Many are Chosen but Few Spend the Night

A working model of promiscuity

After my recent divorce, I entered a period of sport-fucking, that already well-documented effort to burn out all traces of the previous partner and re-establish one's identity as an autonomous being. But within two months, the fever passed, and my delirium subsided into the dull ache and phantom-limb phenomenon reported by amputees. It was as though in losing my wife I had lost an arm, but was now learning to live without it.

When the flurry of heated exchanges died down and the bedsheets were returned from the laundry, I found myself settled into a pattern which contained all the drawbacks of marriage and none of its advantages. One of my many ladies had installed herself as a personality in my life and assumed the role with savage tenacity. Another woman was struggling for fiancee status. And my male lover wanted me to spend a summer with him in the country. This left little time for my work, solitude, or erotic explorations outside this self-appointed triad.

Since I was not a candidate for celibacy and did not yet want to marry again, I was forced to examine my condition with an eye to defining some kind of new order against the tension of conflicting demands. My therapist's injunction to "feel" the reality took me only so far; it became necessary to erect a new conceptual framework to serve as a map, or guiding principle, for what would otherwise remain a mere interface space between marriage and celibacy.

Behaviorally, I was promiscuous. But that word is drenched with such negative connotations, conjuring images of one-night stands, single's bars, indiscriminate and evasive couplings, that I was loathe to apply it to myself. Yet a word is the property of all, and I was impelled to rescue this one from the miasma of imprecise and prejorative meanings which have enveloped it, and to infuse it with fresh life.

The common cultural judgement on the state gives it at best a transitional status, a rather low-grade condition appearing before or between marriages; it is seen as something for the young, the immature, or the immoral. Conversely, it is secretly admired as a kind of paradisical lifestyle, offering the excitement of chase, conquest, and a progression of new bodies. The myths of the Playboy pad and the Cosmopolitan cunt are as viable for one large segment of the population as the special divinity of Jesus is for another.

The first step in my re-evaluation of promiscuity lay in understanding that it is neither the edge of erotic revolution or an erotic garbage dump, but rather a model of feeling and behavior which stands alongside of marriage and celibacy as a means of dealing with the endless conflict between fucking and the rest of human activity. It is no more or less than one of three valid paths available for understanding, ordering, and predicting change and recurrence in the movements of erotic energy. This means accepting that the state has its own structures, laws, etiquette, pleasures, sorrows, and stretches of boredom. Re-defining promiscuity involves a conceptual adjustment, a change in basic vibration, and a radical metamorphosis of inner identity. As I was later to learn, it also entails a terrible austerity, the wielding of an erotic Occam's razor which requires the compassionate cruelty of a surgeon's scalpel.

The second step concerned meeting people who are themselves promiscuous, that is, who had attained the awareness I was just learning to articulate. This is difficult, for most women are so heavily conditioned toward marriage that their whole lives are often movements toward or away from that situation. More than a few I encountered exhibited the most reckless pregnancy need, unconsciously acting out old courtship scenarios, treating fucking as a favor women bestowed upon men. Another type retained the rhetoric of enlightened promiscuity but were merely alienated, incapable of dimensional relating.

Men posed a parallel problem. From a metasexual viewpoint, of course, the gender of the partner one chooses is not germane to any serious erotic consideration, and terms like bisexuality are too stiff and divisive to be of much use. Most men, such as I might meet in bars or at the baths, want no more than a brief fling, and fucking with them is pretty much like a wrestling match. Here, again, promiscuity is taken in its debased sense. Also, the marriage syndrome is quite strong beneath the surface manifestations, and so-called promiscuous behavior is often merely a false veneer covering a deep need for bonding.

After aligning my internal awareness with the condition of those I related to, I was able to discern the basic principle of the promiscuity paradigm. In celibacy, the primary relationship is to the self; in marriage, it is to the other. In promiscuity, the primary relationship is to the concept. Promiscuity, in a Duchampsian sense, can be considered "conceptual eroticism." In it, we serve one another as vehicles for the most perfect expression of erotic energy. As the celibate is committed to self-development, and the married undertakes the task of perpetuating the species, the promiscuate tends the flame of pure Erotic Idea.

