Kingston, Apr. 22, 2008

Introduction | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Link to This


by Paloma Todd

Aries (March 20-April 19)

Keeping my motivations and desires half in the light and half in the dark is my way of keeping Eros alive, as if not voicing my real agendas was part of my erotic game, and a way of keeping control. I need to control so I can feel my power; this is the energy I bring. If the other is in the dark in terms of my intentions, my deep real intentions, then I can feel their surrender mixed with their angst; the angst of knowing I have something hidden. I may use others’ trust as a way of fulfilling my fantasy of being a master; it’s a mental game that boils my blood and turns on the heat of my whole body. If others feel it, their erotic energy is lightened by the tension I cause. I do not take time to think of the consequences of my sexual ethics, because the little death that I cause by omitting part of the truth is my will. I play with death this way, willingly keeping others in the dark about my motivations. But I know something is missing. I know there is something deeper awaiting me, if I dare to cross the threshold of my inner self and speak out openly, sharing (as if reaching out) my secret fantasies and desires, my fears of losing myself, of disintegrating myself when meeting, loving, sensing others fully.

Photo by Eric Francis.

Instead of seeking others, I am the one who must surrender. If I bring the energy of truth, the power of my vulnerability, I will move a new force, I will open a new space that will welcome growth, and in which my personal tranformation will fuel the other with my release. Then, I could feel the shadow melting into the light, the past into the new. I will feel the joy of participating with the other in something meaningful and creative, because the moment I learn to give up control, I will feel the other’s power over me and I will like it; I will feel the deep pleasure of meeting myself in the other.

This new present time opens a door for me. I have places to hide within the inner layers of my past conditioning: my old seduction rituals. The layers have melted and at the core of my being a voice needs to be heard. I am ready. I will put words to the unnamed. I will ask for what I want. I will say: “I want you, I need you.” Because this is the lesson I have learned: I can’t go deeper without the help of the other, and my soul is screaming for company so I can cross my own shadows with others; to surrender beyond my body, I will learn to say the truth, the deepest truth of my needs.

Will I dare to let you in? I know that I am trapped in my own agenda now, and that the first step to freeing myself is admitting it; this is where a deeper erotic journey starts for me. I won’t kill you anymore, instead I will die for you. My words of truth will become the erotic steps of this journey.

Taurus (April 19-May 20)

I want it all. I want sex atop the Himalayas. I want cherry blossom sex in Japan. I want to expand, explore and explode. I want to feel the cosmic universe by meeting you, all of you. I want them all, on a plate to be eaten as a cosmic gourmet buffet; I want all the tastes melting as truth enlightens me, while I surrender the weight of my body into the smells of the skin of others. I am as hungry for orgasmic wisdom as I am for having sexes in my mouth and skins under my teeth. I ask for it all, and as much as I want, I am willing to give back to my lovers, as they are the cosmic stars of my voraciousness. I am such a laugh, such a gift. The energy I bring into meeting the other is overwhelming, overboard, even abrasive, but I do bring something joyful into other people’s lives. Others enjoy me devouring them.

My willingness to give can get me anything I want. The universe is generous with me in proportion to the quality of my giving. I am fortunate. But, enough is never enough, and even if I have what I want, the possibility of missing more delicious, subtle, delicate, tasty, sensuous bodies and souls fuels back my desire, and my need grows bigger; larger. I need the diversity the universe has to offer: it allows me to feel change from my static nature, and then I can dance, shift and move through others in me. By allowing them to be near, and to be able to swallow and smell their different energies I can get the feeling of mutating, shifting. Then, when I come back to myself, I experience the lack of it all. This is why I sail my way by selling my ways to others. I seduce. And by seducing I act as an actor, and a part of me keeps missing something, and this is the core of my hunger, of my voraciousness.

With time I learn that my expectations can be so high that their unattainable quality is what fuels the empty hole in my erotic stomach. I have a long-lived contract with frustration. Behind the lover that I am lies a deep feeling of not being able to relate with reality; because reality feels like settling for less. Having many options open is my way of handling frustration. Do I really handle it?

I need to find my core value. I need to learn to feel satisfaction within my own core self, without feeling starvation, or the lack of something bigger and better. Others are more than energy or fuel to me, they are gods and goddesses, friends and teachers that like me are learning the dance of life: which is to be human.

