For an entire week, I walked around a place where sex was part of the scenery. At the pool, at parties, on the beach, by the bar, sometimes practically next to my salad. In one week, I saw more genitals than a reasonable person might expect to see in a lifetime. And nothing. Nada. I did not feel sexually aroused once.
Not because I was disgusted. Not at all. Not because I was closed off. Quite the opposite. I was open, curious, happy, watching, laughing and, above all, feeling wildly alive.
And that was when things became interesting. Because if I wasn’t turned on, how was I experiencing so much pleasure? I danced for hours. I got up to go to the sea after three and a half hours of sleep. I got excited about food, glitter, new people, an eclipse. I found a sparkling hat and felt as though the universe itself had sent me a gift.
At some point, something small happened that felt enormous to me. All my life, I had been the girl standing below, holding my friends’ clothes while they climbed up to dance on the bar. I always wanted to join them. I never dared.
Then, suddenly, in Cap d’Agde, I found a pole, a mirror and a quiet corner. I climbed up and danced alone with the pole, watching myself in the mirror, happy as a child.
Was it erotic? Maybe. Sexual? For me, not at all. But there was an enormous amount of eros in it. And that is exactly where the word becomes interesting to me.
We tend to hear “eros” and immediately think of sexuality. I experience it as something much broader. It begins long before sex. Sometimes it never gets there at all.
Eros can be the moment when something inside me says: I want. I want to dance. I want to taste. I want to get closer. I want to create. I want to dare. I want to feel. I want another moment of this life.
Eros exists on an entire spectrum, from a flicker of curiosity and a subtle movement in the body all the way to full sexual desire. And for me, Cap d’Agde sat somewhere near the far end of that spectrum, beside a giant sign saying: “A little farther to the right and you’re inside a foam party.”
Gili Cook. Eros does not have to be sexual
(Photo: Selfie)
The funniest part was that, precisely there, in a place where sexuality was turned up to 200, my eros went off to play somewhere else. It danced. It ate. It swam. It sparkled. It connected. It dared. It laughed. It wanted life.
Then I landed back in Israel, and already on the drive from the airport to my partner, I felt my body beginning to wake up. That really made me laugh. Excuse me, body? You spent an entire week surrounded by hundreds of naked people having sex in every imaginable direction and barely responded, and now, in the car on the way home, you suddenly remember that you are sexual?
But apparently my body knew exactly what it was doing. Because now I was on my way to the man I love. To the person I desire. To my relationship. And suddenly, the same aliveness that had accompanied me throughout the week also took on a sexual expression.
Not because this is the “right” kind of sexuality, but because this is how my sexuality works. It is not awakened simply by the presence of nudity or sex. For me, it awakens within connection, attraction, intimacy and safety.
The same vitality that had danced, swum, eaten, sparkled and wanted life all week had now encountered the person I desired, and it took on a sexual direction too.
Maybe that was the most beautiful realization I brought home from Cap d’Agde: Eros does not have to be sexual to be eros. It can dance, taste, dare, create and hunger for life. And when it encounters the conditions in which my sexuality awakens, it can become sexual too. My body already knows the way.
Gili Cook is a somatic-tantric therapist and developer of “The Living Spiral,” an evolving clinical-somatic model