The ship is on the ocean, so to speak

She says "You don't read women authors do ya?" / at least that's what I think I hear her say / Well I say "How would you know, and what would it matter anyway" / Well she says "Ya just don't seem like ya do", I said "You're way wrong" / She says "Which ones have you read then?", I say "I've read Erica Jong" / She goes away for a minute, and I slide out, out of my chair / I step outside back to the busy street, but nobody's goin' anywhere

-- Bob Dylan, Highlands

Reading Eric Jong (Fear of Flying) is turning out to be quite the experience. Frankly it's upsetting, and unsettling, and I haven't even finished it. It's the (in)famous one, the one about trying to reconcile passion with feminism, the one about the "zipless fuck" -- in which the narrator Isadora Wing details her fantasy of elated anonymous sex -- sex without strings, preambles, or consequences; sex with a stranger on a train, an itinerant Romeo who comes, sees, conquers, and disappears into the mists of the station.

What was it about [committed relationships] anyway? Even if you loved your [partner], there came that inevitable year when fucking him turned as bland as Velveeta cheese: filling, fattening even, but no thrill to the taste buds, no bittersweet edge, no danger. And you longed for an overripe Camembert, a rare goat cheese: luscious, creamy, cloven-hoofed.

I was not against [committed relationships]. I believed in [them], in fact. It was necessary to have one best friend in a hostile world, one person you'd be loyal to no matter what, one person who'd always be loyal to you. But what about all those other longings which after a while the [relationship] did nothing to appease? The restlessness, the hunger, the thump in the gut, the thump in the cunt, the longing to be filled up, to be fucked thorough every hole, the yearning for dry champagne and wet kisses........*

The zipless fuck, the (comparatively; relatively) meaningless encounter, dalliance, "affair" or just the one-nighter -- that's the ideal. The irony: Fear of Flying demonstrates the unavailability of the zipless fuck. Far from being an inspirational story (as it is routinely billed) of a woman's escape from a dead marriage and discovery of erotic pleasure and independence, it's the tale of a woman who ditches her husband only to find in the arms of a lover first impotence and frustration, then heartbreak and abandonment. Hardly the embodiment of female liberation -- or 35 years later, the evolution of the committed relationship and the shedding of it's (co-)dependence on monogamy; hardly what I was hoping for.

How disappointing.

Then with timing that's so good it's almost suspicious, you meet the person who throws your world into a spin; the person who throws a dart through the fug of your complacency; who causes you a sharp intake of breath and the racing of pulse and the blah-de-blah. That person who through no act nor blame of their own makes you wonder and ponder long-and-hard at their seeming-suitedness to you; now you're left doubting your commitment and wondering, simply, "am I with the right person?".

And am I able to ever trust your impulses, reasons, rationales, insights (or not) again.

This post was inspired in part by Harvey Pekar; ordinary life IS pretty complex stuff, indeed.

Mayo Thompson - Dear Betty Baby (2.62 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Christina Nehring on Erica Jong and the zipless fuck
Erica Jong on Bob Dylan

*excerpts from Christina Nehring and Erica Jong reproduced without permission.