Sleeping with the Gods

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Copyright ©2008

The eroticizing of divinities (pluralism intended) conjures ancient fears and superstitions and it’s generally expressed in religious doctrine that sexuality is lowly and primal. Despite their exalting of sex to enlightening Tantric potential, the ancient Hindus viewed this physiologically: The sexual chakra is low along the spinal axis, while the seventh/crown chakra is the highest and connects one to cosmic consciousness. In the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, sex is regarded with varying misogynistic degrees of superstition, hygienic caution, prudery and contempt—an act of sin that has stained millions of people worldwide with a fevered and irrational hostility toward Nature herself. Major religion’s fixation on morality (not to mention misogyny and homophobia) has led the world into turmoil, as the persecution of pagan traditions by monotheism tilted spiritual energy toward the male end of the spectrum and away from the female.

Most religious people in our times would doubt that God is a woman; He is an abstract entity, at times compassionate, at times wrathful—but unarguably male and free of sexual desire. A reduction—and in some cases, elimination—of sacred female elements by monotheism has unfairly tipped its testosterone-drenched scales toward a world fearful and suspicious of feminine, healing sensuality. The sexual, fertile Goddess of animist and pagan traditions was subverted by Jews, burned at the stake by Christians and veiled by Muslims; misogyny is enforced, violence is championed and sex is hypocritically bastardized. Homosexuality is treated with diabolical contempt—the sinful counterpoint of devotion, cleanliness and piety, an ironic plot-twist in the development of religion’s tribal roots.

Researchers claim that this demonizing of sexuality (and especially homosexuality) began as a Judaic resistance against ancient homosexual temple rites of fertility and creation, as performed by—among others—Assyrians and Egyptians. Mankind’s fusion of sexuality and religion is ancient and buried under scathing, hypocritical propaganda and institutionalized homophobia—this is, despite spirituality’s tribal genesis. People still wonder why the priesthoods of so many religions worldwide are populated by countless men who contemplate divinity and their desire for other men. Possessed by the eternal and oftentimes homoerotic charge of sexual/life energy, priests, the world over, lead congregations in prayer, meditate before altars, give advice to the weary and heal the ill—from the Vatican to Voudou ounfos. It’s time to reconnect sexuality and divinity and my contribution to this effort—as a fiction writer—is to reinterpret the ancient tradition of love and sex between divine beings and mortals on the page. I will illustrate how I combine divinity and homosexuality in fiction, after we examine this controversial crossroads.

Queer spirituality has existed as its own, resilient phenomenon since dusky days long gone. What is it with gay men and priesthood? Even the revered Saint Augustine was a man-lover before he renounced his sexuality to devote the rest of his life to God. Attempts to uproot gay men from the Roman Catholic Church—as with the current fascist pope, Benedict XVI—have failed comically over hundreds and hundreds of years and I would bet money that it probably boasts the highest percentages of gay priests, of all major religions (I’ve come across estimates of 25% to 60%). The fact that it incorporated so much pagan ritual into its own didn’t help to weed out the queers: This pagan history of queer shamans and folk-healing was absorbed by the Roman Catholic Church that formed from their roots, thus bestowing the modern-day priest with the role of “temple whore”. I’ve seen enough medieval Spanish vestments and papal jewelry to know this and express it with no spite or hatred toward this historical fact, whatsoever. What others view as blasphemy, I view as liberation. (I also admit that if a priest were to ask me where in the church I wanted to make love to him, I would choose the altar.)

A significant factor behind medieval Europe’s witch craze was the propagandistic pressure that priests and doctors put on traditional folk healers—the doctors wanting to take over for medical reasons, the priests for spiritual purposes. Yet what folk healers had long been practicing were old traditions begun by herbalists, sorceresses, earthy mystics and shamans—the realm of the queer and the odd. Europe’s pre-Christian landscape was dotted with regional versions of what’s commonly referred to as “The Old Religion” and these isolated, pagan (country) “religions” practiced everything from ceremonial cross-dressing to orgiastic fertility rites to the impersonating of animal-gods; a web of earthy religions of Celtic, Greek, Roman and Norse origin infused with divination, animism, astrology, alchemy and Hermeticism.

The Mediterranean region where Christianity was born, for example, saw the rise of many great civilizations such as the Egyptian, Assyrian and Greek, where homosexual priesthoods were common. Fertility rites are a historical reason for the incidence of queer sex in ancient temple traditions, since semen was considered a powerful substance by ancient male priesthoods (same-sex female rites have their own unique traditions as well, exalting menstrual fluids and blood shed during birth). Assyrian priests were known to have cross-dressed to conjure the Mother Goddess during rites devoted to Ishtar and others (prostitutes) were specifically blessed to “collect sperm” from other men in the temple—acting out the fertilizing ways of the honored deity. Egyptian pharaohs used to reenact Amun’s “creation of the universe” tale, which featured Amun drinking his own semen, to self-fertilize and thus create the world. They would stand inside a wooden statue dedicated to him—complete with an erect penis, with a hole at the tip—through which they would ejaculate and then drink their own semen. The gods of antiquity—as the men who created them—loved as they wished to, ensuring that the relationship between queerdom and spirituality would be irreversibly stitched into mankind’s anthropological flesh: queerness and spiritual office are ancient bedfellows.

