OK. I read this interesting post by joanna bujes in which she observed, let's see how can I phrase this in a dull and expository manner, that on some occasions when one makes love with a woman one experiences together with her a kind of overwhelming mutual transcendant ecstasy. That this wonderful thing is possible, she knows and can positively assert, because she herself has seen and done it. She then goes on to ask, quote:
> How could a man experience this and still continue to think and act
> like a boy? How could a man prefer the experience of woman as
> passive object to this? How could power make up for this?
I believe it all and those are all excellent questions I guess, but they seem kind of unreal. It seems to me that for lovers to experience the sort of interpenetratory delirium joanna describes, at the moment they'd almost certainly both have to feel toward one another very great trust and love. Whereas I say a lot of men and women these days, probably a solid majority of each at any moment, either are having a Hell of a time getting along at all with that person they have sex with, or else they have no one to have sex with at all.
I'm talking about people, all the people, so it's not good enough to recount personal experiences and anecdotes. Look at marriage, where we have at least a little mass-statistical data, the divorce rate, which last time I read it in the newspaper, the median duration of marriages in the U.S.A. was seven years. I bet practically all marriages start out with both partners a.) in love with one another and b.) hoping and expecting that both their love and their marriage will endure. That's where Joe and Jane Median stand on day one of year one; yet by day 365 of year seven, with varying degrees of regret, resignation and acrimony, they have finalized their split up, they're moving out, and neither intends never again either ask for or offer even the littlest speck of love to the other.
Now it's possible that some days near day one year one Jane and Joe might have been so deeply in love that they could experience that special translucent tantric ecstasy which Joanna described so, so - hey Carrol you didn't complain about _her_ rhetorical flourishes, what's up with that? The chance of that special luminescent love thing happening in Joe and Jane's bedroom at year seven is absolute zero. What do you think the likelihood was at, say, year five? Take that average and add in all the single people who are sleeping alone; how bad are the odds that any K. will make magic ecstasy love with any V. tonight? Bad, bad, all the people starve for love. Famine.
I thought all that would explain itself, but Kelley writes "translate." What's to explain, sez I. Here are a couple lines out of a song by the Clash; it's like about anomie all over this London apartment block, this woman is getting along extremely badly with this man and this other man is divorcing this woman and over here is a man sleeping alone in his apartment next to a woman sleeping alone in hers, grey grey grey, no gratifying ecstasy anywhere. I'd have thought you'd recognize the lyrics, guess I was wrong. Meanwhile reading the thread backward from most-recent to older, here's joanna's previous post:
> ...What men truly don't get about women is that women don't like to
> fuck assholes; that's not the same thing as not having a sex drive.
I'm thinking, "wow, she asks why men don't properly appreciate making love with women and then a couple hours later it's why don't all these assholes just completely fuck off?" (when actually it was in the reverse order, time-wise.)
OK, how about these "assholes"? Hate to admit it but they're men too. "How could a man experience this," but "assholes" don't experience any fabulous soul-shaking sexual communion, on account of "women don't like to fuck assholes," rather they experience being called an asshole. If the main argument for men not to deal with women with respect as though they were passive objects, were gratitude for sensual delight rather than justice and decency, then conversely it's cool for "assholes," by which is meant "all those creepy guys who women don't wanna fuck anyway" - lots and lots of single guys neither handsome nor successful, several-years's husbands, balding manque divorcees, that uncharming sort, males who entirely lack charisma, losers - to do so. Sheesh, what a lousy idea.
joanna asks "How could men experience [the lineaments of gratified desire] and do this or that?" I reply: the majority of men do _not_ experience such ecstasies, that's how. Not last night, not tonight, and at least while they're sober they can dream up only the dimmest prospects for doing so the future. Seems so many men and women can't get along with the people closest to them well enough, or they lack anybody that close to them, for such an overwhelming love experience to be possible at all. For Christ's sake, given a choice between night after night of deliriously sensual loving abandon in the arms of a lover he truly loves who truly loves him in return, and "acting like a boy" or "experiencing women as passive objects" or some other tenth-rate compensation, do you, does she, think _any_ sane man prefers the second? But practically everybody all the time, they, we, men, women, don't get the choice. Who gives a damn anyway whether a woman's capacity for gratification is a fourth that of a man's, as the hadiths have it, or four times a man's, as Twain has it, if a man is getting a hundredth of the love he yearns, does it matter whether his corresponding woman is getting a twenty-fifth or instead a four hundredth? The whole thing's a disaster; everybody's fuckin' starving!
Was that clear enough?
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net