Chapter 12
Literature is supposed to reflect the thoughts, actions, and affairs of a people at a given time, including attitudes and practices in affairs of sex. The earlier English talked frankly on "delicate" subjects during the time of Jane Austen. By the 1840's a restraint was put on certain topics, then a revolt against this prudishness began to rise with the coming of feminism in the nineteenth century. It was a belated, but inevitable, aspect of the democratic process. It was bound to happen when women began to be regarded as companions, rather than helpmates and incubators, with equal rights and privileges of men.
About 1855, Walt Whitman, in the United States, called for the athletic woman, sunburned, vigorous, ripe for love, equal in vital force to men. He begged the contemporary woman to give up invalidism and the glamour of frailty, which were her first resorts when industrialism and a lowered birthrate made her job at home a relative sinecure. These women were not content with the picture of the female (in books) which left a quarter of her life untold. Most females of the last quarter of the nineteenth century knew much more about the motives of the female characters in novels than the male authors were allowed to tell. The taboo was bound to be broken.
Whitman's experience in breaking it was not encouraging. The hullabaloo set up by the guardians of literary morality over his alleged indecencies obscured the real greatness of the man and shadowed his full purpose for well over half a century. The literary Gestapo which hounded him was of men, not women, who felt themselves responsible for reticence. The men were prudish, though not to each other, because they were afraid that the subservient, loving and utterly pure woman they had created out of their romantic imaginations would be encouraged by reading, become a human being with senses like men, and throw off the lash of domesticity.
Once the new woman appeared in society, the idea she should be protected from the knowledge of the facts of life became absurd. Honest writers demanded the right to describe woman with the same frankness used for men. The desire to make women human in books, now that she had made herself human in society, was no stronger than the pent-up desire of men to show that the "purity" of the Victorian Age was the least interesting, and probably the least important, of female attributes.
Men became more truly interested in women as human beings, and not some chaste angel innocent of sexual truths.
And then the American public became acquainted with Freud. Freud declared that sex was important without reference to birth rate. "Sexual intercourse is a vitamin," he wrote. "Without it, your being may warp."
And so, the American woman became a healthier animal. Americans didn't want their beings warped, and they'd already been introduced to vitamins.
And so they began partaking of sex as if it were a miracle drug.
A chemical reaction takes place in your body when you become attracted to a person of the opposite sex. It is a wonderful moment, and you call it love. You don't stop to examine it.
Still, in rare moments of objectivity, you may ask yourself: "How did I fall in love?" You wonder why one certain person can make your blood run hot and cold, make you desire physical contact. Often, it is no more than shapely legs, the rounded curves of a woman's breasts, or even her enchanting smile. There is no pattern to love, or any of its relatives, such as lust. This very lack of pattern enhances it, gives it substance beyond a poet's lovely words, indicating that our intuitiveness is based on real human needs.
With whom do we fall in love?
It is usually a person who is the total of our thoughts, ideals and emotions, someone whose personality complements our own.
That is why falling in love gives us a feeling of being newborn. We are overcome by a power which makes us happy and drives us on. We have a sense of fulfillment.
With this sensation of falling in love goes a feeling of familiarity. A lover may say, "I have the feeling of having known you always." This dynamic attraction is based upon deep psychological and biological desires of which the individual is seldom aware. They go back to childhood memories of someone whom the child has idealized.
At a swap party, a man looked at a certain woman. She looked back, and a shock, almost like an electrical charge, passed between them. They got together and tried each other out sexually. After it was over, the man said, "This is love at first sight!"
He wanted more and more of the same. The woman did, too. At last, the man realized his mind had deceived him. The woman had reminded him of a female in his long ago past, and with that realization, his love grew stale.
Love is a mixture of the sexual and the ego-preserving instincts and shows itself in a psychic bond between two people. Sexual relations, of course, play an important part in the total role.
The aim is for the preoccupation with the beloved to become complete, to unite in coitus. Freud describes love as a mild psychosis, enough though that a young man or woman may pass the home of a loved one at night and study the windows of the loved one's room and experience a feeling of ecstasy that may even result in orgasm.
This love-feeling can be painful. Nietzsche describes it as being like having a fever. When a man is in love, he endures more than at any other time. He submits to everything.
This reaction can be fine if the loved one is emotionally normal. What happens if the loved one is not?
Some may resort to self-torture. Others may become the sadistic type and wish to hurt the loved one. As an unhappily married sailor once put it, a man who had married a mercenary, non-intellectual shrew, "Make sure your mate will be a sail, and not an anchor!"
Psychologically, the above sailor had married his mother who was always hoping some rich relative would die and leave her a fortune! The wife even looked like the mother! And she was cold-natured, saying often, "What is love? I never loved anyone."
With those attitudes, she wasn't a good sexual partner, of course. She took, but she did not give. The young sailor-husband got her interested in a swap party with a friend, who pronounced her good the first time. But, the second time and after that, she was no better than her husband had found her. Her troubles were based on ancient, unpleasant memories.
Jerry married Mary when he was only twenty-two and she was nineteen. Mary had been the most popular girl on the college campus, and, looking back, Jerry wondered if he'd married her mostly to prove to the other boys that he could. As soon as he graduated from college, Jerry took a position with an oil company. It was a good job, and he prospered right from the start. Mary and he had a lovely home, a maid, a nice car, and plenty of time and money to thoroughly enjoy life. The first two years of their marriage were pretty good.
Mary was a good sex partner until after the birth of their first child. She turned moody, and her personality seemed to change overnight. There were times, Jerry felt, when she could hardly bear his presence, and he didn't know why. He tried to talk with her, but she refused to discuss their problem.
