How do we cope with the mixed message?
One parent says “Yes” while the other says “No”
The supervisor who says “Do this project”and the other who says “No, do this project instead.”
The lover who says “stay” but whose actions all point towards “please go”
Or the other way around.
No matter.
Either way we end up not being able to fully trust our own inner sense or the environment where we find that mixed message or conflicted information.
We are drawn back and cautious.
We see the contradictions and just find a way to make it work somehow and deal with the consequences of one parent, one boss, one aspect of the lover being unhappy with us.
And what about one of the greatest mixed messages we have all received culturally?
You are sexual by nature AND you are a sinner by birth.
Whether you are a believer or not this is the cultural air we have all breathed our entire lives.
We have this powerful urge to connect physically and experiment and discover. But then we are told that there is a proper time and place for that, and that we must restrain that desire because it is improper and we must tame our base and animal instincts.
See the contradiction?
This story springs from The Bible and even more specifically the book of Genesis which has hundreds of suggested sexual acts done by “good” and “pure” patriarchs and matriarchs – Jacob, Abraham, Sarah, Rebecca. But all are living under the shadow of “The Fall”…this proto-sexual sin by Adam and Eve.
This mixed message that denies our sexual nature bubbles out into culture and you get sick and sad distortions like the child abuse scandals in the Catholic church or the summarily awful “ghost rapes” in Mennonite communities. Sadly, the list of sexual distortions in religious communities can go on and on.
But what if religion told us a different story?
One where our sexual nature was built into the fabric of our cultural mythology?
My new novel “Genesis Deflowered” unmixes the mixed message we have received.
I took the King James Bible’s version of Genesis, full of “thees” and “thous” and without taking away one word, I added text to it to give all the characters and erotic life and sexual purpose making what we call kinks…just normal things that happen.
It would have easy, and almost tawdry, to simply say “Adam fucked Eve in the Garden of Eden.” So my approach was to write about the sex that all the characters in the Bible are having (and they are having lots of it) as it would have been written about if the authors and translators were a bit more forgiving of sex. The King James Bible is beautiful and poetically rendered but it also restrained and chaste.
Writing biblical erotica in Elizabethan English isn’t the standard approach to turning people on but I think there is a place for it so that the mixed message we have received can start to be resolved – we are just sexual beings with a desire to know, sense and experience…full stop.
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And Eliezer said unto Rebekah, Lo, ye are virgin, and must be kept such; and yet the angel of the LORD said I must taste thee for dates, and figs, and of milk, and of honey; so that thy sweetness may be a blessing unto Isaac, and Abraham, and the LORD. I pray thee let me taste of thy red secrets, so as a servant I may serve thee, and my master Abraham. And Rebekah did recline, and had the servant taste of her mouth; and of her red secrets did he taste her. And he did delight in the taste of figs and dates upon her; and he did rejoice in the flavour of her honey; and he did weep at her beauty. And the servant Eliezer brought Rebekah to the garden; and then he left her for sleep. And they rose up in the morning, and he said unto Laban and Bethuel; Send me away unto my master. And her brother and her mother said, Let the damsel abide with us a few days, at the least ten; after that she shall go. And he said unto them, Hinder me not, seeing the LORD hath prospered my way; send me away that I may go to my master. And they said, We will call the damsel, and inquire at her mouth. And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go; For Eliezer has been good to me, and brought joys to me. Thus such a man must serve a man who is even greater than he. Lo, that man who the servant serves must be of rare stature; and I will serve that greater man. And I will go indeed for an angel of the LORD said unto Eliezer that my red secrets must taste of dates and figs, and of milk and honey; and my secrets, by my troth, taste of dates and figs and of honey. And so shall my sweetness serve the sweetness unto the LORD and Abraham and Isaac. And they sent away Rebekah their sister, and her nurse, and Abraham’s servant, and his men. And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.
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Where many see the Bible as the pathway to Heaven, others say it should be covered in a brown paper bag because it is so, so filthy.
There are hundreds of sex acts implied in the first book of the bible (and sadly none initiated by a woman). How has nobody ever described how each of them would have played out in biblical language?
If the writers and translators of the Bible had been a little less prudish we might have an entirely different relationship between sex and religion than we have now. In Genesis there is sex before marriage, threesomes, incest, group sex, kinky fetish cuckolding, gay sex and more.
Isn’t it time that you read the Bible for the dirty parts?
Using the seminal King James Bible in its Elizabethan English as spring board,”Genesis Deflowered” makes the beginning of the Bible come out as a sexy, readable and fun erotic novel.
“Genesis Deflowered “: equal parts holy scripture and blaspheming scandal
About the Author
Matthew Stillman is a born and bred New Yorker. With the exception of college he has always lived in Manhattan. After scoring a BA in Comparative Literature from SUNY Geneseo, he got into programming at Food Network and developed shows like Iron Chef, Good Eats and many, many others. He also started improvising with the Upright Citizens Brigade shortly after they first arrived in New York, and he still does.
“The End of Poverty?” was his first film. He conceived of it, wrote the first treatment, co-produced it and spoke at the UN four times about it after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and went to 40 festivals around the world.
After a lifetime of a making out with literature, inner spiritual work from different traditions, creativity and play. He has written “Genesis Deflowered”. It is his first full length book. And, of course, he started with a genre that he may well have just made up – Biblical Erotica written in Elizabethan English.
He is married to an exceptional woman from Sheffield in the North of England. He blogs at stillmansays.com where he writes about his ongoing creativity experiment in Union Square. And you can find him on twitter at @stillmansays
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Free ebook to the person in the comments who name the biblical character who is into cuckolding…
Blurb:
As a kid, going to the bookstore was an event. We didn’t actually have one in the small town where I grew up, which meant I’d only get to go once a month when we’d drive to the big city to visit my grandparents. I was a huge fan of the Choose Your Own Adventure books and would immediately seek them out the moment we set foot in the store. That month’s worth of allowance was quickly (and happily) spent on books I knew would pull me deep into the story.