If you’ve ever stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls, you’ve probably experienced an ecstasy as life-affirming as it is dangerous. As loving, living, breathing people we often stare into the abyss of the sublime, the ecstatic, and the deadly and wonder what to do next—to scream into the chasm, to jump, or to allow all of the frightening feelings of desire and mortality to rush over us, overwhelm us, and carry us wherever gravity may lead us—towards exhilaration or the grave.

As a person of great excess known to teeter on the brink of self-destruction, I often strive to find ways to ground myself, to come down to earth, and to chill out. I have to remind myself that pleasure doesn’t always need to be found in the extreme limits of life itself.

As an erotically charged being, coming down to earth often means doing something simple with a friend—talking a walk, sipping a beer, smelling flowers, or cooking a meal. Ecstasy abounds.

Whether in orgasm or a single, beautiful, honest interaction, I am moved by the endless romantic-erotic capacity of the people around me. I love them.

As I’ve learned to tame my need to throw myself into the abyss, I have found the same wonder in a bird, a seed, a piece of gravel as I once found in crashing waterfalls and rocky cliffs.

A romance can last a few minutes or a lifetime.  I want to approach the microscopic and brief with the same respect as the infinite and eternal.

Dear Queer Radical,

You say we should all have sex like bunnies. But what happens when nobody controls sex, everybody has too many babies, populations explode and the land-base is further degraded? And you’d better not suggest us women take hormones or abort. That’s really not nice to our bodies, btw.

Fearful of a Population Boom,

Sexual and Skeptical

Dear Sexual and Skeptical,

The great thing about sex is that it comes in many forms and many packages. When I say we should engage in public sex, I don’t necessarily mean heterosexual penetration, which is rarely conducive to the public sphere.

I agree that unprotected heterosexual sex often has unfortunate outcomes that shit, cry, and degrade the land-base. That said, I’ve never heard of a baby popping out after a blow job, cunt-licking, grinding, anal, hand-jobs, or frotting. From BDSM to vanilla, hetero to homo, there are hundreds of incredibly pleasurable sexual acts with minimal to no risk of pregnancy.  Of course, not all of them are for everybody and that’s just fine.

What counts as sex is as diverse as our imaginations, desires, and consent.

I don’t want to propose that nobody controls sex—sex is all about control, power, consent, respect, and communication. My proposal is that we self-regulate rather than allow the state to do so for us.

Though you may call me an outrageous hypocrite for suggesting this, I do believe in using condoms, dental dams, and non-microwaveable plastic wrap to mitigate against sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Of course, this technology has its ecological-genital print. Getting into the size factor of that might produce anxiety, so rather, let’s put things into perspective: I challenge anyone to use as much plastic exploring their sexuality as they do at their weekly trip to the grocery store. If they exceed that, I will give them a biodegradable trophy.

Finally, regarding hormones and abortion, people have an inalienable right to decide what they want to do with their own bodies. I’m certainly not telling anybody that they can or cannot take a pill or can or cannot have an abortion. I will fight a state that does. If given the chance, I will choose to put my body on the line to protect those inalienable rights and support the choices others make and expect others to respect my choices.

Perhaps one day Queer Radical will collaborate in producing a mini-Q.R. shit machine. While many of my life-style oriented eco-warriors view reproduction as an ecologically offensive act, I am a gardener. I love producing and watching new generations cultivated. Perhaps I’ll collaboratively cultivate a badass dandelion-garlic-radish-silver maple-like human eco-warrior fighting the violence of capitalism (which is about as far from reproduction as you can get). Perhaps the next generation will learn to thrive in new, healthy, and resilient ways with respect to our collective ancestors knowledge, wisdom, flexibility, and brilliance and without following the toxic industrial footsteps of the last few generations. Perhaps?

