Editor’s note: Nin Andrews is the author of several books including “The Book of Orgasms,” “Why They Grow Wings,” “Any Kind of Excuse,” “Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane,” “Dear Professor,” “Do You Live in a Vacuum?” and “Sleeping with Houdini.” Her next book, “Southern Comfort,” is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press. How does anyone become a poet? And why?” The radio announcer asked. I stared at him blankly. “Come on,” he goaded me. “Can’t you at least give me an insight? A metaphor?” “How does anyone have an orgasm?” I thought of answering. But I thought that might have been rude. So instead I said: “It’s a mystery.” Inspiration always is. Like fire, or its source, like life and meaning, if there is such a thing as meaning. But the truth is, I really don’t know. And if I did, I wouldn’t say. Some things are not meant to be said aloud. But I often feel obligated to try. To B.S., or at least to digress. Maybe I could tell a story, a complicated tale. I imagine its title, “The Secret Life of the Poem.” And how I would say, “I can’t tell you too much of it here. After all, it is a secret.” I’d suggest how it began, and offer a few insights into divine truth and the writing of poetry and whatever other quasi-magical ideas I could come up with. For some reason, questions like the radio announcer’s remind me of a friend of mine who has answers for everything. She’s a born-again, and I remember the first time I noticed her wrist band with the initials, WWJD. She had to explain to me that they stood for What Would Jesus Do? She then asked Jesus questions while we were driving around town in her white Buick, plumes of black smoke billowing out of the tail pipe. She asked me: Would Jesus tell her to fix her car or buy a slinky gown for Valentine’s Day? She had already picked out the gown at Target and was newly in love, both with the gown and a tire salesman. Of course, she answered, Jesus wanted her to have a good time. Jesus voted for the gown. She went on to describe how he was her invisible friend. That’s when it occurred to me that Jesus was a little like an orgasm. You can’t see either of them, but they make some noise from time to time. And they know about good times. “But how did you know you heard Jesus talking,” I asked her. “You just have to use your imagination,” she answered. He could be right here, buckled in the backseat of the car. I pictured him there as some kind of blow-up doll. Maybe one of those huge blow-up men single women can insert in their cars to make it appear as if they are not alone. “Yes,” my friend said. She never feels alone because Jesus is always with her. I imagined my friend pointing him out then. “Meet Jesus,” she would say, as I checked out the latest blow-up man. The blow-up men come in different sizes. And the more you blow on them, the larger they grow. I liked the idea of having an imaginary confidante. It reminded me of childhood when I was alone, and like many children, I invented playmates. Now that I’m not a child, an orgasm and Jesus do seem like reasonable playmates. I imagine them both like philosopher-poets. I might ask the orgasm why she ever bothers to come down to earth at all, for example. Orgasms, after all, are a bit like angels. They can fly around and feel bliss all the time. What is wrong with you people, they sometimes wonder. Why can’t you fly like us? Sometimes they dive like sea birds, swooping after fish, just to lift us up in their beaks and give us a little taste of the winged life. But we’re too heavy for them, too devoted to our own past and our intimate brands of despair. That’s why our satori never lasts. That’s why we fall like stones again and again from their grasp. Even the orgasms cry when we fall. It hurts so much to see us go. Yes, I think, that’s the way it is with a poem. That’s the metaphor I would use, but what radio announcer would want to hear that? Who would understand? How nice it is to fly. How brief are even the best of our flights. Ah, but every poet would understand. Five Things You Should Know about the Physics of Orgasms 1. If you measure an orgasm, you change it by doing so. 2. When an orgasm plays two people at the same time, it listens for heartbeats that indicate how far apart the two are in frequency. To know if the two are perfectly in tune, the orgasm must listen forever. 3. When something is as unstable as an orgasm, it lasts only a half-life. It can’t endure life on earth for long. 4. Is the orgasm a wave or a particle, you ask? Sometimes it is one thing, sometimes both, and always neither. 5. Quantum Orgasms: what are they? No one knows, but without them life would be as simple as an experiment in which all forecasts would be proven true or false, and every tomorrow would be today.
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