Obligatory Sex Scenes

Here's a draft, at least, of a 1999 posting to the Phil-Lit list:

WARNING: Strong sexual content; some quite objectionable language. Read at your own risk.

When I offer up these passages, I do so with reference to a number of threads on Phil-Lit, most of which I won't spell out. One is on rereading beloved works after years have passed. I read the Jane Austen scene when it first came out in 1976 and remembered it fondly over the years — so fondly, in fact, that when I found out, through a little Web searching and close questioning of a Canadian bookseller, that the bit could indeed be found in a little paperback book, I shelled out 11 bucks (U.S., not Canadian) to have the thing sent by air mail. I still find the piece funny, but much less so. Is it that the humor is dated? That I'm not 22 but 45? That my love of Jane Austen is less passionate now than it was 23 years ago? I remembered finding the piece flawed years ago; the flaws in the parody stick out even more now.

To add some philosophy, I give the Heidegger scene. I doubt I read it in 1976, and I know too little about Heidegger to judge it now (I'm so ashamed — should one of the chiders chide me?). It looks ham-fisted. But I feel guilty saying that, nay, even immoral — I should at least know what it's playing off. Yet it's not, I should think, "art."

Other sex scenes in the National Lampoon article, for those interested, are for: Plato's "Republic" (not especially funny); "The House at Pooh Corner"; "Walden"; Sherlock Holmes; Charles Goren's "Contact Bridge"; Amendment I of the (U.S.) Bill of Rights; Carl Sandburg's "Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years"; "The Song of Hiawatha"; "Moby Dick"; Consumer Reports; "The Pickwick Papers"; "Our Town"; "The Gulag Archipelago"; "The Purloined Letter"; "The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu"; Roget's International Thesaurus; F. Scott Fitzgerald ("Bernice Bobs Her Cunt"); "The Brothers Karamazov"; "The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde"; "Who's Who"; "A Streetcar Named Desire"; "Gulliver's Travels"; "Waiting for Godot"; "Dune"; and "The Communist Manifesto."

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"Obligatory Sex Scenes," by the editors of National Lampoon (originally published in August 1976, reprinted in National Lampoon: Another Dirty Book, eds. P.J. O'Rourke, Peter Kaminsky, and Elsie Cagan, 1979).

Three famous men, authors all of important novels (Spiro Agnew, William F. Buckley, and John Lindsay) have lately and often appeared upon prestigious talk shows to plug their respective books. Each member of this august trio has unblushingly observed that, yes, his tome does contain the "obligatory sex scene."

Clearly, these writers, all men of the world, have seen fit to trim the sails of their creative integrity to the prevailing winds of marketing considerations, motivated not by greed but rather by the desire for their significant and redemptive fictions to reach a wider audience than your ponderous and semiliterate political potboiler usually does.

Always keen to follow the example of our elders and betters, we have taken it upon ourselves to write the "obligatory sex scenes" which, if included in the pages of well-intentioned but, alas, for the most part ignored classics of literature will return these works to the popularity they deserve.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
by Jane Austen

Chapter XLIII

The winding path that they had been following had grown narrower, and was overhung with branches that tore at Elizabeth's gown; soon it was but three feet at its wides part when she espied, in the distance, an old summer house, dilapidated and overgrown with weeds and mosses, of a lonely and slightly forbidding aspect. As the first drops of rain began to fall, Mr. Darcy turned his steps towards the building, quitting the path and taking a shorter way through the tall grasses;—Elizabeth had little choice but to follow. He murmured something about the weather as they reached their destination; the door yielded easily to his touch, and they reached their haven just as the rain began in earnest.

The interior was empty of any furnishing, save for a small settee, towards which Darcy led Elizabeth;—and when she had seated herself, much to her amazement, he flung himself to his knees before her, and, in a change of mood that seemed as abrupt as the change of weather, began ardently to express his admiration for and devotion to her person. Elizabeth hardly knew how to respond!—was this the cold, arrogant Mr. Darcy, who had expressed such scorn for her on previous occasions? She was attempting to reply when an even more strange event took place;—to her great consternation, he lifted up her skirts, and disappeared beneath them!—in breathless accents did she beg him to desist; in ardent though muffled tone did he make negative reply, as he attempted, with no little difficulty, to undo her drawers; when he had succeeded in the latter, he stopped attempting the former; and Elizabeth was filled with the most delightful and confused sensations: she allowed to herself that they were certainly pleasurable, but at the same time wondered with rising alarm if she had, by her previous weakness, allowed too much familiarity in their previous intercourse.

But her pleasure mounted to such an extent that she soon lost her fears in that direction. "Oh! Oh!" she cried, when she could contain herself no longer—"I am all in a flutter!—Mr. Darcy, your unexpected cordiality has left me quite speechless;—my previous coldness was unpardonable;—oh, my dear, *dear* Mr. Darcy;—how can you ever forgive me?—oh, oh, *oh!*"—and Mr. Darcy, whose head now emerged from beneath Elizabeth's petticoats, although *another portion* of his anatomy remained hidden from view, joined his voice to hers in an outpouring of sentiment to which no one, knowing his proud, aloof manner, might have responded without a great deal of amazement.

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BEING AND TIME
by Martin Heidegger

V. Being-in as Such

26. Throbbing-Memberhood and Its potentiality-for-Exploding-in-White-Hot-Orgasmicity

At first glance the Being-in (*In-sein*) of Throbbing-member appears to us as a latency. Throbbing-member stands before us as a phenomenon of Itness, i.e., Throbbing-memberhood-in-its-Selfhood-as-merely-ontic Being. The Being-in of Throbbing-member attains facticity as an ontological verity when, with eager hands and low urgent moans, she guides Throbbing-member into her hot, pulsating womanhoodness. Then, too, does Throbbing-member discover the Being-present-at-hand-along-with (*Mitvorhandsein*) of breasts, mouth, clitoris, etc.

Thus, Throbbing-member enters "into" the spatio-temporal nexus of her love-drenched pussyhood and is present (*zugegen*) to its potentiality-for-attaining-orgasmhood. This is what I call Throbbing-member's *Being-toward-orgasmicity.* Her verbal characterization, "Oh my God, you're in me!" has "the entity inside" (*Das inwendig Seiende*) in its ontological selfhood as Throbbing-member, exclusive of the theirness of other "throbbing members" merely ready-to-hand, i.e., mere equipment.

"Oh God, I can't stand it, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming . . ." is, therefore, not only a phenomenological statement, but has existential-ontological meaning as well."