© Barbara Lewis

As I made my way from one session to the next, I came to an even greater understanding of how fluid human sexuality can be, and how mysteriously, wondrously complex. Many of the conference sessions showed with startling clarity, however, that we are powerfully influenced by a modern culture which would have us believe that “correct” sexual experience can be summed up in a few words or images. And, therefore, “sexual dysfunction” can also be blithely defined — leaving the door open for the almighty drug companies to offer a “magic bullet” like Viagra, which promises to deliver everyone, who shows a whiff of deviance from the norm, once more sexually upright.

A dangerously simplistic view of sexuality but good for business.

 

I was fortunate to have been with Nicholas all those years. He was an emotionally open man with a confident sexual flow. For him sexuality was not just “doing it.” He felt, as I did, that a major aspect of our overall health was that we gave one another a lot of physical comfort: hugs, kisses, nuzzling, holding hands, rubbing feet — and some very tender nightly love rituals. All of it part of the wide spectrum of an evolving sexual relationship.

But our modern culture promotes quite a reduced picture. One of the conference speakers, Jean Kilbourne, showed us slide after slide of graphics from magazines and television, which presented women’s sexuality as totally dependent on a limited notion of beauty, devoid of intellectual curiosity, and sadly dysfunctional if it does not meet certain standards.

Following Kilbourne’s slide-show, well-known investigative journalist Jean Lenzer gave an eye-opening account of how the clinical results of drug studies could easily be skewed in favor of what drug companies require in order to persuade a needy, older woman that she could be in a sexy swirl again if only she would take this or that little pill. Lenzer titled her talk, “The Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing.”

My mother encouraged the vision. After all, I was nearly six feet tall. And then along came Nicholas with a very different body type from my own. Handsome in his unique way — brilliant, funny and vibrantly sexual. My mother was not sure that he was right for me. Perhaps not tall enough? she wondered. Still she opined, “With Nicholas, you will never have a dull moment.”

She was right.

 

Nicholas questioned everything. He was not easily swayed by the opinions of others and he was ruthless about decrying a culture that tried to put everything, sexuality included, into a tidy little box.

Not tied to a world of black and white answers, not funded by drug money, we strive at Red Flags to explore the many shades of grey, the story behind the story.

Now that Nicholas is gone — gone for that mystical number of months, nine — I feel that I am going through a kind of rebirth. I miss him in ways I cannot articulate. And I miss the tremendous daily physical connection that gave me a feeling of centeredness. But I know that I will have to find new ways to express my sexual self — not an easy task in a world that is sadly narrowing its understanding of what it means to be sexual.

It is too bad that we even have to have conferences that explore the “new view” — as important and educational as this one was — because in truth, our sexuality is always changing. Shaped by cultural forces, politics, religion, world events, human inventiveness, and by technology and an aging population…