ἀπόκρυφον (apókryphon)

The apartment greeted me with silence. My eternal companion. I kicked off my shoes, pouring myself a glass of wine that was needed not for pleasure, but for ritual. To drown the emptiness left after today's non-date.

I picked up my tablet, my personal cabinet of absurd curiosities. The Instagram feed was teeming with faces: smiling, toned, with perfect makeup. "Sex Coaches." "Relationship Specialists." "Guaranteed Orgasm in 5 Minutes Using My Method." They were selling air, packaging the wind in bright wrappers of fashionable buzzwords. "Neurological Orgasms," "Chakra Sex," "Mindful Copulation."

How utterly tiresome they all were. Behind those smiles, I saw the same emptiness that was in the eyes of that boy from the coffee shop. They are all running on a hamster wheel, trying to achieve an ideal drawn for them by algorithms. Career, daily grind, social expectations… A woman is torn to pieces, and by evening, all that remains is a squeezed, nervous lemon. What sensuality can there be? What art?

They call it a "sexual recession." A pretty term, isn't it? Like an economic indicator.

Statistics: the quantity and quality of sex in developed countries have been steadily declining in recent years, by about six percent annually.* I would say this is not a recession. It is a famine. An energetic famine.

They have forgotten-or perhaps never knew-that for a woman, intimacy is not a physiological procedure or a way to quickly relieve tension. It is the only remaining alchemical process in this mad world by which one can truly and effectively synthesize life force. Oxytocin, endorphins, dopamine… You think these are just hormones? No. It is an elixir. An elixir that relieves stress, rejuvenates the body, heals emotional wounds, makes the skin glow from within.

Deprived of this, a woman depletes. Becomes fragile, brittle, perpetually irritated. She is lacking not just orgasms-she is lacking life itself.

And all they want is technique. A set of moves. Instructions. They approach the body like a complex but soulless mechanism: press here, rub there-get a result. They just want sex. Fast, efficient, like a Zoom meeting.

But "just sex" is not enough. Because the art of love is not about quantity (which, by the way, is also dwindling each year*), but about quality. About sacrality. About slowing down and feeling the other person not as an object for obtaining pleasure, but as a temple full of mysteries. It is about an energetic exchange where you not only take but also generously give. It is about a palette of sensations that cannot be packaged into seven minutes.

A weak, unconscious partner, focused on his technique, is incapable of either giving energy or receiving it. He leaves you emotionally depleted, "uncharged." He does not even realize he has committed theft.

I remember how gods were born from unions filled with this power. I remember poets who wrote sonnets about every curve of their beloved's body. I remember warriors whose passion was a battle, not a casual stroll.

And now I watch as their death masks are hawked as trinkets. Art has died. Not because it was forbidden. But because it was packaged into a flashcard game for the impatient. A sacred ritual turned into IKEA assembly instructions. The high mastery of philosophers, warriors, and alchemists is now called "bedroom skills" and sold with a discount coupon.

I put down the tablet. The silence in the apartment grew louder. I walked over to the shelf where my diaries stood-thick folios of lost knowledge. Treatises on love, written in blood, passion, and tears.

I picked up the one I was ready to fill today. The last blank page will remain blank. This era has nothing to say about art. It only wants life hacks.

I placed it back on the shelf. Next to the others. I hope, with time…