Paradise: Ups, Downs, Boys and Booze

[PeterRS]

With so much gloom at present, more and more posters are hoping against hope that the pandemic in Thailand will be under control much sooner rather than later and their visits to this Paradise can continue. It started me thinking about Paradise and how different the word can mean for different people. 

When we were growing up, did we really buy into the idea of Paradise as an idyllic nirvana, a place where the vicissitudes and pettiness of daily life would be replaced by perfect peace, love and harmony? A Garden of Eden where there are no serpents hidden in the apples (as envisioned below by William Blake) and we can bask in its glory amongst gorgeous flowers, sumptuous fruits and an endless supply of beautiful guys?

 

For some adherents of a certain religion there will be an abundance of virgins ready to fulfill their every wish. Another interpretation of that particular religion, I understand, suggests that there may instead be youths attending to them, presumably also fulfilling their intimate desires.

Seriously, though, is Paradise, in Hamlet’s words, the life-ending experience “a consummation devoutly to be wished?” After all, getting there is no certainty. It’s either up or down for us. There is of course a middle path, but then who wants to spend years zooming around Purgatory desperately trying to find that exit to Paradise? Does Purgatory exist? Does an exit exist? Is it purifying or punitive? As for Hell, well that excision of part of our proud dicks as mandated by certain religions is certainly not as practiced here on earth. Down there, they lop off the whole damn organ as well as a great deal more, leaving our never-ending supply of blood continuously oozing forth as illustrated on this painting from the door of a Buddhist temple I saw near Tibet.

But before leaving the horrors of Hell, there is a rather interesting little tale in the Preface of an amusing book titled SEX: Who’s Had Who. Written a few decades ago it is a lighthearted summary of who might just have had sex with whom over a period of years. Having sex is called “rogering” and each chapter is a series of who might just have rogered whom – rather like getting from A to Z by taking short cuts. Some rogers are historical. More modern rogers included are from GETRUDE STEIN to CLINT EASTWOOD in 8 rogers and from PRESIDENT FERDINAND MARCOS to PRINCESS DIANA in 7 rogers. Naturally it’s all just a bit of fun.

 

In the Preface is this thought. “What if God knows everything except ONE THING. What if He has a blind spot: there is no one around as intelligent as Him to put Him right, and He doesn't know He doesn't know it because that is the one thing He doesn't know . . .

“What, for instance, if God has always pushed a red button to send people to Hell, and a blue one to send them to Heaven. And what if the one thing God doesn't know is that He is colour-blind. And sees red for blue and vice-versa.” *

OMG!

After reading that, I wondered what God would do if instead of being colour-blind He was suffering from a touch of dementia, to the point where His short-term memory would be unable to recall which button He had last pressed. And thinking that it had been red, he continuously was pressing blue. Wonder of wonders! A Paradise with one section filled only with huge numbers of all manner of young men. Could I find here all the boys and men I have loved and lusted after during my time on earth just waiting for me without their having aged and just as I have always remembered them? How many boys from my later years at school and at University whom I was desperate to bed but much too shy to do so? Since life up there will presumably be without end, perhaps Hamlet was right.

I wonder how many realise that the word ‘Paradise’ comes not from Christianity or Islam. It does have a religious background, though. It was coined much earlier in Persia when Zoroastrianism, the world’s oldest monotheistic religion, was the state religion for more than a millennium. The God worshiped by the Zoroastrians was Ahura Mazda – yes, the Japanese car company did indeed appropriate the name for their Mazda cars. The prophet Zoroaster is better known to us today through Nietzsche’s novel and the Richard Strauss tone poem Thus Spoke Zarathustra (whose first 100 seconds is featured not only in the opening of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey but also as the prelude for years to innumerable sex shows in Thailand’s go-go bars). Pop singer Freddie Mercury was one of the religion’s adherents. Even today some 25,000 still worship the religion in Iran’s desert city of Yazd.

 

The Ancient Symbol of Zoroastrianism

The root of the word essentially means Garden. Not one with beautiful lawns, manicured hedges and perfumed flowers like Versailles or Hampton Court. Rather, Persian Gardens. These were and still are enclosed spaces with tall trees providing shade filled with orange and pomegranate trees but where water flowing in narrow channels and fountains, often with a pavilion in the centre, plays almost the most prominent role. 

 

A Persian Garden in Kashan

Over time Paradise has graduated to become a much more mundane term. Nowadays anything that gives us a lift from our everyday lives tends to be termed Paradise. It can be cocktails on a fine sandy tropical beach at sunset, nuzzling up to our partner after the most intense orgasm of the year, speeding down an open road in a sparkling new red Ferrari . . . Even our gay community is associated with the word. Phuket is no longer very gay but most of Patong’s few remaining gay venues are clustered near the Paradise Complex.

More recently I discovered another Paradise. From time to time I used to tune in to a light classical station when working. Some years ago I was listening to a rather pleasant piece of music quite unknown to me. The composer, too, was a name I had never heard before, Frederick Delius, an Englishman who composed around 100 years ago. The music sounded vaguely like a cross between the impressionism of Debussy with hints of the Germanic nationalism of Richard Wagner. I was quite surprised when the announcer informed listeners that the title of the piece was Walk to the Paradise Garden. Enchanted by its perfumed harmonies and sultry textures, I could imagine being led through shimmering golden fields of wheat and then towards a magical stairway to present myself to my Creator in the most beautiful of all gardens.

 

My Angel Awaits

Imagine, then, the comedown when, far from being a second Eden, the announcer informed listeners that Paradise Garden as envisioned by Delius in fact refers to a common or garden (oops) rather seedy country pub! Paradise – a pub? Oh well! I suppose in some parts of the world, a regular gay pub may be as close as many will ever get to Paradise down here on earth. 

But I still like the idea of all those youths up in the hereafter ready to look after my every need! Ah! But then I worry. What if I don’t end up by going up, as it were? What if I go down? What if the Creator is indeed colour blind? 

Clearly time for another drink. If thoughts of Paradise can’t cheer me up in these times of covid19, hopefully another large vodka martini will! Perhaps Delius was right after all.

* from SEX Who Had Who by Simon Bell, Richard Curtis and Helen Fielding originally published by Faber & Faber, London