The human being is a very unique combination of hardware and software, enmeshed to work in tandem at the minutest level (probably cellular), and I don't think anything illustrates that as perfectly as the orgasm.
To begin with, it's an unmistakably physical process. The friction of skin and muscles eventually causes the spontaneous and rhythmic contraction of muscles around and throughout the pelvis in both sexes and pumps sperm from the testicles in men.
But there's one problem concerning the physical description of orgasm that's never been explained. In talking about orgasm physiology we tend to talk about the high number of nerve endings packed into the head of the penis and the clitoris, and saying we get pleasure from sex because of the number of nerve endings is like saying you get wet while you're drowning – it doesn't even begin to cover the extra dimension of extreme physicality that's more than just heavy sensory input.
If that was the case we might feel heady sexual satisfaction or pleasure from having our lips or fingertips stroked, both areas that are as much or more sensitive than the genitals thanks to the number of nerve endings in them.
The end result of sex (assuming we're both doing it right) is the burst of explosive pleasure we feel, not just a keen sense of touch. Where does that come from?
Obviously the flood of sexual pleasure we get from lovemaking is physical as well, somehow, and it's got a lot to do with pressure on certain muscles – you didn't know what it meant when you were little, but swing hard on a swing set today and you'll feel the unmistakable pleasure of G forces pressing on something in your groin and crotch.
It's also where the software comes in. Think of the emotional response to orgasm. Release – although the word doesn't even begin to cover how powerful and cleansing it is. You can't keep worries in your mind when you orgasm.
Togetherness – the resulting hormones flood your body and brain and prompt responses from wanting to be physically close to the person you just had sex with to believing you're falling in love.
Joy – is there anything else that makes most of us (again, assuming we're doing it right) as happy as adults as sex and orgasm?
And the release, togetherness and joy are heavy and palpable, physical sensations themselves as much as emotional responses. Orgasm prompts a wave of feeling in both senses of the word that floods the physical brain and body and the sentient mind.
The physical sensation of the pleasure is so complete, so deep seated, so seemingly stitched to our body at a micro-level it has the power to overcome almost any prior mental state of being and completely overwrite or re-program it at a stroke (no pun intended), the hardware rewriting its own software and generating a completely new expression of it. It's as if Windows or OSX knows we're having trouble because we have too many documents and windows open and spontaneously reboots itself to clear the cache.
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