Love Ain't Nothing but Sex Misspelled Read Free Page B

dismissed. He'll test her by introducing her to a guy at the office party who fits her secret sex fantasies, and later asking, "What'd you think of Ken?" And she'll go right on basting the roast or drawing up the blueprints for the new museum wing or finishing the sketches for that children's book, and she won't even look up as she says, "He's nice enough, I suppose. Not very bright, though, is he?" But half the time when she's fucking him, she's envisioning Ken.
    These are only a few. There are others, many others. Add your own at leisure. Talk it over with your mate or love-partner. See if you can get further examples to convince yourself that what I'm talking about here is hypocrisy and fear, not standards of sexual conduct. What I'm talking about is the title of this book: love ain't nothing but sex misspelled. The perversion of sex in the name of love, using two quite clearly separable needs as reinforcements of one another, because you're not secure enough in either to think they stand by themselves and take care of themselves and enrich through their separate powers. The perversion of love to obtain sex as a commodity. The lies that are told because honesty might well mean rejection. And the unbelievably crippling fear of rejection that moves most of us more than we care to admit. Thus doth love make liars of us all.
    An obnoxious woman is a strong man's "limp."
    (I'm sure there's a reverse to this, as seen from the viewpoint of a woman; but being a man, I'm most familiar with this side of it. You'll forgive me if I report this section only from what I know, even if it is one-sided. Female readers can mentally write an addendum in which they project what I'm about to say for the flip-side.)
    Here's this really sensational sweet guy. He's gentle, fair, moderately talented, seems to be happy with his life and what he's doing; and he's involved with a woman who is a righteous phony. She's loud, she drinks too much, she's a fucking pain in the ass at a dinner table: namedropping, interrupting, belittling him in front of his friends, cutting the other women who try to show some warmth to the guy because they're embarrassed for him, interrupting everyone, rearranging the environment to suit herself ("I have to sit here, not there" ... "Would you ask the maítre d' to lower the air conditioning" ... "There's absolutely nothing on this menu, would you ask the waiter if they can find me an abalone steak" ... "Sid, would you mind not smoking, I washed my hair this afternoon").
    And you ask yourself, how can this terrific guy hang out with such a creep?
    (It occurs to me that the reverse, a sensational woman tied to a schmuck guy, is more clearly changing these days. The incidence of women splitting from their husbands, initiating divorce or dissolution of a living-together situation, is very much on the rise. Female-initiated divorces have risen in this country alone by three times what they were even fifteen years ago. Now it's the men who try to hang in there with a lousy relationship while the women, I suppose because of widespread consciousness-raising that has advised them it's feasible to break up without social stigmatization, are taking off. But that's just a guess.)
    I've fiddled around with trying to come up logical on this one, finding some kind of Universal Truth why strong people should harness themselves to albatrosses, but this is one of those aspects of love that I've seen again and again, and every time it's for a different reason. In one case it was that the guy wasn't sufficiently secure in his ego-strength, sufficiently filled with feelings of his worthiness to love and be loved in return. In another case it was because the woman was devoted to the guy in private, absolutely revolved around him. In yet another case the guy felt guilt about how he and his woman had gotten together, and he hung in there because he was paying dues.
    Lori shrugs and says, "Love is blind."
    Maybe that's the best answer. I don't