In the dream of a memory, we are again protists (prōtistos “the very first”). Two billion years ago, starved for nitrogen in the primordial sea, two protists tried to cannibalize each other and instead merged their nucleoli. From the very beginning then, food and sex became one joy!
The combined protists contained two of everything: doubled mitochondria and chloroplasts and two nucleoli fusing to one. After they sated their hunger, they each longed to return to their single identities. And so, in a cooperative effort to disentangle, they invented meiosis. They split into ovum and sperm. As gametes, the original beings exist once again as individuals, free to be themselves until they die – or once more merge.
Genetic androgynes, we are all double-sexed, ambisexual, living in a permanently fertilized state. Each cell of our corporeal being belongs to a hermaphrodite. And in every cell, we feel that ancient urgency of our protist forebears to uncouple. That’s why we couple. We long to emerge from our duplicity and be singular again. We long to taste the secret.