Beginning to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock-and-Roll

Classical and Baroque Sex in Everyday Life

Classical and Baroque Sex in Everyday Life There are two kinds of sex, classical and baroque. Classical sex is romantic, profound, serious, emotional, moral, mysterious, spontaneous, abandoned, focused on a particular person, and stereotypically feminine. Baroque sex is pop, playful, funny, experimental , conscious, deliberate, amoral, anonymous, focused on sensation for sensation's sake, and stereotypically masculine. The classical mentality taken to an extreme is sentimental and finally puritanical; the baroque mentality taken to an extreme is pornographic and finally obscene. Ideally, a sexual relationship ought to create a satisfying tension between the two modes (a baroque idea, particularly if the tension is ironic) or else blend them so well that the distinction disappears (a classical aspiration). Lovemaking cannot be totally classical unless it is also totally baroque, since you can't abandon all restraints without being willing to try anything. Similarly, it is impossible to be truly baroque without allowing oneself to abandon all restraints and so attain a classical intensity. In practice, however, most people are more inclined to one mode than to the other. A very classical person will be incompatible with a very baroque person unless each can bring 106 Classical and Baroque Sex in Everyday Life out the other's latent opposite side. Two people who are very one-sided in the same direction can be extremely compatible but risk missing a whole dimension of experience unless they get so deeply into one mode that it becomes the other. Freud, the father of the sexual revolution, was a committed classicist who regarded most baroque impulses as infantile and perverse . Nevertheless, the sexual revolution, as it is usually defined, has been almost exclusively concerned with liberating those impulses from the confines of an exaggeratedly classical puritanism. The result, to my mind, has been an equally distorting cultural obsession with the baroque. Consider, for example, that quintessential expression of baroque angst (a contradiction in terms, the product of Jewish guilt; Christian guilt is classical all the way), Lenny Bruce's notorious monologue about fucking a chicken. Or, come to think of it (puns are baroque), Portnoy's adventures with liver. I mean seriously (classically, that is), is fucking chickens and livers what sex is all about? Curiously, contemporary sexual "experts" never mention this crucial polarity. This is because they have a vested interest in what might be called establishment or middlebrow baroque—really an attempt to compromise with proclassical traditionalists who insist that sex should be somehow worthwhile, not just fun. Thus the basic axiom of establishment baroque is that consensual sex in any form is wholesome and good for you; a subsidiary premise is that good sex depends on technical skill and is therefore an achievement . Kinsey, with his matter-of-fact statistical approach to his subject, was a pioneer of establishment baroque. Masters and Johnson belong in this category, as do all behavior therapists. The apotheosis of multiple orgasm is an establishment baroque substitute for the old-fashioned classical ideal of coming together, Real baroque sex has no ideals. Much as I hate to admit it, what I have in mind here is a sort of middlebrow baroque project—to report on the two kinds of sex in everyday life. Time: Night is classical; so are sunrise and sunset. High noon and half an hour before dinner (or during dinner) are baroque. 107 O U T O F T H E V I N Y L D E E P S Location: Outdoors is classical, except for crowded nude beaches. The back seat of a car is classical if you're a teen-ager, baroque otherwise. The shower is classical; the bathtub is baroque. Number: Two is classical. One or three or more is baroque. Lighting: Total darkness is ultraclassical except when it's a baroque variation. Dim lights and candlelight are classical. Floodlights and fluorescent lights are definitely baroque. Clothing: The only truly classical outfit is nothing. Clothing evokes fantasy and fantasies are baroque. Black lace underwear is of course the classic baroque outfit. Red is baroque, as is anything see-through. Frilly white nightgowns are a baroque impulse with classical content. Food: Eating in bed is baroque, although artichoke hearts and sour cream are more classical than potato chips and pizza. Tongues, tastes, and flavors are inherently baroque. Comparing sex with food is usually middlebrow baroque, except when a classicist, quarreling with the baroque idea that getting off is getting off no...