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Can love be a stripper?

As I get older, swagger doesn't carry the same vibe... or I don't let it.  Can love be a stripper?  I feel worried about painting this metaphor.  There is such stigma behind this vocation. But in my life love has revealed itself in the most rarest of places.  I find myself being seen as an odd ball because I look at the "shameful", "regretful", and "avoided" with compassion and interest.

Can love be a stripper?  The ultimate hope that most humans strive for is to be loved, adored, admired, and desired.  If I disarm my defenses and what I am really saying is I wish to be loved, adored, admired, and desired. Now I can see the foundation for the glamor in eros.  I can begin to see how love is recognizable in appeal but possibly exploited and distorted by becoming erotic.  I can recognize how seduction becomes a vacuum creating a currency out of attention.  I see how love can be seen in the dance of a stripper.  There is a perversion to it, but what role does perversion play in love.

Is there a home for perversion in the dignified world.  If you describe a woman as sexy does that pervert her dignity?  If you don't see a woman as sexy does it make her more dignified? Please be critical of love and look for its shadow! If love has a shadow I would describe it as jealousy.  The assessment tool for love's shadow might be described best in following way.  If you ask men if they find a stripper attractive, most would say oh yeah, some might say well sure, and some might say yes but in a raunchy way.  This describes for me the role dignity has played in life.  The first set of men I've tried to represent as that man who is still working out of an adolescent state of dignity.  The second set of men represent those men who recognize the importance for dignity.  And the third set of men represent those men that have become prisoners of dignity.  There are infinite number of responses but this paints a spectrum.  Each of the three demonstrating loves shadow.

When a stripper isn't love it might be a sign that your dignity has gotten jealous.  When perversion damages the elegance that glamor can create, my dignity has become jealous.  When I cannot appreciate the allure that is created by "sexy" and I move to judgment and shame, my dignity has had to share loves attention.  Love is a stripper, love can be erotic, love can be admired so deeply by dignity that in jealousy, dignity retrieves the shared attention love has yielded to the Eros.

"Love you spin my head right round, right round!"

Swagger, you have haters, and they are the jealous soldiers of "dignity proper".  As for me, a stripper is love. Stripping is love intoxicated, asking to be desired, yet desperately a prisoner to survival through economics. A stripper is love misrepresented and exploited by perversion.  Love is a stripper naively hoping there is another way to be seen, sought, and surrendered.  I like to think that the gaze just beyond the stigma of perversion has helped me recognize love on the shameful stage of seduction.


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