Mythology of Pussy and Dick Expanded
Coming Soon from
Black Bird Press
the expanded version
250 pages
A Marvin X Classic
Mythology of
Pussy and Dick
Toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality
Marvin X
Reader Comment
Brother and comrade Marvin,
Thank you for keeping me on the receivers list for your written works! I count myself among the privileged. As an artist i.e. truth teller-trail blazer you have always been cutting edge both in what you lived, experienced and the naked truth you bare in "emptying of Spirit out of itself" (as Hegel would put it) as did Trane's Offering. Very rare, and whether we all recognize it now or not we are fortunate to witness such openness and honesty, though it makes the smug uncomfortable in their fake comforts; show is the unessential masquerading as essential and therefore art as truth ripping off masks is often seen as dangerous expose.
I was reading Delores Nochi's Introduction to your new contribution, Mythology of Pussy and Dick: Toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality, and thinking of what she observed:
"Mythology of Pussy and Dick is a compilation of everything Marvin X has written on sexuality in America and the world. There are those who will miss this opportunity to receive wisdom from our brother because of the language he uses to describe the male and female anatomy, and his perceived objectification of women and men, and this is a tragedy because this information is crucial for men and women who are suffering from a psycho-linguistic crisis and inflicting actual violence upon lovers in their male/female and same gender loving relationships. These dysfunctional interactions are witnessed by children who are the next generation of couples... ..
I agreed with her and at the same time recalled the fate of those who preceded you in this undertaking - for instance the social scientist and psychologist Wilhelm Reich e.g. The Function of the Orgasm, Sexual Revolution and Sex-Pol [he was thrown into an American federal prison and his books burned in 1956, he died in an American prison in 1957 http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Book_burning#Wilhelm_Reich.27s_publications_.28by_U.S._Food_and_Drug_Administration.29
Also I thought of Lenny Bruce: Bruce served in the navy during World War II (1942-45) and began performing stand-up comedy in 1946. As he gained popularity in New York night clubs, his brand of comedy shifted from impersonations to free-wheeling monologues satirizing religion and politics. He released several comedy albums and appeared occasionally on TV, especially as a guest of Steve Allen and Hugh Hefner. In 1961 he was arrested after a performance in San Francisco and charged with obscenity. Bruce was acquitted, but for the next few years he was frequently in trouble with the law for using raw language on stage -- a no-no back then. In 1964 he was convicted of obscenity in New York and jailed for a few months (in 2003 Governor George Pataki posthumously pardoned him). http://www.answers.com/topic/lenny-bruce .
Delores' take on the depth and honest language of your work also made me remember the radical 60s and the writings of early contemporary feminists, such as the analysis of sexual biology by Anne Koedt The Myth of Vaginal Orgasm http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/vaginalmyth.html
But more directly your artistic style and the Avante-Garde revolutionary love and rebellion poetry and music of Archie Shepp - in particular his Blase http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpE9SN81H6E
So! Your latest contribution here is evidence that the struggle continues! Thanks and stay strong!
Lil Joe
Preface
After a life of failed relationships, I am now an authority on how to fuck shit up. But I also learned how to keep peace in the house by speaking the language of love and receiving it from my beloved. Call it the tone test, if you will, but the language of love will go a long way toward healthy male/female relations or any human relations.
My mother told me I didn’t need a wife but a maid, secretary and mistress. In the fourth quarter of my life, I must admit and confess I think Mom was right. After someone read my essay Creativity and Sexuality, they said we must keep a balance.
And this is true except for those like myself who manifest the addictive personality that consistently borders on the extreme, somehow missing that balance that provides the stability we need to survive and thrive in this turbulent world, now racing toward The End!
I am much like James Baldwin who said, “I had to live recklessly in order to live at all.” And it seems I am also like the Barakas who live with high drama. It is doubtful I would be able to live a life without drama, being the dramatist I am, although these days I try to stay in the no stress zone, yet drama finds me at every turn. I am fascinated with lesbians because interacting with them is so dramatic.
There is a natural dramatic tension when one desires what he can’t have! It’s a challenge, even greater than seeking a heterosexual woman, although she is fine with me, especially if she has mastered the language of love and doesn’t talk in a provocative language, i.e., don’t tell me to do shit. I don’t have to do a motherfucking thang!
As the Maid, the Ho, the Cook (see story inside) taught me, if you ask me right, in the right tone, I will do anything and everything, but if you come at me in a dictatorial manner that expresses domination, you can’t get nothing here! Matter of fact, I’ll do the opposite, as in kiss my ass.
