David Wallace - Both Flesh and Not - Essays

History-wise, both nature and culture have been ingenious at erecting impediments that give the choice of passion its price and value: religious proscriptions; penalties for adultery and divorce; chivalric chastity and courtly decorum; the stigma of illegitimate birth; chaperonage; madonna/whore complexes; syphilis; back-alley abortions; a set of “moral” codes that put sensuality on a taboo-level with defecation and apostasy… from the Victorians’ dread of the body to early TV’s one-foot-on-the-floor-at-all-times rule; from the automatic ruin of “fallen” women to back-seat tussles in which girlfriends struggled to deny boyfriends what they begged for in order to preserve their respect. Granted, from 1996’s perspective, most of the old sexual dragons look stupid and cruel. But we need to realize that they had something big in their favor: as long as the dragons reigned, sex wasn’t casual, not ever. Historically, human sexuality has been a deadly serious business — and the fiercer its dragons, the seriouser sex got; and the higher the price of choice, the higher the erotic voltage surrounding what people chose.

And then, what must have seemed suddenly, the dragons all keeled over and died. This was just around when I was born, the ’60s’ “Revolution” in sexuality. Sci-fi-type advances in prophylaxis and antivenereals, feminism as a political force, TV as institution, the rise of a culture of youth and its gland-intensive art and music, Civil Rights, rebellion as fashion, inhibition-killing drugs, the moral castration of churches and censors. Bikinis, miniskirts. “Free Love.” The castle’s doors weren’t so much unlocked as blown off their hinges. Sex could finally be unconstrained, “Hang-Up”-free, just another appetite: casual . I was toothless and incontinent through most of the Revolution, but it must have seemed like instant paradise. For a while.

I was pre-conscious for the Revolution’s big party, but I got to experience fully the hangover that followed — the erotic malaise of the ’70s, as sex, divorced from most price and consequence, reached a kind of saturation-point in the culture — swinging couples and meat-market bars, hot tubs and EST, Hustler ’s gynecological spreads, Charlie’s Angels, herpes, kiddie-porn, mood rings, teenage pregnancy, Plato’s Retreat, disco. I remember Looking for Mr. Goodbar all too well, its grim account of the emptiness and self-loathing that a decade of rampant casual fucking had brought on. Looking back, I realize that I came of sexual age in a culture that was starting to miss the very dragons whose deaths had supposedly freed it.

If I’ve got some of this right, then the casual knights of my own bland generation might well come to regard AIDS as a blessing, a gift perhaps bestowed by nature to restore some critical balance, or maybe summoned unconsciously out of the collective erotic despair of the post-’60s glut. Because the dragon is back, and clothed in a fire that can’t be ignored.

I mean no offense. Nobody’d claim that a lethal epidemic is a good thing. Nothing from nature is good or bad. Natural things just are; the only good and bad things are people’s various choices in the face of what is. But our own history shows that — for whatever reasons — an erotically charged human existence requires impediments to passion, prices for choices. That hundreds of thousands of people are dying horribly of AIDS seems like a cruel and unfair price to pay for a new erotic impediment. But it’s not obviously more unfair than the millions who’ve died of syphilis, incompetent abortions, and “crimes of passion,” nor obviously more cruel than that people used routinely to have their lives wrecked by “falling,” “fornicating,” “sinning,” having “illegitimate” children, or getting trapped by inane religious codes in loveless and abusive marriages. At least it’s not obvious to me.

There’s a new dragon to face. But facing a dragon doesn’t mean swaggering up to it unarmed and insulting its mom. And the erotic charge of hazard surrounding sex and HIV doesn’t mean we can continue to engage in sport-fucking in the name of “courage” or romantic “will.” In fact, AIDS’s gift to us lies in its loud reminder that there’s nothing casual about sex at all. This is a gift because human sexuality’s power and meaning increase with our recognition of its seriousness. This has been what’s “bad” about casual sex from the beginning: sex is never bad, but it’s also never casual.

