The Course of Love. A novel pdfdrive com

For all the talk of sexual liberation, the truth is that secrecy and a degree of
embarrassment around sex continue as much as they have always done. We still
can’t generally say what we want to do and with whom. Shame and repression of
impulse aren’t just things that our ancestors and certain buttoned-up religions
latched onto for obscure and unnecessary reasons: they are fated to be constants
in all eras—which is what lends such power to those rare moments (there might
be only a few in a lifetime) when a stranger invites us to drop our guard and
admits to wanting pretty much exactly what we had once privately and guiltily
craved.
It is two in the morning by the time they finish. An owl is hooting somewhere in
the darkness.
Kirsten falls asleep in Rabih’s arms. She seems trustful and at ease, slipping
gracefully into the current of sleep while he stands at the shore, protesting
against the end of this miraculous day, rehearsing its pivotal moments. He
watches her lips tremble slightly, as though she were reading a book to herself in
some foreign language of the night. Occasionally she seems to wake for an
instant and, looking startled and scared, appeals for help: “The train!” she
exclaims, or, with even greater alarm, “It’s tomorrow; they moved it!” He
reassures her (they have enough time to get to the station; she’s done all the
necessary revision for the exam) and takes her hand, like a parent preparing to
lead a child across a busy road.
It’s more than mere coyness to refer to what they have done as “making love.”

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They haven’t just had sex; they have translated their feelings—appreciation,
tenderness, gratitude, and surrender—into a physical act.
We call things a turn-on but what we might really be alluding to is delight at
finally having been allowed to reveal our secret selves—and at discovering that,
far from being horrified by who we are, our lovers have opted to respond with
only encouragement and approval.
A degree of shame and a habit of secrecy surrounding sex began for Rabih when
he was twelve. Before that there were, of course, a few minor lies told and
transgressions committed: he stole some coins from his father’s wallet; he
merely pretended to like his aunt Ottilie; and one afternoon in her stuffy,
cramped apartment by the Corniche, he copied a whole section of his algebra
homework from his brilliant classmate Michel. But none of those infractions
caused him to feel any primal self-disgust.
For his mother, he had always been the sweet, thoughtful child she called by
the diminutive nickname “Maus.” Maus liked to cuddle with her under the large
cashmere blanket in the living room and to have his hair stroked away from his
smooth forehead. Then one term, all of a sudden, the only thing Maus could
think about was a group of girls a couple of years above him at school, five or
six feet tall, articulate Spaniards who walked around at break time in a
conspiratorial gang and giggled together with a cruel, confident, and enticing air.
On weekends he would slip into the little blue bathroom at home every few
hours and visualize scenes that he’d will himself to forget again the moment he
was finished. A chasm opened up between who he had to be for his family and
who he knew he was inside. The disjuncture was perhaps most painful in relation
to his mother. It didn’t help that the onset of puberty coincided for him almost
exactly with the diagnosis of her cancer. Deep in his unconscious, in some dark
recess immune to logic, he nursed the impression that his discovery of sex might
have helped to kill her.
Things weren’t completely straightforward for Kirsten at that age, either. For
her, too, there were oppressive ideas at play about what it meant to be a good
person. At fourteen she liked walking the dog, volunteering at the old people’s
home, doing extra geography homework about rivers—but also, alone in her
bedroom, lying on the floor with her skirt hiked up, watching herself in the
mirror and imagining that she was putting on a show for an older boy at school.
Much like Rabih, she wanted certain things which didn’t seem to fit in with the
dominant, socially prescribed notions of normality.
These past histories of self-division are part of what makes the beginning of

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their relationship so satisfying. There is no more need for subterfuge or
furtiveness between them. Although they have both had a number of partners in
the past, they find each other exceptionally open-minded and reassuring.
Kirsten’s bedroom becomes the headquarters for nightly explorations during
which they are at last able to disclose, without fear of being judged, the many
unusual and improbable things that their sexuality compels them to crave.