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We don't speak about fucking

— What we say and what we don't —

Tineke van den Klinkenberg

In the context of the 50th birthday of the Dutch Association for Sexual Reform, I read recently that a powerful taboo still hangs over discussion of our sexual habits. Perhaps now and then intimate details are shared between close friends or next-door neighbours after husbands are at work, but at the office the subject is hardly on everyone's lips. No-one opens a staff meeting or a chat in the canteen by exclaiming how great last night's fuck was, and how it's really set him or her up for the day; and even less likely is it to hear a colleague explain his filthy mood by relating how last night's sex was just as uninspired and unsatisfying as ever. Someone declaring that he or she hasn't shared a bed for years, and doesn't really feel the need because his own hand or her own finger is more than sufficient, cannot really expect a reaction which will encourage a return to the subject in the future. When on one occasion I told a fellow alderman that my lover and I had broken up six weeks earlier, his response was "My God, six weeks dry already?" Hardly an invitation to share further confidences about one's sex life.

When people do get the urge to bring up the subject, then the talk will be of good sex, because good sex is the norm. And perhaps the problem is that there just isn't enough good fucking going on. In a great number of those little monogamous units, burning love and passion fade into the background over time, replaced by comfortable love, comradeship, 'true friendship, and more of the same boring and undemanding virtues. These certainly don't inspire bedroom stories which will burn ears clear across the open plan workplace. The other possibility is that a love-hate relationship develops: mutual contempt, hostility or violence, but nevertheless an inability to let go of each other - another no-no for informal chats whether in works canteen or boardroom.

The Great Fuck, I suspect, is most common in relationships of paid love, sex outside marriage, love as a game in sado-masochism, or the kind of casual sex common between homosexuals. In these situations, the good fuck is interwoven with play, fantasy, arousal, teasing and passion. But even this is not guaranteed to become a subject for enthusiastic conversation at work. Between colleagues, subjects such as the football results and the new garden chairs remain far easier than the ecstasy of the night before.

Those skilled in the game of adultery keep secret their encounters with the lover. For the stories of these passions, we must generally wait for the books written much later, when the danger of hurt is past, such as Zout op mijn Huid (Salt on my Skin) by Annie Gr., or Renate Rubinstein's love story about Carmiggelt. These stories are then eagerly consumed. On the other hand, a man's pleasure with a prostitute, or the love expressed with whips in a chamber of horrors, remain under a cloak of silence. We 'know' that people disapprove.

Those who speak most openly about the pleasure they get from their horniness satisfied are the homosexuals - and not those who sit waiting for the right to civil marriage. It is because homosexuals are frank about fucking simply for pleasure that they attract jealousy and aggression. Joe and Jeannie Public see them as dangerous.

In the same article on the NVSH jubilee year, I read that the questions they most often receive are the following:

These questions show that the 'norm' is people's main concern, and that the idea that one should have one's own opinion about what feels good, or doesn't, in which position, with which partner, or with none, leads mainly to insecurity. Sexuality as a part of real life is apparently just as threatening as it is as an anticipated intimidating possibility. Only the joke seems capable of blowing some fresh air through the taboo.

Amsterdam, june 1996

   

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