Intimacy vs. Ecstasy
In the most important book I ever read about sex, Murray S. Davis's Smut: Erotic reality/obscene ideology, the author defines "lust" as an altered state of consciousness distinct from our everyday senses.
The book is about quite a lot more than that and if I can ever find my copy I'll write extensively about the other stuff, but for now let's say after reading the book I got a whole new perspective on what sex means in the social sense, and a whole new set of questions to ask whenever I notice one of my assumptions about sex bubbling up from my upbringing.
Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Today's a good day to talk about this because we've got 364 days before the next one. Anyway, I was thinking about how when Valentine's is working for you it's (traditionally) about three things.
1) By yourself: you select cards, presents, treats, what you're going to wear, what you want to do, what you want to say, where you're going to go. Often you'll be pushing a little load of hopes, fears, dreams, resentments, expectations, lessons learned, and so on. But you'll do almost all of this on your own. Any plans you make with someone else will be superficial to your inner dialog and your thoughts of the one you look forward (or at least hope) to being with.
2) Together: You get together, almost always just you together. People almost always eat together, just the two of you. My experience waiting tables years ago, and sitting at tables listening to people around me, says a lot gets said on Valentine's day that usually isn't said other times. This is often when we bring together and share the thoughts, the gifts, the dreams, the plans, the expectations, the hopes and fears we've collected all day. This is when we have our heart-to-hearts. (I'll get back to this in a moment, but first I want to add the final element of a traditional Valentine's Day...)
3) Together, but not exactly "together:" Often, though not by any means always, you may get together after dinner and fuck the living stuffing out of each other. When I say "not exactly 'together'" though I mean that while we're as physically close as two people can be during sex, we're also maddened with lust, fucking with abandon, star struck, articulating our feelings not with words but cries and murmers and with the urgent gestures of our bodies. In other words, we're in an altered state of consciousness distinct from our everyday senses.
(Depending on verve, libido, and other factors you may repeat #2 and #3 over the course of the evening.)
Now, romantic convention has it that sex is one of the most intimate acts between two people. I'm gonna say maybe it's the most vulnerable thing we can do, and maybe the most physical. But intimate? I say it's when you're head to head at a table for two. Sure, not just on Valentine's Day, and not even especially so. Breakfast the morning after is a good time too. Dates when you've gotten past the are-we-gonna-do-it stage too.
There are other genuinely intimate moments, of course. Long walks work wonders. Long drives together provide lots of opportunity of course. Murmering into the night after sex, or after sleeping in can be great too.
I don't want to sound like I'm confusing talking with intimacy, by the way. My insight years ago in restaurants wasn't just about that. It was about a presence, expression, and contact without the loss of clarity that comes (wonderfully! sweetly! But generally-inexpressibly!) with sex.
Fortunately (as I like to say) we don't have to choose one over the other. You can have a perfectly lovely life with one or the other. Having both however (even for a single evening, even if you part forever only hours later) just rocks.
Update: By the way, feel free to disagree completely. We might just disagree on the meaning of "intimacy" and there's never a problem with getting clarity on the big words we use all the time.
Hm, good points. I think you may be right that the ecstatic moment is a transformative consciousness that at least in part each person can only experience individually. But you know how you're saying either one is good, but having both rocks? I'm wondering if the concept of "intimacy" is instead having that combination of both the close communication moments and the ecstatic moments. Because you can have those close connections and conversations with a friend you are not sexually attracted to, but you would rarely refer to this as being "intimate" with him or her. And many people can have great sex with someone they don't really know very well or care about, and they wouldn't say they felt great intimacy with that person.
Aristophanes probably explained what I'm trying to say better than I'm doing:
"And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment."
Love and friendship that spawns a desire that can't be named or understood. That's intimacy.
So the "ecstasy" half still holds, but that friendship/intense communication half, that needs another term, I think. "Confluence?" Or maybe there is no good word invented yet...
[Wow, Syl, thanks for the wonderful, thoughtful reply! I think the Greeks had a couple of good words where we've only got one. They were marvelously attuned to the world of human interaction and so they had as many words for it as Arctic dwellers have for snow. ... I'm sticking with "intimacy" though and keeping it separate from the intense connection of sex. I agree another word might be necessary to distinguish between intimate friends who are also lovers and those who aren't. ... Finally, though I'm sticking with the distinction you make an excellent case for not. Thanks. --fl]
Oh, I still think we should keep the distinction you drew! Definitely. I was more discussing semantics--just saying we should have three names instead of only two (and I just adjusted which got what name).
Anyway, hope you've got all three yourself. You deserve to rock.
[Thank you, Syl. Same for you. --fl]
I like the way you expressed what intamacy is and can be. The connection during sex can be intimate, but intamacy is not always sex.
[Thank you, Bella. --fl]
Intimacy is knowing someone, really knowing them, at least, to me. My hubby knows me, knows that I'd rather have a Hershey Bar and a daisy from a ditch instead of hothouse roses and Godiva's best dark ... since it's winter still and there are no daisies, and since I'm on a diet, he got me ... ANOTHER HORSE!!!!!! Now, THAT'S intimate, as in "I know what she wants!" I also have the promise of hot steamy button popping bodice ripping sex this weekend, after the work week is through. Anticipation always makes it better !!!!!
[You've totally got it, Rhia. Your partner knows those things about you not during sex (the sweet, sweet inarticulate icing) but in your moments of intimacy together. Thanks. --fl]
Figleaf:
Please do write more about Davis's book, Smut: Erotic reality/obscene ideology. It is out of print, but all the reviews I was able to find gave it high praise. So I look forward to reading it as well as your comments and those of your readers.
Kochanie
[It's out of print but you can still find it at Amazon and I've seen it in libraries before. It's a startlingly grounding book. I've been looking for my copy for a year -- it's *somewhere* in my boxes and I'm just going to have to dig for it one of these days. If I can find it (I may just order another copy) I'll certainly write about it. Thanks, Kochanie. --fl]