The New Body Electric School

Seventeen years ago, a Body Electric workshop changed my life for good.

One April weekend in 2002, "Celebrating the Body Erotic" worked its indelible magic on my body, heart, and soul. Twenty-two men met one another as nervous strangers at 8:45 on Saturday morning. By 7 Sunday night, we were a band united and transformed in "the dear love of comrades."

I learned to breathe as though making friends with my lungs for the first time. I leaned to touch myself with a level of pleasure and unashamed abandon that I wish had been availalble to me--as it should have been--at my adolescent awakening over thirty years earlier. I learned to share those gifts with the men who'd embarked with me on this two-day adventure. With astonishing speed and ease, we built for each other  a space of safety and unconditional acceptance where we could all flourish. We reached out to each other with delight and respect. I experienced, with a shattering intensity, the presence of the Sacred in my own body, and in the bodies of the other men who bared their souls and flesh. It left me weeping tears of joy, at the oddest and most upredictable moments, for weeks afterwards.

For thirty-five years, the Body Electric School has offered a precious, life-giving vessel of deep erotic wisdom, a source of healing and growth, self-discovery and community. Its mission began amidst the physical, psychological, and spiritual trauma of the AIDS crisis. In the mid-1980's, founder Joseph Kramer extended a lifeline to men struggling to affirm the wholeness of their erotic selves in the face of that threat. Over the years, its programming has widened in scope to include workshops open to mulltiple genders and orientations--while continuing to offer single-gender workshops that provide safe space for men who need to do the work of erotic, emotional, and spiritual self-realization with one another.

And in 2019, the School takes a courageous new step, as it transitions to a model of non-profit, community-based operation that opens a wealth of fresh possibilities. The cost of workshops has already been lowered. The School's new leadership is committed to reaching younger, more diverse, and more marginalzied populations. 

As the transitional management team observed a few weeks ago, when it announced the move to non-profit operation, "Body Electric has always belonged more to the people who love and appreciate it than to any one individual.  What's different now is that it is also up to us to do the hard work of sustaining and running it, with our own energy and our own finances.   

"For those of us who know first-hand the exceptional, unique value of what we do... for those who have healed and matured from Body Electric in our own lives... for those for whom BE unites spirit and embodied healing with conscious erotic celebration -- we are the ones now entrusted with keeping this work alive.  We carry this mantle forward because BE has helped us become healthier and happier people.  Together, we can keep this precious offering available now and for generations to come. "

If you've taken workshops with the School in the past, it's a wonderful moment to renew your connection with this extraordinary, visionary community. If you've heard of the School and always wondered what its work is like, now is a great time to dive in, to grow more fully into your capacity for deep joy, to be some of the change in the world that you'd like to see.

 

The Naked Art

Fluffy is a regular member of an all-nude men's life drawing group in New York City. Sincere thanks to him for kindly sharing a little of his work here.

Asked for an artist's statement, he offers the following.

What words would I attach? Hm-m-m. 

1) That these drawings have no reason to exist other than my own mental explorations of the process of drawing and desire for socialization. 

2) That part of my brain still exists which wants recognition but another part rejects those considerations. 

     a) I don't need the money.

     b) I don't enjoy excess attention.

3) I don't feel like I've done any that "help." 

     a) I use cheap materials.

     b) I am aware of the waste of time/effort/money spent ENTIRELY for my own benefit/pleasure.

     c) Everything ends up in the trash someday.

(Much of the time, I am consciously trying to suppress a fussy, finicky, concerned with correctness part of my brain. I have a big bag of loose, dollar store crayons and will just scoop up several and THOSE are the one's I "have to use." I also have made a big, multi-colored crayon block from my crayon scraps and will use that on occasion. 

And magic markers...which are sort of "unforgiving.")

4) Nothing that I've written above is true.

At dawn, on the first day of the week

On Watching Boy Erased

Some weeks after its commercial release in November, I saw 

Boy Erased, the film based on Garrard Conley's memoir of a mercifully short brush with the ex-gay movement and "conversion therapy." Mercifully short, because Conley (whose character is given a different name in the film) manages to extricate himself partway through the two-week intake program that for some participants is the initial gateway to months if not years of more of the same.

