Lying about sex

Salwa al Neimi is the first woman I come across to speak the voice of Nehadeh; which is also my voice. (Perhaps Marguerite Duras also does, but I have not read her). Al Neimi likes sex, finds fulfillment in it, seeks it, and does not let other things interfere -- her whole life seems to be lived so as to maximize her sexual pleasure. (Love -- she says -- I don't understand what that word means; but desire, yes, I understand it).

(This does not mean that she's a slut: people like us -- sex-maniacs -- have a such a hard time finding good partners that we tend to want to hang on to the ones we have found -- firmly, and loyally, if not always exclusively. I know).

My past attempts to speak this kind of language with my lovers have invariably led to trouble: even with the really good lovers -- those not only adept but also clearly fulfilled in the act; they often seemed to have had that amazing frame of mind in which their ability to do it well and enjoy it somehow cohabited with the strong belief that the sex was not important, merely a means to an end, the end being e.g. lazy afternoon walks in the sun to nowhere in particular, for instance (i.e. comfort of being together). Hearing me speak that language, the language of Al Neimi, they were usually offended: I was somehow not respecting -- perhaps even castrating -- a part of them that was to their minds the truer and more important part of them -- the non-sexual part. Not to mention, also, that I was proving myself base, vulgar, and -- of course, the usual -- typically male.

Beh.

It is of course preposterous to me: lazy walks in the park can be done with a dog, one does not need a well-matched lover for it. I don't want a woman for lazy walks in the park; in fact, I do not want any woman who does not want me first and foremost in that way.

Stumbling upon Al Neimi has a perverse result on me: instead of delighting me with the discovery that there do exist other people who think, feel and talk like me, I am overwhelmed by the stifling, depressing, crushing majority of those who do not; with whom one cannot be honest; with whom one has to dissimulate.