photo by tgw, "Her Dancing on Her Toes" 2006"What's love got to do with it?"
I have someone in love with me. It's a very private love. Sometimes I sit for hours trying to know what to do with it--IT being LOVE. Like I don't know how to handle it, though when I think about it, I luv the idea of it being directed toward me.
My second wife asked me right before she divorced me why I had never told her I loved her. At that moment, I could not recall anytime she had ever told me she loved me either, though turnabout wasn't fair play in this case. The closest we ever got to love, and I say this with much deep investigation, was during sex. But our sex wasn't love. Here again, I don't remember her saying she loved me during sex or after sex nor do I remember me saying I loved her during sex or after sex. What we did say was all sexual stuff, like "oh yeah! god-damn right, yesss, oh Jesus you're such good...." If that's love then OK I've had lots of love from lots of different women. Except my thinking keeps challenging me: "You've had sex with women you didn't love, right?" "Right." "If it was good sex, same as if she'd a been your wife, did that mean you guys were 'in love' at the hottest moment during the act?" "Why's it called an act?" And maybe that's the key to it in terms of sex. Sex is simply an act. A ceremony.
Sex is like dancing with a woman. The dance should culminate in sex. The sex dance is the dance that leads to love--the goal of the sex dance being copulation; the goal of copulation being procreation; the goal of procreation to have children, to raise them as a mother and father. "What's love got to do with it?"
Is mating LOVE? We're supposed to "be in love" before we marry aren't we? Marriage is the legalization of our natural need to mate to have children (or even if you're gay or Lesbian--without sex is there love?)--marriages should last at least 9 months. But we are mammals. Some mammals don't mate; the champion male of the tribe, pride, pack, whatever, gets to bang the females of his choice from his harem. Some humans see polygamy as the highest form of love a champion male can have for women in general, especially the women of his pride. Even there, if a polygamist male can't get it up, then can all those wives be happy living on "love" or would ringers have to be called in to satisfy the pride of women needing to be sexually serviced by a champion male? It's complicated; yet it should be simple. Chiefs around the world have always been allowed to have as many wives as they needed.
Like where did LOVE come from? Tina Turner singing about "What's love got to do with it?" called love a "second-hand emotion." Does that mean if the introductory sex was good, then came love? Tina claimed sex was terrible with Ike. Or did she? I always feel when I hear her sing "What's Love Got to Do With It?" that she is singing about her own feelings, though I know she didn't write the song, though surely it was written for her. Marvin Gaye believed sex was healing; therefore, sex is love.
The sex is all that I now remember in terms of affections I had for my second wife, the young one. In recalling sex with her is when I have a feeling of loneliness for her--you know, when I begin to miss her and think about what if we'd stayed together--guilt tripping old Herr Doktor would call it.
I was always able to get it up for her, if that has anything to do with it. Some of the best sex I ever had was with her: like one time in particular in New Orleans on a steamy summer's afternoon when I went into the bathroom while she was taking a shower and when she came out of the shower I was naked and with a towel and she stepped into the towel and I began to dry her off, kissing after I had dried, all down her luscious body, and she did have a wonderfully rounded young smooth untarnished body, and I pulled her back with me, sat my ass down on the toilet, pointed my burning spear skyhigh, and pulled her down on top of it with a "loving" plunge, and I will never forget that act and how well we grooved on it for over an hour in that bathroom. Everything just clicked. Even to the point of "cumming together," where sex stories usually dive off into fantasy (tall tales, fish stories), but we really did gush-spasm at the same time, her released liquid love gushing around my spurting madly inside her love. Absolutely perfect spontaneous sex with an absolutely perfect spontaneous conclusion.
I can rationalize that pleasurable event as a love event. I had to love that woman to fuck her that good; and she had to love me to fuck me that good. By remembering this story and the woman who participated in the story with me, I now maybe see that event, yes, as a love event. At that moment I am supposing we mutually needed sex and we mutually achieved satisfaction and as such we were sharing our LOVE for each other. So love has its roots in sex. "Oh, I love you, baby, especially after that!"
Sounds corny now. To believe that, then, yes, good sex is LOVE. But then, that leaves me vulnerable to the philosophical question, does that mean I couldn't have ever loved my mother because I never got to have sex with her?
And I stutter step my way into the question of did I love my mother?
