Monday, June 28, 2004
Sex talk
It's too early in the week to talk about sex, but I'm gonna do it anyway. The inspiration really comes from Brian's piece about breasts and Andrew's piece on the economics of prostitution.
In America, you can pretty much talk about sex openly in public and not having to fear dire consequences, though one should be careful when little children or grumpy old people are around. Such practice is encouraged by the popularity of Sex & The City where the protagonists talk about nothing but sex. The open discussion of sex is healthy because it treats sex as an everyday matter rather than a taboo subject. Last Friday, a bunch of us were hanging out after my gig and Bill said the reason why he sticks with his "doll baby" is because she endures the music of Coltrane in the background when he's giving her pleasure. "She doesn't seem to mind the Coltrane Ballads album with some vicious chords by McCoy," said Bill. Cracked us up.
The best way to discuss sex is to write about it in a classy manner. No one is better at it than Milan Kundera, who turns humor and erotica into literary gold. In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, he writes:
I am now 65. So I have had a sex life of 50 years. I assume - and it's a very modest estimate - that I made love an average of twice a week. That makes a 100 times a year or 5,000 in my life. If an orgasm lasts 5 seconds, I have had 25,000 seconds of orgasm. That makes a total of 6 hours and 56 minutes of orgasm.
On the topic of misogynism, Kundera writes:
Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists or, more accurately, gynophobes. Worshipers revere traditional feminine values such as feelings, the home, motherhood, fertility....while in misogynists these value inspire a touch of terror. Worshipers revere women's femininity, while misogynists always prefer women to femininity. Don't forget: a woman can be happy only with a misogynist.
No wonder many women enjoy the process of being mistreated by guys and love complaining about it. When I visited the Picasso Museum in Paris three years ago, it bothered me to witness such misogynistic portrayal of women. Kundera's passage clued me in, but I still don't get all of it. Culture and customs play a great part, and environment and painful past experience contribute to the mess (See movie Bad Lieutenant). In Picasso's case, it was the latter.
Someone I fancy says, "I always fall back into kundera's arms, it is comforting and familiar." Can't agree more. It's like returning home.
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In America, you can pretty much talk about sex openly in public and not having to fear dire consequences, though one should be careful when little children or grumpy old people are around. Such practice is encouraged by the popularity of Sex & The City where the protagonists talk about nothing but sex. The open discussion of sex is healthy because it treats sex as an everyday matter rather than a taboo subject. Last Friday, a bunch of us were hanging out after my gig and Bill said the reason why he sticks with his "doll baby" is because she endures the music of Coltrane in the background when he's giving her pleasure. "She doesn't seem to mind the Coltrane Ballads album with some vicious chords by McCoy," said Bill. Cracked us up.
The best way to discuss sex is to write about it in a classy manner. No one is better at it than Milan Kundera, who turns humor and erotica into literary gold. In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, he writes:
I am now 65. So I have had a sex life of 50 years. I assume - and it's a very modest estimate - that I made love an average of twice a week. That makes a 100 times a year or 5,000 in my life. If an orgasm lasts 5 seconds, I have had 25,000 seconds of orgasm. That makes a total of 6 hours and 56 minutes of orgasm.
On the topic of misogynism, Kundera writes:
Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists or, more accurately, gynophobes. Worshipers revere traditional feminine values such as feelings, the home, motherhood, fertility....while in misogynists these value inspire a touch of terror. Worshipers revere women's femininity, while misogynists always prefer women to femininity. Don't forget: a woman can be happy only with a misogynist.
No wonder many women enjoy the process of being mistreated by guys and love complaining about it. When I visited the Picasso Museum in Paris three years ago, it bothered me to witness such misogynistic portrayal of women. Kundera's passage clued me in, but I still don't get all of it. Culture and customs play a great part, and environment and painful past experience contribute to the mess (See movie Bad Lieutenant). In Picasso's case, it was the latter.
Someone I fancy says, "I always fall back into kundera's arms, it is comforting and familiar." Can't agree more. It's like returning home.
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