Fwd: Re: Safe Sex is No Fun

[Burgess, John]

Adam:
>What about the gang-bang in which Bianca was conceived?  Or Pokler's 
>film-inspired sex with his wife, which is described in rape-like >terms? 
 Or the round-robin orgy aboard the Anubis?

No argument here, but I will take a whack at your good questions:

Sex, as many other human interactions, is open to varying interpretation 
by the various participants.  Sex, as many other such interactions, but 
perhaps more so, is an intensely individualized activity.  When the 
individual(s) concerned have a slipping grasp of reality, then all sorts 
of things happen and terms of reference have to be shifted.

The 'rape' of Leni by Pokler -- and thus the conception of Ilse, of whom 
more, later -- is a pseudo-rape.  He's not psychologically engaged in a 
sexual act with Leni, but rather with Greta.  Her S/M film scene has 
eroticized him to such an extent that he believes he's actually 'raping' 
Greta (because she likes it, but also because it makes him feel alive).  
He has flashes of Leni, but they, too, are melded into his struggle to 
achieve/develop/maintain his own identity. He is seeking self-survival, 
albeit in a manner that depersonalizes Leni absolutely.

Ilse, and the sequential visits by her or a 'double' provided by THEM at 
Zwolfkinder, is another desperate activty whereby Polker tries to stay 
human.  He is, I think we can agree, pretty fucked up.  His emotional 
wires get crossed, he can feel the short-circuiting (thus his violence 
toward 'Ilse'), but he's still trying to find a real expression of his 
love.  "Inappropriate?"  No argument there.  But he's doing the best he 
can... which is pretty inadequate.


The orgy on the Anubis is probably the easiest (for me) to comprehend. 
"Decadence," as a state of being, practically defines the situation in 
which a society (here, the passengers on the ship) are so jaded by what 
ordinary folk consider 'real life,' that they have to push the edges.  
This scene could have been taken out of Boccaccio, easily, and probably 
out of Suetonius as well.  In pushing the edges, the participants can 
quickly go "over to top" (to use both WWI and colloquial meanings).  As 
'ordinary' life has lost its savour, has gotten boring (as in "bored to 
death?"), only that which gives an edge, adds salt, gets kinky, can make 
the participants feel alive.