Once, she did tell him that she'd grown tired of sex - at least, sex with Jerry. "It's so routine," she'd said.
Jerry tried some new techniques, but they did no good. He couldn't warm Mary up, so he started finding his sexual release with the maid, Millie.
Millie was the kind of girl who liked to eat a man up. She admitted to Jerry that before he came along, she was fucking it up with the next-door neighbor's gardener. He had an apartment over the garage, and Millie admitted she often went out there and slept with him at night.
The first time Jerry screwed Millie, his wife, Mary, was off to some social function. Millie liked to have her large nipples sucked, and Jerry gave her the works. When his fingers tingled her buttocks, she squealed, "Oh, Jerry, Jerry, put that thing in me!"
"Okay," he'd whispered hoarsely, "let's get out of our clothes."
They were up in Jerry and Mary's bedroom. Millie undressed first, and while Jerry was getting out of his clothes, she went around pulling down the blinds, and turning the lights low. When she came back, Jerry was stretched out naked on the bed, and his hard cock was sticking up like a tent pole. She grabbed it and squeezed, and it throbbed in her hand. Jerry's cock was pretty big, and its glans was pinkish-red.
Jerry ran eager hands over the slim body and received her warm, wet kisses. She kept her hand on his organ that was demanding to be taken care of. Gently, she pulled his body to her and guided his dick into her cunt. Her cunt juices were freely flowing, so it slipped all the way in and throbbed inside her warm pussy. She thrust upward to get all of it. He began moving upon her, and their blissful connection was completed.
He moaned as he pumped. Under him, Millie's ecstasy mounted, and she answered his moans with her own.
Jesus Christ, she was hot and good! Jerry pumped it to her, lifting her now and then a few inches off the bed.
Jerry felt good in every pore of his body as she helped him reach heaven. Let Mary neglect him, he thought, as he pumped it to her.
He fucked her intensely as she held him about the neck. His cock filled her, and yet she didn't complain that it was too tight.
He was breathing hard - once in a while hissing his breath - as he pushed. He asked, "Hurt you?"
"Hell, no!" she replied. "Give me all you've got - every fuckin' inch of it!"
He felt his cock twitch inside her. His semen gathered in his balls. Millie convulsed and began grappling frantically. He knew she was reaching her climax. And, oh, God, he was, too! He began writhing and bucking, losing rhythm, missing beats. And then his cock throbbed and spurted. She gobbled it down with her cunt, squeezing him with her pussy lips. He writhed and jerked until she drained him of all he had.
"Damn good fuck," he said, when it was all over.
"Yeah," she said. "We'll have to do it again sometime!"
Mary, disappointed and angered to the point of bitterness, had also found her outlet. She, like Millie, was letting the neighbor's gardener fuck it to her. Though Jeff was young, there was nothing of the boy-stuff about him when he got a woman in bed. He knew how to screw in a royal way, and since Millie had quit him for Jerry, he gave everything he had to his new broad.
He'd press his immense cock deep into her, and she'd squirm to take it all. They'd make mad, passionate love, and he explored her breasts while his cock rammed her. He fucked her in ways Jerry never tried, and it was too wonderful to describe. They'd spasm together, and it felt as if Jeff poured buckets of semen into her. His cock hardly ever softened, and he'd fuck her a dozen times before he'd quit.
One time they were indiscreet, and Millie caught them together. But she only laughed and suggested she get Jerry and make it a foursome.
They did, and Mary got fucked by both Jeff and her husband. Jerry had learned a lot of new tricks, and he made a thousand nerve ends in her spine tingle. He fucked her hungrily, and it was good - good!
After that night, sex between Jerry and Mary was revived.
And when they weren't swapping around with Jeff and Millie, they had pretty good times by themselves!
For some married people, a little change now and then seems necessary. Perhaps that's why swap clubs flourish in the United States. What's wrong with having a little bit of fun with a neighbor? The swap deal often avoids divorce and turns couples back to an interest in sex. And change is often a cure for emotional ills.
Love and marriage are here to stay. But spice can be added to life if couples are discreet. Old sexual taboos are fading fast, and with their passing the problem of mental health has improved.
Sex is a form of play. Free, spontaneous play is romping around, running, kidding, teasing. It is jesting, and all kinds of silly stuff that can heighten the enjoyment of sex.
Play is screaming in feigned pain or anger. It is frolicking among rainbows and fleecy clouds and rolling in the green grass - or a bed. Players are uncommitted to anything except play itself, and the joys coming from it.
Play is a release from boredom and a discharge of tensions. It is a physical expression of the life force. Play with others is contact and interplay in which body, mind, and emotions are triggered in interaction. Ray is a prelude to intimacy.
Sex is play, and not a performance. It is when emphasis is placed on performing that fear of failure comes and the firm erection passes. For a woman, fear may mean the inability to lubricate.
If sex grows stale, then perhaps the swap party is the answer for revival. One woman says, "My husband and I never talked much about sex. When he wanted it, I just gave it to him, and it got so it wasn't much fun for either of us. Then we learned about swap parties. And I can tell you, a swapping deal really put tabasco sauce over our sex lives. We're really enjoying the old routine with new vigor again!
The husband added, "We're both glad we tried the experiment with some neighbors. It has awakened us both to the fullest possible range of sexual gratification. We just grew tired of physical contact with each other and needed to be stimulated. Why, before we swapped, it got so my wife could hardly arouse me!"
That revival can happen often if couples are careful to erase guilt from sexual pleasure. The life instinct, which is the same as the sex instinct, seeks narcissistic bodily pleasure and union with others. The union is based on erotic exuberance, but it is a union of self with others nonetheless.
As the swappers say, "Forget your prudishness. Go ahead and have sex. You may enjoy it!"