No, I don't remember ever loving my mother. She wasn't the loving type. She hugged me when I came to her crying like a baby. She was gentle with me in, I suppose, a loving way when I was a baby and for a few years thereafter. She wasn't a bad mother. I grew up wonderfully free as a bird and in that sense I thank both my parents for at least leaving me to my own devices, which led to my from about 12 on living on my own, isolated from my parents by having a room of my own (like Virginia Woolf's "room of her own"), a room in which while I was in it I was allowed to keep my door closed--and my parents respected closed doors and taught me to do the same.
I never saw my mother naked. I've seen her in her underwear, but I never was turned on by seeing any naked aspect of my mother, like checking out her legs, or when she exercised on the living room carpet and her dress was up around her waist getting an erection looking at her pantied hips and big round ass. Those moments didn't cause me quiverings in my loins and writing about her like that now doesn't either. I do remember as a little boy getting an erection and running in and showing it to my mother but her reaction to that as cold, chiding, and certainly my erection was not caused by my "wanting to have sex" with her, though Freud might disagree with me on that one.
I have known dudes back when I was growing up and curious about things who obsessed over their mothers. One kid one time showed me some Polaroid naked pictures of his mother his father had taken of her and he had found while rummaging through his parents's bedroom closet (kids do that, you know). He asked me if I thought his mother was as hot as he did. I was too embarrassed to look at those pictures.
One friend of mine had a very hot mom. She looked like Jane Russell, the movie actress who was a hot property at the time thanks to Howard Hughes making the movie "Outlaw," in which Miss Russell's 42DD bosom was well exposed and exhibited, especially in one scene where she's slinking around in a very tight and revealing dress and stretching back to allow those breasts to sail high up into the lusting eyes of all the ogling men and boys fantasizing about ripping her blouse open and getting very oral with her. And this kid told me he peeped through the keyhole of his parents's bathroom and watched his mother shower--and he told me how big her breasts looked naked and how she had a huge black patch of hair covering her yass-yass-yass. That kid later found out he was adopted and one afternoon they hauled him off to the psycho ward after he tried to rape his adopted mother who he'd thought all along was his real mother. Later at his trial he admitted he hated this woman so much now that he wanted to kill her every time he saw her.
Father love! Forget father love. My mother used to tease my father by telling me when I was a curtain-climber to "go give daddy a kiss on the mouth," to which my father would back off and say, "Oh no, men don't kiss...men don't kiss." My father, I guarantee, never ever told me he loved me. Nor did I ever feel "love" for my father. D.H. Lawrence tried to explain "man-to-man" love in a couple of his books--men wrestling naked--men hugging each other; slapping each other on the butt; kissing! No, I never had those feelings for any male and certainly never for my father.
When I was a little brat, I got beat quite a bit. It was normal in those ancient days for parents to not spoil their children by "sparing the rod." "Spare the rod, spoil the child" was a phrase I heard quite a bit. Not only was this spare the rod philosophy in my home life but I faced it at school, too. These were the days in public school education that teachers had arsenals of custom-made paddles (boards that were whittled down into paddles, as in the paddlewheels on steamboats, some with holes drilled in them--to lighten the pain, they claimed, though when you got whacked with one of those paddles you realized the holes were in that paddle to eliminate any chance that a cushion of air getting between the paddle and your ass and thus softening the blow) which they applied to boys's asses with fierce pride in their "whipping" abilities. I suppose girls got "whipped," too, though I don't remember any being in line with me the many times I waited in that line of boys for my 20 licks. I do have etched upon my mind when I was 11 my girlfriend, she was 10, being beaten with a belt by her dad when he caught us in a very uncompromising situation on a bed in a back room of his house. I can still hear this girl's screams and the blows of his cruel belt on that so beautiful young woman's pure body--and she was Ingres-beautiful at 10--god, she was a pretty girl. I didn't know what love was then for sure but I knew what sex was. It's funny, at that age, every time that young lady and I were around each other we found a way to get off by ourselves to have sex, which is what is was even though it was so innocent and natural and sweet and tender. She's the first girl I ever remember kissing with hunger! Now, I suppose that kissing was my way of telling her I loved her.
I was beaten quite a lot in grade school. I still remember the principal who beat me the most. I remember his name, H.R. Reed. He was a big dude, too, 6-foot-3, a giant to a little kid. He was a methodical whacker. He hit your ass systematically the same every time, steady blows, usually 20 all together right on the dot.
