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HOW
MANY TIMES WOULD YOU LIKE
TO KISS ME?
Thinking of sex after the first 20
minutes
There is an enormous void of knowledge in our culture. We know nothing
about love. We know everything about how we meet, woo, fall in love,
give the first kiss and roll in the hay the first three times. Thousands
of films, novels, comic strips, songs and poems tell us the opinions
of thousands of people.
We also know a heap of things about the end of love affairs, the
critical moments, betrayals, the quarrels, what you say when you
leave each other, and how you suffer when you find yourself alone
again. Instead nobody tells us anything about what you do in that
period, whether it be long or short, between when you kiss for the
hundredth time and when you start not to love anymore. Yes, because
something happens in that interval and that is the interesting thing
about the whole love affair.
Instead
it almost seems that that period of time doesn't exist. You say:
"Ah, ...it was wonderful. We loved each other madly!"
And that's it. What do you mean, that's it?!?
Humanity infuriates me.
Tell me something! Nothing.
A terrible gap, an amnesia, an abyss. No one who can give you some
indication, an idea, any damn old theory.
So humanity cheats itself by its own hand. Yes, because when you
meet a woman, you think immediately about conquering her, seducing
her, having her. The whole effort is concentrated on that idea of
the beginning of love. You don't give the first kiss thinking about
what is to come, trying to construct a shred of a relationship.
The
first kiss is already in itself the end: the effort is concentrated
all at the beginning, in seizing the coffer with the diamonds of
delights inside. Once you have seized it, you really don't know
what to do with all those longed for precious stones anymore. You
don't know. You no longer have objectives. There is no trail to
follow. You feel lost in the unknown territory of love, and so you
begin to get anxious, and you wait with fear for what will happen
next, when the love affair starts to feel the strain.
And you are almost stunned to be there in that part between the
beginning and the end, because for us that period doesn't exist,
just like the things which we know nothing about don't exist. It
it as if we are in the waiting room of a train station, rather stunned,
as you always are in the waiting rooms of train stations, amazed
because we find ourselves there wasting our time with all the important
things we have to do.
When you have a relation with someone, it's like when you are asleep:
a sleepy bird doesn't catch the worm and those who have a partner
don't catch any worms. They are lacking a purpose, something interesting
to do. When you have a relation with someone, you can't wait for
it to end, because it's dead boring.
At
least when the scenes, the quarrels, and the attempted suicides
begin there is passion, emotion, you live intensely, you don't lose
a minute. It's for this reason that many couples skip the middle
stage and from falling in love immediately start quarreling.
At this point, I would like to provide you with a string of good
advice on what to do when you have already made love three times
with someone and you still get along. Unfortunately, I don't have
any ideas to give you. I'm not really able to fathom out this mysterious
period of time.
The only thing that I can say is that this is not an accidental
situation. It has very specific reasons. It's inherent in our culture,
in the behaviour that we have learned, in our mental habits and
traditionally in our emotional and psychological attitudes.
In
the second part of this article, I will try to list and briefly
analyse a few of the essential elements that interact and cause
this damaging collective amnesia.
First of all, perhaps, this gap in our knowledge depends on the
fact that we are not blessed with a sufficient attachment to pleasure.
Pleasure (like sleep and death) is something that requires a sense
of abandonment, of waste of time, of passivity - all foreign concepts
in our competitive culture.
Falling
in love attracts us because we experience it as if it were an adventure,
a conquest. Instead caressing, massaging, looking at each other
in the eyes, listening to each other, soaping and warming each other
up seems to us a silly activity because it lacks a purpose, there's
no contest, there's no adventure.
Perhaps it is for this reason that the male, once he has conquered
the woman, seems to gradually lose his sexual interest. Possibly
not knowing how to enjoy a woman who is always within reach bewilders
him. The lack of a purpose drains him and he begins to see sex with
his wife or his girlfriend as a duty and not as a pleasure. And
this is because sexuality gets stuck on the repetition of the first
scene that obviously, as it repeats itself, loses its lustre.
In
this way the first kiss is no longer the first stage in a mad search
for mutual pleasures, the beginning of a touching game with each
other, of the planning of a moment in each day dedicated to pleasure,
to the invention of new ways of getting physically close and pleasing
each other. The first kiss is only the start of a string of repeats.
And so as sex in the relationship becomes an exam during which you
have to show your sexual prowess and the sincerity of your emotions
(as this same scene is gradually repeated), the anxiety of not being
sexually competent or in love enough increases. You despair, confusing
desire and boredom with love and erotic prowess.
Such painful reality makes us doubt our own sentiments and wears
us out with continuous self-examination, leaving us in a situation
that doesn't evolve and therefore has no way out.
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