I was glad I saw the film, but I found it incredibly painful to watch. Conley's story of the spiritual abuse he suffered at the hands of others--his pious fundamentalist parents, the repressed and constricted souls who staffed the program, the unqualified charlatan who led it (and who later himself came out in real life)--is markedly different from my own experience. But it left me feeling utterly identified with him, and viscerally wanting to rip a page out of a Bible every day, wad it up, and set it on fire as a YouTube clip, from Genesis through to the last page of Revelation.

Reenforcing my reaction to the film the following week was the New York Times' story about a gay Roman Catholic layman who brought his San Diego parish back from the brink of shutdown, and who has now resigned his position as its lay leader after a campaign of homophobic slurs from within the congregation he rescued.

I'm heartily weary of feeling an all-consuming, reactive rage around such bullshit. I'm tired of bigots hijacking a religious tradition I know from my own experience also contains life-giving treasures of all-inclusive, self-transcending love. I'm utterly exhausted by trying, as best I can, to see such people as misguided rather than as malicious, to remember that they're capable of change, no matter how oblivious they remain to the suffering they inflict. I feel like I've been on this treadmill since I embraced my queer identity over forty years ago. 

Fifteen years of nearly total alienation from Christianity didn't really fix the problem. Nor did reclaiming my Christian roots twenty years ago, on my own terms, with a healthy, skeptical detachment from many aspects of the tradition.

If I look deeply at my own experience of homophobia, both as inflicted on me over the years, and the deeply internalized shame and repression I suffered as an adolescent and young adult, I begin to get why neither walking away from Christianity, nor returning to it, has entirely freed me from the defensive rage I still feel, after all these years. 

The fact is, I don't think Christianity itself is the source of most of this crap. If it were, adherents of other religions wouldn't be so readily capable of equally bloody-minded homophobia. If religion per se were the root of the problem, atheists and agnostics would be uniformly queer-positive. Christianity offers a convenient rationalization for fears and hostiiities around sexuality, and around sexual diversity, that are disturbingly close to universal. 

But if Christianity weren't there, in this culture, to provide a powerful, transcendent rationalization, then Judaism or Islam or Vedic Hinduism or much of Buddhism would be waiting right around the corner to take up the slack. Or if it came to that, older and more reductionst strains of Freudian psychoanalysis, or classical Marxist-Leninism, could serve very nicely. Or some versions of evolutionary theory, or genetics.

It is an absolute truth that absolute truth claims suck. But absolute truth claims aren't what mature, authentic spirituality is about. Deep Christianity, like deep Buddhism, deep Judaism, deep Islam, deep Hinduism, come down to this: that the richness of our life is an unfathomable Mystery, to which the appropriate response is gratitude, wonder, and a willingness to be endlessly surprised. That the only appropriate use of sacred writings is one that finds in them an incentive to love more fully, more profoundly, more indiscriminately. Homophobia that wraps itself in the cloak of faith is just unregenerate hatred in very bad drag.

All that said--I suspect that as long as I live, there will still be days I want to crumple up a fucking Bible, page by page.

A wise man saying wise things about a very problematic book:

https://store.cac.org/products/what-do-we-do-with-the-bible?

Claiming Wholeness of Body and Spirit

July 10-14, 2019, take your place in a fellowship of erotically awakened, spiritually aware, open-hearted men. Together we'll celebrate the presence of the Sacred in our bodies and honor the desires that spring from the depths of our souls. We'll affirm our place in Creation amidst the natural beauty of western Maryland's rolling hills.

Awaken your body and spirit every morning with gentle movement and meditation. Speak and listen from the heart as we gather in sharing circles. Work together for an hour every afternoon caring for the forested land on which we gather. Find joy, generosity, and healing in mindful, respectfully structured erotic experiences with your fellow travellers. 

Play with abandon. Touch with wonder and delight. Practice generosity. Heal your soul. Repair the world. Come home to the deep truths of your nature.

StoneSong Nature and Awareness Center is situated outside Flintstone, Maryland, about two hours west of the District of Columbia. 

