motivated by sex / comforted by death

“I love death! And sex!”

I blurt out ac­ci­den­tal­ly, in the way I so of­ten do when I say ques­tion­able shit. 

“I mean, I’m a Scor­pio,” I con­tin­ue, as an ex­cuse – what I think might wa­ter my state­ment down to a palat­able fla­vor, be­cause she’s shoot­ing me a look like I’ve just flung dirty un­der­wear in her face. In my de­fense, she just fin­ished say­ing she was writ­ing a whole-ass book about death, so I don’t see what the prob­lem is. 

Guess we’re not gonna bond over this one. Oh well. 

I stand from the ta­ble, drop my plate in a bus tub and de­cide to go look for Christo­pher. Or “A Christo­pher.”

We’ve come to un­der­stand there like­ly is more than one black snake on the hun­dred acre farm, since he seems to be everywhere. 

I an­thro­po­mor­phize Christo­pher and as­sume he’s also a Scor­pio there­fore thinks about sex and death all day, every day, just like me. Re­al­ly, Christo­pher prob­a­bly doesn’t pon­der these sub­jects the way I do, if at all. 

I won­der if he’s even aware of his own mor­tal­i­ty. What mo­ti­vates a snake? How do snakes fuck? A quick google of snake sex in­forms me that fe­male snakes store sperm and de­cide when they be­come preg­nant, and the males have two penises. 

In­ter­est­ing. It’s shit like this that caus­es the porn block­ers to over­re­act when it come to my Sub­stack.

*     *    *  

I watched my friends dance in a barn the oth­er night and thought, soon we’ll all be dead, but in a nice com­fort­ing way, like bet­ter en­joy it while it lasts. 

I didn’t want to scare any­one so I said noth­ing. Lat­er, some­one talked about deal­ing with their dead par­ents books and I near­ly shouted, 

“Some­day you’ll be the dead one and some­one will have to deal with all your crap and the crap of your par­ents that you held onto. And much of it won’t mean any­thing any more, it will just be stuff.”

I bit my tongue. I imag­ined some­one go­ing through my box­es dis­cov­er­ing books in­scribed to me and old let­ters I’ve saved. Some of which brings me great joy to dig up and re­vis­it, so, as long as we’re here be­ing hu­man, there is mean­ing and it does matter.

When I look up the spir­i­tu­al mean­ing of an au­ro­ra bo­re­alis, I read that some cul­tures be­lieve it’s a win­dow into the spir­it realm. 

Hu­mans as­sign mean­ing to every­thing; Snakes are scary. Sex is scary. Death is scary. 

We walked around the farm at night – night is also scary – af­ter eat­ing mag­ic mush­rooms, and sud­den­ly looked up to see the North­ern Lights. 

In Vir­ginia?

This had to mean some­thing, the tim­ing lined up per­fect­ly, none of us planned this or even knew it was go­ing to hap­pen. We agreed it was a peak life mo­ment, a re­li­gious experience. 

All peak life ex­pe­ri­ences seem to in­volve the mys­tery of the oth­er side. Sex can be that too, if done with the right per­son, in the right way. The or­gasm, also known as le pe­tit mort, or a lit­tle death. 

So why are these sub­jects so taboo?

Walk­ing in the dark, we felt a lit­tle scared of step­ping on a Christo­pher so I joked about him be­ing in his lit­tle snake hole tucked in, re­al­ly just as a way to com­fort us, and then from the oth­er side of a large, grassy area a voice said “I found a black snake in the hole of a sculp­ture!”

We all ran over to dis­cov­er my joke was real. And we were high, so this was ex­tra su­per funny. 

Come to think of it I haven’t seen the snake whis­tle-blow­er guy, or Christo­pher since.

*     *    *  

The lack of sex or po­ten­tial sex at this res­i­den­cy has me turn­ing to what is read­i­ly avail­able – dessert. 

Sug­ar and gluten make me sick, but af­ter ten days of hy­per-fo­cused writ­ing, I’m des­per­ate for a distraction. 

I’m re­al­iz­ing how big a mo­ti­va­tor sex is for me, or mere­ly just the pos­si­bil­i­ty of it. When I eat sug­ar, I lose in­ter­est in sex and be­ing a fa­mous, suc­cess­ful writer and then I write less, be­cause I start to feel gross in my body, like, ex­treme­ly fa­tigued. I’m break­ing out in chin acne and bloat­ed, there­fore want­i­ng to hide like Christo­pher in a snake hole, and I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by how twist­ed and re­lat­ed all these de­sires are for me, so much so that I’m writ­ing a whole-ass book about it.

A fel­low writer ap­proach­es me at din­ner to dis­cuss some­thing I read from my work in progress book, the oth­er night. She had a strong re­ac­tion to it and I think it made her wor­ry about me a lit­tle. Then she said some­thing along the lines of, “I have a wish for you. I hope you re­ceive what you give in your writing.”

I felt moved by this sen­ti­ment, be­cause I sup­pose I do give a lot and was grate­ful she’d no­ticed. I hold very lit­tle back and my blunt hon­esty has proven to be rather con­tro­ver­sial at times al­ready, and boy, just wait till this book hits the world. 

I don’t think about it much as I write, but when I read it out loud, I see the in­ten­si­ty of my words in the faces of my peers, and I think, oh shit. 

Am I gonna be in trouble?

I wish the re­ceiv­ing thing for me too. I hope it’s worth it. I wor­ry about on­line hate, over­re­ac­tive porn block­ers, in per­son hate, stalk­ers, truth hat­ing pu­ri­tans, and the ones who are de­ter­mined to mis­un­der­stand and even un­der­mine me and my message. 

But then I re­mem­ber I’ll be dead some­day and none of this will even mat­ter. So I bet­ter do what I came here to do, now, in these pre­cious mo­ments of life that lined up just right for me to be here, writ­ing it all down. 

I will avoid the cake tonight. And I’ll keep telling my­self that be­ing a suc­cess­ful au­thor will prob­a­bly get me laid.

It al­ways comes back to sex and death. I as­sume if you’re here, you’re down with star­ing into the void. Look at it now, ask the ques­tions now, talk about it now, do the things now, be­cause soon we’ll all be dead! 

Let’s just hope not too soon.

 

—love, hol­ly

Flom­mist Hol­ly Solem is a singer/songwriter, mod­el, ac­tress and writer known for her work on Amazon’s orig­i­nal se­ries Hand of God, as well as play­ing, tour­ing and writ­ing with nu­mer­ous bands and artists. Copy­right © 2025 Hol­ly Solem.

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