I got into trouble because not only was I a cute little whitey kid but I had a mischievous gleam in my eye and an impish way of deportment. I wasn't openly mischievous like Bart Simpson; no, I was more the off-stage-type mischievous kid. Like one of my favorite pranks since I was a master printer by the time I was 5 thanks to my father's love of penmanship was changing the teacher's name on the blackboard when I'd first enter a new class. You remember how your teachers printed their names on the blackboard? Mrs. Baldridge. I changed her name to Mrs. Bald Ridge. Mr. Sims became Mr. Simple. Mrs. Schott became Mrs. Schnott. Always the kids noticed these subtle changes to those names before the teacher ever did. Sometimes the names would stay wrong for days before the teacher would erase them. I finally got caught by a young teacher I eventually got the hots for--"puppy love" the adults called it, Miss McMillan. I changed her name to Miss McHubba Hubba, "hubba hubba" being an adult phrase (it started with the Zoot-suit cats who followed Cab Calloway from the 30s through WWII) that meant a girl was a hot mamma--like a man would shout at a good-looking babe, "Hubba Hubba!" Putting words to the proverbial wolf whistle!
The first time I changed her name, Miss McMillan caught it. She laughed, got up, went over and erased Miss McHubba Hubba and rewrote it correctly. I was scared shitless for a brief minute, my face turning blazing red (a White folks vulnerability--they can't hide their emotions), my ears red and tingling. But then she carried on with class and I forgot about it. When the bell rang, she dismissed the class with the exception of, "Mr. Wolfe, I'd like to see you a minute before you go to your next class."
So, yep, I am still very confused about LOVE and what it is.
My friends who are married faithfully call their wives and tell them they love them. And most of my friends have very successful marriages--at least on the surface. They all married late in life. My first marriage I was a very stupid 23 years old; my second marriage I was 26, but she was 18, 15 when I met her, 16 when I started "desiring" her, and 17 when we finally did the double-back beast and just 18 when the marriage took place.
She's the one who said I never told her I loved her. At the divorce proceedings, she told the judge that I seemed to "love" every other woman except her. The judge looked at me and said, "How could you treat this beautiful young woman like that?" I replied, "But judge, you weren't married to her for ten years!"
Now I know, I never told her I loved her because I didn't love her. That's pretty damn simple, but it wasn't that simple to explain back in those days.
I once wrote a letter to a woman I was absolutely madly nuts over in which I just wrote over and over "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you." She's the first woman I ever saw that it was "love" at first sight. Except, here again sex has its foot in the door. I fell for her because her persona was a "sex fantasy" persona I'd obviously kept alive in my subconscious. I mean the first time I saw her--hell, not only was she gorgeous in the face, but she was classy, wearing denim overalls, a man's white shirt, and a headrag--her hair was bleached totally gold--and her voice was full of lust and intelligence and offering chances.
She replied to my love letter by saying she truly respected my love and she did feel a love back for me but she was happily married (to my best friend), and you know the rest.
Then came another woman, later after my best friend's wife, a bass player's wife, out West, while I was married to #2. The first time I knew I "loved" her was when I went with my wife to the hospital to see her and her husband's newborn baby. I looked at her in that hospital bed and I couldn't take my eyes off her--and she gave me her eyes back, too--we stared at each other--and those stares eventually became sneaking off and kissing and making each other so hot and pressing into each other--and, yes, I NOW remember, one time, out back of this restaurant where we had gone with our spouses to have dinner--I did, I told her I loved her. Holy Christ, I had forgotten. I have told a woman I loved her...and maybe that was love since we never had sex. Except I remember her sexually, too. I first remember her sexually. Then I remember kissing her. That was passion. And I remember feeling her breasts and tonguing her and pushing my loins deep into hers--and there was a heat like I'd never before felt coming from her circle of passion, her loins, her pushing-into-mine pelvic--and that was sex wasn't it, but, dammit, I think I really did love this woman. But I'm not for sure. Only in reminiscence am I turning this passion and desire we had for each other into love.
But now, I have a woman who says she loves me! This is a woman.... I was going to say I had never had sexual desires for, but that's not really the case. Except when I first saw her, it wasn't for sexual reasons I fell for her. It was her face, her look, her eyes, deep gorgeously dark eyes. It was also her forceful intelligence. She was so smart and that smartness made her more beautiful than she already was. A unique beauty. Then I noticed her flawless skin. Jesus what skin. Then I noticed her.... OK, OK, I did have sexual feelings for her, she is a gorgeous well-built woman, but, dammit, I think what I really feel for her may be love--the only "love" I know from knowing it from deep within me. My natural love? My instinctual love?
