Free The Course of Love by Alain de Botton Page B

You lick it off, and then your hand moves gently down her body.” Rabih continues: “She’s still wearing her apron, which you help her out of. You find her sweet, but you also want to use her in a rather mercenary way. That’s where the strap comes in. You slide her bra up—it’s black, or no, maybe grey—and lean over to take one of her breasts in your mouth. Her nipples are hard.”
    Still Kirsten says nothing.
    â€œYou reach down and slip your hand inside her particularly lacy Italian panties,” he goes on. “Suddenly you feel you want to lick her between her legs, so you get her up on all fours and begin to explore her from behind.”
    By now the silence from Rabih’s usual storytelling partner has grown oppressive.
    â€œAre you okay?” he asks.
    â€œI’m fine, it’s just . . . I don’t know . . . it feels weird for you to be thinking about Antonella that way—a bit perverted, really. She’s such a lovely person; I’ve known her since she was sittingher Highers, and now her parents are so proud of the distinction she got. I don’t like the old chestnut of the man sitting there, getting off on watching two women licking each other out. Sfouf, it feels, frankly, sort of stupid and porno. As for the anal thing, to be honest—”
    â€œI’m sorry, you’re right, it’s ridiculous,” interrupts Rabih, suddenly feeling utterly daft. “Let’s forget I ever said anything. We shouldn’t let something like this come between us and the Brioschi Café.”
    Romanticism hasn’t only increased the prestige of monogamous sex; along the way it has also made any extraneous sexual interest seem unvaryingly foolish and unkind. It has powerfully redefined the meaning of the urge to sleep with someone other than one’s regular partner. It has turned every extramarital interest into a threat and, often, something close to an emotional catastrophe.
    In the fantasy in Rabih’s mind, it could have been such a tender and easy transaction. He and Kirsten would have chatted with Antonella in the café, all three of them would have recognized the tension and the appeal, and then in short order they would have ended up back at Merchiston Avenue. Antonella and Kirsten would have made out for a while as he looked on from an armchair, then he would have taken Kirsten’s place and had sex with Antonella. It would have felt warm, exciting, and wholly meaningless in terms of the marriage and of Rabih’s essential love for Kirsten. Afterwards he would have walked Antonella back to the café, and none of them would ever mention the interlude again. There would have been no melodrama, no possessiveness and no guilt. At Christmas they might have bought her a panettone and a card by way of thanks for the orgy.
    Despite the liberal atmosphere of our time, it would be naive to assume that the distinction between “weird” and “normal” has disappeared. It stands as secure as ever, waiting to intimidate and herd back into line those who would question the normative limits of love and sex. It may now be deemed “normal” to wear cutoff shorts, expose belly buttons, marry someone of either gender, and watch a little porn for fun, but it also remains indispensably “normal” to believe that true love should be monogamous and that one’s desire should be focused exclusively on one person. To be in dispute with this founding principle is to risk being dismissed, in public or private, with that most dispiriting, caustic and shameful of all epithets: pervert.
    Rabih belongs firmly outside the category of the good communicators. For all that he nurses some strongly held views, he has long found the journey towards expressing these fraught with obstacles and inhibitions. When his boss, Ewen, announces a new corporate strategy of concentrating more on the oil sector and