The first time I saw a naked body, it was made of stone. I was in an art museum gallery, staring up at a Roman statue of Hercules. I remember the carved arc of his muscles, the tilt of his chin, the veins down his arms. A strange energy moved through me — understanding a body like his made me feel grown up. That same rush of maturity returned to me several years later. I was watching “Titanic,” dazzled by the film’s sweeping central love story. I remember my stomach twisting as the romance reached its climax. I watched as windows steamed up and shirts were unbuttoned. I began to understand how bodies worked together. A few years later, I was given another window into my own burgeoning adulthood. I opened the book “Outlander,” a pulpy historical fiction novel, and shocked myself with graphic depictions of wedding nights and ravishing pleasure.
For myself and many others, art was the first thing to turn “sex” from a dirty, amorphous word to an understandable human act. These statues, films and novels teach us how to kiss, how to yearn, how to feel. Art gives humanity back to punchline words like orgasm and blowjob. Even now, I use art to parse my own desires. I want to be kissed with the same hunger that Westley kisses Buttercup with in “The Princess Bride.” I want foreplay to come in the form of witty banter like it does in “The Apartment.”
In this B-Side, writers share their own experiences with art and sexual discovery. They celebrate bodies, touch, emotion and honesty. They deconstruct shame and bring new meaning to overused terms. They step into the shoes of the artists that have inspired them, adding their own voices to the ongoing conversation surrounding sex and desire. It is my hope, then, that this B-Side continues the artistic work that we celebrate here, condensing the pluralities of sexual desire into singular personal truths.
Senior Arts Editor Lola D’Onofrio can be reached at lolad@umich.edu.
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