Humanity has a painful quality to me, as I am more connected with the idea of god, than the human. I connect with the god quality in others, forgetting that like me they are human. Do I ask too much of others? Of myself?

Gemini (May 20-June 21)

Trusting is not that easy for me. I feel a wall that separates me from the experience I desperately need to grow. I have it in front of me, but breaking the wall taps directly into my duality: a feeling of inner fragmentation. A part of me wants and needs the freedom to experience fully and totally, it feels like youth, untamed and wild; I am curious, I am playful, but another part of me seems to be anchored in schemes that do not belong directly to me; it sounds like the voice of my parents, of my teachers reminding me of the boundaries that I should not cross, the do’s and don’ts that I have inherited. A voice of containment inhabits me and limits my perception of the other, especially my perception of the other’s desires for me, of me. I do not know how to relate with need without feeling the debt, obligation and contractual boundaries that are connected with the ghosts of my past. I cannot surrender without feeling I might let go of my freedom, of my individuality. This inner tension is exhausting; I want and need to be free from it, so I can move into a new field of experience with my friends, my partners and my lovers.

I know the key is in asking, but I feel judgmental messages coming from within saying that being helped will disempower me. My inner power is strong but I am elusive with it; I fear handling it because I know I can only feel it if I learn to give up something about me. I procrastinate surrender; I postpone surrender; I fear needing, I fear being restricted by need.

Something new is happening within my core self; a process has begun, and though I feel the intensity of my fear growing, as a fire can grow suddenly, I know, deep within myself that the time has come for slowly melting these fears into my passion. Life is in the other too, not only me. If I learn that my passion makes me more human, that my fears are the seeds of my real freedom, and that the closer I let myself be, the more independent I will feel, then I will recognize that I am in a new territory, a new space, where humbler, I will feel safe.

In the past it has been easy for me to contract within myself, now I feel that the inner heat melts the contraction and transforms it into expansion: an expansion that allows for the healthy limits that I need; limits that contain the experience as a space where it can grow.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)

I am more unpredictable than you can imagine: I have unpredictable needs. Under my soft skin I am wired with electric erotic channels that respond to their own master. My needs are connected to this circuit, and I can shift energetically the voltage of my desires. I am unique, never the same and always familiar. With me you can feel the rebel and the container, the virgin and the whore, the boy and the girl, the wise and the immature, the good and the bad. I surprise myself by surprising you, or is it that my own surprise is the energy that attracts you? I need you in order to be able to express this complexity, this system that I am. I am the pervert, and the healer. I destroy and I construct. Both are the same as in me there is a new form of naming, without judgment: I only see a vision of possibility. I am literally turned on by possibility. And I am especially turned on by impossibility. I need to transgress in order to feel that I am on the move, that I have a direction. I need others to transgress me, to push me, to help me rebel against myself so I can feel life’s evolution. I need inner cellular sexual revolutions, I need to revolve and be revolved.

Photo by Eric Francis.

If I were to put names to my fantasies, the universe would blush. I am ahead of my time, open and willing to explore being explored; I go beyond sex and gender, I go beyond society’s myths; about what constitutes the right way because I have my own way, and I want and need the diversity of all the other ways possible.

I want and need to become pure energy, maleable, transformable; I need to feel the movement of others’ transformational forces happening because of my contact, within my contact; I need to feel that my body and I are a vessel that allows others to experience new forms of touching reality, pleasures: hidden, unconventional, transgressive.

My whole body is a constellation of chakras; each pore of my body is a chakra that spins and makes others spin. Others’ sexual energy is activated by my willingness to be penetrated on all levels: mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. This is my healing contribution to the world. As a servant of the mother energy, I become also a cosmic sexual channeler that nurtures and liberates at the same time.

This is a community project, as I need to reflect and multiply myself in the many experiences of others.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)

I am the ocean of the universe’s reflection; the stars are projected on the ocean of my fire made liquid. I am the king of queens and the queen of kings, and the magnanimous quality of my heart is paired with the vastness of my soul. I am royal and mystic. Meeting me, melting with me, has the quality of being drowned in fire and burned in water. I am a hot steam that comes out of any experience that makes transcendence the dance of our meeting.