The danger here lies in using the notion to rationalize an intrinsic dehumanization of erotic relationships. To avoid this, an extraordinary honesty, with oneself and with one's partners, is essential. If the relationships are themselves warm, tender, and compassionate, it does not matter that the metaphor which governs them is cold. Romanticism is no longer our reigning myth, and models drawn from cybernetics are clearly the thought-shapes of the future present. Even in the esoteric wing of human knowledge, the Gurdjieffian machine analogy provides the most compelling current of the century. Accepting a new model of promiscuity involves a new understanding of what it is to be human. This may be used, as many ideas have been used, as an instrument of perversity; but as with all human activity, the final arbiter is the individual conscience.

After coming to terms with general considerations, I began to chart the actual flow of my specific promiscuous evolution, and was able to draw the following diagram:

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At the center is the Defining Principle. The first circle contains a Wife Surrogate (WS), a Lover Surrogate (LS), and an Ad Hoc situation (AH). The outer circle holds a Lover-Friend (LF).

The Wife Surrogate is a woman with whom I have developed a steady relationship, reciprocal at all levels. The Lover Surrogate is a man with whom I share traditional romantic values, our energies going from chest to chest more than from genital to genital. The Ad Hoc situation is an open space, variously filled by vagrant episodes, occasional threesomes, and so forth. The Lover Friend is an ex-wife who I see a few times a year and with whom I always share good talk and warm fucking.

The single most important fact about these relationships is that they are structural rather than personal. They remain unchanged in texture, activity, and feeling no matter who happens to be occupying the space at any given time. Should the Wife Surrogate leave, the next woman to take that position would, from the very first day, assume the depth, complexity, and quality of that role, and continue in that fashion for so long as we maintained the contract. To define the rule: for the promiscuate, all individuals are unique, and no one uniqueness is given special prominence over any other.

With the passage of time, the diagram changed its form periodically. For a while it contained a Peripheral Woman (PW) who called me once or twice a week and with whom I slept once or twice a month. But I found the presence of that category too draining on my energy and deleted it. Of course, this description has both a universal and specific aspect. Anyone entering the state of promiscuity seriously will develop a structure like this, but the details will vary from person to person.

Once I was able to be clear about my condition, I could explain to each of the people in my life precisely where they fit in relation to myself and to one another. Some found the notion grotesque, and wanted no more to do with me. But more than a few, both inside and outside the circle, were grateful for the clarity. I was able to distinguish the true promiscuates from the closet celibates and secret seekers after marriage on the basis of which grasped the necessity for such a conceptual structure. The motto became, No Passion Without Paradigm.

Too often we have taken the magic, mystery, and power of the erotic spell for granted. Fucking, the source of life and perhaps its most complete activity, is also our most comprehensive metaphor. Erotic energy is very pure, very fine, and comparable to the energy one develops while doing zazen or other meditational practices. In the act of fucking we pierce one another's flesh with flesh, breathe one another's breath, drink one another's fluids, swim in one another's souls, communing telepathically on all levels, tossed upon the same billowing waves of cosmic creation and thrust into the same intergalactic calms, speaking, weeping, smiling, listening to the cries and sighs of ecstasy which punctuate the profound silence of the erotic mood. It is unquestionably grand, a gift from the gods as well as a legacy from the animals. The major insight of the promiscuate, paradoxically, is that there is no such thing as a casual fuck.

Simply because this vortex is so magnetic, it shines out of all proportion over the drab routines of our grey civilization, and we seem unable to deal with it sensibly. Celibacy, ideally, is the awareness of the splendor of eros, a decision to treat that ground as so sacred one will not walk upon it. But all too often it is practiced out of fear of opening oneself, or out of some misplaced notion of holiness. Marriage can be a pact between two people who find fucking so special they decide never to share it with anyone else. Or else it may become a clutching jealousy which ultimately smothers the erotic spark. Promiscuity also has two faces: one sees fucking as a sublime activity, its own raison d'etre, and structures human relationship as a vehicle of erotic worship; the other continually cheapens the erotic impulse by pretending that it has no meaning, seeing fucking merely as a way of scratching an itch.

