Sex with trucks

I stumbled across a hilarious interview between Allen Ginsberg and conservative columnist John Lofton from 1990. Lofton begins the interview aggressively asking if Ginsberg is crazy. Ginsberg talks about seeing a shrink and Lofton is mystified why the poet doesn't know his psychiatrist's religious beliefs.

GINSBERG: I know some, through body language and the response to the immediate situation in front of me, which is what I am really interested in, rather than, say, this conversation. I'm dealing with you in terms of how you display yourself here, not the history of your thoughts. I'm trying to deal with the evidence or manifestation of how you present yourself here--your harshness, aggression, and insistency and--
LOFTON: Why not call it my perseverance? Isn't that a nicer word? Or guts? Or tenacity?
GINSBERG: I would say there is a little element of S&M in your approach. Power.
LOFTON: No. I would say this is more like the kind of sex you like.
GINSBERG: And I would say this is the kind of power relationship you like, judging from your behavior.
LOFTON: Well, that's certainly what S&M is all about--power..
GINSBERG: And you seem to like that don't you? Have your sexual fantasies ever involved that kind of power relationship?
LOFTON: No, not to my knowledge, I'm a Christian. So I don't fantasize..
GINSBERG: Do you ever have sexual fantasies?
LOFTON: No.
GINSBERG: None at all?
LOFTON: No, I said I am a Christian.
GINSBERG: You've never had any sexual fantasies!
LOFTON: Before I was a Christian, I had them, absolutely.
GINSBERG: And since you're a Christian you don't?
LOFTON: No.
GINSBERG: And when you had them, did they involve any dominance/submission fantasies!
LOFTON: Mine were pretty orthodox heterosexual kinds of fantasies. But there's no doubt they were bad. And I am so glad that Jesus Christ delivered me from them.
GINSBERG: You have no erotic dreams now, at all, that you remember!
LOFTON: None that don't feature my wife, no.
GINSBERG: Yeah.
LOFTON: It's an amazing thing what Jesus can do for a person.
GINSBERG: Uh-huh.

The conversation turns towards Ginsberg's affection for young boys, which Lofton calls rotten and sinful.

GINSBERG: I should say my sexual preference is not just for boys, but also for middle-aged men, straight men, and women. I've occasionally had fantasies about making out with trucks as well as beasts. And maybe I'll be making out with you, before it's all over. [laughs]
LOFTON: Well. maybe I could drive that truck while you make out with it, perhaps an eighteen wheeler, with the pedal to the metal.
GINSBERG: Now there's your fantasy. [laughs]
LOFTON: Excuse me. but you raised the idea of having sex with a truck.
GINSBERG: You extended it.
LOFTON: I'm just trying to accommodate you. I even offered to drive the truck. And you attacked me. But to hell with you. I won't drive the truck. Get your own truck.

The conversation moves to the nature of the mind. Lofton doesn't believe Ginsberg has any qualification to talk about "the mind" when his experience is only with his own mind (and to Lofton, Ginsberg's mind is sinful and deranged).

GINSBERG: I'm observing my own mind and consciousness and reporting on that and trying to be candid. Walt Whitman, who was a very great poet and, incidentally, gay, said he thought that for poets and orators of the future the great quality would be candor, frankness, truthfulness.
LOFTON: Well, Walt Whitman suffered from, if I may say so, what might be called terminal candor--not unlike yourself.
GINSBERG: You don't like Whitman?
LOFTON: No.
GINSBERG: Have you read Whitman?
LOFTON: Some.
GINSBERG. Do you remember the name of the poem you read?
LOFTON: Yes, one that says something like: "So I make mistakes. I contradict myself. So what? I contain all things," This is absurd. Talk about arrogance.
GINSBERG: Dig this.
LOFTON: I'm diggin' it.
GINSBERG: He says: "Do I contradict myself? Very well. I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes," Do you know what he meant by that?
LOFTON: Probably nothing good. And I doubt if he knew what he meant.
GINSBERG: Yeah, he did. I know what he meant.
LOFTON: How do you know what he meant?
GINSBERG: [laughs] Because I am large. I contain multitudes.
LOFTON. But you might contradict yourself.
GINSBERG: Yes. And I certainly will contradict myself.
LOFTON: This will be one of your multitudes the ability to contradict yourself.
GINSBERG: That's what Whitman is saying.
LOFTON: It's gibberish.
GINSBERG: That our own minds are so vast that we can wind up contradicting ourselves without having to freak out about it. It's very similar to what the poet John Keats said about negative capability. He said the quality of a very great poet like Shakespeare was his ability to contain opposite ideas in the mind without an irritable reaching out after fact and reason. Meaning that that part of the mind which judges, and irritably insists on either black or white, is only a small part of the mind. The larger mind observes the contradiction, and contains those contradictions. The mind that notices that it contradicts itself is bigger than the smaller mind that is taking one side or the other.
LOFTON: You speak very confidently about this. Where do you get your ideas about what the mind is?
GINSBERG: By direct observation through meditation practice.
LOFTON: But at most this would tell you only about your mind, wouldn't it? You were making statements about the mind.
GINSBERG: I should say I noticed this about my mind and John Keats noticed it about his mind. Sure, you might want to check our which side is right but when you get irritable about it and insist on one or the other, black or white, it's likely you'll eliminate some information from both sides.
LOFTON: Is nothing black-and-white?
GINSBERG: Nothing is completely black-and-white. Nothing.

Ginsberg's point dovetails nicely with a recent article about how babies see the world. For a long time, we've thought of newborns as being blank slates that get filled up by experience.

Now, however, scientists have begun to dramatically revise their concept of a baby's mind. By using new research techniques and tools, they've revealed that the baby brain is abuzz with activity, capable of learning astonishing amounts of information in a relatively short time. Unlike the adult mind, which restricts itself to a narrow slice of reality, babies can take in a much wider spectrum of sensation - they are, in an important sense, more aware of the world than we are.

The article goes on to talk about how artists' and musicians' minds physically work more like children's, keeping an openness to life without preconceptions. It even compares a baby's mind to the Zen idea of beginner's mind, which is something Ginsburg was very interested in.

And just to add more to the mix, here's Kool Keith's crazysexy ode to Mack trucks: