Bareback Meditation

      Today, on a moment's notice, I drove my man an hour and a half west to drop him off at a 10-day silent beginners Vipassana retreat. That's right, for ten days, he will be sitting in meditation approximately ten hours per day, without being allowed to speak, exercise, stretch, write, sing, dance, or masturbate (though I don't really know how they could enforce that last one). Other than writing, that is an extremely long time for him (or anyone) to abstain from those things, and I commend him for his quest forward, to ease his cluttered mind, and to move himself closer to being the man he wants to be.
    The Vipassana retreat is by donation only, and you cannot donate until you have completed at least a 10-day course. The whole camp is run this way, with teachers, servers, and staff all being unpaid Vipassana students who are repaying their gratitude to the meditation technique through service. As he was preparing to go, we read all the info we could find on their site -- with some strangely irrelevant FAQs.
  Topping the list, was Why is the Course 10 Days? to which the response came that many different lengths were attempted and they found the 10 days being the most complete, and doable while still immersing the new meditator adequately to understand and use the technique in the future.

  While working at Club X, one of my "regulars" (meaning I saw him once every two weeks or so), was a lovely 70-something year old gentleman, soft spoken, with shiny eyes, and beautiful crows-feet that belied years enjoying the great outdoors and smiling into the sun. He always wore a floppy straw hat with a beautiful swath of fabric tied around it. We would speak at length about the status quo mentality in the country, and travel (which we both loved), and about the universe's plan, and how there are no coincidences.

  One day, he was telling me of traveling at length in Asia with some friends, and encountering a very enlightened soul whom he had heard spoken of by other friends. This stranger to him invited him to a Vipassana monastery in Tibet, and at first, our man thought it was silly, too difficult, and undesirable. As his journeys continued, he ended up temporarily parting ways with his group of travel buddies, and catching a ride cross country with a different group of hippies who picked him up on the side of the road in China. As it turned out, they were heading to the very same Vipassana centre, and at this he resigned to his fate and went along. At the time (sounded like the 70s from what I can recall), students stayed at the centre for months and months in silent meditation and work amidst the devoted monks.
  Our man was so taken by the silence, the beauty and the technique, that he returned many times for many years, and continued his practice at home in Australia, meditating daily for the following 30-some years.

  After his meandering story about his journeys into enlightenment, he asked me where the gay porn was and I pointed him around the corner to the section he desired. A few minutes past, I can only imagine in deep meditation about which movie to purchase, and again he returned to the desk to ask for my help in finding the bareback, twink porn. I came around the corner and we perused the section together, combing the racks for condom-free young men fucking, much the way Vipassana meditators comb their bodies for Senkaras. At last, we found two possibilities and in the end the film "Bareback Mountain", with its young supple Czech boys, its playful spin on the groundbreaking gay blockbuster, and its guarantee of nary a condom in sight won our enlightened, gentle septuagenarian over, and he was able to purchase the porn of his fancy, and leave the store a lighter man, smiling into the sun.

I'll let you know what parallels I can draw once my man is home from his 10 day course.
But I can bet that even if his mind is clearer, his loins will be soon to follow.