The exalted view of promiscuity, however, for all its lyrical charm, contains its own problems. The marriage reflex is the most trenchant, and it insidiously reappears whenever I feel it has been extirpated. Allied to this is the entire area of conflicting demands on my time and energy, a difficulty which prompted the notion of setting up a pecking order. Then there is the question of dumping. How does one tell one's Wife Surrogate that she has been cycled out and replaced by yesterday's Ad Hoc adventure? Specialization is perhaps the most thorny issue. Does one define the totality of one's erotic life in terms of the full range of people with whom one is involved, responding in part to each; or does one seek full expression with each every time?

I have found no definitive answers yet. The bonding reflex, on the level of social conditioning, may be dealt with consciously; but as a biological mechanism it is intransigent. The pecking order situation may be eased by having the various individuals in the circles meet and come to an understanding in relation to excessive demands. The problem of termination is eased since each of the people I see has his or her own erotic web. Breaking off with someone doesn't exile that person to isolation, but simply occasions an alternation of his or her own erotic structure. Also, anyone in the inner circle can move into the second circle, not an uncomfortable location. The question of specialization, very subtle and complex, requires much more experience and analysis before I can define its elements.

These and related difficulties indicate that the state of promiscuity presents a range of challenges as wide and deep as provided by marriage or celibacy. Those I have indicated represent first impressions, and I imagine that anyone entering this realm will find his or her own angles on the situation. My purpose in presenting, however sketchily, my current structure is to give an example of the model. My major concern lies in indicating that promiscuity offers a sane, adult, and compassionate alternative to marriage and celibacy, and one which requires research, self-awareness, strength, and a daring leap into a new realization of one's erotic makeup.

Beyond this, once promiscuity is given its proper respect, there is the possibility of movement from one state to another with greater ease. The end of a marriage need not mean a leap into degradation or loneliness, but merely a sidestep into a different mode. Hybrid forms are possible. One gay couple I know has been together for five years, and since the first year they have not fucked one another, but maintained all erotic liaisons outside their relationship. Thus they have the emotional and psychological security of marriage, the austerity of mutual celibacy, and the erotic flexibility of promiscuity, all within a single life style.

From my own experience, I feel it is essential that the promiscuate be widely understood as a separate and legitimate type, on a par with the married and the celibate. Such a person blends the solitary quality of celibacy with the bonding capacity of marriage, adding a third and unique ingredient, conceptual primacy. Up until now, promiscuity has been treated by society, by psychological opinion, and by its practitioners, as some form of aberration, or else as a fantasy fulfillment. Promiscuates fell into the mindless habit of fucking first and asking questions later, coming to despise themselves for qualities which seemed debased only because they were not being totally expressed, poisoning themselves with an unconscious wistful hankering for marriage or a secret idea that celibacy was the superior way.

Once promiscuity is taken seriously, foolish and degrading behavior will be seen for what it is and one will have a much more difficult time justifying one's weakness and neurosis. Promiscuity is diametrically opposed to trashing, and perhaps the major reason why it has not been accepted as a viable lifestyle is that such an understanding might seal off an escape route for millions who have few other ways to deal with excessive levels of anxiety.

For myself, this is the conclusion of my current phase of exploration. A year from now, I may be married again, or celibate, or have worked out a new synthesis. But for now, while I am promiscuous, I have no choice but to understand the nature of the condition and to define it in the most rigorous terms. To be at once a person, an individual, operating within finite parameters of human relationship, and a transpersonal manifestation of pure energy, a reflection of the primal mystery of being, a living coordinate on the grid of creation, to be the actual embodiment of the principle of both/and, to have solved the problem of duality in the acid bath of eros, this is the promise held out by the path of enlightened promiscuity.