Shamans from Siberia to the Amazon were (and hopefully still are) sexually ambiguous. Ancient Japanese Shinto medicine men were encouraged to have sex with other men and even the ancient Chinese fused homosexuality with religion, as did the priesthoods of ancient Yucatan and Sumerian societies. Most Native American tribes (with some homophobic exceptions) considered the “non-breeders” in their communities to be of the “third sex” and these individuals commonly functioned as shamans and visionaries. Some Buddhist monks—beginning in 9th-century Japan—were so openly homosexual that they often shocked visiting foreigners. Sound familiar? We should all know by now why there are so many queers in religious service worldwide: there always have been.

Humankind created the gods and goddesses in his and her image first—not the other way around. And those gods were (and still are) tormented by insatiable sexual desire, unbearable yearning for the flesh. Since the early gods weren’t completely removed from Nature, they were still subject to her cycles and influence—they mingled amongst us, drank with us, seduced us. The shift from earth-cult deities to sky-cult deities separated man and divinities and launched the fearful worshipping of abstract omniscience. As gods with limited influence and power were torn away from the earth, they had less frequent interaction with ordinary mortals, thus even less sexual exchange. (The Roman god Jupiter, for example, was infamous for changing his form and seducing and even raping mortal women.)

As for homo-love, ancient Norse, Japanese, Egyptian and Babylonian mythologies all tell of same-sex love, sometimes between gods and mortals, sometimes not. Greek mythology is probably the most famous for its same-sex love stories: Apollo had a hard-on for a number of male lovers. Among them were the unfortunate Hyacinthus, whom the flower was named after (after Apollo killed him) and the tragic Cyparissus. Zeus transformed into an eagle and carried the beautiful boy Ganymede away to Mount Olympus, so in love was he with him. Achilles fell in love with his closest friend Patroclus.

Monotheism’s sexual repression surfaces in coded ways, especially with the erotic tension of Jesus’ depictions, in flesh and bone. This could be attributed to the homoerotic Italian painters who have immortalized Jesus’ image—which is rare—since Jews and Muslims don’t obsess on representing their gods and messiahs visually, Muslims forbid it. Catholics, eroticize Jesus to the point of sublimation—in a coliseum of unrealized sadomasochistic fascination. I knew this from the time I saw the first barely-clothed Italian renderings of the crucifixion in my mother’s altar as a small boy. The sexuality (loincloth and tight musculature) was mesmerizing; it in fact interwove sexuality and religion together for me, before I knew how to write my name. I don’t see the sexualizing of gods and messiahs as shameful, blasphemous or improper—since the mystic and sexual to me are still connected. Those who find offense with such ideas have issues with sexuality in general: The Bible boasts stories of rape and incest that somehow escape moral scrutiny more than anything honestly erotic.

My writing has always drawn heavily from my casual Catholic upbringing; Mediterranean sensuality and its cosmopolitan interface with animist and tribal art—a Creole pastiche drawing from both imperial and native influences. Several erotic stories I’ve had published exemplify this aforementioned fascination of matching what’s considered profane and sacred; the exploitation of the weaker by the stronger and the sexual experience as something more than physical—as something transcending and mystical. While trying to get published for the first time, I researched man-on-man erotica and noticed the formulaic obsession with “ordinary sex as perceived by the five ordinary senses”. I chose a different and more individualized route. I decided that the narrator or protagonist would either, one, experience the transformation of a human sex partner (or partners) into a god-like being—sex-god—or two, in more abstract stories, actually be in the presence of a god.

In my first novel, I pitted Pan (Buzz), a handsome drug dealer and jewelry store thief against Eros (Israel), a contemplative and closeted actor. They meet on the night of Israel’s birthday party—in fact, Israel’s girlfriend invites Buzz to the party, to buy ecstasy from him. They drop the ecstasy pills, swallow cocktails and smoke through joints like there’s no tomorrow. Israel—the protagonist—feels an instant fascination for the sexy hooligan and they leave Israel’s girlfriend behind at his own birthday party. They go to Buzz’s subterranean apartment, where Buzz fires up a bong and fucks Israel into another lifetime. A profane and mutual infatuation begins. Israel’s girlfriend cannot deal with her boyfriend’s erotic transformation—despite the fact that she nibbles on nymph-pussy like no one’s business.

