator, as a presenter, as an international presenter, do people understand when they come in - and you know, a lot of people, a lot of seekers, a lot of people looking for that, that thing that they think that's going to make them happy and a lot of them think it's going to be found within …Lee:
…a one hour class?Dan:
A one hour class. Right. Do you think that they get the idea? Are they looking for something external, or are they starting to get the idea that it's an inside job? I so completely agree with you on that. You gotta start on the inside.dawn:
On the inside.Lee:
Well, you do have to start on the inside, but I think that the classes, that parties, that good movies, that a quality book, that a walk out in the rain on a summer afternoon, these are all catalysts. Right? That if we're going to have this alchemical process happen inside our spirit, I really think that needs to be something that happens where we… where we have something that triggers it.dawn:
Right.Lee:
And I've met the people who are having catalysts - who don't need a catalyst, who are constantly volatile inside all the time. “Oh my God, today I'm having this revelation. Tomorrow I have the high drama capacity.” I'm like, uhhh. Right?But for most of us, we're stable elements. We are, you know, a bottle of, a package of baking soda and a bottle of vinegar that live side by side in our being. And we've got to have something that picks up those two things, pours it into the vessel of our heart, shakes it up, and turns into that crazy volcano thing we did back when we were in third grade and made, you know, made the weird clay volcanoes. Did you guys ever do that art thing as a kid?
dawn:
Yeah. And sometimes it involves going to a class and having something mirrored back that we didn't even realize we needed mirrored back.Lee:
Or the moment you go, oh my God, I'm not alone. Yeah. That was a huge one for me when I was, when I was younger, that I'd known. One of my weird things is that I've known I was kinky since I was six years old. So. And I have a definitive moment that I can very blatantly point to. And I'll be talking about that moment in my Wet & Messy Play class tomorrow. But one of the things that I realized was that the first time I started playing with other people, not just reading stuff in books and not just having self moments, was when somebody else was like, wow, you know, that just sat next to me, God, that that girl looks really cute in a pair of really, really tight jeans. That came out of their mouth.Right? Not in a derogatory way, like, I’d tap that, you know, not derogatory way but in a “that looks really hot.” I went wow, that looks really hot to me, too. And it's that moment where it's like my desires are validated by an outside source - is a good starting point. And so for a lot of people who have fetishes or who have, you know, either, you know, object fetishes, like, you know, denim, or leather, or latex, or pantyhose, or fuzzy bunny slippers, whatever it is, right?
Or whether it's people who are like, you know, I really like having my hair pulled. Or I've always wanted to have hardcore anal sex with 17 people or whatever it is. The idea that you can show up to a space and have somebody else go, I like that too, can be the moment that simply not only do I have permission for that one thing, but I have permission for the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing.
And it's like dominoes falling, right? It’s like dominoes falling. And so I think that there's something really valuable about having people understand that these things can be catalysts. But it’s, what do you do afterwards, right? When you're talking about the work you have to do inside, what do you do afterwards? Well, great.
Well, great. You went to a weekend on meditative practices on how to be a shaman, and you had an amazing experience where you open yourself up to the universe and you've met your deities that are supposed to guide you to the next level. And God came down, channeled themself through your fingertips, and you, glossolalia, spoke in tongues, all over the place.
And now what? Great. You had a revelatory spiritual experience. I think there's a book out there. There's a title that's like First the Nirvana, Then the Laundry, or something. [dawn laughs] And I love that idea that like, great, you have this and - the same thing happens at sex clubs. The same thing happens at S/M events. The same thing happens anywhere you have a revelatory experience.
Any time you wake up, great. You have this amazing time, where you realize something about yourself. And now what? What do you do when you go home? What are you doing about it? And there are some people it's “No. That's all I want. I want to realize it. And now I feel stronger about myself inside. And I never have to go there again. I had the amazing experience once, and I can keep that locked in my heart to be a glowing ember in the darkest of times, to warm my hands by.” Cool.
And I know other people where it's like, “No, I'm going to go home. And this has totally transformed my life and I'm going to change everything. Oh mu God! I want to be a kinky person a 120% of the time. I'm going to dedicate myself to the divine 120% of the time. And everything is different now. I've got to leave people.”
I'm like, okay, that's the other end of things. And another, and there's a third end, where it's we forget everything happened. Because by having this revelation, I can't go back to my life, and I have to. For whatever quantity of have to.
