Is there really this large a gap between us?

As I was sitting, nursing the remains of last night’s hangover by feeding my caffeine and nicotine addictions; a cool breeze flowed over me, seemingly friendly in its gentle eagerness to address my alcohol induced dehydration. It crept in under my loose shirt, and like a familiar lover, it caressed my back, slowly and coolly it touched the nape of my neck making me shiver. In my ears my phone played Dead Can Dance’s Host of the Seraphim; isolating me audibly from the world. I smiled.

The book in my hands was a Jean Paul-Sartre handling a man’s struggle with an ever increasing awareness of his existential existence in a world of communal experience. The book however, couldn’t succeed in grasping my attention as my mind kept flowing back to last night’s expedition and ironically my communal experience with a friend to break down the barriers of our separate existential awareness’s.

We were bored and had started drinking too fast too early. There was, or still is, a question which has occupied my mind for a few days now; “The female experience of sex as opposed to that of the male”. The table behind us was occupied by three females, girls, young women. I approached them broaching the initial communication barrier frankly and honestly, wanting to know first hand of the differing opinions that separates man from woman in this sacred physical act.

Having expected immediate reproach in such an endeavour I was surprised by the openness with which I was greeted by these three. Me and my friend were invited to take seats and delve into the depths of this topic. I was listened to interestedly as I stated my case with its relevant specifics, the replies were enthusiastic even if there was a measure of confusion concerning the female perspective. It occurred to me during one of the ladies’ soliloquy that none of the three at the table had ever really been able to answer my stated problem to them with any measure of honesty. The discussion was abruptly cut off when a new face appeared at the table; a male friend of the ladies. Obviously they had a preset of behaviour established with this male friend which did not include frank discussions comparing the male and female experience of the sexual realm.

We retreated from the table. Somehow we were once again engaged with our neighbouring table and its new occupant who presented his case on sexuality from a biblically religious point of view. We did not challenge his views; we simply asked him the questions that we knew would lead him into logical barriers. His enthusiasm wore thin when we inevitably led him to the end of his “logical” alleys. We were then accused of being inappropriate though we had said nothing of our own views and had only prompted him to continue his own train of thought. We then aborted this demographic of enthusiastic and curious young ladies coupled with a religious patriarch.

Disappointed and unsatisfied with the aborted discussion we contemplated going homeward. This plan too was aborted when our neighbouring table’s occupants were replaced by two more ladies and a male friend. I and my friend made our estimations on the new demographic and ultimately I decided to approach the new occupants with the same conundrum. We were met even more enthusiastically by the new occupants and what followed was a frank a ultimately fulfilling discussion.

Though the discussion could come to close on this occasion we were still left wanting with clear answers to the question. “How does the female experience of the physical act of sex differ from that of a man?”

The conclusion I was left with at the end of the evening is this: For a man it is much easier to separate emotion from sex, for us these can easily be two mutually exclusive categories. While on the other hand, the input we had received from the ladies of the evening was that they were either unable or unwilling to separate emotion from sex at all.

“What do I want physically from sex?” one said. She had then gone quiet for several seconds and continued to tell me how she wants to feel considered during the act, how she wants the realization that her sexual partner was thinking of her as well even if she were not to make any physical demands of him herself. She wanted an emotional bond.

“Forget any kind of emotion during the act. Imagine that you have now decided you’re going to take a stranger home tonight in order to fulfil a physical need of yours. What would you want from him physically?” I asked of her. All five ladies we had met last night responded with a certain kind of confusion, as if it were unreasonable of me to expect them to make the distinction between sex and emotion.

These last two finally answered that for themselves at least it was not possible for them to make the distinction. I am not sure if this is the answer that one would get more often than not from a woman but in light of last night’s expedition it certainly seems so. If sex were simply a biological need for a man and emotion was a by product of inter-gender interaction it seems that emotionally charged sex is in itself is the need for the human female.

It seems that a satisfactory summation of last night can be found in the work of Jean Paul which I had neglected only an hour ago. We are all single and lone beings, ultimately trapped within our own bodies and minds, but the sharing of a communal experience can be most strongly felt within the act of copulation; the most sacred of physical human activity.

I guess the most important question here is; Are we biologically one being or two separate beings when we share our bodies with one another?