Enya Sex

By Judah Pollack

My friend was upset, haggard looking, fingers fidgeting with the brim of the striped straw hat he’d taken to wearing under the misapprehension that it was cool.

“What is it?” I asked.

He sighed, stared at his iced tea in the sun. “It’s Tear Down The Walls.”

That was the name of his girlfriend. Actually, Tear Down The Walls was her Playa name but she’d taken to using it in the real world. On the Playa she now goes by Jill.

“What’s wrong with Tear Down?”

My friend shrugged rather hopelessly. “She likes Enya Sex.”

“Feral:” I said, “having become wild from a state of domestication.” I knew it was a random statement. But I’d thought about this for a while. Allow me to explain.

Enya is that Celtic musician who was big ten or fifteen years ago, kind of faux sensitive music, ethereal vocals, swelling strings and songs with titles like “Nightingale’s Bosom,” “Guinevere’s Heart,” and “Tear Down the Walls.”

Most men are familiar with the phenomenon of Enya Sex. I first encountered it in college. The girl’s roommate is kicked out, Christmas lights turned on, incense lit. She bends over the stereo and you’re thinking nice position; let’s remember to come back to that. Then the sound of those strings, like fairies jumping on flower petals. There’s flowing water and suddenly the voice of an angel giving thanks for her wings.

An hour before this same girl was in the Di Phi lounge spanking her girlfriend’s denim-clad ass. Now she’s ushering Gaia into her bed.

Your first thought is, “I can’t get hard to this.” Ha! Not a problem. This is college. Your second thought is, “I can’t cum to this.” That is true. Climaxing to Enya would be like cumming in Mother Theresa’s mouth.

Apologies, I’ll give you a moment to wipe that image from your mind.

Men don’t climax to Enya. We just pretend too, wait for the girl to go to the bathroom, then jerk off really fast.

You can tell a lot about a relationship by the music associated with the sex.

I had Depeche Mode sex. That was hot; though I was always afraid she was going to kill herself afterwards.

Pink Floyd sex can be good but it gets a little intense, goes on a little too long, and there tends to be little to much screaming.

Rolling Stones sex is good, clean fun; no tears, no sweet nothings, just some banging, slapping and a little bit ‘o biting. And when it’s over you go get a burger and fries.

I do not recommend Tori Amos. That’s the kind of sex that in-the-closet-gay boys have with their I’d-rather-not-be-doing-this girlfriends. In that vein Bob Dylan is also a rather awkward erotic troubadour. Though, if hippie Berkeley girls are your thing…

But if you really want to get it on nothing beats psy-trance for head-in-the-pillow ass-in-the-air who-are-you-again? sex. Turn it up loud, blot out the world and live in the layers. Just don’t try to keep up with the music because you might have a heart attack. A little psy-trance sex will make you wish you had paid more attention to those quiet girls with dyed black hair who wrote on their jeans and killed the world with their eyes and listened to hard-core girl bands you’d barely heard of like Veruca Salt.

Yet none of these are the phenomenon of Enya Sex. I don’t know if women still scroll to Enya per se for their romantic interludes. Perhaps they have a favorite Native American flutist, or a playlist of the world’s most popular arias given ambient backbeats. In the end it’s all Enya Sex. The question is why does this phenomenon exist?

Think of the college situation. It was a random hook-up. We were both being a little bit slutty.

(That’s a word the sex positive community has trouble with but honestly, if we’ve just met and we’re climbing into bed, or a bathroom, it’s not negative or positive, it’s slutty.)

So, there we are; a slutty little hook-up. This is the very thing a young princess is taught never to do. On one nightstand sits guilt. On the other nightstand sits shame. I’m in the middle, the tempter, the devil, the poor horny schnook. Caught in this dark wood the princess goes to her music and reaches for a talisman, a protective medallion, to walk through the darkness, Enya.

The music is divine light, purity itself. The music fills the room with meaning. What it all means this horny boy couldn’t tell you, but there is the distinct sense that it all means something. Like a bad movie using good music to give its love story gravitas, women reach for Enya to deepen an act they fear is shallow. Enya creates the illusion that one is not merely making bones but is in fact making love. Enya Sex is a phenomenon because it allows women to feel “clean” while doing something “dirty.”

And that’s the problem. The princess doesn’t need a talisman. The wood is not dark. Too many young women are taught to believe that sex is dirty and thus feel the need to make it clean. Reaching for Enya and her purifying sound begins with the assumption that sex is dirty. Enya sex is sex stripped of its vitals. Enya Sex is sex being put in a little box with a bow and set afloat on a babbling brook. Enya sex is the taming of sex.

Classic Gilgamesh myth, harlot woman tames wild man through her control of sex. There is this powerful idea that there is meaning in taming things. That’s why men hate Enya sex. They’re being told to reign themselves in, that to move slowly is the only meaningful way. Enya Sex is ass-spanking, incense burning college girl trying to act like she doesn’t have the same ravenous desire as the horny schnook beside her.

But why can’t the girl be ravenous as well, untamed, out of control? Why isn’t she taught that the divine exists within head-in-the-pillow ass-in-the-air psy-trance as much as hand-over-the-heart Enya? A woman reaching for Enya is like a woman binding her own feet. She must learn there is just as much meaning in arching her back, beating her fists and letting out a growl.

Feral: having become wild from a state of domestication. That’s a good journey for any woman to undertake.

So I told my sad, straw hat wearing friend, “Enya Sex is putting you both in a box. It’s as difficult as cumming in Gangaji’s mouth.”

Sorry, that one wasn’t much better. I went on.

“This is what you’ve got to do. Make a playlist. Start with Enya but then segue into something like Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” where the woman’s all hollering unintelligibly but full of pathos. It might give her some ideas. Move on to Depeche Mode, any song will do. See, you’re staying soft and quiet but building the intensity. Then try “Gimme Shelter” by The Stones, that prowling guitar in the beginning. Then it’s all psy-trance.

“She’ll be feral by then. You’ll feel heroic as Gilgamesh. It’ll be as easy as cumming in Julia Childs’ mouth.

Doh!