I don’t talk much here about my Other Life, but this topic requires it, so: for the last decade and a half I’ve been a sex educator and author, writing books and teaching workshops, spreading the gospel of kinds-of-sex-you-don’t-discuss-in- polite-company. I’ve taught tantra in Toronto, spanking in San Diego, polyamory in Portland. It’s been weird, and it’s been fun, and I’ve discovered a couple of important things along the way.

One is that human beings need ecstasy (Webster’s defines it as “a state of being beyond reason and self-control,” and I’d have a hard time improving on that). Our brains aren’t meant to be rational and intellectual all the time, and ecstasy-deficient brains get stupid and sad. Two is that most people only know one way to experience ecstasy – sex – and that sucks.

So I’m getting less and less interested in sex, and more and more interested in other kinds of ecstasy. Anything that a brain can do to quit stewing about the past and fretting about the future, to be in that transcendent Zennish state of total presence and acceptance, I want to know about it. (Except the stuff that involves extreme physical exertion. I may be a seeker, but I’m a lazy one.)

Last week a friend and I did a bit of ecstatic journeying. He’s new to this sort of thing, having recently recognized that four decades of brilliant intellectualism haven’t taken him where he wants to go. Since tantric breath or guided trance isn’t easy for someone that brain-bound, we took a very small chemical short-cut, just so he could see what the terrain looks like out there. He loved it. I loved being with him while he loved it. I doubt that either of us will ever be exactly the same again. That’s what ecstasy is for: it defrags your brain.

And the very next day I turned on the TV and channel-surfed into Shall We Dance, starring Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. This is, of course, a remake of the Japanese Shall We Dansu; I saw the original when it came out in 1996, but I didn’t know as much then as I do know, so it didn’t mean much to me. I gather the plotlines of the two movies are almost identical. If you’re looking for a flick about ecstasy – about what it feels like not to have it, and about finding it in unlikely places – check out either one.

The story is simple. A successful, happily married businessman is drawn to a ballroom dance studio after glimpsing a beautiful young instructor through a window. He begins taking dance lessons as an excuse to get close to the girl, but slowly he gets hooked on the dancing itself, on being able to lose himself in the pursuit of beauty.

Gere’s John Clark has money, family, success, but yearns for something more, something ineffable; the closest he can come to explaining is to say that he’s “unhappy.” He projects his yearning, as such men often do, onto a beautiful woman. But after she shoots him down, he comes back to the dance studio anyway, sensing that whatever he’s looking for is still waiting for him there.

The only words we have for describing this sort of passion are the words of sex, of romance: “The rhumba is the vertical expression of a horizontal wish. You have to hold her like the skin on her thigh is your reason for living,” explains Lopez’s Paulina. But when John and Paulina finally get to dance together, what’s going on is not sex; it’s beyond sex. It’s connection, intensity, focus, presence. In learning to become graceful, John attains a state of grace.

People, I think, often pursue sex when what they really want is a path out of the labyrinth of thinking and reasoning and remembering and projecting. But most kinds of sex require another person, and that – to put it as tactfully as possible – often leads to complications. Smart folks figure out ways to get there on their own, so that sex becomes a happy luxury rather than a starvation-fed panic.

Is ballroom dancing your path to ecstasy? Who knows? Maybe yours is surfing, or painting, or tae kwon do, or Sufi twirling. The only way to find out is to try, and to keep at it for long enough that your body and spirit can take over from that stubborn brain of yours.

Don’t get me wrong: sex works too. But if it’s your only option, consider expanding your horizons. When you suddenly find yourself in “a state of being beyond reason and self-control,” you’ll know you’re in the right place.

* * *

You wouldn’t know it to read most food writing, but food isn’t really a very good pathway to ecstasy (although I might make an exception for a certain filet mignon with gorgonzola horseradish sauce a few years back, which actually made me burst into tears of joy). However, food is a good way to keep yourself happy until the next ecstasy comes along. Especially food that has a nice intense gingery burn mixed with gentle cakey goodness.

Gingery Gingerbread

In a medium bowl, mix

1-1/2 c. flour
1/3 c. brown sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. ea. cinnamon and salt
1/4 tsp. ea. powdered cloves and nutmeg

In a microwavable cup or bowl, combine

1/4 c butter
1/2 c water
1/2 c molasses

Zap till the butter is melted, a minute or so.

Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Add

one lightly beaten egg

and stir until just smooth. Stir in

3/4 c chopped crystallized ginger

Bake in a greased 8” or 9” square pan at 325 degrees for about 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Especially nice served with warm chunky applesauce.