The Idol of Fake Eros

This past Sunday, Pastor Tim gave the last sermon in a series called "American Idols." He played the song "Break Your Heart" to a congregation mostly made up of laughing university students. In the song, Taio Cruz (whom I confess I had never heard of before then) aims to absolve himself of any responsibility for the feelings of the lady to whom the song is addressed by disclosing up front that he is not interested in le grand amour and will only do what the title promises (break break your break break break your heart.) Pastor Tim used the song to preach on the idol of casual sex in our culture.

This made me think of Karen Owen, the Duke University student whose PowerPoint "F*ck List" grabbed instant internet notoriety. The list, created for an audience of sorority sisters, details and rates her sexual encounters with thirteen "subjects." The premise isn't much different from that of the average Cosmospolitan or Maxim article or Sex in the City episode, but she has an evocative and funny voice that made me pay attention (plus, how could I resist the pull of that great modern trope of girlie intimacy: the morning-after postmortem!)

Owen hits her narrative sweet spot when writing about Subject 12, who scores a 12 out of a possible 10 points. And though she tries to keep her cool, the sexual antics take a backseat to the thrill she feels when he tells her "You're not just a regular girl, you're a cool girl," when he keeps eye contact with her, when he puts her pleasure first, when won't let her go in the morning.

In other words, what moves her to give him the highest score, perhaps in spite of herself, are all the elements that point to something greater than a lame one-night stand begun at a place called The 'Pound -- that point to nothing less than romance! In other words, she's might believe she's looking for a hookup, but she's looking for (and maybe glimpsing?) that old dog Eros!

As Frederick Buechner says in The Sacred Journey, "It was the upward-reaching and fathomlessly hungering, heart-breaking love for the beauty of the world at its most beautiful, and, beyond that, for that beauty east of the sun and west of the moon which is past the reach of all but our most desperate desiring and is finally the beauty of Beauty itself, of Being itself and what lies at the heart of Being."

When I was Owen's age, I was sold on what our culture promised was the pathway to Eros too. So I have known what it is to be with someone and be so busy making the experience into a neat little burnt offering for this idol's fun and glamorous altar that you forfeit any chance of connecting with him, to anything beyond yourself, let alone to "Being itself and what lies at the heart of Being." (Hint: you are not going to find this at a place called the 'Pound.)