You need me to feel impossibilities made possible, and from these to dream reality and make it happen. I am so tangible, so present, so here and now, that others get lost in my second dimension, one in which everything shifts, expands, multiplies. I can give strengths and power, security and warmth, but step into my world and you will access worlds within worlds projected in my offerings to you. I am limitless within. Do not try to reach me; better, just follow me and meet my journeys in my mind and soul.

I learn to live my complex inner dimension and make it be in the real world. I can get trapped within my unrevealed fantasies that nurture me, but that may be like ungrown seeds. I need to be the actor of my fantasy. I need to dare to shift in my sexual roles, my many lovers, with many faces, I need to be all of the beings that inhabit me. I have a multitude of erotic characters that want to see the light of my sun, that need to be born. That can only happen if I play, replay, rewind, fast-forward my inner movies for my lovers, friends.
I need cameras, mirrors, films, where I can create and recreate myself, and I need a public, an intimate public that is willing to venture into these worlds with me. I need to be seen.

I have such an aura of magic surrounding me. I inspire, I heal, I am therapeutic by just being willing to explore my sensuous erotic dimensions with others. I become an experience of transcendence, like a sexual utopia that either feels too good to be true or too scary to be gone through.

During these times I am learning to ground my inner reality, and to understand that I am so good at getting what I want that I need to bring deep awareness on what I ask from people. Do I see them only as part of my fantasies? Multi-dimensions of myself? How do I really connect with others? What is it that I bring as an offering, as a service to their lives? I can be self- absorbed into the beauty that I offer, and forget the edges and boundaries that others need to have as subjects to meet me. Am I willing to let go of having the first role, and listen to the other fantasy world, and be able to go there without feeling lost, or confused, because it is not my world? These are the questions of today. I am being challenged to rebel against myself.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

Behind the containment of who I am and how I present myself to the world lies a secret. Behind the well-constructed, pleasing image of who I am to others, I have a surprise. I am good, I behave, I control myself to fit, I categorize, I take it all into account; all but my anger, hunger.

When you meet me you can see the fire in my eyes, you can feel the jump behind my controlled movements, the impulse beating behind my well- constructed words. I am paced but if you look closer you will see the speed of my desire bursting. I get turned on faster than light, and this energy moves my wheel. I spend so much energy containing my strength. When I am naked in my erotic self with others, something new gets to be born: a new body, a new desire always emerging.

I am always a virgin: a new being in my sexual erotic encounters; a new creature, hungry for life and allowed to emerge from the womb of my own being. I surprise myself. I am caught off guard by my powerful sexual nature, the one that melts the boundaries of my self-perceptions. Something about me eludes me. And it is this self-elusive power that attracts others to me, and it is this force that I can’t control, the one that makes me unique. I am thankful that it is stronger than me, than my shame and my pride. I am thankful that my desire is so raw that it leads me to new territories, new encounters. It makes me dare.

I get to lead, I get to be first, I get to get what I want. I am a conqueror, but not of the other, just myself. I am a battle. I battle my inhibitions and inner shyness, so when I get you, I have no more struggle to offer. I can’t win over my desire; it is stronger than me and my walls, it is as if an inner sword of truthfulness was able to be turned on by just being hot for another. When I am hot, I am so hot that I can only surrender exhausted, and my exhaustion makes me open, vulnerable, available, willing. I will to be this force, even if it pushes me beyond myself.

In the past I have feared this energy. From fear I move to anger. My anger is the untamed expression of my frustration of not being able to express my power. If I am angry it is because I am hungry. I will fight you, I will attack you, I will claim my will over you, angry because I need you to be able to battle me, to conquer me. Sex is my battle. Do not fear. Help me accept it. Do not fear my anger, it is only a distortion of my passion. I give everything of myself to you. Help me cross the boundaries of my resistances.

I am ready to go deeper within the shadows of my fear of pleasure. No more fear, no more feeling guilty for the immensity of my desires; they will not kill me, I will survive them, enact them, honor them. This is my new creative journey and territory. Something will die, and I am ready. It feels like home. I have won the battle.