Consider this hypothetical situation. Naked, sweaty, lusty bodies thrust, moan, and contort in fields coated in Monsanto’s Roundup Ready before skinny-dipping into a flowing stream of nitrogen fertilizer tea. As the bodies make love in the toxic soup, a police officer spots them, takes them to jail, and a judge and jury deem them sex-offenders. Forever, their names reside on a list of sexual deviants too dangerous to trust and well deserving of social scorn. Before they get out of prison, one dies of cancer without adequate treatment.  After release, the other mourns alone, harassed by neighbors and denied basic human love.

From ecocide to a perverse criminal justice system, romance is under assault—even conventional, wild, heteronormative, dreamy field-fucking and skinny dipping.

The old sensual gestures of rolling around naked in the grass and diving into water have become high-risk behaviors. We wander from the toxic streams to the itchy, pesticide Kentucky Bluegrass wondering how our land-base that should give us a safe space for pleasure, food and drink has turned into a deadly casserole of industry, forever altering nature.  We express our desires openly and publicly, constantly fearing the never-ending policing of sex.

Our public expressions of pleasure, our refusal to poison water and land, our thrusting and moaning in allies and fields resist the violence of a system hell-bent on poisoning our earth, policing our bodies, and controlling with whom and where we can manifest our desires.

In our bodies, lust, and sensual explorations resides a sacred, sensual mandate to clean up the world around us or to die. We hold on to life, ecological balance, and the conviction that the sensual need not be imprisoned into four walls, enacted on sterile sheets, and neat hide from the pulse of life abounding.

We fight for the eternal erotics of the earth.

At Hot Air Green Room, Lori Ziganto published a vile article “We’re Here, We’re Queer and We’re in Abject Denial” critiquing Toronto’s “Queers Against Israeli Apartheid” and celebrating Israel’s tolerance of queer rights.

The article makes rash generalizations about Palestine, deeming all Palestinian culture to be “against our very core principles as human beings.” Apparently Palestinians protesting the Apartheid Wall, tired of watching their homes bulldozed only to be replaced by Israeli settlements, sick of watching their neighbors bombed and boats carrying aid to Gaza raided in international waters by helicopters share no commitment to our very core principles as human beings?

Queer Palestinian organizations fight for queer rights without any solidarity from Ziganto who claims Palestinian queers “would need to stay in a steel-encased panic room, forever.” As a people once led by Yasser Arafat who commissioned notable queer playwrite and novelist Jean Genet to document the First Intifada, Palestinians have a long history of engaging in queer solidarity.

Ziganto’s claim that Israel is “one country in the Middle East that truly embraces diversity by believing in freedom” is quickly shattered by the recent attack on the Freedom Flotilla, the construction of a massive wall blocking out Palestinians, and the militarized check-points denying entry into the country. Since when has freedom been defined by Apartheid Walls, military checkpoints, and regular attacks on impoverished people?

Ziganto also claims that “the Judeo-Christian ethic has done the most good in the world.” Ask those whose families have been murdered in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Central and South America if they agree? What about the inquisition? What about the regular, blatant, violent attacks on individual rights perpetrated by the Religious Right? To claim that the Judeo-Christian tradition, which casts queers into hell or death by stoning has been an ethically positive experience for the LGBTQ community is a farce.

Finally Ziganto’s claims that Israel is “the only place in the Middle East where one can be gay in public, without fear of being jailed, tortured or killed.” Taking into account the shooting of 13 people at Aguda, Tel Aviv’s LGBTQ support center quickly shatters this assumption.

As long as people in North America justify Israel’s ongoing violent nationalist crimes against Palestinians, on women and Queers, combating homophobia within Judaism, Islam, and Christianity and building bridges across traditionally divided communities will be impossible

The fight to end Israeli Apartheid exemplifies the best of solidarity work as queers, Jews, Muslims, and others fight for Palestinian liberation despite the odious stereotypes perpetrated by Ziganto have a homogenous, essentialist hatred of queers.