You can find everything you'll want to know about these five days of embodied freedom and inner discovery here.

Queer Men's Spirituality 101: A Five-Part Series

What is Queer Men's Spirituality? It's pretty simple. If you're reading this, you probably already believe that what happens in your body happens in your soul. Your sexuality and your spirit are an indivisible whole. It's about going deeper and claiming a bigger, freer, juicier life.

Tune up your inner life as a gay/bi/trans/queer man with this series of five 90-minute sessions, Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m., in midtown Toronto. Take stock of where you're at. Increase clarity about where you need to go. Build the personal practices that are right for you. Draw on your own inner resources for healing, liberation, and growth, in community with kindred spirits. All spiritual paths and traditions are equally welcome here.

January 27 Claiming Your Sacred Ground

Guided meditation, inventory exercises, and group conversation will help you clarify what brings you the deepest fulfilment and joy in life, and how you can invite more of it into your daily experience.

February 10 Building Your Sacred Space

Bring objects that are important to you for a "show and tell" session. Share ways to keep reminders of what really matters to you present in your everyday environment. Explore possibilities for creating and maintaining a simple home altar or shrine.

February 24 Creating Your Sacred Practices

Experiment with simple mindful routines that can help ground you in daily life. Learn more about how you can create well-designed, uncomplicated, authentic rituals for yourself that speak to your deep hopes and longings. Explore practies that can help you drop down out of your head into your heart-centered intuition.

March 10 Finding Spiritual Community

We aren't built to be happy in isolation.  Explore the potentials and challenges of creating spiritually engaged queer men's community that supports and nourishes your soul.

March 24 Cultivating Erotic Spirituality

Share a safe, supportive exploration of what it means to integrate our spiritual longings with our erotic energies and sexual experiences. (Much of this session is clothing-optional.)

As leader and facilitator of this series, I bring decades of experience as a teacher, a gift for listening from the heart, a deep knowledge of spiritual resources drawn from many world traditions, and a passionate commitment to the integrity of gay, bi, and otherwise queer men's spiritual journeys.

Men have offered these appreciations of work I've shared with them:

"David Townsend is smart, articulate, and genuine, a terrific teacher, thinker and facilitator. Warm, with a good sense of humour, accessible and engaging, he is a sweet asset to our community."-Richard, San Francisco

"David is a gifted ritual leader. He combines his exquisite and unique artistic talents with a deep reverence for nature and a rich connection to spirit."-Michael, New York City

"David has a gift for creating potent, content-rich experiences. He had us diving right in, and doing so with joy."-Paul, Boston

"David brings together the varied strengths of artist, scholar, and teacher, all permeated with a deep queer spirituality. He has the rare ability to both immerse himself fully in an experience and reflect intelligently and articulately afterwards."-Robert, Rochester, NY

"David was excellent at keeping us balanced between head and heart; he addressed intellectual questions and challenges clearly and openly, kept things moving, and brought us deeper into our bodies and souls." Lee, New York City

Register by sending me an e-mail (anchorholder@gmail.com). I'll respond with the location of the sessions and explain how to make full payment of CN $100 for all five sessions by January 21. Pay by January 7 for a 20% discount on registration. You can also RSVP on the Meetup group Queer Men Building Spiritual Practice Together. 

I'm Over the Maccabees: A Hanukkkah Prayer by Trisha Arlin

I'm over the Maccabees. I'm done with fanatics. I'm done with extremists who demand purity. I'm done with fundamentalists who shut women up. I'm done with religions that kill. I'm over the Seleucids. I'm done with invaders. I'm done with outsiders telling anyone how to live in their own country. I'm done with people telling me how to worship my God. I'm done with liars and rapists and powerful men. 

I'm over the Hellenists. I'm done with accommodation. I'm done with rich suck-ups. I'm done living in comfy bubbles. I'm done with pretending we're one of them.

I'm over Hanukkah. I'm done with Hanukkah bushes. I'm done with eight days of socks. I'm done with parties at the White House.

I'm done with cheap chocolate gelt. I'm okay with light in the darkness. And potato latkes. Oh, and donuts. Let's start there. Amen.

