Why are 6 square inches at the centre of us excluded from massage therapy, and from friendship? We imagine and choreograph friendships in ways that – like “donut massages” – keep the erotic out-of-bounds. We say someone is “just a friend”, as if friendship were less than lovership and partnership. What if we explored our friendships without the boundaries of convention that keep them circumscribed and “safe”? I don’t want every friendship to include genital interactions, though I love to integrate erotic rituals into my relationships with several friends. But I do want my friendships to be erotic in the sense that they are deep, abiding intimacies, where we reach for ecstasies, together, again and again….
At the core of each single one there is an emptiness. However we surround and sugar-coat it, it is still a hole. When Eros opens us, we know our longing. Even if we have never known ecstasy, it becomes a guiding goal. Can we learn to fully inhabit the open, empty core of us, and courageously feel into our longings? Can we learn to want and welcome trustworthy, courageous friends to meet us in that empty core? Can we learn to reach for ecstasies together, weaving partnerships that thrill and inspire? That’s what I mean by erotic friendship….