I looked over at my dear friend staring into his cell-phone like a lover, texting sweet nothings to a new beau. It was adorable. I teased him.

Then after receiving a series of Facebook Posts from my sweetheart, we were accused of acting like a smug married couple by another dear friend. That friend, I’ve often flirted with, wallowed in the dirtiest of language, crudeness, shocking vulgar, endless back and forth.

I have just returned from the U.S. Social Forum, a gathering of people imitating the Internet in endless greetings and inadequate depth. I’m a sucker for depth. I despise: “Hello. Nice to see you. What’s up. Good bye.”

Perhaps most human interactions have shifted from real life affairs, long nights of talking on the porch to virtual and in-person nods. Perhaps our society is extending our sexuality, the way we interact with the world, beyond the need for hours of conversation, loving, touching, and romance. Perhaps we are whistling robots flashing lights at each other through the night.

Me, I want old fashioned love, dirty backalley sex, and endless flirtation. I want touch. I want sweat. I want long long long conversations.

Phatic romance on my cellphone bores me. I want engagement, sensuality, laughter, collaboration.

I want to know the world around me and feel its never-ending pulse.

I am taking a shit at the Marriot before heading down to the hubbub of the national Left ideology meat market—the U.S. Social Forum—where the best minds of my generation are bumping into each other for a few minutes before feeling compelled to rush off to the next vapid encounter with amazing people spread too thin, too scattered, and too overwhelmed to focus.

On the shelf above the sink is a tiny sign reading “Save Our Planet.” Sounds like the Marriot is pimping out the same hope that the Social Forum is—“Another World is Possible.”

I’m humbled that I have been given the comfort of this fancy hotel room by two dear friends and colleagues who secured funds from a grantor to come to the forum. I am honored to be working with my coworker K.P. and to be surrounded by old friends, newer friends, and former lovers.

Regardless of the vastness of the forum, which K.P. earlier pointed out mirrored the Internet, what I love about the shallow engagements at the social forum is how much they are reaffirming my desire to be in Denver, working in the garden, shooting media about my neighborhood, and deeply engaging with my home community and land.

Have I become provincial? Could it be that I am having a slow, soft breakup with the idea of a national political platform?

Either way, I’m happy to be here, but mainly because it is reminding me of my gratitude at being rooted elsewhere.

Today I relaxed. I don’t do that very often. I made a delicious lunch—garlic-tamari turnip and radish greens, radishes, and butter crunch lettuce.

I spent the day with my new friend E. We picked sage and mullein, cut them, and put them in Everclear to create a tincture to alleviate respiratory problems (at least I think that’s what it will alleviate…) We picked hundreds of rose petals, removed dozens of squirming earwigs, and distilled the rose water from the petals. We talked about everything from the aesthetics of queer porn to our Missouri childhoods.

All too often in our goal-oriented consumer culture, we push ourselves towards the next newest thing, to strive for perfection, and to solve this or that crisis. We race towards a finished line like our pace matters. Death awaits us quietly. No matter how fast we run, it will catch us in the end.

Today, with the simple, bubbling pleasures of a new friendship, a few projects, the humor of my sweetie, and my excitement to see old friends and lovers, my heart beats quickly.

I am madly fond of living, breathing, and lusting, drifting through the world, dreamy and grateful.

The other night, three dear friends and I were sitting at Sputnik drinking beers and having a wonderful conversation about adolescence, boners, menstrual bleeding in white pants, and the endless embarrassments we faced in middle school. That night at the bar, my friends accused me of harboring “boner shame.”

Looking back on those years of mortification and lust, I miss the lack of control I had over my body. Were I to experience such unbridled sexuality now, what would I do?

Imagine, now that I’m an adult, if I were to find endless pleasures in inanimate objects, the vibrations of cars, the texture of fine paper, the stain of charcoal, and the vibrating strum of my guitar. Imagine a world where people proudly bled down their white pants, boasting their stains like hippies wear tie-dye.

