On sex and death...

I've been thinking much on this concept lately, with two revisitings and something new restimulating my thoughts on it. I recall first becoming interested in the concept of sex being either paired with, or juxtaposed against death during an American Literature course I took some eight years ago now. We were studying Don DeLillo's White Noise. I remember enjoying the book immensely, although the specifics of it escape me somewhat, but two fascinations came away from the section on it with me. One - a fascination with American supermarkets. Two - a fascination with the concept of the Libidos-Thanatos dichotomy-spectrum what have you. The first has been sated, at least for now; I am unsure that the second ever will be.

I don't remember the relevance to the book. I do remember that the postmodernists had a thing for psychoanalysis. Freud. As a Psych major, colour me not surprised in the slightest. Everyone's obsessed with Freud. That it should be part of a literary movement - yawn. The concept though, that drew me. Perhaps I shall expand on other thoughts about Freud at a later date. Mostly it's bunk, and I accept that. This particular idea is rather delicious though. In brief, our behaviours as human beings are underlain by two key drives. Libidos, the drive to create, the drive for pleasure; and Thanatos, the drive to destroy, to lead ourselves inexorably towards death. Freud proposed that these two concept were opposing forces. I remember DeLillo treating them as opposites - one forcing the other away by necessity. I'm more interested in the idea that the two are richly entwined, and cannot be separated, existing in some kind of reciprocal feedback loop.

At around the same time, I remember seeing the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer called Forever just after the death of Joyce Summers. Post-funeral Xander and Anya have been getting busy and there is this exchange...
ANYA: Mm. That was different.
XANDER: Yeah. It was more ... intense.
ANYA: It's because of Joyce.
XANDER: Right. Huh?
ANYA: Well, she got me thinking ... about ... how people die all the time, and ... how they get born too, and how you kind of need one so you can have the other. When I think about it that way, it ... makes death a little less sad, and ... sex a little more exciting.
XANDER: Again I say, huh?
ANYA: Well, I just think I understand sex more now. It's not just about two bodies smooshing together. It's about life. It's about *making* life.
XANDER: Right, when ... two people are much older, and ... way richer, and far less stupid.
ANYA: Breathe. You're turning colors. I'm not ready to make life with you, but I could. *We* could. Life could come out of our love and our smooshing, and that's beautiful. It all makes me feel like I'm part of something bigger. Like I'm more awake somehow. You know?
XANDER: Yeah, I do.

Clearly they have been comforting each other with sex. But at the same time, the thought of death is driving it and included within it, and with that wrapping together, both Anya and Xander come to an understanding of something more.
[Aside: I've recently been vaguely mocked (?) by someone with whom I keep explaining things through Buffy references. Should he read this, I'm quite sure that continued 'mocking' and frustration with the hold this particular universe has over me will ensue. I'm also quite sure I will also soon analyse why everything in my life relates back to a TV show though...]

I recall various times in the 8 years since then considering this over and over. I remember considering the thought when I read Zadie Smith's On Beauty; and mulling it over when, during a time of excessive amounts of death around me, the last thing I could bear to think of was sex. So much for driving off death with life-creating smooshing. I think of it in relation to the creation of the vampire mythos stemming from Dracula, where we seem to be powerfully drawn to the mystery of death, and that in that particular story, women fall in love with death and give themselves willingly to death, with obviously sexual over/undertones (also see recent teenagedom obsession with Twilight).

Most recently, two things happened at once. I was re-reading Stephen King's It and at around the same time as I knew a particular scene was approaching, someone showed me an amazing video series on YouTube called 'hysterical literature.' Here is a blog of one participant talking about her experience filming her video and why she chose the piece she did. The scene in It is the one that probably shocked me the most when I first read it - of 11 and 12 year olds having group sex, with the ultimate outcome being that they reach out and touch something through an act of love, that is good enough and pure enough to fend off the evil which is trying to ruin them and bring them to death.

But these two things haven't solved the puzzle, just made me question it more. Maybe it will never be solved. In the previously linked blog, the woman talks about how she can sometimes reach out and touch what it is with her fingertips, but never grab hold of it. But the only way she will ever try to grab hold of it is by wallowing in the places she might find it. So here's my wallow for now: If sex, occurring as an ultimate act of love, could lead you to be able to touch that and understand how and why it is so closely related to death, or maybe even opposed to death, I want to gain that insight. I also fear now though that I may never gain that insight. Perhaps that insight is what people who become mothers gain. They certainly seem to know something that the rest of us don't. Perhaps through the creation of life, and bringing it forth in an act that actually brings them incredibly close to death, they have some kind of experience that tells them the answer. That teaches them not to fear death, and know that they don't need to fight it, because it's a part of everything and can't be escaped. But at the same time, life cannot be removed from these things either, and so with life comes death, but also with death comes life.

It's still so confused in my head. Maybe I'll get there one day, if I keep wallowing in the dark places occasionally.