Finding a Male God

Male, I came to paganism through the goddess, through the mystery, power and deep rightness of her femininity.  The more deeply I explored my own spiritual impulses, the more I realized how intensely I wanted to connect with her, to suckle as a little child at her galactic breasts, to worship her sacred cunt with lust and awe, to look into her eyes and be guided by her vast wisdom. 

The god of male sexuality came into focus much more slowly for me.  As a father, I connected deeply with the Dagda and his unthreatening nurturance, and for many years before I realized I was pagan, I had a boy wind-spirit guide, wild and fey, but neither of these was exactly a fucking god.  I didn't have much access to the male counterpart of the lusty, fertile goddess I so naturally and deeply worshipped. 

Perhaps the distorted patriarchal model I'd grown up with scared him off.  He and I tended to meet secretly in my masturbatory privacy where he'd slip quietly out of the deep woods, his own cock hard as mine, and help me build the violent, passionate rites of male ecstasy. 

Part of his shyness and mine, I think, derived from commonplaces of American culture.  When I was younger, sex was generally understood as boy territory, the nasty thing that boys always want and girls have to put up with.  Many women of my generation asserted their good character by making lust a masculine responsibility to which they only acceded as a favor, or to get what they wanted. 

In that context, male sexuality is a thing to curb and get under control rather than cultivate and surrender to.  I tried hard to fit the model and domesticate my maleness.  I wasn't exactly a SNAG (sensitive new-age guy), but I was sure that if I let the power of my desire show, it would frighten or disgust any sensible woman. 

Later in my life, I've gotten to know a variety of strong feminist women who openly and comfortably embrace their own lust and the lust of others, and also a variety of courageous, sexy gay men.  From the example of these friends, I've come to understand that raw maleness can be a positive, beautiful thing.  And as I've gradually become more comfortable with being a cock-carrying member of the masculine contingent, the god has circled me less shyly. 

I've always known the god is not a frat boy — he's animal, not an "animal."  His lust, for all its intensity, is no simpler than you are, and his imperative is as much spiritual as physical.  He demands that you hunt, take and utterly submit to divine ecstasy and love. 

That can be scary, even terrifying if you're serious about it.  We boys often try to retreat to something we can accomplish safely, like getting laid — we're scared to touch the bloody beating heart and sacrifice ourselves to a consuming mystery.  Instead, we tend to squirt and run, then boastfully pretend to our friends that we got off without a wound.  But we know better. 

Like an animal, the god can be fierce and dangerous; like an animal, he can be gentle and nurturing; and like an animal, he's often wary.  When the pain and danger of intimacy panic me and I find myself running headlong into dark unknown forests, the god is always ahead, unseen.  And as I finally collapse shivering and useless against a tree, I feel him circling ominously nearby.  He can't help me, I know that.  I'm not...  I can't...  until I feel his heat.  Then I find myself prowling too.  I sense him, catch his smell.  One of us growls. 

Now I want to go back.  Using the fear, not denying it, I hunt my partner.  She pushes me away with ambivalence, but I'm behind her now, my fingers tangled in her hair.  She looks into my eyes angrily, but with hope.  She can feel the muscles of my arm across her breasts, but it isn't strength she wants, it's the god's fierce certainty. 

My/his heat flows into her.  She sees it in my eyes, the wild directness, that lets us both just want, whatever the complexities and their consequences.  We fuck.  Oh my god!  We fuck. 

(originally published in 2003 in Widdershins volume 9, issue 2).