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I stress ‘apparent’, because I am sure that a life in
which bread truly was the staff of life and cake a rare indulgence
was deeply rewarding and maybe, if such a word means anything, healthier.
I am also confident that I could have been happy in such a world. Instead, I found myself in one in which I was expected to treat
mere profiteroles with the deference due to far more enduring, sustaining
and more substantial rich Dundees, and everyone around me seemed
as confused as I by the clash between what was on offer and the attitudes
expected of us. This metaphor has been extended far further than I intended or it
can bear. All that I wanted to say is that I became increasingly
aware over these months that we were all confusing eras and values,
no less than if we still had men with red flags walking down the
motorways in front of our cars. It would be as daft to claim that the link between sex and love
was riven as to claim that safety measures were no longer necessary
in modern cars.
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Love is often better with sex and sex at once engenders
affection and can be an expression of inexpressibly great love. Perhaps
instead we should be looking for a new name and new rules for recreational
or therapeutic sex which is a creative art, an expression of tenderness,
a release of pent emotions, a balm for solitude but which imposes
no obligations beyond those of courtesy on its participants. Why should I consider sacrificing my new-found independence for
something so easily acquired, with such in-built obsolescence and,
ultimately, with no significance beyond that which the act itself
entailed? Feminists get all snotty and scornful at male jealousy
and possessiveness and the notion of a woman’s virtue being
a pearl beyond price, but I could readily appreciate and even approve
such notions where sex is likely to mean children and so fifteen
years of obligation, not merely for the woman but for a putative
husband as well.
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