EROPLAY IN LIFE AND ART Eroplay is a made-up word for intense physical playing and touching of oneself and others. Chero is the force of energy which is released as the result of eroplay. Usually the word sex has been the catchword for people to dump on almost everything sensual, romantic, physical, or showing more skin than usual. Cars are called sexy. Poses that do not show the sex act are called sexual. Moving in certain ways is called sexual even when it is not leading or intending to engage in the sexual act... In magic, words create. If you use sexual words for non‑sexual playing, they will create a false sexual confusion. Eroplay is not foreplay, though foreplay is eroplay. Kids play very physically both with their own bodies and others’ bodies. They get turned-on by this play, both physically and mentally. This turn-on is not sexual in kids. Studies have shown that babies who are held, touched, and played with are more healthy and alert, weigh more, and have a lower rate of death than babies who are denied this eroplay. Studies also show that old people who live alone, who don’t get physical and emotional contact, are less healthy and die sooner than people of the same age who live with others and get that physical contact. We may need a certain amount of straight eroplay (not connected to or leading to sex) to be as healthy as possible. Eroplay can be intense. It is like rubbing a puppy on its belly: the puppy goes into a state of rapture, both totally turned-on and relaxed. To use something that is not normally confused with sex, eroplay is the blissed-out, warm, totally satisfying feeling of a good head rub. Sex seems to be connected to mating; whereas the combination of both physical and psychic forces released during and after eroplay seems to be connected more to communication and attracting people to you. Eroplay is satisfying in itself, in relaxing intensity. There is no build-up of pent-up energy in one climactic act. In sex, however, there is a point where foreplay (eroplay) ceases to satisfy and energy gets pent up and built up to be released in the sex act. This build‑up is a clear and broad dividing line between the turn-on of eroplay and sex. Eroplay starts when the possibility of the physical eroplay arises, the possibility of breaking normal rules, social conventions, and morality. But the turn-on of the possibility of breaking the taboos, rules, and the common morality is not a natural part of eroplay. It has been added on to eroplay by social repression. Anytime you break a taboo, there is a release of energy almost like a high. But sooner or later you have to go back into the system where that taboo still exists. Then, more often than not, you will get a backlash from breaking it. It may come from inside you or from others. If you can ride out this backlash ‑‑ if you have it at all ‑‑ you will be a stronger person, and you can modify the moral system to fit how you want to live. Breaking taboos has always been a part of art...at least the area of art that changes consciousness and reality. The breaking of taboos ideally should not be a part of everyday eroplay, but it is. One of its functions is to take eroplay out of the taboo area. Eroplay’s focus is on physical pleasure for its own sake. This is why it is taboo: religion teaches that physical pleasure for itself is bad. Eroplay connects you more with your own body and with other people. It decreases isolation and alienation. It increases self-trust and trusting of others. It makes you harder to be controlled. This is another reason why eroplay is taboo. Most of the so-called sex problems in sexual relationships have to do with trying to do with sex what eroplay can do, trying to fill needs with sex that sex can’t fulfill. This leads to the downward spiral of frustration, self-doubt, trying too hard, and blame. Since eroplay may release certain chemicals in the body, to get familiar with what eroplay itself does, not adding other chemicals will help. Since eroplay is not mate oriented, it is possible to have a relationship with a friend in which eroplay is an important part, but in which the possibility of sex and romance is very clearly excluded. This kind of relationship will have good effects on your other relationships. In the ’70s, I had a group of about thirty people. It was fairly clear to us that there was a difference between playing and sex. By eroplaying intensely, but playfully, it released a certain creativity which we used in many ways. But at a certain point, we started questioning the concept of marriage: what was the difference between what we thirty had together and being married? We did not see any difference. I now see that we should have used the word “mating”, which does not refer to child‑bearing, but to bonding. So we started to have sex. Almost immediately changes appeared. The playful creativity which came from eroplay dried up. Playing and the physical freedom between the people quickly ceased to be. The group quickly began to fall apart. Thanks to the repressive, anti-sexual, anti-pleasure morality, romanticism, and pornography, the traditional area of eroart ‑‑ art that uses physicality, and/or sex to turn people on to life ‑‑ has been ripped off by pornography. The true goal of eroart is to turn people on physically to their own bodies and to passion for life. It is fashionable to be against porn. But it is not fashionable to offer an alternative to porn. To make videos that satisfy that child‑like need of seeing nude bodies and seeing people playing, making out, and having fun is not as profitable as either what Hollywood does or what the porn makers do. This child-like need is the healthy human desire that is perverted in porn. The time is right for an art form that addresses this healthy desire. The women’s movement has changed people’s standards with regard to sex and the quality of relationships. This is true of both men and of women. They have scrapped, or are scrapping, the old sexist ways and attitudes, and now they find the old style porn is not meeting their needs and desires. They want to see nudity and be turned on without stupidity; they want to see new ways of relating between humans both in and out of bed. Eroart in all media can show this way of relating...can show both purely nonsexual eroplay and eroplay as foreplay in sex. The desire to see nudity and intimacy and to be turned-on is not being satisfied. Hollywood is caught between being ruled by taboos and being in the business of teasing. Hollywood has been doing a 40 year striptease, showing a little more each year to get people to come back. But breaking taboos has always been a part of art, at least the area of art that seeks to change consciousness, change morality, change reality. This kind of art creates a kind of bubble in which the forbidden can be done with immunity, releasing energy of the broken taboo...energy which then affects society as a whole. The best way to undermine sexism and porn is to take back nudity, pleasure, sex and eroticism…but only if it comes from some warm, playful place can it be good eroart. Unless we put ourselves, our creativity, our minds, and yes, our bodies into eroart, the pornographer, the sexist, and the moralist will win by default. |