I know other people who are like, wow, that was really amazing. And I want to remember what that feels like. I want to dig into myself and figure out how do I get other ways I can feel that way? If it's not with the same activity. Yeah, to me it's the version of doing the homework. It's the homework. I can't just go to a class. If we’re looking at the university level or even the high school level, right?
I can't just go to class and listen to a lecture and know everything on the topic. I have to go to the American history class, listen to the lecture for an hour, then go home with the book and learn more about Andrew Jackson.
Dan:
Right.Lee:
[laughs] Or else I only have the surface understanding and I might still feel, wow. Andrew Jackson was a really interesting character in American history, but that's all I know.And the same thing happens at S/M clubs. Right? That I can show up and go, “Oh my God! I got this amazing flogging. It felt so cool.” But if I don't go home and do the homework of like, “Wow, well, what does this mean? What do I want to do with that? Let's try a little bit more flogging. Was it the flogging? Was it the connection with the human being? Was it me realizing that I could be naked in public? Was it about the fact that I've got more touch in my life, and as Americans we’re touch starved as a culture? Was it about the fact that I certainly was the center of attention and nobody looks at me normally, and how else can I get that need? Oh, and I could do it by becoming a Beat Poet.”
What does this mean? And I think that homework is really important, because I keep on meeting people in every walk of life who have discussed the huge moment - and that either ignore it, or get hooked, become catharsis junkies. Right? Become revelation junkies. Where they have to go back and have another big experience. It's always the big experience, the next big experience, and they can't do it for themselves.
These are the people who end up going to, you know, going to the tantric yoga retreat weekends and doing it every year and have the exact same experience every year. And it doesn't build. They keep on going back to the exact same conference and doing the exact same thing. It doesn't build. It doesn't enrich the rest of their lives. It's just the thing they do and then they walk away from it
dawn:
Sure. It’s a moment in time.Lee:
And it's a way to do it, but it's not my way. I'd much rather have the huge “Oh My God! That was an amazing thing.” And then at least take one piece of it and go, “Wow, I can at least use that breathing technique when I'm masturbating.” Or when I'm stressed out, I can close my eyes and remember how calm I felt in that moment of meditation. And keeping that shard alive in my heart, instead of waiting for the next time, I can have the entire pie.Dan:
We know a friend of ours who’s - we were talking about, we went to this level one certification of a particular Tantra school, and she said, “Oh yeah, I've been to that one too. I've been to that one six times.Lee:
[laughs] Right, right.Dan:
Six times, literally. And it's like, but we went only once. And then we went level two after that.dawn:
And then we picked it apart and pulled out some pieces and morphed it into something else.Dan:
And it's very neat that you bring that up. Right? How long are we going to sit on that, like you were saying, that flogging was fantastic. I love the feeling of the flogging. I guess I'll just have to keep getting flogged over and over again.Lee:
But it's not all a bad thing. I mean, what comes to mind is my friend Spike, who great, great guy. Crazy traveling trucker and many other things. I mean, he does a lot more than that now, but that's how we originally met. And he's been to my… what is it? I think it's my Rope & Sex class. He’s been to one of my rope bondage classes four times. And I’m like, what are you doing? You know this class. You know this class. What are you doing? I mean, I cover a chest harness. Maybe, if I have time, a one column tie, how to tie wrists out to a bed frame or whatever. A two column tie. How do I touch down to ankles. Or tie, you know, your ankles to your thighs for spreading apart. And I do strap-on harness and a crotch rope and/or strap-on harness. That's it.And he's like, “No, that's actually not all you do.” And I'm like, “What's that?” He's like, What do you mean? He's like, “Yeah, I’ve got the ties down. But I come back to it because every time we do the same 101 level class, there's some piece of wisdom that slips out that we didn't catch before.” Because it's one of the amazing things about theater, right? About going to a concert, instead of listening to a CD. About seeing a painting live, instead of a photograph of it. Right?
Each time we bear witness to it, we are, as the viewer, at a different place in our life, right? We as a viewer, are at a different place in my life. And so therefore, this time when I say “and remember, don't cinch down the wrist too tight” - the first time, okay, whatever. The second time… Well, since then he had a scene happen where the person's hands fell asleep.
