La petite mort… an idiom for orgasm. It makes sense to us because sex and death are inextricably entwined human experiences and no others move us more than these two.

My brother died in a car accident when I was 17. I watched him die. After his funeral and wake I went with our mutual friends to a spontaneous house party where I ended up having sex on the bathroom floor with an ex-boyfriend. His skin against mine, his mouth on mine, his tongue, his fingers, the tears down my face, his arms around me, his cock inside my mouth then my cunt, our sweat, our mingled smells, our pleasure, our fluids, our orgasms… they comforted me beyond words, beyond sympathy cards, way beyond the stiff drink.

I remember feeling ashamed of myself the next day, and for many years proceeding it, for having had sex on the day my brother was put in the ground, for having wanted to have sex that was not about love at all either. I have, thankfully, done a 180 on that feeling since I’ve shed the negativity about sex that fails to see it’s beauty and importance to human social bonding, wellness, wholeness. Death, that which ends a life and separates us from another forever more, is matched only by the other innate human experience that has as much power over us… Sex, that which can begin a life and bonds us with other humans more than any other act. Therefore it is totally natural that when confronted with the disconnect of death we might experience a strong urge to seek reconnection with sex. This seeking reconnection, I believe, is not only with life but possibly with the experience of death as part of the life cycle. When orgasming I am in oblivion. I’ve seen sex in action as a comforter a shit load of times. After crying comes fucking. So many of us have been there so many times.

It is no coincidence or surprise that death and sex are the human experiences that the abrahamic/tyrannical faiths try and deprive humans from fully experiencing and appreciating. It’s fundamental to their campaign to disconnect humans from each other and from how beautiful and awesome life and existence is in and of itself. Their enforced and discordant inequality of men and women in the very first chapter of their sacred texts is a malevolent disconnection between humans to our severe detriment. The description of child birth as a punishment brought on by sin seeks to instil a still further malevolent disconnection between humans and our own ability to procreate and our connection with our offspring, with life’s beginnings. By forcing themselves between us and the innate control we have over our bodies, lives and deaths they seek to create a discord in the human experience that they insist can only be filled with their god and their religion. They spread poison about the human experience so they can make the claims of being the remedy. Yes child birth is painful, death is painful, loss is painful, love can be painful but pain does not mean we are being punished… pain is the fire we can be forged in. It is not an indication that we are born in original sin but an alert to opportunities to grow and feel more of the human experience.

Death has been unequivocally hard for the human race to face, individually and culturally. This is largely why religions exist and hold so much power. The idea of the stoic grief of the family that is particularly English is a ludicrously inadequate way to to grieve. When I came in my 20′s to explore other cultures I found cultural expressions of death that made far more sense to me than repression and keeping up stoic appearances. The Ancient Greeks had large funeral processions where professional mourners were paid to wail, beat their chests and tear their hair along with the grieving. The grieved shaved off their hair, something beautifully symbolic of the beginning and longevity of the grieving process, of endings and beginnings. I wish we could have screamed, wailed, sobbed and torn our hair. I know we all were inside. I am glad I, at least did have sex and gave myself the comfort I needed even if it took me a while to recognise it’s value. I have often wondered why sex and pleasure have been so vilified by religion but it seems to me that a culture that embraces sex and allows humans to feel proud and in control of their bodies and it’s reproductive functions is less likely to be so fearful of death or of sharing sexual comfort with the grieving… so then how would they get their foot in the door?