Superimposing a cast of punk rocker, drug-addict hedonists onto the already-sexually ambiguous world of the Greek pantheon exposed archetypal and timeless truths for me as a new writer. I decided that porn-directing the horny gods/characters would be more effective than simply telling about them—I created my own homoerotic syncretism between Greek gods and fictionalized men. Buzz took Israel’s ass, and eventually his spirit, with all the joy and obsession that Pan (addict) would’ve felt for Eros (romantic). Throughout the story Israel/Eros fucks two other gods. The first is the golden-haired firefighting heartthrob Herakles—who fucks Israel into yet another lifetime. Jeremy/Herakles (Buzz’s ex-boyfriend) informs Israel that Buzz had given him permission to plow Israel’s ass, when Israel pleads with him not to tell. Israel suddenly finds himself amidst a new world of meaty, hairy, guiltless gods of pleasure—an endless list of trysts. Later in the story, Buzz and Israel pick up the Daddy-like Orion at a bar, in hopes of having a three-way. Orion’s fatherly personality unravels new layers of passion in Israel and turns the plot inside-out and into a tragedy—a fiery plunge.

In another story published in an erotica anthology, José, a sweaty Puerto Rican neighborhood baseball hero, “a bronze god, a life-sized statue forged by Vulcan and come to life”, shows the younger and enamored narrator how to masturbate in a steamy shower seduction scene. A god “capable of dream-like flight”, the brown marble muscles of his forearms tense as he slides his fingers up and down his swollen brown cock. He commands the narrator to enter the shower and the narrator describes his initial refusal, which segues into his loss of self-control, his descent into a state of “possession”.

Spirit possession is a broad and esoteric subject and I know that most people wouldn’t correlate it to sex, but I do. Perhaps in my case, as with others of Caribbean-American descent, it’s cultural. (Female mediums in the Espiritismo tradition in the Caribbean have described spirit possession as sexual—as a penetration or invasion of the soul by an outside force.) The best sex to be had takes us out of our bodies—and it should. We forget who we are—our disciplined, social constructions are demolished. We say Oh God even if we’re atheist. We shake and heave—we smell and grunt like animals, as our bodies escape our control and are pulled by invisible tethers.

My “possessed” adolescent narrator enters the shower stall, where his hero—his puppet-master—shows him how to produce jugo de pelotas (semen) by masturbating. José “awakens a monster in him that will never die”, as he watches his hero please himself with uninterrupted fascination—realizing that his own anatomy has become tighter and stiffer. José shows him all of his favorite techniques (since he’ll need to know “for the ladies”). The young god then loses his patience and grabs the narrator from behind and jerks him off with a soaped-up, Herculean fist of steel. After the narrator’s virgin orgasm blinds his senses and his first-ever ejaculation is expelled from his body, he collapses to the god-like feet “to catch his stolen breath”, in the cum-speckled water, on the day he becomes a man.

In another short story, a spellbound narrator rides the subway in the middle of night, seeing no one else in the midst of a city where millions should be present. He walks into a temple-like building and finds a small café table and chairs, where he sits and waits. There is a strange mural on the wall. A black, Spanish-speaking god incarnate appears abruptly, scaring the narrator, who tries to escape but cannot. The sweating, smoking god has two different colored eyes, “one was as brown as his skin; the other a blue that had been dulled by a gray and milky glaze”, a man who laughs uncontrollably at the narrator’s paranoia and nervousness; a god who can hear his thoughts and was sent to bring him back to life—from a confused, wandering conscience to a living being with a beating heart, five awakened senses and a desirous body.

The god adjusts his genitals in his jeans and has a suitcase filled with fragrant oils. He rubs “Lion’s musk” onto his hands and begins tracing the narrator’s three chakra centers, first touching his forehead to give him wisdom and intelligence. He then places his hands on the narrator’s chest to awaken his dead emotions and proceeds to fondle the narrator’s cock, showing him how to “pay tribute to me always—and forevermore”. The narrator (realizing they are both naked and in a partially destroyed church) puts his lips to the god’s skin, falls to his knees before him and whispers “Oh, my god”, his first words, as his life begins anew.

This last story consciously radiates Afro-Caribbean sensuality—a lifelong fascination for me, as a queer writer of Cuban and Puerto Rican heritage. Consorting sexually with the gods is hardly unusual in Santería, Vodou and Espiritismo; these composite, multicultural spiritualities do not shield religion from sexuality. Eleguá, Changó and Ochún can be very sexually-charged “gods/orishas” and those taken under possession by them often act out that sexuality during tambor rituals. The pulsing of the ritualistic batá drums helps to conjure the spirits that “mount” their mediums (or “horses”) and also inspires others to thrust their hips back and forth. Sex is alive in Santería (often referred to as “that faggot religion” in Cuba), as in many other pantheistic religions worldwide. I feel fortunate to inherit this rich mythology of mischief, affection, fury—and sex—from this wild and earthy folklore, which has seeped into the music and visual arts of my culture. Sleeping with the gods has made my life richer and has also given me endless inspiration to write.