The C-Word, et cetera

[Paul Mackin]

>From SkipW:

> I think one interesting thing about the Roger/Jessica passages here is
> the contrast between what is essentially a cute,
> boy-meets-girl-they-fall-in-love story, and the actual sexual and
> linguistic content.  We sort of expect hand-holding, the timid first
> kiss, that kind of thing, but what we get is coming, cocks & cunts, and
> fingers up the asshole.  In a tenderly-described scene where we would
> expect to see Roger stroking Jessica's hair while she falls asleep we get
> cunnilingus instead.  This has always struck me, but I haven't figured
> out quite why, exactly.  Maybe we're so used to seeing sex and love being
> portrayed as separate, at most casually-related, entities, that we're
> shocked when we see them so inextricably joined -- the way we're taught
> they should be.

Don't know the answer to the sex/love riddle, but Skip's post suggests
another possibly RELATED paradox.

It's  the curious fact that a number of sex activities which will seem
commonplace and not the least bit "sinful" while DOING them,
can, in spite of ourselves, seem  overly-salacious
when they arrive in our brains through the WRITTEN WORD  (especially
maybe when not accompanied by a lot of hair-stroking and I-love-yous).

Can this be because we are living  in a time still quite close to when
authors were (for unexplained reasons) forbidden to put such things
in their books? (Let's call it a collective consciousness since for obvious
reasons many p-listers cannot remember those pre-lady-chatterly-or-whatever
days. Or we could say I'm just an old fogey.).

But back to Skip. Authors, being what they are (gotta move those books), 
naturally are going to emphasize the side ot love/sex that will stir
us up a little, giving seeming short shrift to what we are all, again
collectively natch,  quite used to seeing Andy Hardy and Polly 
Benedict do under the cirumstances.

			P.