FoodSexLit

Virginia Woolf, in her famous essay “A Room of One’s Own,” writes of the need for a woman to have—yes—you guessed it—a room of her own.  A place to write, to create, to think, to dream.

The high school virgin who still lives in me remembers my desperation, the first time I fell in love, to find a private space, a room of our own, a place for my body and the body of my would-be lover to join.

My high school boyfriend and I, my first “real” boyfriend, made a space with his little red truck at the Hamilton Viewpoint overlooking downtown Seattle.  We steamed up the windows and were occasionally ogled by other high school kids congregating in the parking lot.  The Thanksgiving weekend of my senior year, the cop who busted us was treated to a view of my still-budding breasts and my boyfriend’s exposed hard-on.

When I went away to college, I was at first exhilarated by the relative freedom of my dorm room.  What luxury to be able to close the door—to be totally naked without worry of being fined for public nudity—to have a bed to stretch across instead of scratched and worn fake-leather seats . . . but even that wasn’t perfect.

First of all, my lovers were subject to the scrutiny of roommates.  I know none of them will ever forget the night I brought a girl home, took her into my room, shut the door, and started playing the latest Dave Matthews album as loudly as possible.  And, as my college living arrangements did not provide for single rooms, there were always arrangements to be made and deals to be struck every time I wanted to hook up: you know, the old “If you sleep on the couch tonight, then you can have the room tomorrow night . . .”

It wasn’t until my late 20’s, freshly divorced, that I finally obtained not just a bedroom of my own, but a place of my own—a little apartment just off Alki Beach.  I loved to wake to the morning sun, the seagulls cooing under the eaves, a new lover just within reach.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in a place where I finally felt completely alone, I wrote some of the best poems of my life.

Now in my early thirties, single, childless, I take a room of my own for granted, and remember (mostly fondly) those outdoor couplings for their own particular brand of romance.

Mostly, however, I remember that desire for a room of my own, which brings me to poetry, the sonnet in particular.

John Donne, metaphysical poet extraordinaire, said once that the sonnet is a little room for lovers.

You might remember Donne from your high school British Literature class: he wrote “The Flea.”

Or you might remember Dead Poets Society– the movie where Robin Williams plays an English teacher and stands his students in front of all the old pictures and tells them to “Carpe Diem—Seize the Day”?

Donne was one of those guys.

You know . . . pleading with the virgins to make much of time . . . Robert Herrick and that lot.

God, how I loved those poems, and those poets, when I was in high school.  All I thought about was sex, and, being Catholic, I kept telling myself not to think about sex, which of course made me think about sex more . . . you can imagine how effective that was.  And then here were these old British guys in our textbooks who clearly had nothing else but getting laid on their minds either.

Is it any wonder I became a poet?

As a poet, I love the idea of a poem opening up a space—a private place for you and your new love.

One of the best examples in literature is in Romeo and Juliet.  When Romeo and Juliet first meet, at the Capulet party, they share a sonnet that ends with their first kiss: Romeo has the first quatrain, Juliet has the second, they share the third, and then split the final concluding couplet.  Imagine those two star-crossed lovers, surrounded by raucous and drunken partiers, (not to mention Juliet’s parents trying to hook her up with the much-older Paris), using words, of all things, to create a small space that’s just for the two of them.

I have always loved Baz Luhrman’s interpretation of this famous in his film Romeo + Juliet:

When teaching a film class with a colleague last fall, I had one of those fabulous experiences of  synchronicity—just as I was teaching that scene to my Shakespeare students, my colleague showed our students the clip below.  I was thrilled to learn that to film the scene, which takes place in an elevator, Luhrman actually had to create a little room to film it.

All this talk of love and sonnets and poems and rooms brings me, finally, to sexting—the sext text—and the little room it creates in cyberspace for lovers.

For centuries, lovers have seduced through sonnets.  As I tell my Shakespeare students, during the Renaissance, you didn’t send flowers—you sent a 14 line poem with a complicated rhyme scheme.  Now, in the new millennium, we seduce, and sometimes fall in love, with our sexts.

“Send me a sext,” a lover once wrote me.  “I think that’s what the kids are calling it these days.”

One late evening two springs ago, I arrived home late from work after watching Christa Bell’s fabulous show Coochie Magik.  Sexually charged from talking about pussy all day, a casual evening texting session with a former love (who also lives in another state) suddenly escalated into one of the most mind-blowing, erotic sexual experiences I’ve had in my life.

Ever.

And even though I’m separated from this man by more than a few states, sexts open up not just a private space for the two of us to be lovers, but a space to be poets.

After all, everyone loves a cunning linguist.  Especially me.