He has a different understanding of what I meant. Right? And also each time I give it, as a speaker -
Dan:
Right.Lee:
I might have the same outline, but it's like music. I can't play it identical the same way twice. It's just not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. I'll have the same outline. I know that I'm going to cover a one column tie, a two column tie, a crotch rope, some basic safety stuff.I'm going to include at least three jokes about different sexual positions. I'm going to pick on at least two people in the audience that I can pull up there and flip around into different poses. I'm going to make at least a couple other people in the audience blush. I'm going to come up and examine somebody else’s strap-on harness in the room, and usually, you know, play with it and slap it around in some way.
These are the main ingredients, right? I know my main ingredients. But it is impossible for me to make a souffle the exact same way twice. Engineering speaking, chemical wise speaking. Yes, I would be making the exact same souffle. But every bite is different. It's one of the amazing things about living rather than being a one-off recording.
Dan:
Right.dawn:
Right.Lee:
And I'm not saying that listening to, you know, a song like.. Here's a great one for my personal life: Self Evident by Ani DiFranco. It's her World Trade Center song. Right? And I memorized it at one point, because I'd listened to it so many times because each time I listened to it, the very first time I cried about friends I lost.The second time I laughed about, you know, the line of “pull our dick out of someone else’s desert, put it back in our pants, and take the hypocrite - and take the hypocritical chance of Freedom Forever.” All right. And I laughed so hard about that, I couldn't stop laughing. The third time I listened to it, the metaphor of “as people, we are just poems, we’re 90% metaphor, and the leanness of meaning, approaching hyper distillation. And once upon a time we were moonshine, flowing down the throat of a giraffe.”
And that line, the first opening lines were just so evocative to me. It's the same bloody recording from her doing it from Carnegie Hall, right? But I, as the viewer, have come to it every single time differently. So your friend's saying she did, you know, the woman saying she did the same tantra class six times.
It's not a bad thing, as long as you're getting something different out of it each time, you know? Are you? And if you're not, if you're just going to come to it and just say, wow, I loved that one breathing technique so much, I have to be back to relive it. I have to get the same thing out of it again?
To me, it makes me wonder if each of us have somewhere between one breath and 150 years on this planet, depending how many, how many breaths we get around this time around. All right. If we have one breath, 150 years, what are you doing with it? Right? How are you living with it? And, to me it feels like, almost not quite a waste, but like, for my life, I could do more with it than do the same thing, the identical thing again, not the same thing, but identical thing again.
Dan:
I wonder if the tricky bit apart that - a bit apart that - I wonder is the tricky thing. See, I will edit that out. [all laugh] It's like junkies talk about, always chasing that first high.Lee:
Yes.Dan:
People that you know, they have this experience and it's like, “Oh My God, I've gotta…” And they chase that experience instead of living in the current experience.Lee:
A friend of mine who we lovingly referred to in college as Baron Harkonnen, because he was a fairly good sized guy, was an acid dealer. We’re not supposed to talk about this, whatever, I don't care. You know, people do drugs, it's a reality.But he was an acid dealer and one day he just came back and he's just like, “I’m gonna keep dealing, but I'm done taking.” And we're like, but “What happened?” This is a guy who used to trip balls every weekend. And we’re like “What are you talking about?” He's like, “I had the perfect high. And I'm not going to be like my clients.”
Dan:
Yeah.Lee:
And he's like, “I had the perfect moment, where I had a moment of revelation over Froot Loops.” [Dan laughs] Right? “Well, I had the perfect bite of Froot Loops in milk, half dissolved, where the rainbows hit my skull and everything was exactly as the world should be. And I know that I will not have that moment again. And I'm not going to try.”dawn:
Wow.Lee:
“I'm not going to try.” And I've also met people on the scene who've had that happen to where they're like, you know, I had that perfect scene of that type. I don't want to go chasing it.Dan:
But what do you do with that point? Right.Lee:
Go to something different. What's the next chapter? It makes me think of Picasso. Right? Fine. You’re done with your blue period. You've painted what you needed to get out of that thing. What's next on the agenda?[music outro]
Dan:
Eclectic artist, spiritual and erotic educator, gender adventurer and published author on human sexuality and spiritual experience. Part of the international sex positive community since 1995. His stories make people laugh while showing you that eroticism can be as serious, sexy, or silly as you make it while challenging each of us to pursue our own erotic and spiritual authenticity. You can find out more about Lee at his website, PassionAndSoul.com.dawn:
Music heard on Erotic Awakening: Free by White Night, Strawberry Jam by Jerry Bradley, and Wunda by 31D1, is provided from the Pod Show Pod Safe Network. More information can be found at music.podshow.com.