One thing about this love--sex has no role in it--except after she sends me a wonderful expression of love, Platonic love, highly romantic love, I do begin to tingle with excitement. I thrill at the thought that so wonderful a woman says she loves me. Looking at this picture I have of her and thinking about how, "Wow, that gorgeous woman really loves ME!," OK, it does sometimes turn sexual--I suddenly realize that after looking at her and thinking about her loving me I do have an erection.
Here I hang. Hung up just because a truly good friend says she loves me. I'm responding coolly. She knows from long ago that I'm putty in her hands, but is it love?
You see what a screwed up world we humans have "created."
thelonesomegrowlingwolf (waxingsentimentally)
for The Daily Growler
The Woman's Point of View
The Wolf Man is a very naive boy. Germaine Greer would have scratched his eyes out when she was a feminist bitch. His statements are so childishly devoted to his master Freud and his MASTERY of women. Kate Millett would have backed her automobile over his lame Freudian excuses for claiming he doesn't know what love is. I'm glad I'm not his lover.
He is a rather handsome devil in a animalistic sort of way. That is as long as he doesn't open his mouth. His last bar fight ended in him getting all his teeth knocked out. He excuses this on stage by telling the story of one of his heroes, Percy Mayfield, an early r and b singer/songwriter/bandleader, who was in a terrible car wreck that left his face a Frankensteinish mess. Unlike the Elephant Man (remember when Michael Jackson tried to buy the Elephant Man's bones?) and Michael Jackson, Percy refused to hide his deformity under a mask and his career tanked as a result. So Wolfie claims he, too, was in an accident where his face was smashed into an iron beam. Even with a Phantom of the Opera face, he's still attractive to women. Why even I have "desired" him at one time.
But, Jesus, after reading his love diatribe, I now feel sorry in a motherly way for his lost and lonesome self-caged situation.
Sex isn't love. Good sex should be a result of a good LOVE affair and not vice versa. Most women date guys and even if they half-ass like them, they usually figure around the third date at the end of the evening, if there was fun to be had and happiness pursued then probably they're going to end up in bed with the dude. I mean we women get horny, too, but in a different way than men crudely get horny. However, being horny and having sex I've never ever related to love. Lovemaking, OK, but LOVE, no.
It's natural for men to get horny when they see a female they are lured toward due to some sexual signs men think they understand. I overheard a guy talking to a colleague one time and saying he knew if a woman came to his desk and bent over in such a way he could take in her most revealing cleavage for a goodly amount of time it was a sign she liked him and was offering herself to him. Oh, poor men. They are so hopeful. Did men ever think that women showed cleavage just to air their breasts out. Bras get very hot and stiffling and uncomfortable. Plus, as a man told me one time, breasts smell like burnt rubber sometimes when they are released from the bindings of a bra, a male invention surely.
And faking it. It's called the sex act because for some women it is acting. Marilyn Monroe, the masturbational object for how many millions of men--still to this day?, told her closest friend that though she had fucked over hundreds of different men in her day, she had never had an orgasm. Now I have had an orgasm, so I know women can have orgasms, but for most women, I dare say, they are few and far between.
Have I ever been in love? Yes. Was it sex? No. Love is the reason for sex. To a woman, having sex is simply an action they must endure if they are serious at wanting to be married, mothers, successful wives. Those women who have no desires to get married and have children have sex for pleasure only--and, yes, sex can be pleasurable to a woman. Most times, though, boys, it's not. It's a chore. That's why we maybe have to be a little tipsy or in very swoony moods, moony moods, moods when our sexual horniness might be interpreted as LOVE.
I love to dance. But dancing to me is not sex. It's a coordinated effort by a man and woman to work together in rhythmic union to accomplish a completion together. If a night of exhaustive dncing leads to sex, OK, but if it leads to love, that's grander still.
True love is a willing of two people to be two together. If it works, if love is shared, then comes the good sex.
Freud didn't know shit about women. Most men don't.
I recently dated a man who asked me every time before we screwed if I were on "the rag" or not. I screwed him because he was a good "old country" screw, as we women sometimes designate men we'll screw but wouldn't marry or have kids by for all the money in the world, but what a dumb lumox.
Love must come from your family. As a child is where you learn love. Girls feel love before they feel sex.
The first time I saw a penis, I laughed at it. Over the years, however, I'll be honest, there are some penises I find terribly attractive--easy to make LOVE to.
franny&zoe,thedailygrowlertwoheadedgirlreporter
for The Daily Growler
“Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different” Kate Millett
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