Married But Available

by B. Nyamnjoh

  “I also think that the AIDS pandemic in certain parts of Africa may have moved people, especially men to non-contact sex such as strip shows and watching porn. In places where AIDS has reached alarming proportions not only do men who think they have a reason to stay alive use condoms but now they limit the number of female partners. With their pleasure neutered by fear of AIDS, they channel interest in sex to other outlets that include using porn stars as proxy partners and virtual spaces as reality.”

  “You are very learned,” said Lilly Loveless, full of admiration.

  “Thanks,” said Desire. “It’s mostly my male colleagues who are so fussy about these things,” she continued. “Be it normal relationships, pornography or academia, they are out to rape us into utter and total invisibility,” Desire explained. “In feminist writings it has been suggested that most men have fantasies of conquering women or even raping them. This is of course controversial. What matters is that porn is made for male viewers; it’s a male fantasy. The typical threesome is two women and one man, preferably the women do a lesbian scene. The man feeling envious, provoked, stimulated or all three by what the women do, or thinking of teaching the girls a lesson with his irate, erect – or is it elected – penis is a homophobic fantasy in which men typically think there is nothing to lesbianism – a situation not aided by the fascination lesbians have for sex toys that mimic male genitalia, or that overly dramatize their importance, as in the case of the double headed penis. Once the man enters the scene the women invariably stop their thing and attend to him. There is of course the ‘full assault’, where three men penetrate the same woman vaginally, anally, and orally all at the same time. I see in this an underlying assumption that real sex lies in penile penetration of women, regardless of which orifice is penetrated. And the fact that many female sex toys mimic the male penis and penchant for penetration just further proves the point. It’s all in the penis in a world governed by phallocracy.”

  “That’s really profound,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “I do not doubt that women have come to desire this kind of conquest and now fantasise having endless sex using any orifice in the female body… A man has to penetrate and occupy all available openings simultaneously or serially. What is missing in this porn is how women themselves feel about it. Do they enjoy it?”

  “I think so. Some do, don’t they?” ventured Lilly Loveless.

  “If they do bravo! If they do not, we have a problem of abuse of women which will only stop if the market for this type of popular entertainment is no longer there. I have read of women who are so violated that they have all manner of complications including fistula, incontinences and so on. In small scale productions by amateurs, it is possible that the women may initially do them for fun. I heard a story right here in Puttkamerstown about a young woman in her 20s who, suffering from heartbreak, recorded sex-explicit scenes of herself with another man and sent it to her ex-flame to snipe him. I suppose this was the young woman’s take on the idea that men consider all women they have been with ‘their women,’ even when they are no longer interested in them, hence the popular belief that men are upset when they see ex-flames with other men. The flick was intercepted by others and the matter ended at the police station. Some women do it for the money and for fun, but eventually are enslaved by producers and subversive digital technology.”

  “I can neither validate or invalidate your theory, not having read much into this area, but I find what you say very compelling.” Lilly Loveless felt pleased with her comment.

  “One last point,” said Desire. “Coming back to the popularity of hardcore porn… I suppose people want to push to envelope in experiencing pleasure. I know men who patronize sex workers who get them in pairs or trios, like in harem so that the women stimulate every little receptacle the man has for a fee. It could be Viagra or other drugs that make men veritable sex machines – no place for words as their toolkits do all the talking. I do not know if this is pleasurable for ordinary women who are not similarly stimulated. I suppose in gender politics we will know we have a revolution taking place when man to man porn is consumed openly because we know that there is a huge undercurrent of M2M out there. M2M sexual bonds in this sense remain sacrosanct – hidden, respected, sacred – while male-female bonds are cheapened. Porn is rewriting injustice, and the advent of Viagra and its reinvention of penetration as the ultimate indicator of sex turns the clock back on many achievements by the Feminist Movement. This is why some people have developed ‘woman friendly porn’ or ‘couple friendly porn’. I do not think you will find it on hardcore shelves.”

  “So Viagra is a real monster of an invention,” said Lilly Loveless, half question, half affirmation.

  “Recently, I was at the cybercafé checking my email when this joke came through, forwarded by a woman I attended secondary school with, who now lives and works in southern Africa: A bride tells her newly wedded husband, ‘Honey, you know I’m a virgin and I don’t know anything about sex. Can you explain it to me first?’ A broad and yearning smile on his face, the husband touches her caringly in places and says, ‘OK, Sweetheart. In simple terms, let’s call your thing the prison and my thing the prisoner. The game we play is PPP – Put the Prisoner in Prison. And it is imprisonment with hard labour, as no lying about is tolerated.’”

  “Wow” said Lilly Loveless, surprised that Desire could bring herself to share a joke like this. She would have sworn such jokes were beneath her. “I can see where things are heading,” she added.

  “They made heated and passionate love for the first time. Afterwards, the husband is lying face up on the bed, panting like a lizard but smiling with satisfaction. With a giggle, the bride nudges him: ‘Honey, the prisoner seems to have escaped.’”

  “And what does he have to say for himself?”

