THE TENUOUS ORGASM

Sexuality is satisfaction par excellence. The whole spectacular display of our civilization does nothing other than repeat that love is wonderful and that in the arms of that beautiful woman (or that beautiful man), all your desires and all your needs will be satisfied in one long prodigious orgasm.
Now, like crazy spoilsports, we would like to put forward here the theory that in reality the sex life of modern man is rather poor and lacking in satisfaction.
This orgasm, which is alluded to everywhere, is in fact a pale reflection of what it could be and hides oceans of dissatisfactions. That is to say: twentieth century sex is somewhat rotten. The entertainment world, which depicts sexual pleasure as the obvious spice of life, bears the terrible guilt of hiding this enormous problem, so hindering a possible solution.
Everyone is left alone with his own dissatisfaction as if in front of a tragedy that in themidst of such collective happiness seems to touch only him (or her). Not knowing that everyone experiences sexual dissatisfaction prevents us from understanding the nature of the problem and from confronting it. When you make love, you may sometimes happen to ask or be asked the question, for example: "Did you like it?" and the answer, which is required is: "Yes!" Because the "yes" implies that the partner has pleased us.
The idea that you can be dissatisfied even though you very much enjoyed your partner and his sexual technique isn't part of our culture. Sexual dissatisfaction isn't recognized as a problem in itself, with its own magnitude of causes, but as a phenomenon stemming exclusively from the fact that you can make love with a person that didn't please you.
Sex is, by dogma, satisfaction which only the inadequacy of the partner can spoil. "I don't like making love with you anymore!" means always and only that you no longer love that person. No one can utter such a phrase without putting off the lover, because no one thinks that sexual dissatisfaction could be independent of the love that you feel for him (or her).
A similar concept only falls under the category of "illnesses". Illness, as such, goes beyond love, and therefore renders a contradiction possible, such as a lover who doesn't like making love with his beloved.
In reality, it is our culture that is an illness. It is our way of thinking that produces dissatisfaction. The idea that pleasure is in sharp contrast with our lifestyle, rhythms, habits and customs is constantly obliterated in our mind. Society exorcises the truth by inventing classifications full of neat subdivisions.
A large category of sexually dissatisfied people in our culture is frigid women. Classified like cars that have a broken starter, they "don't reach" an orgasm.
Frigidity was once considered a divine favour, because it allowed women to remain pure, despite taking part in sexual relations. My grandmother, for example, spoke about it with pride, saying that, although bringing four children into the world, not once did she experience pleasure while making love. In fact, pleasure was once considered the exclusive right of the man-master. My grandmother would say that 96% of women were like her and only a few (the nymphomaniacs, sick women, in fact) experienced pleasure in bed.
Today things have been reversed. The economic boom has been transformed into the imperative of "enjoyment" and frigidity has lost its aura of sanctity, becoming instead an inconvenient disorder. An orgasm (as a technical point from which a physiological reaction sets off made up of throbbing, emissions of liquid, sounds, muscular contractions and the freeing of chemical compounds is set off) is made to represent the pinnacle of pleasure sensations. This pinnacle is another dogma. It is considered as a clearly definable set of sensations.
Sexual pleasure is in fact more complex and the time it takes to build up is extremely diversified and varied. When you have sex, pleasure fuses at stretches, reaching peaks that are different each time and experienced differently from person to person rather than a rigid succession of strictly physiological reactions. Sometimes the orgasm is so diffused as to embrace a longer period of time than the technical phases. Sometimes it is very quick and precedes or follows the emission of liquid.
However, you can't consider it as a sort of obstacle in which once surmounted you can unquestionably declare an orgasm. (Even women can "ejaculate" when they come, that is emit some squirts of "secretion" from the urethra. It doesn't happen to a lot of women and others don't notice. There are some people who maintain that women can learn to "ejaculate" and that it's very pleasant). This helps to mask dissatisfaction.
Availing itself of the fact that from a physiological point of view, the male orgasm is very obvious, ejaculation is considered as a sure sign of orgasm. Thus man's pleasure always finds undeniable proof of its existence and is placed outside any possible discussion: "If he doesn't come it's one thing, but if he comes, then he is experiencing pleasure".