Our sexual recognition of what is can start with the conscientious use of protection as a gesture of love toward ourselves and our partners. But a deeper, far braver recognition of just what kind of dragon we’re facing now is starting to take hold, and — far from Armageddon — is doing much to increase the erotic voltage of contemporary life. Thanks to AIDS, we’re expanding our imaginations with respect to what is “sexual.” Deep down, we all know that the real allure of sexuality has about as much to do with copulation as the appeal of food does with metabolic combustion. Trite though it (used to) sound, real sexuality is about our struggles to connect with one another, to erect bridges across the chasms that separate selves. Sexuality is, finally, about imagination . Thanks to brave people’s recognition of AIDS as a fact of life, we are beginning to realize that highly charged sex can take place in all sorts of ways we’d forgotten or neglected — through non-genital touching, or over the phone, or via the mail; in a conversational nuance; in an expression; in a body’s posture, a certain pressure in a held hand. Sex can be everywhere we are, all the time. All we need to do is really face this dragon, yielding neither to hysterical terror nor to childish denial. In return, the dragon can help us relearn what it means to be truly sexual. This is not a small thing, or optional. Fire is lethal, but we need it. The key is how we come to fire. It’s not just other people you have to respect.

— 1996

esculent—edible espalier—tree or shrub trained to grow in a flat plane against a wall; (adj.) espaliered esplanade—open flat place in park… like concrete spaces around central fountain et ux—Latin abbrev. for “et uxor” = “and wife”; “Mr. Hoad et ux” etude—musical piece composed for the development of a specific point of technique étui—small ornamental case for things like needles euchre—card game; slang for to cheat = “he euchred us out of our life savings” euphuism—ornate, allusive, overpoetic prose style exanthema—skin eruption accompanying some diseases, like dire skin trouble excise(n.) — internal tax on production, manufacture, sale, consumption of something excrescence—abnormal outgrowth or enlargement like a wart or boil excursus—long intellectual digression in a speech or piece of writing execrate(v.) — to loathe, hate, declare loath-some or hateful exeleutherostomize—to speak out freely (nonceword from Greek roots) exhilarant(adj.) — serving to exhilarate: “warm and exhilarant sunshine”; “exhilarant coitus” exocrine(n.) — an externally secreting gland, such as salivary or sweat gland exordium—introductory part of speech in practical rhetoric eyeteeth—canine teeth of upper jaw falcate—sickle-shaped falx—sickle-shaped anatomical structure fanfaronade—bragging or blustering behavior; a fanfare fastigiate—having parallel upcurving branches like lombardy poplar fastigium—worst part of fever, illness fatuous—unconsciously smug and foolish felly/felloe—the rim or section of rim of wheel that’s supported by the spokes feoff- ment—grant of lands as a fee fer de lance—venomous U.S. snake (pit viper) fermentative—causing fermentation (“the air in the trailer was fermentative”) ferrule—a ring or cap placed around a pipe to keep it from splitting ferule—cane, stick, or flat board used for punishing children festoon(n.) — decoration: a string or garland, as of leaves or flowers, suspended in a curve between two points fetch(n.) — distance unimpeded winds or waves travel fey—displaying an otherworldly or fairyish (coyly transcendent) look; faggy? filibuster—private, not military, raid of foreign territory flake(n.) — a frame or platform for drying produce flambeau—littorch; a decorative candlestick flange—protruding rim or edge or col lar on wheel or pipe shaft, used to strengthen, hold, or attach flitch—longitudinal cut in tree; a bunch of long planks bound together to make a beam floret—a small or reduced-size flower, like a daisy foliate—of or relating to leaves fourchette—small fold of mucous membrane forming the posterior region of the vulva and connecting the posterior ends of the labia majora; narrow, forked strip of material connecting the front and baxctions of fingers of gloves fox(v.) — to repair a shoe by attaching a new upper; to make beer sour by fermenting fugleman—leader, especially political leader fustian—corduroyish fabric fustic—kind of yellow gotten from fustic tree (tropical U.S.) fustigate—criticize harshly gabardine—sturdy, tightly woven cotton or wool fabric galenical(n.) — medicine made up of 100 % herbal or vegetable matter