The Joy of Sex (11 page)

For desire to grow, what’s needed after that is mutual appreciation. One doesn’t necessarily need commitment – society is now past the point where a woman only allowed herself to lust once she had the ring on her finger – but believing that the person we desire is still going to desire us in the morning lowers our emotional barriers and lets us get serious about the business of wanting. What then develops is everything this book is about.

If desire fails early on, it’s probably because sometimes once we have what we want, we don’t want it anymore, and the most sensible thing for both parties at that point is to let the whole thing go. Once love is established, however, a temporary dip shouldn’t be cause for panic, withdrawal, or infidelity; no one, male or female, can enjoy sex when one is dead with fatigue, when one has just given birth, when children are hammering on the door, or in the middle of a busy street. If desire fails totally and permanently, the likely culprits are medical or hormonal problems, depression,
or
relationship crisis – and it’s not disloyal but sensible to rush off to the doctor or the
relationships counselor (
see
resources
). Ignoring the problem and teeth-gritting – following
Alice, Lady Hillingdon’s advice to “lie back and think of England” – will simply make the problem worse as the lack of pleasure gradually seeps into your blood. Eventually, all that will be left is negative reaction; a partner’s touch becomes something to shrink from. Get help now.

Other than these situations, a strong and lasting
desire for each other is a reasonable request to make of the
love gods, but serious players know that the gods help those who help themselves. Desire will be strongest where lovemaking is most effective; that means both partners should know how to arouse creatively and bring the other to climax as a matter of course, however much teach-and-learn it took to get there. In the end, Pavlov’s dogs stopped salivating when no food appeared; it’s wise to make sure that most meals satisfy both diners at least most of the time.

Intense desire is not just about passion, however, but also about emotion – one reason why the title of this book contains words referring to both. If we are to keep lusting, we need to keep feeling; if resentment and irritation lead to emotional anesthetization, that will inevitably lead to physiological anesthetization and a total shutdown of sensation experience. This is not to say that feelings have to be positive all the time – even the best of relationships contain some of what sex therapist
David Schnarch describes as “reptilian” reactions; that is, going in for the kill. But to keep on feeling passion, you need to have the courage to keep feeling full stop. Rage if you have to, but don’t disengage.

Remember that desire will be strongest in situations where it’s awarded the most space and encouragement; if you want each other, act on it. A truly dedicated lover works at their art, and realizes that art is no less valuable for having to be worked at. The more sex one has, the more one will want – even with his biological limiter, that is true for him, and it’s even more true for her.

love

We use the same word for man-woman, mother-child, child-parent, and other interpersonal relations – rightly, because they are a continuous spectrum. In talking about sexual relations, it seems right to apply it to any relationship in which there is mutual tenderness, respect, and consideration – from a total interdependence where the death of one partner maims the other for years, to an agreeable night together. The intergrades are all love, all worthy, all part of human experience.

Some meet the needs of one person, some of another – or of the same person at different times. That’s really the big problem of
sexual ethics, and it’s basically a problem of self-understanding, and of communication. You can’t assume that your “conditions of love” are applicable to, or accepted by, any other party; you can’t assume that these won’t be changed quite unpredictably in both of you by the experience of loving; you can’t necessarily know your own mind.

If you are going to love, these are risks you have to take, and don’t depend simply on whether or not you have sex together – though that is such a potentially overwhelming experience that tradition is right in pinpointing it. Sometimes two people know each other very well, or think they have worked things out through discussion, and they may be right. But even so, if it’s dignifiable by the name of love, it’s potentially an open-ended experience. Tradition has tried to cut the casualties by laying down all kinds of schedules of morality, but these never work 100 percent in practice. Nor are they of much use in classifying the merits of different kinds of relationships (
see
fidelity
).