Libra (Sept. 22-Oct. 23)

I am so good that I don’t even have to make an effort. Love is my word. Pleasure is my star, and I follow it, willingly, wantingly.

Photo by Eric Francis.

My loving equation is balanced and harmonious because I can go from imagination to realization without blinking an eye. I am the image and the body, I am the fantasy and the reality. I dream about it, I make it happen. This equilibrium makes me desirable. And, I desire with the same proportion as I am desired. I let the other’s desire of me transpass me; I allow it, I want it, I do not hide from it, I game with it. This is the beginning of my dance with others and with myself. I am made for others. I am more an other’s being than a self being, therefore I open up so the other can feel and sense the delights I have to offer. I am a geisha.

I am a charming charmer. I charm my way in and I charm my way out. I am gracious about it, but, am I truthful? I have a deep survival need for aesthetics, but I tend to blur the line between the form and the content, which can make my ethics dubious. I indulge myself in my ways, my form of making things happen, and sometimes I miss meaning and depth. My search for equilibrium, grace and harmony might make me miss some information about the shadow that I have to negotiate with in order to find the core of my sexual value.

The harmony that I preach is only superficial; and in digging a bit further, or by just scratching the surface of my ritual graces, you will discover an abrasive, almost destructive, desire burning wildly within my core. The fear of destruction (mine and others) makes me need to exaggerate my being desirable and seductive, sweet and gracious, so I can feel the illusion of taming and channeling this energy. The truth is that I can only hide it as a shadow, which in the long run makes me lacking in sincerity and openness. 

I hide behind my desire and talents to please, instead of having the courage to step into the hot zone of my fire. I can be lazy out of fear of conquering this inner territory, as I fear it will break the aesthetic order that I need to feel safe. If I only knew that my real power was like the diamond hidden in the belly of a dragon: the treasure buried under a pile of shadow material; instead of conquering others with my charms, I would let this energy be expressed as an ally, not an enemy.

If my erotic energy is a fuel that I offer to others and to the universe, what is it that I am giving? Truth? How do I spend my sexual power? Do I spend it on a whim, or do I save it to be shared with others, deeply? Do I share my true self, or my idealized self? What values do I put to all of this?

At the end I am bound to find that the self-idealization of my loving rituals is just a shallow layer of a real earthy tangible passion. If I learn to use the form as a channel and not an end, if I allow the repressed material that makes my heart beat with less ‘beautiful’ fantasies, I might find the balanced equation that I seek.

I will learn to collaborate within myself: to find the ethics in the aesthetics.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)

My mind goes faster than my body. My desire follows the whims and labyrinths of my mind. My mind is like a tower, where we climb and see the immense view I have to offer: one of openness and freedom. We can go down the stairway under the earth, and find the mirror of all the lights in the shadow of my brain. Many things are forbidden in my world, but the fact that they exist in my mind, the fact that I have the language to build the inner experience makes it real to me. I offer this to you. The journey of discovering all the layers that can make us travel the lower and higher corners of my (our) imagination. I offer a constant movement of transformation in the spiral of my duality.

You might think I am offering the experience of polarity. But my will is to give you the totality of the erotic experience, which is that shadow and light are the same. I am willing to put words to this experience. I do not hide. I do not fear.

I am an erotic player, and I play mostly with my mind. My mind is hot and aware of itself, of its power and its force. I learn to harness the power of my mind by allowing my body to follow my mental leads. I need others.

You will discover that by letting me in, I can put words to your most hidden desires, and by doing so, help you to cross that mental block of fear. I sense and feel the split between fear and desire in others. I melt it with words. I make them be experienced as actions, therefore I domesticate the power behind them. My perception of others’ desires is heightened.

I am symbolic, a fetish worshiper and creator, because it gives language an altar to experience my deepest inner pulsations. I have learned the dangers concealed in this dynamic. I know I can play mental games and tricks. Trust is the key. If I trust myself, you trust me and we can play.

I learn to speak out my beliefs, without fearing being seeing for what I really am. The fact that I exist, and that my art exists, implies that the universe needs me. Feeling shame or censoring this raw, pure energy of desire is not only an attempt against myself, but, and especially, an attempt against creation. I put my mental energy to use on others’ behalf.