Photo: "Menorah" by Oscar Wolfman

A Queer Utopia: Supple and Turbulent, Chapter the Last

14

We sat out on the deck for another hour, watching the bats flit across the rising moon, above the fireflies that went on fucking their way through the grass down the slope, their lust lighting up the forest as ours had lit us up from within. Occasionally the talk ran back to the intensity of our lovemaking. But we floated together in pure, self-sufficient tranquility now. The glow we witnessed on one another’s faces lit up the deck as no torch could have. Eight men who’d made something none of us could have done on our own. Something that no two of us could have created as a couple separated from the rest of us. We’d made Big Love and sent it into the world, sent it coursing through one another’s hearts, joined heart and mind and cock in loving memory of the friend who’d brought us together. 

Pete was with us in spirit, and we’d resolved that he’d be with us in what was left of his body. The previous fall we’d released his ashes and watched them drift into the soil of the forest at our feet. He was all around us now, in the leaves and flowers of another green year. All but a small heap  that we’d treasured up, even before we’d figured out, amidst our afterglow in the spring, that they were destined for this last gesture of farewell. I guess we knew then in our queer, horny, grieving, loving hearts the destiny of these last remains, but hadn’t given voice to it yet.

Billy took the little phial of coarse grey ash from its place on the side altar. Our offering lay pooled and  glistening in our magic bowl: even Luke had managed to salvage a little of himself from where his seed had oozed down his thigh despite our best attempts, in the enthusiasm of the moment, to lick him clean. Uncapping the phial, Billy poured the contents into the pearly swirl of our lust, joy, hopes, and love. As he stirred it, the mixture darkened and went thick.

“Pete with us again,” he said. “The founder of our tribe. Our lover, brother, friend. The one we all carry now.” With that, he dipped his finger into the dark paste, drawing a line down either of his cheeks, and another horizontal stripe across his forehead.

“Pete over my heart,” whispered Jake, taking up the riff of our sexy, blissed-out jazz of the soul, smearing a little on his chest.

“Pete with us, every time we’ve cum.” Kurt stroked a dollop onto his limp cock, then over his heart, finally touching his finger to his forehead, a sign of love and loss between his eyebrows, a third eye of the wisdom and compassion born of our bodies.

“Every time we’ve cum,” Hank echoed, dredging out another portion and smearing it thick.

An invisible force drew me forward to the bowl. I rubbed my fingers together, exploring the grainy texture of  one man’s ashes mingled with eight men’s seed. It gave off a scent like moist soil after a spring rain, sweet and strangely earthy. It was the stuff of final payments, but the ground of new beginnings too. I was ready to welcome the future, mortal and precious, to welcome it as Pete had welcomed it and so opened it up for the rest of us. I crossed the circle to Jim. Raising my fingers to my forehead and gazing into his eyes as I hadn’t since he’d left me, I marked myself with the glory of everything I shared with Pete, shared with this circle of lovers, would share with whoever came to join Luke and me to build an impossible community of loving, horny men. Holding Jim’s gaze, I reached out to touch my muddy fingertips to his forehead, then turned to Rajiv to mark him as I’d just marked the man who’d been mine and was now his, then lowered my fingers to daub his chest. Jim’s arms rose to rest across my shoulder and Rajiv’s. I signed Jim’s heart and my own with the mud that still clung to my fingers before I entwined my own arms with theirs, completing awkwardly the uneasy trinity we all three longed and were afraid to form. 

Behind us the others crowded into a layered embrace with its own life, swaying with the shift of one man’s weight, righting itself, undulating again as one hip pressed against the next man's. Eventually one or another of us nodded off while still we stood there, slumping against his neighbour, waking again as his own fall was broken by the support of seven others. 

Finally, our complex flower broke apart. The mud that was all of us mingled together caked and fell from our faces and chests where we’d smeared it thickest; clung smooth to our skin where our touch had stayed light. Wrapping ourselves in the bright cloths that had fluttered from the rails, we settled onto the deck to lie tangled in each other’s arms, talking less as the night wore on, drifting into sleep, roused from slumber by the short, hoarse cry of the nighthawk and the faint sound of prayer flags fluttering above our heads, on through to the first chattering bird and the early dawn of a new day.