If sexual love can be – and it is – the supreme human experience, it must be also a bit hazardous. It can give us our best and our worst moments. In this respect it’s like mountain climbing – over-timid people miss the whole experience; reasonably balanced and hardy people accept the risks for the rewards, but realize that there’s a difference between this and being foolhardy. Love, moreover, involves someone else’s neck besides your own. At least you can make as sure as may be that you don’t exploit or injure someone – you don’t take a novice climbing and abandon them halfway up when things get difficult. Getting them to sign a consent form before they start isn’t an answer either. There was a great deal to be said for the Victorian idea of not being a cad (“person devoid of finer or gentlemanly feelings”). A cad can be of either sex.

When this book was first written, the world was in the middle of the most radical rethinking of sexuality ever – and the subsequent rethinking of love. The prediction then was that sex and love could be divorced, and no-strings sex is certainly now more common. But most of us still require a connection before we can do any more than simply perform; love may not be all you need, but it’s an essential for any except the most basic satisfaction. Equally, when the going gets rough in relationships, good, pleasurable sex can bring you through. When you make love, you do exactly that.

appetizers

real sex

real sex

being together, touching, holding hands

The sort our culture and most mass-media propaganda don’t recognize: not that intercourse, or masturbation, or genital kisses aren’t real sex, but some other things are real sex too, which people need, but that don’t excite our time and age. We can list some: being together in a situation of pleasure, or of danger, or just of rest; touching, even if that doesn’t involve any of the traditionally erotic zones; old-fashioned expedients like holding hands (permissiveness makes for more orgasms, but we miss out on the
simple pleasures of looking, smiling, flirting, dating, kisses, and holding each other close – the bonding elements that vagina-obsessed males think of as schmaltz); sleeping together even without, or especially after, intercourse.

Most women know all this, but they are as shy about telling it to males, for fear of seeming over-sentimental, as males are about confiding object preferences or forceful needs. Don’t get stuck with the view that only those things that Auntie calls sexual are sexual. In a book on sexual elaboration, this needs saying, if you are concerned with love rather than an Olympic pentathlon. People in our culture who are hung up on the Olympic bit don’t get much from using the gentler options, unless over time such use builds the realization of just how important those options really are.

food

food

a meal can be an entire erotic experience in itself

Dinner is a traditional preface to sex. In old-time France or Austria, one booked a restaurant room with no handle on the outside of the door. At the same time, there is a French saying that love and digestion went to bed together and the offspring was apoplexy. This isn’t quite true. On the other hand, immediately after a heavy meal is not an ideal moment for sex – you can easily make your partner, especially the woman if she is underneath, sick.

A meal can be an entire erotic experience in itself – for a demonstration of how a woman can excite a man by eating a chicken leg or a pear “at” him, cannibal-style, see the lovely burlesque in the 1963 film
Tom Jones
or the outrageously sensuous equivalents in
Tampopo
and
9½ Weeks
.

A meal à deux is, quite certainly, a direct lead-in to love play (
see
big toe
, and
remote control
), but don’t overindulge on
alcohol. Recent studies show it lowers inhibitions and increases euphoria, particularly for women, but is the most common cause of unexpected erectile problems. If you are serious about sex, develop a liking for mineral water.

Love and
food mixed well in Greek and Roman times when you reclined together on a couch, or fed one another (geishas do this still). Some people enjoy food-and-sex
games (ice cream on the skin, grapes in the pussy, and so on), which are great for regressive orality, but messy for an ordinary domestic setting; take care too with sugary foods, which can cause
yeast infections, and oily foods, which can shred
condoms. Most lovers with privacy like to eat naked together and take it from there.

dancing

dancing

good lovers dance well together

All dancing in pairs looks towards intercourse. In this respect the Puritans were absolutely right. The development of no-contact dances has come about because one doesn’t now need a social excuse to embrace, but as an excitant it need not involve contact at all – in fact, most dancing today is far more erotic than a clinch because you aren’t too close to see one another. At its best, this sort of dance is simply intercourse by
remote control (
see
remote control
).