THE JONG AND THE RESTLESS

The Zipless Fallacy (Erica Jong, 6/30/03, NEWSWEEK)

Since passion is about fantasy and marriage is about reality, passion and marriage are the oddest of odd bedfellows. My own experience has been that passion ebbs and flows in marriage. It is far more dependent on romantic vacations and child-free weekends than we like to admit. And when we do check into a fancy hotel with our spouse, as the women’s mags recommend, we’re likely to start talking about whether the roof needs fixing or the car needs tuning. After all, marriage with work and children leaves little time for adult conversation. You might get to that hotel room in the sky and use the time just to converse with your spouse. And you might consider that a perfect evening.

Perhaps the problem is not in our marriages but in our expectations. In our post-sexual-revolution era, we expect carnality and familiarity wrapped up in the same shiny gift package. We would be much happier and much more fulfilled if we changed those unrealistic expectations. And our glossy mags would do well to stop teasing us while pretending to be helping us.

The truth is that ziplessness has always been a Platonic ideal rather than a daily reality. Yes, wild passionate sex exists. It can even exist in marriage. But it is occasional, not daily. And it is not the only thing that keeps people together. Talking and laughing keep couples together. Shared goals keep couples together. If this were not true, how would some couples survive illnesses, deaths of beloved family members, even holocausts? The pair bond is strong. We are pair-bonding creatures--like swans or geese. We can also be as promiscuous as baboons or bonobos. Those are the two extremes of human sexuality, and there are all gradations of chastity and sensuality in between. The glue that holds couples together consists of many things: laughter, companionship, tenderness--and sex. The busyness of marriage is real, but we also use it to protect us from raw intimacy, from having to be too open too much of the time. Pleasure is terrifying because it breaks down the boundaries between people. Embracing passion means living with fear. “Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate,” wrote the poet Rupert Brooke. “Love sells the proud heart’s citadel to fate.” Amen.

Isn't part of the problem--a part which Ms Jong did her share to contribute to--that sex is so omnipresent in our culture that it isn't, well, sexy
anymore? When every skank singer on TV is half naked and so on and so forth, the well-turned ankle ain't gonna get the engine revvin' too fast. When movies insist on being more and more graphic, doesn't the old-fashioned kiss face some stiff competition? When the catalogues that come to your house feature more skin than your Dad's Playboy ever did, why sneak into his sock drawer for a furtive peak? We're losing the excitement that rarity offers and what do we have to show for it? Britney Spears navel? Madonna's pelvic thrusting? Pamela Lee Anderson is a star? Gay couples kissing on tv? Calvin Klein ads tarting up children? Al Gore accosting his wife at the convention? Memoirs revealing relationships with one's own father or the family pet? A floodtide of e-mails promising a longer penis, instant erection, or bigger breasts? Has the trade-off been worth it? Couldn't you do reasonably well without all of that?

Westerners react in horror to the burqas of the Muslims and look down on the "prudery" of the Puritans and the Victorians, but there's little evidence that these folks have/had any less sex than we and no little reason to believe that they valued the experience and their partners more. When it comes to public sexuality, we're thinking less is more. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 6, 2003 1:17 PM