August 3rd, 2026 - Earthly Delights
Dear TNY,
“Earthly Delights” was today’s brain candy.
It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever read. It’s fun. It’s got spirit. It’s brief. God I love it when you publish a story that’s under four thousand words. It makes my whole week.
This story reminded me of a story that a friend wrote in grad school. It was about a pillar of fire appearing in a random guy’s backyard. So he called the fire department and they tried to put it out, but then it just became a pillar of smoke. And if you wandered into it, you died. Eventually the fella did and he went to heaven where he met Jesus, who was a bartender. And you got to ask him one question that he had to answer truthfully. And this is what followed:
I asked what was the point in creating human life, and He looked at me and said, We are infinite in our capacity for interest, amusement, boredom, and loneliness, and all of those were huge contributing factors in the creation of mankind.
Firstly, shout out to my boy Hunter Whitworth for writing cool shit.
And second, I love that answer from an omniscient being. Like, he’s not sure why, at least not to the fullest extent of why. He can get as far as “huge contributing factors” but not all factors.
And that’s what the end of this story felt like. Not even God knows what sex is. I felt that was a decent conclusion to this story. But, it’s not a good ending. I’m just saying that as this story is written now, it’s a good conclusion in the same color palette that this story exists in.
That’s as far as I’m willing to take it, though. Because the rest of it, I feel, misses the mark. And I’ve had time while cooking dinner, eating dinner, and then watching some animated shorts, to mull over why I was just whelmed by a story that was about sex (and a short one at that) and it’s because it’s not about sex. It’s about the author exploring the idea that wanting things is better than actually getting those things. And the author used the device of sex in the setting of heaven to approach that. Sure, it’s a novel idea. I haven’t read much like this. But does it do anything other than being akin to a neat object printed on a 3D printer? I don’t think so.
Why? I think sex is such a personal thing. I’ve had partners who couldn't seem to care less and do not see it as critical to the human experience outside of reproduction. And I’ve been with insatiable people. I’ve been with vanilla people. And I’ve been with wild animals. And all the shit in between. So for me, this story, as an experience, was like criticism reserved for second person point of view stories: I don’t like being told what to do. Normally, all stories tell you what to do, just using I or he/she to create distance (it’s weird how I creates distance, but it does). This subject matter, though, didn’t create enough distance for me to disengage with myself and fully engage with the work. I was left disagreeing with pretty much everything the main character experienced and the conclusions of the two characters who fucked in heaven.
What can this story say about sex that means something to me? It can’t. At least not with how it’s approaching it and I’m receiving it.
Anyway, cue the patented FTNY unnecessary ramble…
Real sex is selfless. It is a giving mode. It is the unlocking of meat and bone and the quiet ushering of incredibly complex and ever-changing Rube Goldberg machinery such that, metaphorically, layers are removed, first hair, all of it, blowing away, from one dream into another, then skin suits are peeled down, like taking off a perfectly tailored wet suit of you, then muscle and gristle and ligament and tendon, unravelling to parts unknown, then bone, each tumbling away from the others, ambling off to places bones go when it’s time to rest, then intestines festoon the edges of liminal spaces, the liver inchworming its way next door, the other offal stuffing themselves inside the stomach and riding it like a zeppelin into the night, the kidneys grow stick figure hands and stick figure feet, hold said hands, and then walk toward a cool blue light past the pines, the lungs flap themselves like condor wings, up up and up again, out of existence, and all that’s left is the heart, beating ever-harder, and if the sex is done just right, just careful enough and tender enough, with a little bit of salt, paprika, and cream of tartar, then a big, fat, red phone receiver will pop out of the heart, towing it’s curly cue cord, unspooling from an infinite supply within the heart, the receiver disappearing as it sails toward a low rumble that you didn’t notice until now, the phone, still zipping through space, then time, then space/time, slipping through the whip-stitched edge of this plane and into the next, where god (sic) is waiting, palm outstretched, the receiver slowing its bullet-like trajectory before softly landing on his warm, dry skin, where he gently closes his fist, holding the phone aloft and bringing it to his ear and mouth, and then, if you are really listening, and the walls are gone and there’s no you anymore, or your partner, there’s just this thick, warm, viscous fluid ebbing and flowing in the air between you, but not air, not in the room at all, not fluid either but more like electric lava that’s plasma in nature but spectacular in tonality, this fire cloud is you and your partner as there are no separate things anymore, just oneness, with each other and the bed and the air and the land that the structure was built on and the dinosaurs that once roamed right here, and the grasses they ate and the butterflies that they stepped on, and twinkles and sprinkles and a phrase I heard today as a bad translation in a ridiculous phone game, “eat the sparkles, friend,” yeah man, and as you and your absolute angel of a lover eat the fucking sparkles, god clears his throat so very far away and whispers everything that ever was, is, and will be, and he slows time down, because god’s cool like that, and gives you so much that you have enough time to do it twice.
Nick