If you fear my intensity, I get emotionally ill trying to express what I mean, because it becomes a matter of life and death. If fear is played out, you will exprience my sarcasm as a defense mechanism for the nakedness of my mind and soul. Because I have the ability to create negative thoughts, I make an effort to create positive ones, creative thoughts, and for that I need to cross, with you, the deep thresholds of collective shame and guilt that we have inherited.

My path is the path of love and trust.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)

Do you know where my arrow is pointing? It is believed to be at the stars. I confess: I am pointing at the unattainable desire to melt back into my mother’s body and milk. I need to feel the nurturing embrace of the Female Universal Force. My arrow points at the Moon, but not to reach Her, just to capture the memory of life, the one that says we are all sons and daughters of the same orgasmic milky universe. This truth makes me ache, as the missing link that makes me human is the force that I bring when I love, it is the embrace that I seek from the other. In my joy there is the missing piece of melancholic love. I love and I miss.

The seeds of my emotional world inform my desires, my erotic fantasies, my sexual cravings. I need emotional reinforcement as I disguise old emotional hungers from childhood in my adult ways of meeting others. This is a ritual that turns me on. Feeling vulnerable. Sex and the fantasy of feeling safe and nurtured turns me on. I am proud and therefore will not ask explicitly for this; on the contrary, this is the undercurrent inner, and sometime hidden, ritual that I live through. I feel such an intense emotional exposure in my erotic cravings that it takes a lot of experimentation and play -- and adventure -- to have my needs met. If you ask my partners they will comment on my mood swings and unpredictable shifts from one state to another. I am always looking for the missing piece, therefore I am always looking. I can, sometimes, turn to emotional blackmail in order to get the attention that I so much seek. This is only a symptom of my need. I need to learn to reach out.

I am gifted for freedom, and a truth seeker, but the universe has given me an inner task to fulfill, which has to do with admitting how deeply I need others; my independence is not a gift to hide away from others, or to conquer others, it is a gift to share and to teach to others. As the teacher that I am, I have a mission, and that is to honor how emotional sex can be to me, because it connects me with the universal memory of my mother, and with the mourning of my human condition. If I learn to accept that others are the image of this love that I remember feeling, I can shift from wanting to receive, to being able to give and nurture others. And to teach how compatible deep love is with passion and eroticism, and especially how compatible emotional vulnerability is with freedom and adventure. This is my task, the task of the universe that the Goddess has given me.

Each joyful step in the journey has to include some tears, releasing tears. I learn that all is compatible. This is the spirit-body alchemy that I preach and seek.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)

I have the luxury of acting understated and being cool because I know the quality of the fire I tend to. Not only am I an emperor and an empress, but I can feel the golden rays of being and feeling like royalty without needing to be an emperor or an empress; this is my way of metaphoring my sense of self-worth and the energy that I put out in the world; and into meeting and creating with others. I therefore need others to match this inner energy of mine. I count on others’ sense of self-worth to be able to feel the equal ground that I need in order to let all my passion out. If I do not feel I am being matched by you, I can have a ruthless and predator energy, that might turn you on in the short run, and me, off, in the long run. This makes me feel deprived, as in my world; love and sex are closer than you might think.

Photo by Eric Francis.

Leadership is the dance of my life; I set the pace, I lead the way, I get what I want, and I need to feel recognized for this. I have a cool façade, but if you get near me, you will feel the temperature moving fast into the hot zone. This is part of my sexy persona, and the source of my heart’s hottest desires. I can’t separate the feeling of giving and loving from the need to lead and be in charge.

This doesn’t mean I do not have space in me for your lead; on the contrary, I want it, I need it, it is my deepest desire to be led, played, tamed. This is the secret of my power that I am so strong, that the experience of weakness is foreign to me. I need you to tame me, and for that I need to be able to surrender to your power, and for that I need to feel your power.

I only look for the quality that will allow me to let go of my rigidity, and to be the king of a queen, or the queen of a king. Is this too much to ask?

