Читать книгу Swinging: The Games Your Neighbours Play - Mark Brendon - Страница 15

AT DINNER IN THEIR KITCHEN a couple of days later, Fiona—the ageless, very beautiful, Sloaney wife of a doctor friend—raised the argument that swinging somehow ‘devalues’ sex or the human body.

Her husband Johnny (tactfully) and I (less so) confessed that we found this one incomprehensible.

Grant that we all have sexual urges and that these are not of their nature specific. In what sense then can it be claimed that routine fulfilment of these urges within marriage or long-term relationships places a higher value on sex than what is, after all, a carefully prepared, long-anticipated, mutually exciting celebration of physical pleasures?

Johnny chose much the same metaphor as Lisa. As well argue, he said, that a celebratory dinner at a fine restaurant with food prepared by strangers ‘devalues’ that prepared at home by spouses.

Unsurprisingly for a doctor, Johnny placed little added value on the human body’s functions. ‘Look, Fi, I’m not denying there’s something lovely and consoling—sacramental, if you like—about good old cottage-pie on Monday and chicken fricassée on Tuesday, even if the cottage-pie is watery and lumpy and the chicken bland—not that yours ever is, of course, darling. But you really can’t accuse Gordon Ramsay of destroying people’s pleasure in home cooking by giving them the occasional joys of exciting smells, textures and flavours in a luxurious and theatrical environment.

‘So yep, OK. I actually am basically a cottage-pie man. I like all that familiarity and prolonged proximity. It’s sort of the grout securing the tesserae of a relationship…’

‘But it’s not to denigrate the importance of grout,’ I said, ‘to acknowledge that it can often be just a little dull.’

‘Thank you, Mark,’ said Fi. The corner of her lips twitched.

‘No, come on! I’m sure you make brilliant steak and kidney and spag bol, and comfort-food and comfort-sex are both great things, but they are emotionally distinct from fine food and fantastic sex, both of which are generally enjoyed in public places amongst kindred spirits…’

‘Though they’re too rich for everyday consumption,’ put in Johnny, ‘and probably simply for most metabolisms including mine. Just not Mark’s, though…’

And in truth, I have known many chefs and food critics who are privileged daily to eat the finest and rarest ingredients, but I have yet to encounter one who has lost the capacity to enjoy—or to appreciate the significance of—a bowl of champ, or a home-cooked hotpot.

So, too, I have never met a swinger who no longer enjoys sex with his or her partner because of their shared adventures with others. On the contrary, visits to restaurants and forays into swinging both seem to stimulate appetite and inventiveness at home.

Cheap fast food guzzled on the hoof simply to assuage hunger is, like casual sex, altogether another matter—just sad, abusive, unhealthy and unworthy.