Back Again to High Fidelity

By J.L.

Wanda:Ralph, do you remember Stanley, who ran off with the meter maid and joined the love commune in Altoona? Well, it seems he's back with his wife again.

Ralph: What happened, dearest? Did she come into some money?

Wanda: Try not to be cynical so early in a conversation, Ralph. Stanley just wanted to explore his sensuality. Once he did, he came to see that an in-depth relationship with one person is more challenging and erotic than casual sex with many.

Ralph: Poor Stanley. He'll have to do some remedial reading of the revolutionary texts. Didn't Alex Comfort tell us in More Joy of Sex that "hot sex" with its "tragic intensities" was far inferior to cool, unemotional sex?

Wanda: That was in the '70s, Ralph. We are way beyond that now. Many people tried to detach sex from love back then, but that was because society told them they couldn't have one without the other. Now that society has relaxed a bit...

Ralph: Wanda, you're trying to bring me a bulletin from the sexual frontier. Out with it.

Wanda: Commitment is in, Ralph.

Ralph: You mean sex is not just a user-friendly technology? Tell me more.

Wanda: Nowadays we speak of intimacy, pair bonding, working at relationships. In sexuality, quality is more important than quantity. There's a big reaction against the trivialization of sex. George Leonard, who used to be a guru at Esalen, has written a new book called The End of Sex, and it talks about the ideal of "high monogamy." Anything wrong with that, curmudgeon of mine?

Ralph: Nothing at all, my pet. Fresh cant is an important component in America's never-ending quest for novelty. What is high monogamy, by the way? I assume I have been a notably low monogamist all these years.

Wanda: One of the lowest, my stodgy one. High monogamy is people staying together, not because they have to but because they know who they are and because they want what Leonard calls "challenge and an adventure." He talks about "two vibrant entities merging to become a new vibrancy."

Ralph: Sounds awfully shaky to me, dearest. Two vibrating people in one small apartment might be enough to drive Stanley back to Altoona. What other news from the front?

Wanda: Living together is not seen as a rejection of marriage any more. It's more of a way station, almost part of the courtship ritual. And divorce ends in remarriage so routinely that you could call it a backhanded compliment to marriage and its claims.

Ralph: This is certainly bracing news for us lovemongers, Wanda. If stability and commitment are the watchwords, then I take it that the sexual revolution is over?

Wanda: Yes, it's over, Ralph, because it has been won. There are just a few counterrevolutionary guerrillas like you and Jerry Falwell left up there in the hills.

Ralph: Harsh words, Wanda. Have I ever uttered a single word against the sainted cause of the revolution?

Wanda: No, but I have a feeling you will.

Ralph: Far from it, beloved helpmate. In fact, I grow nostalgic for the cause. Who will ever forget the jolly sex communes, the fantasy workshops and masturbation classes, the Playboy philosophy and the dedicated search for new female sex organs. Remember the wellspring of sympathy for "erotic minorities" (a.k.a. perverts), and the invention of "creative divorce," leading to "quality time" of 45 minutes a week spent with the kids during that important self-actualizing period after a creative divorce? Then there's your cousin Bruce down in Greenwich Village. He stayed an extra five years with his wife waiting for the inevitable fulfillment of Alex Comfort's prediction that bisexuality would be "standard middle-class morality" by 1984. I think he knew your friend Marvin who nearly got himself gelded in a sex-change operation because he considered himself a woman trapped in a man's body, when actually, he later concluded, he was merely a dentist trapped in Chicago. I believe he is now into yoga, a pursuit which luckily requires no genital mutilation at all. Ah, Wanda! Those were the days!

Wanda: You argue quite fluently for a deranged person, Ralph. I suppose we were all better off back in your favorite decade, the '50s, the golden age of shotgun weddings, coat-hanger abortions and wall-to-wall guilt. Everybody but you and Cotton Mather knows that there is more frankness, spontaneity and joy in sex because of the changes. Even a Cro-Magnon philosopher like yourself should have no trouble opposing that. Why do you judge the sexual revolution by its most frivolous people, as if the whole idea were to set up a nationwide game of chase the meter maid or jump the stewardess?

Ralph: I believe you meant to say "flight attendant," dearest. Actually I am thrilled to see marriage and commitment making a comeback among the self-realizers, Californicators and middle-aged kids left over from the '60s. There is nothing so touching as watching someone reinvent the wheel.

Wanda: None of your diatribes would be complete without a shot at the '60s. Can I assume you are winding down?

Ralph: Absolutely, and if I may sum up, there is much to be said on both sides, including a bit on yours. But since we spent the revolutionary period together, Wanda, I have a question ...

Wanda: Yes, recalcitrant one?

Ralph: Was it good for you too?

Wanda: See me later, Ralph. Right now, I have a headache. --J.L