I’m re-reading old journals. It was a time in my life when I was studying sexuality in San Francisco, meeting new people every day, expanding concepts, and learning new language. It was a time of great love and joy for me, as well as an enormous struggle to have a child that never came to fruition.
My poet’s heart loved the city. I walked the streets of the Marina, the Mission, the Castro, the Tenderloin. I frequented City Lights, buying something or buying nothing, allowing the pages and the essence of the Beatniks to seep into my cells. I often stayed in Hayes Valley, eating dinner on the cheap and splurging for dessert at a place that served lavender crème brulée and pear tart with rosemary.
And I studied love and sex. To me these parts are never separate, somehow, just expressions of our love for ourselves, our humanity, our partner or partners, our bodies, our earth. And like the diversity of the earth, the diversity of humanity’s sexual expression astounded me with its depth, its breadth, its beauty and its fearlessness.
I marched in San Francisco Pride with my school. One million people are said to attend every year, and I have never felt anything like it. The masses and their sheer joy and creativity were like a bass drum from the center of the planet, calling all who were present to wake, celebrate, see, touch and hear.
In my journal, I wrote:
“The sexual revolution, as the books say, is far from over. It’s still going on, it never stopped. I am only the latest soldier in this war of flowers. Everything is fucking, as Gerry Jud says. And so it is.”
The sexual revolution is nothing less than life affirming itself through us, as it does through all things. As a sexuality educator, I am advocating for humanity, for the trees, the mountains, for the streets of San Francisco during Pride. I am advocating for the worst of us as well as the best of us. I am uncovering the mystery to find another. I am feeling the pain of a thousand thousand poets. I am living the ecstasy of a thousand thousand lovers.
The sexual revolution is now. It is us. It is you, brave and daring to say that sex is life. It is good. It is important. It is love at its purest: one life form reaching toward another to say hey, there you are. I was looking for you. Let’s make something new.