Today, relationships are fragile at best because people are under great stress generally: will we have a job tomorrow, a house, a mate, sanity? So we can only take things one day at a time. Again, there is great insecurity among the people, thus relationships are enduring major stress.
Yet, we cannot get out of these human relationships because love is all there is, even living in the imagination will not suffice, ultimately, we must leave our dream state to encounter reality, and the reality is that we often connect with people with whom we know and don’t know, whom we love and don’t love, yet must love. It takes the same energy to love as to hate, same energy. My favorite song says, “The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love and be loved in return.”
--Marvin X
Introduction
by
Delores Nochi
Mythology of Pussy and Dick is a compilation of everything Marvin X has written on psychosocial sexuality in America and the world: domestic and partner violence, rape, honor killings, stoning of women, female genital circumcision, sexual anorexia, verbal and emotional abuse, manhood and womanhood rites of passage. There are those who will miss this opportunity to receive wisdom from our brother because of the language he uses to describe the male and female anatomy, his perceived objectification of women and men, and this is a tragedy because this information is crucial for men and women who are suffering a psycho-linguistic crisis and inflicting actual violence upon lovers in their male/female and same gender loving relationships. These dysfunctional interactions are witnessed by children who are the next generation of couples. They will emulate what they see elders enact.
The same people who dare judge his choice of words, his linguistic dexterity, are guilty of lingering in the comfort of their bedrooms watching shows on big screen TVs that depict graphic details of violence perpetrated against others, especially women, yet they call it entertainment. If children learn more from what they see than what we tell them, how will they process and act upon the continued sexual chaos that is manifested in our families and society?
The author has proven himself to be a leader and a teacher who has the best interest of the community at heart.Not only does he teach almost daily at his Academy of Da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, but often on national book tours, speaking at such colleges and universities as Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, University of Arkansas, University of Virginia, Penn State, Temple University, Medgar Evers College, San Francisco State University, UC Berkeley, Laney and Merritt in Oakland. He speaks truth with language that can be understood by the least of us and the best of us. His credentials includes brief tenure at Fresno State University , 1969, University of California , Berkeley , 1972, Mills College , 1972, San Francisco State University , 1974, University of California , San Diego , 1975, University of Nevada , Reno , 1979.
He embraced the system and defied the system! Oriented in the Muslim tradition of polygamy or plural marriage (see his play In the Name of Love, Laney College Theater production 1981); he has conquered his own demons and held his own with associated intellectuals and psychopaths.See his memoir of Eldridge Cleaver: My friend the Devil, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 1979--one of the funniest books in history! In the words of James Sweeney “…Courageous and outrageous, he walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as white fish and black as coal.”
We all have war stories about relationships gone bad. The difference between Marvin X and the rest of us is that Marvin X has lived what he is writing about, survived it and is willing to talk about it, and holds nothing back, narrated in language that will grab your attention and cause an epileptic seizure!.Each story is rich with commentary which speaks to society’s attitudes about male/ female relationships: rape, athletes, toxic love, crack house sex, women without men, language of love, religious persecution of women (a woman stoned); gay and lesbian youth, same sex marriage, and much more…
His parables are ingenious commentary about events in real time. If you are a follower of his blogs, then you know with each daily entry he not only provides us with happenings locally and nationally, but walks us through events from a historical and global perspective.See www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com and www.parablesandfablesofmarvinx.blogspot.com.
Marvin X has chosen to sensitize our society by using words like pussy and dick. Language is fluid and if its primary use is communication, and if through words one fails to hit the target, then what is the point? It may be that the author is before his time, and in future generations, pussy and dick will become words of endearment, not relegated to the present negative connotations. Perhaps it will become a mantra chanted over and over as a pre-sex ritual. Why not? Lord knows we could use some more effective ways to get beyond reckless abandonment.
In his essay, The Maid, the Ho, the Cook, Marvin X demonstrates his tender side. Lil Joe describes this story as “One of the most beautiful pieces about real love I’ve ever read. The image of ‘crack-heads’ as scandalous and without human dignity is destroyed by Marvin’s recollection of this sister with whom he fell in love”. Because the object of MX’s affection is a whore, there are those, and you know who you are, who will lose the essence of this story which addresses real feelings and real interactions between a man and a woman. Perhaps, you have only loved when it was safe to do so. But all of us who have loved surely know that passion and feelings can at times be both spontaneous and unsolicited.
Is Marvin X the only courageous one among us who dares to “tell the truth and shame the devil”?
--Delores Nochi Cooper
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