While lurking on the edge of a zoom, I listened to a 90-minute conversation about orgasms. That in itself was a new personal best for me: I’d only succeeded in talking about the subject with a few girlfriends over the years, usually right before we passed out. But here were rooms of adults, scattered across this great land, intently studying it.
My wildest dreams had been answered! Not only could I talk about it, I could voice my enthusiasm for the entire pursuit. I love orgasms! More orgasms! I used to yell at the wall when all the writing I was reading sounded like cardboard. More orgasms! I’d yell in the grocery store without 5 Spice Powder. More orgasms! I’d think while talking to a person who was barely responsive, standing like a Chia Pet placed down on a sidewalk.
Zoom talk turned to “climax consciousness”, a term that landed on my ears and sent my brain through a windshield of possibilities.
Was the meaning as literal as in “don’t pass out when you orgasm?” Come on, it happens. Or did it mean you scrupulously count your orgasms, never saying you orgasmed if you didn’t or didn’t when you did? To my mind, “climax consciousness” could only mean one thing: be conscious of your orgasms and have as many as you can. That idea suited me fine.
Not so fast, those wise zoomers said. That’s not what it means AT.ALL. Turns out that ‘Chia Pet Person’ I met on the sidewalk is in the clutches of “climax consciousness,” and I was not. (Those roles could easily have been reversed in a different moment.) I was walking down the street looking at dogs passing by and the Chia Pet Person had spun an hour into the future, not seeing, speaking, or feeling anything much at all until that future moment arrived. There was a meeting you see, and he had to get to it.
“Climax consciousness” is that endless carrot-stick game set up by Western society. It’s the day of meeting deadlines, hitting someone else’s mark, performance to meet the needs and expectations of others — for money, for love, for whatever. It’s using the carrot as the be-all-and-end-all of your life; you’re saying, ‘oh yeah, I wasn’t worth more than that carrot.” Any life that transpires while you chase that carrot falls away into oblivion and just the endless chase remains with you.
My God. No longer on the edge of that zoom, my insides were on fire and tingling. “Climax consciousness” described the last 15 years of my life, locked inside a New York City media career that left piles of money and an exhaustion that took two years of sleep to heal! I was everywhere all day long and nowhere whatsoever. Everybody knew me and no one had any idea who I was. I’d work constantly for six months, then fly to paradise on the other side of the world (using some of that money I had no time to spend) and sat in my room, surf pounding outside my hotel, sobbing. For two days. There was just nothing else inside me but that.
I was in one such spiral when, standing on a beach, a humpback breached 100 feet offshore just as my cell rang with a complaint from the office. I stood watching the rough water where the whale had disappeared, Her wave reaching where I stood, and stared at my phone. Even I could not turn away from this message.
Eros had appeared in the form of a humpbacked whale to pull me out of my “climax consciousness” and though I did not have the words then, I do now. All the bus-y-ness and meetings and planes and running around was killing me and none of it was worth a damn if I couldn’t even REMEMBER it.
But damn. I remember that whale and the message She brought. And yeah, Eros had to hit me over the head with 30 tons of marine mammal to get me to listen.
I learned on that same zoom that Anjuli gave up coffee. R or B, I no longer know which, said, “well, coffee is the rocket fuel of climax consciousness.” Then I thought about my big media career and all the busy-ness; the endless coffee shops of New York City filled with folks who have so much to do but find so little time to be happy about it – or much of anything else for that matter. It was all so ludicrous, I laughed.
If the humpback hadn’t called me out, I’m sure something else would have finally gotten my attention. And now I know where the spot for me is: on Anjuli’s porch, having some nice tea.