Sexuality is like the X-Files.  Much is unexplained.  All that fumbling around in the dark through strange drawers only tantalizes and leads to more questions.  There is always the vague sense of greater forces at work, but human beings still disagree as to what is behind it all, and how far to go in the search for understanding.  And yet, the search for truth continues.  The human mind seeks to know.

In the Sex Files of my mind, the one case that is still not closed has to do with the body itself.  Specifically, the body image.  I'm 43 and have seen each year increase my enjoyment of sex, and I'm wondering just how far a person can go as they age.  What about the problem of wrinkles?  Cellulite?  Sagging?  Where does true attractiveness really lie?  As a matter of fact, I get more attractive every year, regardless of the aging of my body.  Like, what gives?

My inner Scully and inner Mulder love this question.  It's the backdrop to all others.  (Or, is it?  Ha ha!  As usual, it only seems to be.)

Take cellulite.  To Scully, this is a physical and mundane fact of life.  It's consequences are unpleasant.  Cellulite destroys sex appeal.  But if you're halfway normal, by the time serious cellulite hits, you're married to your true love, and true love conquers all, so it's not a problem.  Scully is, at heart, the monogamous type.

Mulder believes cellulite is a metaphor for some other thing operating in the mind of the body.  Maybe.  He is not quite sure, actually, but he knows something is going on that connects the cellulite phenomenon to the mind of the cellulite sufferer, and that this problem must be solved for the sake of all humanity, because beyond it lies a dangerous and noxious belief: that only the cellulite-free can comfortably enjoy the great gift of sex that was once considered free to all creatures.  Mulder would like to enjoy the great gift of sex with as many creatures of the world as he can before he dies.  But even he, Hollywood hunk, may someday lose his hair and get love handles.  What then?

Mulder poses the question.  What does body image have to do with sexuality?  Scully can barely suppress her impatience at such a stupid question.  Chemistry is a fact.  People are attracted to who nature says is attractive, and the most attractice body is the one who will naturally get the best action.  It's purely innate.  Survival of the fittest, gene-pool-wise.

Mulder says, but sexuality is life itself!  Its essence can't be reduced to simple measurements!  Souls meet through sex!  How can the magic and wonder of sexuality be held back, be stymied in its infite glory, by a few bumps on the thigh?  What makes them so much more powerful than our souls' grand sensual expression?

Nice words, says Scully, but sex isn't life itself, life is life itself, sex is a pleasant side-benefit, a mechanism for bringing sperm and egg together, nothing more in the most basic sense.  Souls may express themselves through sex, but that is not what sex is basically for.

Mulder says, no, that is definitely what sex is basically for.  Maybe.  Mulder is full of maybe's, since he deals with the non-facts.  Sex, he says, is more than we know, and at this point Scully yawns, because Mulder always runs out of words around this time in the conversation.  She says she has to go to the gym, and he lets her go, because no matter what he says, he likes what the workouts do for her body.  She has no cellulite.

The two of them argue over this whenever they have a spare moment.  You'd think they'd have it settled by now.  Scully has just won a big one by getting my body to a plastic surgeon for a little tightening of tummy flesh that Mulder could not visualize away.  His problem, it seems, is that he could not convince himself it was proper to even care about cellulite, if in fact sexuality rises so far above it.  If sexuality rises from the soul, if it is life itself, if inner beauty is the core of outer beauty, then what kind of weasel is he to wish my stomach didn't bulge so much?  He disqualified himself from sitting in judgement on this one, and Scully took matters in hand.

Scully was pleased at the efficiency of plastic surgery, but she needed Mulder's input again, because the mind was still entertaining flabby thoughts even while supposedly committed to well-toned abs.  She and Mulder once again pooled their thoughts and began yet another investigation.

They decided, to both their satisfaction, that for each person in the world, there was at least one person at all times who was attracted to that person, and who that person found attractive in turn.  In other words, every person always had the option of having some hot sex with someone who turns them on.  Every person.  Always.

This rather surprised them, since, being babes, they suffered from the common misconception that only babes had such an option and that everyone else had to settle for less-than desirable sex with less-than desirable partners.  And yet, people with sub-babe bodies were out there having super-babe sex.  Not only that, but people with babe bodies were having sub-babe sex.  Trim waists, then, did not automatically translate into sexual ecstasy, nor did cellulite equal lonely nights.  What, then, did body image have to do with sex?

And why, Scully mused out loud, was everyone dieting and working out so hard?  Who were they trying to attract?  The only answer was, they were trying to attract everyone.  Everyone!  They wanted to have that universally-approved look that would make them attractive to every person they met.

Such a serious pursuit seemed to Mulder to imply a deep spiritual need.  Scully shut up and listened to his mumblings, since she found herself confused.

Ah ha, Mulder cried!  There are no separations to the self!  What if "everyone" is, in fact,...?

You mean, Scully whispered in the dark room where they had once again started fumbling through drawers, "everyone" is themselves?  Because when they meet up with "everyone," the reflection they see in the eyes is themselves?  They're really wanting to see themselves as beautiful through the mirrors of others' eyes?  Oh, Mulder.  Oh god, yes, you've got it, oh yes..."

Sevral minutes later, the case was all zipped up.  The answer seemed, on the surface, vague, but then, their answers often did.  That made them no less true.  Apparently, the deep spiritual need people are looking to fill at gyms and plastic surgeons is the need to be attractive to themselves, to be in lust with their own bodies.  Cellulite only mattered if it affected their own sense of themselves as beautiful.  Their own sense of their own beauty was the piece that put the puzzle together.  Follow-up reports proved this true.  People who did fall in love with their own bodies, regardless of the presence or absence of cellulite, were more able to accept the attentions of others.  They were more able to enter into the sexual encounters of their choice, and more able to relax and enjoy themselves. This, in turn, made them even more attractive to themselves, and hence to others, and so it went.

How simple it all was.  Mulder worried whether anyone would believe them, but Scully was ready to go on to other pressing questions.  She pressed one against him, and then the other.  He noticed that they hung a bit lower these days.  Somehow, that made him very horny.

©1998, Mui. Printed in the December 1998 Issue of the online Conscious Creation Journal. (Feel free to duplicate this column for personal use - please include this copyright notice.) http://www.consciouscreation.com/