What Does Sex Mean?

My friend, Dave, sent this to me. He likes to attend poetry readings. At one particular poetry reading, a young man, who is an acquaintance of Dave, kept going on and on about wanting to have sex with a particular young woman. So, Dave asked him "what would it mean?". The young man ignored him (except to wonder out loud what meaning had to do with sex), but Dave asked again, "what would it mean?". Because the young man never got what Dave was asking, he wrote this poem.

I love it.

WHAT would it MEAN?

WHAT would it MEAN?

The sounds we speak and the scrawlings we write may be formed to symbolize meanings.

But one can speak more loudly, deeper, clearly, in a language that spans space and time.

As if it were poetry from before the dawn of time,

            written into the fabric of the universe,

            it speaks in ways our utterances and writings never could.

WHAT would it mean?

What could we and would we 

            say if we spoke this language tonight?

Would it be beautiful?

Would it be music that burns in our hearts forever?

Or would we cover our ears, and yell, “I can’t hear you!”,

            trying to drive it away,

            but we cannot drive it away -- it speaks directly into the core of our beings.

What would it mean?

What could we and would we 

            say if we spoke this language tonight?

Would it have a creative force?

As god spoke the world into being, will we proclaim, 

"let there be something here more than was here when we started", 

with such force that what we speak becomes reality?

Or will we proclaim division and opposition?

Two opponents, playing a game, 

having fun, perhaps, but proclaiming,

“let me defeat the other, taking what I can”,

with such force, that the world is less than what it was when we started?

WHAT would it mean?

What could we and would we 

            say if we spoke this language tonight?

You and I together, making music that shakes the stars in the heavens,

and rumbles the pillars that hold up the earth.  

Would it be something worth saying?

Would the stars burn brighter?

Would the earth resonate and dance joyously for the rest of our lives?

Or would a surge of intense, passionate

... banality

suck the life out of a star?

And isn’t that what we often do?:

USING this language

            and USING each other

voraciously consuming, unsustainably

            in something we call love, but is it?

WHAT would it mean?

What could we and would we 

            say if we spoke this language tonight?

I don’t want us to open our mouths and

shout out to all creation

absolutely

            nothing 

                        at all

                                    worth 

                                                saying.

So what would it mean?

It would mean nothing to speak of.

You’re beautiful and sexy and a lot of fun.

But you and I have nothing to say worth saying.

So why don’t I just give you a ride home and a goodnight hug?

And I’ll call you sometime.

I hope you’re not disappointed.

Let’s keep gazing at the stars;

maybe,

someday

you and I will have something to say

that will make one of them burn brighter.

-Dave Jones

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Dave understands something the young man he was talking to did not - our bodies speak a "language" when two people have sex. When a husband and bride take vows, they pledge their love, fidelity, permanence, etc verbally. The same happens when they have sex! They speak the words of love, fidelity, permanence, etc with their bodies. In fact, we are created in order to speak this sexual language honestly and when we have sex outside of marriage, our bodies speak a lie. To say "I love you, I want to be bonded to you, I want to be with you forever" with your body and yet you are not married, it is a lie of the body. This is why JPII said:

"The body, in fact, speaks the truth through conjugal love, fidelity, and integrity, just as non-truth, that is, falsity, is expressed by all that is the negation of conjugal love, fidelity, and integrity." -JPII