I momentarily can get turned on by my power over you, but the real challenge for me is to feel confident enough to forget about my power, and abandon myself to the pure pleasure of being with another. Can you feel the fear behind my pride? Can you feel the vulnerability of not really knowing how to surrender and receive? This is my lesson, trusting you enough to open my power to you, so I just follow you in your space, and once there, unarmed and unharmed by disillusion, regaining my strength, for you, for me; with you, with me.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)

I am complex; complex as a system can be, complex as life itself. I am complex because my need to grasp the meaning and dynamics of my complexity is a lifelong journey of the dissemination of information that I analyze, categorize, compare, process; I am a process. I need proofs, and I need experience to find my way in the maze of the mystery that we are. Desire is for me as much of a soul matter as a scientific one. I know that my desire is biology at work.

My mind is as sharp as a knife, and I apply the rigors of science to my voracious need for empirical proof. I fuck as an experiment. I fuck to understand. I fuck to learn and gather material. I fuck and it is my service. I fuck and I heal.

I am so far into my research that I am felt as cold and distant. I am not. On the contrary, I am one that goes deeper than everyone else in the layers of experience of others. The difference is I do not need the personal drama, nor the symbolic subjective images of passion to turn me on. I am mostly turned on by everything else: that is, life. Especially the diverse, rare, refined, tasty, well done, well thought out, sophisticated, extravagant, classy; I like it all, as good as it serves my purpose: the need to know, to grasp, to get it, to feel it. I am on a scientific erotic curiosity path.

In matters of sex, I need a certain emotional and mental hygiene to be respected, and understood. The underlying tone behind all my encounters has to do with non-attachment: the only attachment I have is with the task. And my task is the search for meaning through sexual exploration.

Others might perceive this rather cold explorative approach as perversion, as if I were stepping out of the commodity of having to follow everybody’s version of what sex ought to be about. I am sorry, this is not me. Perversion is just equal to freedom in my dictionary.
As an individual I feel deeply wounded by the history of prohibition, inhibition, prosecution, persecution, so if you follow me, you will discover that I need to heal the imprints of these in my mind and cells, and for that, to explore, and to push the limits is my survival affirmation of life. So, yes, behind my free-spirited path, lies the shadow of a wound that I acknowledge without shame. I am not a victim, though I might feel a little like one sometimes. The truth is that there is an unconquered territory within me, that I need to tap into. I need all of the world to reach this state. Meeting me is meeting the world at large.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)

If you think I am a romantic, I will say no. If you insist, maybe I will admit it, but before doing so, I will explain to you my version of romance.

I am the definition of romance, and maybe you’ll be rather surprised by the fact that it does not exactly fit the one sold to us by society’s myths of love and sex. You see, I am an ‘out of bounds’ being. I am a collective soul in one human form, and, a collector of a soul’s experiences. I only respond to one mythology; one that is not made by humans, but made for humans. I am a Goddess worshiper, the mother lover of all the vaginas from which we were all ejaculated into: this is my home. It is from here, from this space-idea-energy myth that I worship, that I define romance. The seed of this proposal lies in the idea that we are coming from the same place we all want to go back to: collective orgasm. This is the core of my romantic nature.

I feel that I am on a mission to explore the many levels of cooperation we can achieve as social and sexual beings. We need each other, but not only as individuals forming lovers, no; we need to expand the concept of socialization to the concept of sharing, as friends, the loving and sexual journey of being codependent on each other for love and growth.

I am a law maker. I want and need to create political sexual avenues that open up society’s conservative boundaries to all forms of relating. My search for balance, harmony and equilibrium needs to create a community that sustains love as a space that is free, just, fair.

I love on the communal level. This is the romance I preach: real romance for all, not only a few. My capacity to love and to venture into the erotic landscape of myself, has no major meaning; its pleasure is not something that makes us all equal.

I am a facilitator of pleasure; probably because is comes so easily for me, on a personal level, that I cannot think of pleasure without desiring it for all.

If I am not able to connect with the collective nature of my romantic needs, I can get lost in the frivolous and superficial way of relating, one that uses grace and form as an end, not a means. I can easily fall for the shallow end of pleasure, tasting conventional forms of ritualistic sexual games. This will lead me to feelings of anger and depression as inertia kills the voice of my soul.

My loving and desiring of a higher ideal (by connecting with the sexual energy of the universe) is what I bring back into society. I am always in love, and I want all to be in love with me. Romance is a right.