They’re good at smiling they are accomplished people pleasers. They cannot normally explain the scale of the distress they felt in childhood, the disappointments of adolescence, the fear and exhaustion of their careers, the frustrations and tetchiness of their relationships, the difficulties with their families, the existential terror they experience in the night, the unease they are hounded by at almost every moment… They are, somewhere in the background, carrying an intolerable sack of eeriness and grief. The most fundamental fact for the melancholy is that life is filled with unending pain – almost all of which they must hide. They may feel compelled by something altogether more distinctive: crying. They are perhaps not especially interested in ropes or leather, in studs or fur collars. The melancholy person approaches the honesty available in sex from a very particular angle. What one chooses to be honest about will vary the dream is always that one can land on something that feels especially significant and hitherto blocked by the rules of propriety. One can finally do what one has – in a little corner of the mind – being aching to do for so long: perhaps act in a totally submissive way or explore a ruthless uncompromising side, dress in the clothes of another gender or start uttering a litany of obscene and taboo phrases one would also like the partner to repeat carefully.
This is as private and as intimate as it will ever be.
We cannot reveal most of our true desires or wishes, we must proceed in terror that we might somewhere along the line cause grave offence or be thought peculiar and damnable.īut at last, in bed with someone we truly like and who likes us back with equal sincerity, we can let our guard down. For most of our lives, we must dissemble and pretend, hide and compromise. Sex is a time, first and foremost, of great honesty.
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