Last night, I edged away from entertaining people with pretty words about pretty things at some open mic

night that was caught between a hot sunny day and the torrential evening pour of rain. I had an old copy of a Whiskey Dregs collection of writing and in between the pages was a little freak story, called “The Fly” that ended with a fly’s face appearing on the endowed ass of a woman while fornicating (I’m being polite, see?).

There’s more to the story than that but I was reading for people whose opinion I could have cared less about and what prevailed was exactly what I intended to spin – a horrific balance of pornography and violence.

As someone who is heavily influenced by photgrapher, Joel Peter Witkin, I don’t always profess beauty in the superficial sense – at least not philosophically. Beauty is complex and art should sometimes represent the savagery of our innate nature (as it already does). Ugliness is essential to recognize beauty, even to embellish it (paradox, anyone?). Ugliness is what makes beauty sophisticated because the knowledge and expression of these undesired characteristics of humanity is what distinguishes us from every other species.

The story I read, in spite of its repulsive content, portrayed the act of consumption, comparing human sexuality with the voracious hunger of maggots and how, after a while, this act eventually ends with death or, as the closing moments of an orgasm is called in French, le petite mort. Accepting life or giving life is to accept death or give death and our insatiable desire for sex is the silent voice of our genes echoing our past, present, and then passing our history on to subsequent generations.

What I wanted to do with this story was strip down the characters to what they really were – savage animals, with one goal, just like the maggots – to survive. It just so happens that the act of sex feels pretty good too. It’s supposed to.

Tears of Eros

If you’re interested in reading more on this topic, check out Tears of Eros by the French author and outlaw philosopher, George Bataille. He had a good deal to say about these things. Although the book includes a lot of nonsense, it is also rich with ideas that will cause uncomfortable questions about who and what we really are as a species, .