Editor’s Introduction
This anonymous scientist will shortly receive her Ph.D. in linguistics. She already edits an academic journal, has published one book in her field, and was CEO as well as primary software designer for a small computer company, as well as having had a term of employment with a major government research agency. Like many scientists who have submitted accounts to TASTE, she is very concerned with preserving her anonymity because of possible negative repercussions in her academic and professional life.
This is the first of three experiences she has submitted (she has had others and may submit them later). It raises interesting questions about the nature of both our ordinary and possible identities. This one occurred in the Fall of 1989, when she was 30.
The Nature Of Androgyny
Anonymous
I was sitting across the table from a man I loved deeply, and I felt very powerfully the polarity between us. Rather than trying to release this in some way, we both just stayed present. The energy built up to a point when something happened… a bridge was crossed.
The resulting state was oddly asexual, though the force of the polarity was very much present, not collapsed at all as it is after orgasm, for example. The energy which gave rise to the experience was certainly that of being in love (a male-female polarity), but the state itself was asexual – I don’t even want to use the term ‘sexual’, because even at that earlier point, before the culmination, ‘sex’ did not exist. The idea of sex somehow did not make any sense. There was no such thing.
The physical manifestation of the experience was irrelevant. It so happened that we were simply sitting at the table having a late breakfast. We might have been doing anything, including what an outsider might have described as sex. It was irrelevant. The essence of the experience was what I would describe as extreme Reverence. It began with a specific person with specific characteristics which one held in high regard, but once it fulfilled itself, it was not only asexual, but apersonal. The individual was not addressed. The individual was a means, not an end. I knew myself as both male and female, as not separate. I also saw something of the nature of male and female as a result – what they actually Are.
On the physical plane, nothing whatsoever happened. We sat still and nothing happened – not even sexual arousal. Yet once it had passed, he also acknowledged that something very peculiar indeed had just transpired. And after that experience, I also felt free relative to this person, as if a permanent bond had been forged. Nothing more could be said. Nothing needed to be said or done ever. The process was complete. He is married and lives in New Zealand. I live in America. We never see one another. We rarely write. But there remains a fact between us. We both acknowledge this
Contributor’s Comments on the Experience
I’m not sure what is responsible for what. I do observe that I seem to function differently in relationship than most people I know. On the one hand, I feel polygamous, no desire for a single partner. On the other hand, I’m nearly celibate by inclination. But this isn’t due to a collapse of emotion or energy, because I can fall in love very deeply and do from time to time, not necessarily with one person at a time. My feelings are very strong. I have no hesitation in expressing it sexually, if that’s what I feel like, but I rarely feel it that way.
