RANDY ELROD

Sensual | Curious | Communal | Free

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Category: Four Minute Read

  • The Two-God Hustle: When Christianity Became a Trump Card

    The Two-God Hustle: When Christianity Became a Trump Card

    From my vantage point here in Barcelona—where ancient cathedrals stand as monuments to humanity’s complex relationship with the divine rather than political weapons—I’ve been watching America’s latest theological circus with a mixture of fascination and horror. Americans have become increasingly bewitched by what I can only describe as a borrowed god who brings particularly bad…

  • Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Great Sex

    Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Great Sex

    Phoenix Adams, the morning after (the morning after The Purging Room imagined) The question hits me like espresso on an empty stomach—sudden, bitter, necessary. I’m sitting in The Plaza’s restaurant, still wearing yesterday’s clothes, still carrying the impossible weight of a burgundy book that shouldn’t exist. The waiter assumes I’m another businessman nursing a hangover….

  • The Ultimate Proof There Is No God: Trump

    The Ultimate Proof There Is No God: Trump

    I’m done. Not the dramatic, door-slamming kind of done. The quiet, bone-deep exhaustion that comes when the last thread of hope finally snaps. When 82% of white evangelical Christians pulled the lever for a convicted rapist and felon—again—any whisper of faith I’d been harboring finally died. Here’s what gets me: I spent thirty years in…

  •  Barcelona vs. Madrid: A Comparison

    Gina and I visited Madrid for four days this past week. We updated my hearing aids at Costco (there is no Costco in Barcelona), visited the Prado Museum (it was amazing), and enjoyed the Longines Global Champion Show Jumping Competition. We found Madrid a welcoming city, less expensive, but not as beautiful and artsy as…

  • Pleasure as Prayer: Reclaiming the Spiritual Nature of Sensuality

    For many of us, pleasure and spirituality have been positioned as opposing forces – one belonging to the realm of flesh, the other to the divine. But what if this division was never meant to exist? What if the ecstatic sensations that ripple through our bodies were actually gateways to the spiritual, and pleasure itself…

  • Protected: My Annual Birthday Selfie: A Celebration of Embodiment

    There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

  • My One-Year Journey with Tantric Massage Therapy

    My One-Year Journey with Tantric Massage Therapy

    For the past year, I’ve been experiencing tantric massage therapy here in Barcelona, and at 65 years old, it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever done anything like this. What began as a completely serendipitous encounter has become a profound healing journey that has transformed my relationship with my body and myself. I…

  • The Mountain Where Time Stands Still: My Secret Retreat from Barcelona’s Bustle

    The Mountain Where Time Stands Still: My Secret Retreat from Barcelona’s Bustle

    Each year, I escape to Montserrat for a solitude retreat that renews my spirit in ways no other place can. Just an hour from Barcelona by train, this mountain sanctuary feels like stepping into another world. The magic truly begins after 5 pm, when day-trippers board their buses and descend to the city. Suddenly, the…

  • Barcelona: The Muse Behind “The Purging Room”

    Barcelona: The Muse Behind “The Purging Room”

    In the labyrinthine streets of Barcelona, where Gothic spires rise above modernist masterpieces and ancient Roman walls embrace Mediterranean shores, I found the perfect muse for my transformative novella, The Purging Room. The idea was born in the Appalachian wilderness, but it needed Barcelona’s unique blend of architectural time travel, artistic rebellion, and sensual atmosphere…

  • Unholy Yearnings

    Unholy Yearnings

    My tender and urgent longings as a sensual adolescent soon clashed with the harsh reality of a prudish religious upbringing. And for over forty years, I suppressed my gnawing hungers, my incessant desires, and my carnal fantasies.  But a single touch of a friend sent courses of electricity through my being and cast a hot…

  • I Survived Hell

    I Survived Hell

    As anyone who knows post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will tell you, days and nights can be unpredictable. It can be the brightest day, in the loveliest place, or the most cozy night, nestled in cotton sheets, and you still feel like your being is sucked dry. I fight a relentless battle with shame, fear, guilt,…

  • Writing and Painting the Hidden Things that People Dare Not Face or Say

    Writing and Painting the Hidden Things that People Dare Not Face or Say

    Ah, the secrets we keep, the longings and desires we hide. We are afraid to be honest with others (and sometimes, rightly so); tragically, we are scared to be honest with ourselves. If you dare, play a game with me.   Look, in your mind, at this photograph. Is it of a nude (or would…

  • My Raw Thoughts A Few Minutes After the 2024 Presidential Election Was Called 

    My Raw Thoughts A Few Minutes After the 2024 Presidential Election Was Called 

    Shock. Horror. Disbelief. Disappointment. Hollow vindication. These are a few of the violent emotions that swept over me this morning when the Associated Press confirmed that a psychopathic criminal filled with hatred has been re-elected President of the United States.  Surreal. I would never have dreamed this would happen after the traitorous attempted coup and…

  • My Most Controversial Art Yet. Why?

    I grew up smothered by religion. My father and both grandfathers were preachers. Sexual pleasure never came up in family conversations or sermons. To this day. And I’m 66 years old.  Never will I forget, at around age eleven or twelve, waking up with wet white stuff covering my sheet. I had been dreaming about…

  • Loreena McKennitt In Concert (The Backstory)

    Loreena McKennitt In Concert (The Backstory)

    Last night, Gina and I saw Loreena McKennitt for the first time in concert. I have loved her music for over thirty years, particularly her vocal clarity and quality. Afterward, I told Gina the backstory of the song The Mummer’s Dance, which helped her understand why I was so moved last night as the stunningly…

  • Impromptu (and Candid) Thoughts

    Impromptu (and Candid) Thoughts

    (A Four-Minute Read) I retired at the age of forty-eight. Which caused a few years of tumultuous adjustment—tears shed over this self-imposed exile from the stage; once applauded by audiences, admired by peers, and stopped by strangers in the street; how could I not feel some bereavement over the waning of my celebrity, the weekly…

  • My Culture Survey (Spain Edition)

    My Culture Survey (Spain Edition)

    **I saw this survey in The Atlantic and loved it. I adapted it slightly. The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: Visiting the Costa Brava of Spain. The sun-kissed land, a rugged coastline lined with pine-edged coves, golden untouched beaches, and crystal clear water. Its beauty extends inland with important Greco-Roman ruins, and quiet Medieval villages,…

  • Sex is a funny little concept, isn’t it?

    Sex is a funny little concept, isn’t it?

    Traditionally, a male puffs up or hardens his sex organ and physically mounts another human, animal, or sex toy, shoves it into an orifice, and then moves it vigorously in and out as the penis hopefully remains stiff (for many, thanks to Viagra) until it contracts and spews out a whitish substance that inexplicably can…

  • Thoughts After One Month In Spain

    It has been a fast and furious thirty days in Barcelona, preceded by an extremely busy September through December, evaluating neighborhoods, selling most of our earthly belongings, estate sales, obtaining our visas, getting our vaccines, and so much more. We have not stopped for five months—no wonder we feel exhausted. When we settled into our…

  • I Read Banned Books as a Child and am Better For It

    I Read Banned Books as a Child and am Better For It

    During my elementary school years in the early 1970s, I read everything. Books about Roman gods and teen detectives (male and female) and gruesomely martyred saints, but also ancient encyclopedias bought at Goodwill, used Reader’s Digests and my grandmother’s Penny’s catalog. In the time-honored tradition of nerds everywhere, I read the backs of cereal boxes…