The Course of Love. A novel pdfdrive com

Arousal seems, in the end, to have very little to do with a state of undress; it
draws its energy from the possibility of being granted permission to possess a
deeply desirable, once forbidden yet now miraculously available and accessible
other. It is an expression of grateful wonder, verging on disbelief, that in a world
of isolation and disconnection, the wrists, thighs, earlobes, and napes of necks
are all there, finally, for us to behold; an extraordinary concept that we want to
keep checking up on, perhaps as often as every few hours, once more joyfully
touching, inserting, revealing, and unclothing, so lonely have we been, so
independent and remote have our lovers seemed. Sexual desire is driven by a
wish to establish closeness—and is hence contingent on a preexisting sense of
distance, which it is a perpetually distinctive pleasure and relief to try to bridge.
There is very little distance left between Rabih and Kirsten. Their legal status
defines them as partners for life; they share a three-by-four-meter bedroom to
which they repair every evening; they talk on the phone constantly when they
are apart; they are each other’s automatically assumed companions every
weekend; they know ahead of time, and at most moments of the day and night,
exactly what the other is doing. There is no longer very much in their conjoined
existence that qualifies as distinctively “other”—and there is therefore little for
the erotic to try to bridge.
At the close of many a day, Kirsten is reluctant even to be touched by Rabih,
not because she no longer cares for him, but because she doesn’t feel as if there
is enough of her left to risk giving more away to another person. One needs a
degree of autonomy before being undressed by someone else can feel like a treat.
But she has answered too many questions, forced too many small feet in too
many shoes, pleaded and cajoled too many times. . . . Rabih’s touch feels like

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another hurdle in the way of a long-delayed communion with her neglected
interior. She wants to cleave tightly and quietly to herself rather than have her
identity be further dispersed across yet more demands. Any advance threatens to
destroy the gossamer-thin shell of her private being. Until she has had sufficient
chance to reacquaint herself with her own thoughts, she can’t even begin to take
pleasure in gifting herself to another.
We may, in addition, feel embarrassed and almost intolerably exposed when
asking for sex of a partner on whom we are already so deeply dependent in a
variety of ways. It can be an intimacy too far, against a backdrop of tense
discussions around what to do with the finances and the school drop-off, where
to go on holiday and what kind of chair to buy, also to ask that a partner look
indulgently upon our sexual needs: that they put on a certain article of clothing,
or take a part in a dark scenario we crave, or lie down in a particular pose on
the bed. We may not want to be relegated to the supplicant’s role, or to burn up
precious emotional capital in the name of a shoe fetish. We may prefer not to
entrust fantasies which we know can make us look ludicrous or depraved to
someone before whom we otherwise have to maintain poise and authority, as
required by the daily negotiations and standoffs of conjugal life. We might find it
a lot safer to think about a complete stranger instead.
The week before, Kirsten is alone in the house, up in the bedroom, one mid-
afternoon. There’s a program on the television about the North Sea fishing fleet
based at Kinlochbervie in the northwest. We meet the fishermen, hear about their
use of new sonar technology, and learn about a worrying decline in various
piscine populations. At least there’s a lot of herring about and the supply of cod
isn’t too bad this year, either. A fisherman named Clyde captains a boat called
the