Could soldiers go to war and police assault youth with an unwitting boner protruding or a flowing crotch of blood?

I wish that as children we weren’t made to feel ashamed of our desires, our blood, and our loins. I wish we celebrated our bodies and developed an unabashed lust for the world.

We live in a morbid age of violence, hatred, and the desire for centralized authority. We should fear it; no, we should fight it. Were we to wander through the world in a maze of bleeding crotches and painfully hard cocks, we might remember that we are animals and that we are one with the earth.

Just the other day I was out with a group of people who had met my partner Hillary. Confused why a gay man would have a woman for a partner, one of them said, “So what is she exactly? Your wife? Your girlfriend? What?” I laughed and didn’t have much else to say.  I said “We don’t do that sort of thing.”

I’m not precisely sure what my answer meant, particularly, what “that sort of thing” referred to. I did enjoy the confused look on the person’s face.

I’m writing about this interaction to explore the question of naming relationships, identities, and desires, particularly within queer and polyamorous contexts.

Often, in the circles I travel in, people value fluidity, shifting relationships without fixed terms. Theoretically, I admire this urge, but practically, I find it meddlesome.

I’m not sure if it comes from journeying into my thirties, overworking, overplaying, and needing more rigorous forms of time management, or simply valuing the clarity of “roles,” I have a somewhat conservative impulse to secure lines and definitions within my relationships.

Part of me is quite traditional. I love an old fashioned date. Walking through the city at night, kissing on park benches, romping around in a field of flowers, and waking up and having brunch on the weekend. I also love rowdier times, dirty bars, back allies, feasts of pleasure and pain, and wild, nameless orgies where bodies and genders blend into heaving, breathing, panting chaos.

All this said, I also like knowing where I stand with people: are we dating, do I stand a chance with you, are we still seeing each other, and if so, in what contexts? Clarity puts me at ease.

Having clear roles also means knowing when those roles change, clean breaks, new modes of relating. While there is a fluidity to how relationships evolve (or often devolve), I like to have clear, open lines of communication through these transformations. For me, language helps.

In a world where heterosexuality, monogamy, and gender singularity are the norm, how do those of us who have apparently primary normative relationships also maintain our social and political presence as queer and polyamorous people when the norm is all the normative world wants to see.

Perhaps leaving those who don’t understand confused and befuddled is a radical gesture that destabilizes their understanding of all relationships and brings clarity through confusion to their rigid notions of love and identity. As a gay, queer, bi, pan, poly, pervy, genderqueer/male-presenting man living in domestic bliss in a normatively heteroish-appearing relationship with a fellow queer, the best I can do is present my lived reality with integrity, own the labels I choose to own with my partners/lovers/friends, and do my best to bring clarity of experience (which will likely lead to further confusion) to the normative world.

Funny thing is, my guess is that the experience of multiple desires, identities, and sexual preferences embodied within one person is much more normative than dominant society chooses to think.

Hanging out with some of the loveliest people in Denver, we talked about queer identity, anarchist movement, and the pleasures of flirtation. It was clear as we spoke that there was a resounding unity in our love of joy, pleasure and possibility. It made me giddy.

I am so tired of faux-militancy, insurrection, and violence-fetishism overriding the dominant themes and goals of anarchism. I have anguished this year over the “insurrectionary” desire to create social war. This fetishism of violence and war seems divorced from an experience of the conflict, agony, and pain of fighting—whether in self-defense or not.

Speaking for myself, I need pleasure and joy. I need love and community. I need generosity and I need stability. These concepts are much less authoritarian than promoting coercive destabilization and social war. Though I do not rule out any tactics or strategies that may destroy capitalism and undermine the centralization of power, I understand that the psychological damage inflicted upon me when undergoing confrontational strategies hurts my ability to achieve my primary goals which are creative not destructive, based in joy rather than anger, and stem from possibility rather than despair.

Chatting with joy-oriented people felt quite liberating.