Free The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort Page A

give us our best and our worst moments. In this respect it’s like mountain climbing – over-timid people miss the whole experience; reasonably balanced and hardy people accept the risks for the rewards, but realize that there’s a difference between this and being foolhardy. Love, moreover, involves someone else’s neck besides your own. At least you can make as sure as may be that you don’t exploit or injure someone – you don’t take a novice climbing and abandon them halfway up when things get difficult. Getting them to sign a consent form before they start isn’t an answer either. There was a great deal to be said for the Victorian idea of not being a cad (“person devoid of finer or gentlemanly feelings”). A cad can be of either sex.
    When this book was first written, the world was in the middle of the most radical rethinking of sexuality ever – and the subsequent rethinking of love. The prediction then was that sex and love could be divorced, and no-strings sex is certainly now more common. But most of us still require a connection before we can do any more than simply perform; love may not be all you need, but it’s an essential for any except the most basic satisfaction. Equally, when the going gets rough in relationships, good, pleasurable sex can bring you through. When you make love, you do exactly that.

appetizers

real sex

    real sex
    being together, touching, holding hands
    The sort our culture and most mass-media propaganda don’t recognize: not that intercourse, or masturbation, or genital kisses aren’t real sex, but some other things are real sex too, which people need, but that don’t excite our time and age. We can list some: being together in a situation of pleasure, or of danger, or just of rest; touching, even if that doesn’t involve any of the traditionally erotic zones; old-fashioned expedients like holding hands (permissiveness makes for more orgasms, but we miss out on thesimple pleasures of looking, smiling, flirting, dating, kisses, and holding each other close – the bonding elements that vagina-obsessed males think of as schmaltz); sleeping together even without, or especially after, intercourse.
    Most women know all this, but they are as shy about telling it to males, for fear of seeming over-sentimental, as males are about confiding object preferences or forceful needs. Don’t get stuck with the view that only those things that Auntie calls sexual are sexual. In a book on sexual elaboration, this needs saying, if you are concerned with love rather than an Olympic pentathlon. People in our culture who are hung up on the Olympic bit don’t get much from using the gentler options, unless over time such use builds the realization of just how important those options really are.

food

    food
    a meal can be an entire erotic experience in itself
    Dinner is a traditional preface to sex. In old-time France or Austria, one booked a restaurant room with no handle on the outside of the door. At the same time, there is a French saying that love and digestion went to bed together and the offspring was apoplexy. This isn’t quite true. On the other hand, immediately after a heavy meal is not an ideal moment for sex – you can easily make your partner, especially the woman if she is underneath, sick.
    A meal can be an entire erotic experience in itself – for a demonstration of how a woman can excite a man by eating a chicken leg or a pear “at” him, cannibal-style, see the lovely burlesque in the 1963 film Tom Jones or the outrageously sensuous equivalents in Tampopo and 9½ Weeks .
    A meal à deux is, quite certainly, a direct lead-in to love play ( see big toe , and remote control ), but don’t overindulge onalcohol. Recent studies show it lowers inhibitions and increases euphoria, particularly for women, but is the most common cause of unexpected erectile problems. If you are serious about sex, develop a liking for mineral water.
    Love andfood mixed well in Greek and Roman