Читать книгу Swinging: The Games Your Neighbours Play - Mark Brendon - Страница 9

I WAS 47 YEARS OLD when I set out on this journey. I had been married for seven miserable years and divorced for twelve, ten of which I had spent in a more or less monogamous relationship. Now, on leaving rehab for alcohol dependence, I was alone.

‘Sex is just another quick fix…’ my counsellor told me on my last morning at the clinic.

Emma was charming, sympathetic, proficient, almost prim. I had to remind myself that before she became sober, she had lived the usual junky life of blurry jags, blags and shags on the streets. Now she crossed stockinged legs beneath her desk and wiggled the lavalliere at her throat.

‘…just another quick fix, another way of refusing to look at yourself and who you really are. As you know, it can be an addiction too.’

I shook my head. It was during my three-month stay in the clinic that my long-term girlfriend at last decided—really quite reasonably—that she had had enough. I was confronting a solitary existence out there.

‘Cocteau used to complain that he was asked to travel on a filthy, cramped train to nowhere,’ I told Emma, ‘but when he took opium, he was enabled to jump off and sit on the banks amidst the flowers, yet here were all these people urging him to get back on the train. I understand why it is not a good idea to take opium or alcohol if you are an addict, but I don’t understand why it is invariably bad to get off, stretch your legs and breathe the fresh air.’

‘Sex can be just as dangerous as alcohol or opium,’ she said.

‘I’m sure it can, Em, but so can food or oxygen in excess. Doesn’t alter the fact that they are also essentials. And sex is—or it can be—a very good thing. It’s a loving thing, an adventure, a great game when played between equals and friends, a madness in controlled circumstances. It lets you escape from the paltry, transitory concerns and the isolation of every day. I think I can now live without alcohol, but I really don’t think that I can live without sex. You’ve just levelled all the mountains in my landscape. Now you seem to be telling me that I should cut down the trees as well. Just a featureless desert…’

‘No, no, no,’ she soothed. ‘We’re not saying that you must avoid sex. Just relationships—and just for the time being.’

Outside on the gravel drive my fellow-patients sloped out of the front door and slumped onto benches or sprawled on the sun-dappled lawns to smoke and shake and chat.

‘Look, I know the rules,’ I said, ‘but I don’t understand them. No “relationships” for at least twelve months, and then only with a potplant. Then an undemanding pet like a hamster, then a dog, and finally another human being…And you say we don’t have to avoid sex? That pot-plant had better be a cactus.’

Emma intoned it like a catechism response. ‘Sex for its own sake is just using another person to escape from reality…’

‘Yes? And? Flying is just an escape from the equally inexorable forces of gravity. It can take you somewhere you want to go, or you can just go for a whirl, land where you took off, and it gives you a thrill and a beautiful view of the world. And if it’s mutual?’

‘…and you need to focus on who you are, what you need for happiness, and that must come from inside you. You need to find peace and serenity within yourself.’

‘Certainly, but myself is a sexual being. Serene isn’t exactly easy when you’re shaking with longing every time you see a frolicsome sheep.’

‘Hey, no! I’m not expecting you to be totally celibate…’

‘Thank you.’

‘…but only on the strict condition that you don’t give the other person power over your contentment or emotional stability. Your life depends upon that.’

‘I know that. I realise that,’ I nodded. ‘But listen, Em. I still want to share large aspects of my life. I want affection and adventure and flirtation. I want freedom. Are you saying I should just be a brutal, uncaring exploiter, then? Hurting others who expect more of me? Love ’em and leave ’em, and to hell with the consequences? Is that how you ensure the next generation of patients here?’

‘No, of course not,’ she smiled indulgently.

‘So, sex but no relationships? Which means—what? Whores?’

‘No!’ She reconsidered. She gulped. ‘Well, maybe. Possibly. But that can leave you feeling lonely and degraded. Just someone strong and not needy…’

‘I turn gay, then?’

‘That’s not fair.’ Her lips writhed. She did unnecessary things with papers and smiled. ‘Look, Mark, there are many people of both genders who can give love without sex and can share sex without regarding it as proof of ownership or allowing it to become a replacement obsession. It shouldn’t be such a big deal for you…You must never allow it to take the place of your Higher Power.’

‘Frustrated desire is far more likely to do that,’ I told her. ‘Not desire for sex, as such, but desire for the warmth, the closeness, the laughter, the excitement…’

‘Precisely,’ she said, as if it meant or proved anything. ‘The excitement…’ She leaned across the desk and laid a hand on my forearm. ‘It’s all right,’ she added, ‘you’ll work it out.’