Take It or Leave It (But Please Don't Leave It)

A faithful reader, who shall remain nameless, recently berated me for having let this blog of mine become too focused on sex. The critique, of course, came in the wake of my latest entry, which I admit verged on shameless exhibitionism. While I personally felt I managed to balance out whatever awkwardness it might inspire with wisdom and jocoseness, the reader in question was not impressed.

In the days that followed, I gave the matter some thought. Needless to say, I refuse to be a stooge for a few disgruntled prudes in the reading public, but the person with whom this point of critique originated is someone whose opinion matters to me. I was nonplussed and upset, and adding to my puzzlement was the fact that this reader is quite possibly the most sexually preoccupied person I know – an admirable cocksman in his own right. At least he used to be.

So what could be the matter? As I see it, one of two things: Either this erstwhile conqueror of the pink flesh was going through some sort of personal crisis that precluded him from appreciating a piece of writing because the subject matter was emotionally disturbing to him; or the writing itself – form, content, the whole lot – was simply very poor, and this loyal friend of mine was so polite as to be loath to criticize the work itself, choosing rather to blame the topic. The latter notion brought a mist to my eyes – for exactly half a second. Then I dismissed it on the grounds that it was just as ludicrous as the assumption that sex had somehow outstayed its welcome as a subject of writing.

At the end of the day, I write about the things that occupy my mind, and to say I should write less about sex is tantamount to telling a starving man to stop obsessing about food. Furthermore, managing the Blog of the Blogless involves a certain amount of responsibility. I am the gravelly voice of human failure after all, and goddammit, that includes being a spokesman for the sexually malnourished, the avant garde of the carnal light brigade. “Charge for the flesh!” I say. Into the valley of death ride the sex-hungry.

Anyway, although I once made such a fleshly charge in Crimea with rather bleak results, my next entry will be about how I found my own personal valley of death in the apartment of a middle-aged intellectual in Berlin last summer. I know I have long baited my readership with this story, but I have struggled with its focus, thinking that it was an upbeat travel account when in fact it has at its core the basic elements of the tragedy. I expect to have it ready come Maundy Thursday.