31- bread and kisses

The workers would start their day with a piece of bread with pork rinds (skin, fat, and fried intestines) and mate, a bitter green tea, very popular in that region. They wouldn't consume any more food until sunset, when it was time for a rest. As the sun set, bonfires were lit to roast animals, guitars would come out, and enough liquor would be distributed to soothe the soul and warm the bones, but not enough to get anyone drunk, as they had to start the next day with a clear head. The roasted castrated animal testicles on a stick were considered delicious. Luis Sepúlveda narrates a chilling scene in his book Patagonia Express, where men, showing off their machismo, castrate lambs with their teeth, but I have never seen anything like that. Sheep shearing was a male task, women had no place in that barbaric ritual of the pampas.

This reminds me of the story "The Butcher" by French writer Alina Rey: there was a man who would buy goat testicles from the butcher every week to maintain his extraordinary sexual power. Without a word, the butcher would deliver them nicely wrapped, convinced of their stimulating effect, but not daring to try them himself, because, as Alina Rey writes:

That part of the male anatomy, so vilified in all kinds of jokes and remarks, still demands respect. Needless to say, one cannot go very far without trampling on sacred ground.

It is true, we treat that part of men with solemn consideration. In the United States, the case of John Wayne Bobbitt made history. His wife, tired of violence and abuse, waited for her husband to fall asleep one night and cut off his penis in one blow with a chicken-chopping knife. Surprised by her own virulence, she took the car and escaped down the road, but a couple of miles ahead, she realized she had the piece of flesh on her lap. She simply threw it out the window. Anyone would have done the same. Later, the police meticulously searched the road with flashlights until they found the amputated appendage—they would never go to such lengths if it were a female organ—and carried it triumphantly to the hospital, where doctors sewed it back in place. The details, with color photos and vivid television images, spread throughout the country, captivating the imagination of countless women for months and causing a wave of insomnia in the male population. John Wayne Bobbitt, like his namesake, ended up becoming a star in the movies. He specializes in pornographic films, and now any curious person can see on the big screen, in vivid color, that pathetic cucumber crossed with scars. They say that some women fight to personally verify if this Frankenstein's work functions. And by the way, do you remember the Japanese film "In the Realm of the Senses"? It's the story of a woman and a man whose sexual passion drives them to the extreme of locking themselves up to make love without respite, excluding everything else from their lives. Seeking increasingly intense sensations, they discover the game of her strangling him with a silk scarf to prolong the erection. Each time she tightens more, each time the pleasure is longer and more brutal, until she finally kills him. Desperate at realizing that she has lost him, she cuts off his genitals... The film is based on the story of Oden Takahashi, who wandered for five days in open fields with the genitals of her murdered lover in her hands until the police arrested her. In a spectacular trial that shook the country, she was sentenced to only five years in prison. When she was released, she returned to her former profession as a prostitute with great success. Despite charging ten times more than her colleagues, men traveled from remote provinces and lined up for hours to play with her silk scarf...

17- On Eroticism

In the 1940s, Anais Nin and Henry Miller survived for a while by writing erotic stories for a man who paid them per page. This customer, who called himself the Collector, always remained anonymous, filling the two great authors who lent their talent and pen to satisfy his whims with indignant curiosity. This collector of pornography didn't appreciate style and repeatedly demanded that they "skip the poetry" and focus on sex, as he was not interested in anything else. Anais Nin wrote him a letter in which she masterfully defines the essence of eroticism:

Dear Collector:

We hate you. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, routine, exaggerated, when it becomes a mechanical obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone about the mistake of not mixing sex with emotions, appetites, desires, lust, fantasies, whims, personal connections, deep relationships that change its color, taste, rhythm, intensity.

You have no idea what you are missing with your microscopic observation of sexual activity, excluding the aspects that are the fuel that ignites it: intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising texture, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You reduce its world of sensations, wither it, starve it, bleed it dry.

If you nourished your sex life with all the excitement and adventure that love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent man in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are seeing your flame extinguish, suffocated. Monotony is fatal to sex. Without feelings, inventiveness, willingness, there are no surprises in bed, it must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the components of fear, trips abroad, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dance, opium, wine.

Do you know how much you're missing out on by having that periscope at the tip of your sex, when you could enjoy a harem of different and novel wonders? There are no two hairs alike, but you do not allow us to waste words describing hair; nor two smells, but if we expand on this, you scream: Skip the poetry! There are no two skins with the same texture, and light, temperature, or shadows are never the same, nor are the same gestures, for a lover, when aroused by true love, can span the range of centuries of lovemaking. What variety, what changes in age, what variations in maturity and innocence, perversion and art...!

We have sat for hours wondering what you are like. If you have denied yourself silk, light, color, smell, character, temperament, you must now be completely withered. There are so many minor senses flowing like tributaries to the river of sex, nourishing it. Only the unanimous pulsation of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.