This letter below was sent to the Salon blog World O' Crap. The guy may be nuts but he can definitely write. This is probably my favorite passage- And while I know it is very un-Christian of me, I find I cannot suppress a mental image of you and Dorothy Parker and -- Heck, let's make it a threesome! -- Susan Sontag shackled to one another in a scalding hell-pit, shrieking pithy bon mots at one another and blithely debating the relative merits of "spitting" versus "swallowing" as your lips retract like shriveled apple-skins and your dental fillings bubble to vapor and splash against your swollen, blistered tongues. Dear World O' Crap: I visit your site more often than I should -- not because I am a Liberal or a life-hating degenerate, but out of the same helpless, sad compulsion that prevents me from looking away on a warm summer's night as insect after mindless insect seeks out, and then receives, the crackling blue-neon embrace of my patio Bug Zapper. It pains me, as a Christian, to sense the unabashed delight with which you deliver your "glib" rejoinders, "witty" reductios and "world-weary" libels against writers whose only "sin" is their fierce desire to elevate and ennoble our experience on this earth, rather than celebrate its pernicious enfeeblement and decline, as you (and, I assume, your readers) take such apparent glee in doing. And while I know it is very un-Christian of me, I find I cannot suppress a mental image of you and Dorothy Parker and -- Heck, let's make it a threesome! -- Susan Sontag shackled to one another in a scalding hell-pit, shrieking pithy bon mots at one another and blithely debating the relative merits of "spitting" versus "swallowing" as your lips retract like shriveled apple-skins and your dental fillings bubble to vapor and splash against your swollen, blistered tongues. I take no joy in that image, but it is one that I hope you will ponder and reflect upon. Like you, the oh-so-clever Ms. Parker paid no heed to the price that God would ultimately extract for her immoral self-indulgences and blasphemous "whimsies." (Neither, alas, did Harpo -- but that's another, darker story.) By way of introduction: I am a 28-year-old abstinent virgin male. (Laugh if you must, as I know you will. "For the laughter of the wicked is as a knife that cleaves its own blade, and the capering of cloven hooves shall not overspread the footpath of the Righteous.") Since my "sexual awakening" at the age of 13, I have battled both the feral impulses of my own body and the corrosive social forces that encourage conformity to a "just-do-it" philosophy of thoughtless gratification while relentlessly promoting "sex" with "others" as an "act" to be "enjoyed." Although I have succeeded in preserving the "unstained gift" which I will one day offer up, proudly, like a flawless gem, to the woman I marry, it has been a lonely and difficult path -- and one that I could have walked with much greater confidence and certainty had I been able to turn to Mr. White's exemplary book "Pure Excitement" as a companion and guide. ("For behold: That which is light in the one hand is heavy in the other. And the load of the teacher in time makes glad the student's mouth.") I admit that I was initially put off when I came across Mr. White's book -- but only because my eyes (which have been weakened by daily and strenuous exertions to enforce my own personal "virtue-zone") misread the title, quite innocently, as "Pure Excrement." Once I began reading, however, I was hooked. Here was a book that not only spoke to me, but actually seemed to be written about me. And not just a sterile text-book or a compilation of well-intended, stale pieties, but an authentic, human voice bringing real-world people and challenges to immediacy and life. This is the kind of book that makes you bolt up in your chair and say "Yes! Yes! I KNOW what you're saying!" -- and does so in an engaging, "Hey-look-at-me-when-I'm-talking-to-you-fella" style which is, in its most intimate and gut-kicking passages, a heady distillation of Sam Spade, Lester Dent and Shlomo Raven at their peerless best. White writes, if you will forgive a culinary comparison, like a fine French chef cuts cheese. I recognize that spirituality, to your mind, is a pre-rational "relic" on the order of menstrual tents and the Macintosh "Lisa." And I can only assume from your casual mockery of White's God-affirming stance on self-denial that you are, might we put it delicately, the sort of woman who has gripped any number of nameless consorts between her tautening haunches and run them breathless and exhausted to ground with the single-minded determination of a Mongol rider astride a bucking, wind-spirited pony of the Steppes. One can only hope that your many tainted memories -- memories, one assumes, of steam rising in curling arabesques from a tangle of naked, heaving flesh in the muted light of a gentle, afternoon rain; observed (indistinctly, not as separate bodies but a single urgent, quickening motion) by strangers in a passing tram -- will comfort you on the fateful night you serve up to your chosen mate-for-life, not the pure, sweet draught of your oak-barreled-and-aged love, but a disappointing "Coke-without-a-fizz." However, that is neither here nor there. ("For that is neither here nor there.") I can attest from my own experience that what White presents is the honest truth, and a truth that desperately needs to be assimilated by every individual who -- unlike yourself and your readers -- values virginity over hedonistic, jet-propelled self-pollution. For example, in Chapter 2 (which you curiously neglected to assail, perhaps because it admits of no rebuttal), White relates the story of a teen-ager named Jason, whose feckless and misguided father gave him a condom on his 15th birthday, thus encouraging promiscuity and nearly destroying the young man's life. That tale resonated with me, because I, too, had a father who confused "permission" with "guidance." I still shudder when I recall his drunken "re-imagining" of the Ten Commandments following a bitter confrontation with my then-mother. "Kid," he slurred, "The Bible says 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor thy neighbor's ass.' But it doesn't say ****-all about 'thy neighbor's wife's ass.'" Much later, on his deathbed -- when I hoped I might finally persuade him to accept Christ into his heart -- he pulled himself off the bed by my shoulders, shaking with pain, and whispered the words that are still seared into my soul: "Boy or girl, it don't matter, son. Roll 'em over on their bellies and they're all women." You, least of all, can imagine the impact such careless words might have on an impressionable young mind. In any event, I have no doubt you will make light of all this, as you do anything of value and permanence. (BTW: You might want to ask your dentist about those new polymer fillings, Gehenna-Girl!) But let me leave you with a challenge: Inspired by White's book, I have written two of my own which I hope might both complement and extend his wide-ranging insights. The first -- intended as a "user's manual for virginity" with a hip, contemporary youth audience in mind -- is titled "Palm Pilot," and draws heavily on stratagems and techniques for "virtue-building" which I have developed and perfected through years of painstaking trial-and-error. The second -- which might be more up your alley, Thunder-Thighs -- addresses the special needs of those who, by choice or circumstance, find themselves pursuing abstinence as a lifestyle well beyond their teens and 20s, and frequently into late middle age or beyond. Recognizing that these "Winter Warriors" already have self-denial down to a science, I offer them instead a thought-provoking stew of guided meditations, word-association games, "body discovery workouts" and adult-aligned "structured visualization" exercises designed to help them productively channel and redirect the "stored purity" that longs, impatiently but less-and-less hopefully, to be showered on some deserving "other." That book will be available online at the end of March under the title "Stainless Steel." I will comp you on both of these tomes, in the hope that you and your little gaggle of hellbound companions will "do your worst" to find a single assertion that can be refuted on the basis of logic and reason, rather than childish insults. Thus barred from recourse to the hoots and catcalls that pass for argument on this site, I fear even you may be forced to concede that devoting one's life to being an uptight, sexless mannequin may not be as "loony" a notion as you thought. "That which is stainless cannot be soiled, and that which resisteth dirt cleans with ease in a single wipe." Incorruptibly yours, Darryl "Clete" Poonsman Pittsburgh, PA
This guy reminds me a lot of the character Ignatius in A Confederacy of Dunces (one of my favorite books.)
