SEX IS NOT THE ANSWER

It has often puzzled my companions—and not infrequently provoked their concern—that I can live quite blissfully without tethering my feelings to another through the flesh. From time to time, I do indulge the bodily appetite, though never as one enslaved to it, but as a man might sip a cordial on a cold evening: not for nourishment, but for warmth. Yet, truth be told, these encounters have seldom offered more than a fleeting quenching of the senses—a momentary hush upon the clamour of the body. They have never been the hearth at which my spirit is warmed.

My innate satisfactions—those rich, inward raptures that steady the heart and animate the imagination—have ever resided elsewhere: in the slow bloom of a letter composed with care, in the vibrant silence of a painted canvas, in the quiet company of books or the solemn symphony of thought. These things, immaterial though they be, have never left me barren. Indeed, they have fashioned for me a more durable fellowship than many a bedfellow ever could.

When, some time ago, I parted ways with a woman with whom I had shared four years of companionship, I felt no rupture of the reason, no weeping wound. Life, with its curious resilience, proceeded untroubled, and I with it. My friends, startled by my composure, presumed some grave suppression of grief. One, with the tenderness of a mourner and the persistence of a preacher, insisted that I must be grieving in disguise—that I had, in some subterranean way, murdered the very meaning of what we had. When I explained, gently but firmly, that a thing lost is, quite simply, lost—and that I did not find it fruitful to steep myself in sorrow over what could not be reclaimed—she recoiled, as though I had committed a blasphemy against the human condition.

More bewildering still was her reaction when I disclosed that my life’s concern did not rest in marriage, nor in the rearing of children, but in the pursuit of coherence—in truth, in beauty, in divinity, or whatever invisible thread binds the disposition to eternity. At this, she declared me less than human and fled, as though I had exposed not a philosophy but a crime.

Modern sentiment is insistent upon the notion that man must, from cradle to coffin, be cradled yet again—this time in the arms of another; that companionship of the romantic sort is the keystone of happiness, and those who live without it are either broken or bereft. And yet, from my earliest youth, I have stood somewhat apart—neither miserable in my solitude nor longing for its end. I have often wondered whether this marked me as defective. But reflection, that faithful old friend, assures me otherwise.

I possess—by what unearned grace I do not know—a naturally cheerful spirit, a modest taste for pleasure, and a temperament more inclined toward activity than brooding. Whatever impish passions once flared within me have, I suppose, been gently dimmed by time or tamed by temerity. Thus, I have come to believe that not all artists must be tormented, nor all solitary souls sad. There is more than one way to be human, and more than one melody in the plainsong of joy.

And yet, I cannot help but notice the deep confusion that seems to have seized the age. We have mistaken the intensity of appetite for the depth of meaning, and thus, the act which was meant to signify love has been swollen into a counterfeit of love itself. Sex, when torn from its rightful place—as sign, seal, or sacrament—becomes a poor prophet and a worse tyrant. It promises union but delivers only the echo of it. It mimics intimacy, but without the metaphysical gravity that true intimacy requires.

We are told that to live without constant romantic entanglement is to live a diminished life, as though eros were the only wing upon which the spirit could soar. But there are loftier loves—agape, caritas, even philia—which ask not for possession, but for presence. They do not burn so brightly, perhaps, but they endure the night. And when the fever of youth has cooled and the flesh grown silent, it is these loves—humble, unswerving, radiant in their invisibility—that remain.

If, then, I am strange, let it be said that I am strange only in this: that I have refused to let the cry of the bosom drown the whisper of the music. For the music, when it listens, hears a hymn no physical pleasure can compose—a music that plays not for gratification, but for glory.