A Queer Utopia: Supple and Turbulent, Chapter Thirteen

We both turned to Luke, who’d hardly moved while we watched everything unfolding across the circle. His cock hung swollen between his legs, drooping onto the crimson sarong, the tip just brushing a fold in the cloth. I held back from inviting our drained, happy comrades lying in their pile across the deck to join us. Luke looked a little stage-shy of all the attention he knew he was about to receive from the whole tribe. 

I wanted him to peak into the best orgasm of his life. I wanted him to see spirals of light, wanted him to scream for joy, wanted him to stay hanging at the edge of the wave longer than he’d ever stayed before. I wanted him to shoot the biggest load of his life and go on cumming deep inside long after his ejaculation. He leaned back on his elbows. I straddled him and cradled his beautiful, ageless trickster face between my palms. He must have looked the same thirty years ago, I thought. I bet he’ll look the same twenty years from now, with maybe a few more crinkles in his smile. 

Jake was right with me. He moved around to kneel behind Luke, kneading his shoulders and kissing the top of his head. “Whatever you want,” he murmured to him. “We’ll give you anything we can. Just ask for it.” 

Luke melted into Jake’s arms, surrendering to himself and the two of us. “Put your fingers inside me,” he whispered to me, “and massage my chest,” he added to Jake, as he took his own stiffening cock in his right hand and began to stroke it, with the sensual abandon of a man who’s let go of all shame and feels nothing but pleasure in the sheer miracle of being alive and naked with other men. As my middle fingers began to massage their way slowly, gently into him, I pressed  my thumb along the inside of his thigh, grazing his scrotum and flicking across the root of his cock. I wanted him to drill down into awareness that what I was touching inside him and outside were one and the same. Jake’s confident hands came down across his shoulders, fingertips gently tugging at his belly, palms pressing either hip as his forearms slid back up and over Luke’s nipples before the next circle down.

Soon the others joined us. Kurt began massaging Luke’s feet. “Fuck,” Luke moaned as Billy and Hank crowded in, each of them flicking the tip of his tongue at Luke's sac where his balls lay loose and draped over my fingers now buried deep inside him. “I want a dick to suck. Somebody please feed it to me,” he whined.

Jim obliged, kneeling straddled above his chest, leaning forward into Jake and kissing him greedily while Luke began sucking languidly on Jim’s now-softened phallus. With the palm of my free hand I traced the line of Jim’s spine down his back to where it bloomed into sacrum, resting my hand there, breathing energy into him, through his cock into Luke’s mouth.

Billy and Hank had reached arms around my hips to clasp wrists behind me. I felt fingers running through my hair that might have been Rajiv’s, or Kurt’s.

Luke still held out--unbelievably, his deep yogic practice notwithstanding. Every time his eyes glazed over with arousal, the wave of pleasure seemed to take him square in the chest but then wash on into the recesses of his body. Finally, the first surges drooled out of him. Billy,  Hank and I had the best sight of him as he started to erupt. Without thought or hesitation, we began licking at the source of the flow until our cheeks were wet with it, the scent of it in our nostrils and the living warmth of it on our tongues. 

But the slow, steady rhythm of his hand didn’t change, until he shot another surge into the air that landed to glisten in the candlelight on his undulating stomach. Three more jets spurted up after it to pool in the hollow between his lean belly and the flaring wing of his hipbone. Kurt crowded in from where he’d stood,  scooping it with his fingertips, touching it to his lips and then reaching around to offer it to Jim and Jake, who lapped eagerly at the gift. Rajiv nuzzled into the slick pool with his chin, sliding his tongue out to taste it. Jake still cradled Luke from behind. Jim’s hand rested over Luke’s heart. Luke’s hand finally grew still. It lasted for whole minutes, from the first flow sliding down his shaft until the last drops seeped out and he touched his fingers to his own mouth, tasting himself as we’d all tasted him by then.

“One less for Pete,” he smiled, a little regretfully, despite his afterglow. 

“No less for the rest of us,” I said. “And Pete would have been the first one to the source.”