Both the habitual way of thinking and the whole set of social signals imply that man can be spared of sexual dissatisfaction. The whole image of the entertainment world is characterized by the gratification of male sexual desire. Scantily-clad women, mouths reddened by desire, sports cars Ðeverything facilitates the full enjoyment that you assume the male has in every sexual encounter.
Man, hunter and master, how could he not revel in all this prey that adorns itself from morning to night in order to make itself more desirable to him? A man who doesn't enjoy himself screwing all the babes that he conquers is an unthinkable possibility. This situation paves the way to the conspiracy of silence that covers and distorts the existence of widespread male sexual dissatisfaction.
It is difficult for men to talk about their own sexual dissatisfaction. It's not an eventuality contemplated in the career of a go-getting male.
To talk about it means to place yourself at once outside the male group. In bars, he talks about how many he has had, of how beautiful they were, and of how much pleasure he gave them. To talk about private dissatisfaction is a serious infraction of the code of habits. It places you at once half way between impotent men and faggots in the big sea of losers. Man by definition likes to do it always and anywayÉ long as the prey is decent. It's in the quality of the prey that pleasure lies, not in the physical sensations of sex. Man doesn't enjoy sex in itself, but as the reflection of his power and success.
Male sexuality is public, a victory on the world. This social obligation to keep silent about your own 'orgasmic weakness' paves the way to a chain of excessive sexual boasting that leads to perpetuating the sham because as the sea of lies widens, the truth appears more and more unacceptable.
The secrecy of dissatisfaction leads to neuroses and induces man to become unreceptive and to transform his own sexuality into a series of power trips through which he hopes to achieve the longed for satisfaction of the flesh.
In this way, males end up forming a united front that perpetuates the habits of the today's sex phobic society. Women are certainly right when they state that it is mostly the male sexual attitude that spoils the proper enjoyment of sexuality.
Man isn't able to experience sexuality with that willingness, peace of mind and openness necessary for fulfillment. Moreover, it isn't completely true that it is only the women who pay the consequences of this sexual state of affairs.
Man suffers from a range of pleasure disorders that are in no way inferior to the ones women suffer. Besides functional disorders, such as impotence or the inability to ejaculate, man has orgasms that, even though they take place, don't produce decent levels of pleasure and sometimes nervous tension produces actual "white orgasms", which even though they perform the normal functions of insemination, do not produce the pleasure of an orgasm.
But there is no mention of this real male frigidity in the various sex mega-manuals. It is completely hushed up. Male and female sexual dissatisfaction is however only partly determined by male stupidity.
The whole system of values and of sexual and social taboos converge to create an unhealthy situation in which sexual activity is considered a base heritage of the individual's animal stage, and it is therefore experienced as something essentially "dirty".
The restraint of social customs constantly forces individuals to deflect their instincts, and not use spontaneous language or behaviour, which society condemns as "savage".
It's not our intention here to theorize about how things should go, but certainly there is an unresolved contradiction in the historical process of civilization, between the animal and social needs of mankind. This fact is the fulcrum of all dissatisfactions.
In fact, sexual dissatisfaction lies precisely in the fact that the satisfaction of desires would put social conventions in a spot. Indeed, social organization diverts sexual energies and channels them in other ways, utilizing them as propellants in social dynamics and as cement of the unnatural laws of a system based on mutual bullying among individuals.
In acutal fact, dissatisfaction is enormous. Everything that suggests this sexuality is the only possible one ("the right one") seems inappropriate.
The categories themselves of "sexual acts" and "non-sexual acts" are absurd, since not only sexuality, but all interpersonal contacts are regulated by very strict procedures. People always keep at a certain distance. You can't touch them if not on specific occasions. If a man touches a woman's thigh, it means that he wants to go to bed. If a man touches another man's ass, he's a queer... etc.
This situation forces men and women to pour into sexuality a whole series of natural drives towards their fellow man or woman that have nothing 'sexual' about them, but that are erased from the short list of accepted behaviour 'with people' because of some resemblance with sexual behaviour.
Think, for example, how wonderful it would be if we had the habit of spending an hour a day massaging or being massaged by friends and relatives.
