Volume 6, Number 5 · March 31, 1966
On Pornography
By Gore Vidal
The Olympia Reader
edited by Maurice Girodias
Grove, 725 pp., $12.50
The man and the woman make love; attain climax; fall separate. Then she whispers, 'I'll tell you who I was thinking of if you'll tell me who you were thinking of.' Like most sex jokes, the origins of this amiable exchange are obscure. But whatever the source, it seldom fails to evoke a certain awful recognition since few lovers are willing to admit that in the sexual act to create or maintain excitement they may need some mental image as erotic supplement to the body in attendance. One perverse contemporary maintains that when he is with A he thinks of B and when he is with B he thinks of A; each attracts him only to the degree that he is able simultaneously to evoke the image of the other. Also, for those who find the classic positions of 'mature' love-making unsatisfactory yet dare not distress the beloved with odd requests, sexual fantasy becomes inevitable and the shy lover soon finds himself imposing mentally all sorts of wild images upon his unsuspecting partner, who may also be relying on an inner theater of the mind to keep things going: in which case, those popular writers who deplore 'our lack of communication today' may have a point. Ritual and magic also have their devotees. In one of Kingsley Amis's fictions, a man mentally conjugates Latin verbs in order to delay orgasm as he waits chivalrously for his partner's predictably slow response. While another considerate lover (non-fictional) can only reduce tempo by thinking of a large loaf of sliced white bread, manufactured by Bond.
Review, 5084 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |