My interests include yoga, vegetarian food, Ani Difranco, and indie film.
Follow me at @nidyasarria.
“For many men, freedom to separate sex from relationship without guilt or hypocrisy has always been what sexual liberation is about. But the conventionally masculine dream of pure lust is, I’m convinced, as conservative in its way as the conventionally feminine romanticism that converts lust to pure emotion—or, for that matter, as the patriarchal values that subordinate passion to marriage and procreation. All are attempts to tame sex, to make it safe by holding something back. For the objective risks of sex would not terrify us half so much if they did not reinforce a more primal inner threat. To abandon ourselves utterly to sensation and emotion—to give up the boundaries and limits that keep us in control—would be, for most of us, like cutting loose from gravity and watching the earth spin. Dissolution of the ego is the death we fear; the real sexual revolution, the one no virus can keep us from imagining, is the struggle to face that fear, transcend it, and let go.”
(from Coming Down Again, 1989)
No More Nice Girls. Ellen Willis.
(via emilygould)
As Fisher later wrote about their relationship, “She was a woman who loved men as much as they loved her, and she wasn’t shy about it.”
Having learned always to get her way and to indulge her enormous appetite for life, in all its forms - food, love, sex, jewels, booze, attention, drama, joy - what Elizabeth needed was someone who could say no to her. Or at least stand up to her. Or at least knock her down a peg or two.
“Fuck you - and you - and you, dear!”
Scandalous love can be forgiven, even by Americans, if, after all, it results in genuine marriage - intimacy and companionship - which the Burtons seem to have found so far, four months shut of their first wedding anniversary.
But - ever ahead of the curve - the Burtons were making married love glamorous and sexy. They had been such notorious, dangerous people in the two years following Cleopatra that they had found themselves shunned by longtime friends.
“Will you please stop talking about your damned Shakespeare and give me a hand!” Elizabeth shrieked.
Elizabeth, beaming with pride, said, “Isn’t it awful to have to tolerate this monster?”
“(We are) a lovely charming decadent hopeless couple.”