A similar situation would immediately change the contours of sexual life, taking the pleasure of tactile sensations beyond the confines of sex. If massaging each other at the office, at home, on the bus, were common there would be an enormous upsetting of social habits. A stranger's offer: "Would you like me to massage you?" would be transformed from an audacious erotic proposal to a polite example of civil courtesy. You would then think of a group of children that massage their teacher as something other than a scene of juvenile perversion.
Sexuality is from early on obstructed because besides satisfying itself, it has to compensate for a dissatisfaction incurred in other spheres of life. This lack of physical contact with your fellow man or woman outside sex, besides overburdening the needs that sex is called to satisfy, causes incidental damage of enormous importance, since it limits the practice of bodily contact, so impoverishing the physical sensitivity of individuals. Practically, it produces a certain degree of numbness in sensations.
We can say that, to a certain extent, our pleasure system is rusty just like a tool that is rarely used. This arouses fear and uneasiness in sexual relationships, often making sexual practices an awkward and unproductive huddle of bodies.
It's enough to see the frenetic rhythm of sex acts that are shown to us in most pornographic films, to make us realize how widespread the idea of sex not as the gentle pleasantness of physical contact, but as the pure iconographic representation of the vehement power of male virility and the infinite compliance of the female prey is.
Man, cheated of his instinct, has lost the awareness of how natural sex should be, so that this instinctive sex no longer exists anywhere. We construct our way of making love on the basis of information, that is for the most part unhealthy. Only with the effort of the self-learner, do we sometimes succeed in inventing for ourselves a way of making love that seems our own and expresses our true instincts.
The lack of naturalness, the difficulty of finding a sexual mimicry that corresponds to desire is another matter that is hardly ever talked about.
What do you do in bed? You kiss, you touch, and your sexual organs come in contact with the lover's body. But how is all this done?
The only universal standard recognized to evaluate the degree of the quality of sex is the level of raunchiness reached: the more risquŽ the things you do, the more points you score. The utmost is to put it in wherever it goes in. In some social milieus, point scoring is the opposite. The less you do it, the better it is. Others also value a romantic standard. The more you exchange rapturous, dreamy looks, the more you sigh in her ears or on her neck, the better it is.
Assessments on harmony, reciprocity, playfulness, serenity and a sense of humour is totally lacking in the standard used. This obtuse lack of sensitivity for the concreteness of the sex act leads to a huge loss. In fact, even the simple mechanics of coupling appear screwball in the end.
People don't know what to touch. They don't ask. They don't talk about anythingabout the details of skin to skin contact, what he or she prefers. In this confusion, aided by the oppressive moralism that chains women, an essential part of the concrete dynamics of sex has almost been lost.
In fact, most women don't use their vaginal muscles during sex. Another disaster that has repercussions on sexuality is the desire for possession and the whole labyrinth of infidelity, insecurity and betrayal within which sexuality unravels.
A series of meanings and emotional and sentimental values are attributed to true sex that add to the already heavy burden that this part of human life must sustain. You could say that you almost never get to sex because all the emotional negativity, the tensions and disappointments of social life end up in sexuality, and true sex gets lost in this chaos. So that in the end, immersed in tensions and problems that are foreign to it, an orgasm loses it's strength. It leaves us dissatisfied.
Gripped by this feeling of incompleteness, often unaware of it and unable to confront it, we then end up clinging to what is concrete about our orgasms and we become "spies" of our pleasure. All tense and no longer delighting in pleasure, but engaged in measuring it so that, as participants in pleasure, we risk becoming only observers.
So the tenuousness of the orgasm casts us into a narrow sexual materialism and makes us also lose that part of the orgasm that is marvellous precisely because it is the tenuous, impalpable joy of being inside a world of irresistible and incomprehensible phenomena.
The tenuousness of the orgasm as a whole obscures that precious part of the orgasm that is instead naturally tenuous, and that of all the pleasures, is certainly a great pleasure because it frees us, with its 'unbearable lightness', from the temptation of protecting our "EGO" from the outpouring of emotions, thus making your total abandonment to pleasure possible.
We don't have that serenity and that erotic enjoyment, that silence of tensions satisfied that allow us to feel the gentleness of the soul. The subtlest, impalpable, and tenuous part of the orgasm.
That instant of total psychological abandonment that for a second suspends the existence of armours that defend our "EGO".
That instant in which we experience pleasure because we are no longer separated from the rest of the universe.