  “He turns on his side, a smile on his face, and says: ‘Then we will have to re-imprison him.’ After the second time, he reaches for a cigarette, but the bride, thoroughly in the mood, whispers to him with a smile in her eyes: ‘Honey, the prisoner is out again!’ The man rises to the occasion, but with the unsteady legs of a drunk. Then, he falls back on the bed, totally exhausted. Again she nudges him: ‘Honey, the prisoner escaped again.’ Barely able to turn his head, the man yells at her: ‘Hey, look here! It’s not a life sentence, OK?’”

  “I can well imagine what could happen after the prisoner has served his sentence and returned to a normal working life,” volunteered Lilly Loveless.

  “What?” Desire was curious.

  “I imagine his employer complaining: ‘Mr P, I didn’t know you had such a small organ,’ and he replying, ‘How was I supposed to know I’d been playing in front of such a huge cathedral?’”

  “Wow!” said Desire. “And does he keep his job?”

  “I imagine him, after working for a few years, requesting a promotion and a raise, and advancing as reasons the fact of his hard physical labour, working at great depths, plunging headfirst into everything he did, working upside down in dark, poorly ventilated conditions and in a high humidity environment. I also imagine him complaining about not getting weekends, holidays and time off after extra hours or not being paid overtime, and about being exposed to contagious diseases.”

  “And what do you imagine management telling him in response?” enquired Desire, enjoying Lilly Loveless’ imagination.

  “Dear Mr P, after considering your request and assessing the arguments raised, management rejects your request for these reasons: You do not work 8 hours straight during any work period; you do not answer immediately to all requests, do not always follow the orders of the management team nor take initiative. Instead, you have to be pressured and stimulated to start working. You easily fall asleep at work, show little evidence of fidelity at the workplace, and prefer working alone than with others. You leave the worksite rather messy at the end of your shift, and often leave work too early. You are grossly unable to work double shifts, and will certainly retire well before 65. And as i
f that were not enough, you have been observed entering and leaving the workplace carrying two suspicious looking bags.” Lilly Loveless was pleased with her effort, and so was Desire.

  “Jokes like this used to make sense, but with the coming of Viagra, it’s the bride who screams for mercy from a deaf and dumb penis made to operate like a workman whose only tool is a hammer and to whom every problem is a nail,” Desire concluded.

  “I like that!” screamed Lilly Loveless, excitedly. “Could you repeat it?”

  Desire repeated, slowly, and Lilly Loveless jotted, getting things down word for word.

  “But Viagra is not the only villain in town,” added Desire. “General insensitivity by men to women’s sexual needs has always been around. In societies where extreme forms of female genital cutting are practiced it is also possible that women find penetrative sex less pleasurable. I have read personal testimonies of women from certain parts of Mimboland who say penetration is uncomfortable for them. Come to think of it, I haven’t read much about non-circumcised women finding it pleasurable. Some simply resolve the need for intimacy in the sense of tender loving care through woman-to-woman non-penetrative sex away from their husbands or boyfriends. Sex with men is endured for childbearing and economic security.”

  “I really appreciate what you have said,” remarked Lilly Loveless. “I can see that these are things you have thought through for some time, although your modesty won’t allow you to agree. Have you always felt like this about love?”

  “You do really have a way of digging under one’s feet, don’t you?”

  “I do my best,” replied Lilly Loveless. “Research is a difficult exercise.”

  Desire got up, went to a cupboard, and took out a bundle of letters, which she had carefully folded away. “This is my love,” said she, placing the bundle on the table. “I have had two serious relationships, but with very little to write home about at the end of the day.”

  “Please tell me, if you don’t mind,” implored Lilly Loveless.

  “That will have to wait till tomorrow evening,” said Desire. “I’m late for a women’s meeting somewhere in town.”

  When Desire left, Lilly Loveless stayed back to develop her notes. The interview was too rich for her to postpone writing up, as she didn’t want to risk forgetting anything Desire said. She was particularly impressed with Desire’s knowledge of issues, much of which confirmed what she, Lilly Loveless, had read from various sources. On Viagra for instance, Lilly Loveless had read that the initial reason for its launch over a decade ago, was to serve as a love potion for impotent men. But not only was the drug soon to become the darling of healthy men desirous of enhancing their virility and terrorizing women with eternal erections, it also became a sensation and the messiah to the pornographic industry the world over. Thanks to Viagra and the unyielding erections it generates, men are invited to cross the boundaries of acceptability in sexuality under the gaze of prying cameras by demonstrating that they can do it again and again and again. The message is clear: Gone are the days when men risked too little sex because of defective erections, or when they were forced to embrace foreplay, kissing and touching in order to prolong or continue a journey abandoned by their failing erections. Viagra has indeed brought back to life the self-confidence that was dead and buried in many men.

  However, if what Lilly Loveless had read was anything to go by, Viagra was more a source of pain than pleasure for women. Far from enhancing the ability of men to be good lovers, Viagra was turning men into automated penetration zombies, programmed to test drive to destruction women for whom penetration with an enlarged penis is hardly a priority to good love-making. The road to a woman’s orgasm is long, narrow and full of detours that demand mastery of roadmaps and creative improvisation. By overplaying the centrality of penetrative sex, Viagra takes away from the game of love the creativity that makes a woman feel ‘this is for me as well.’ With Viagra has come arrogance amongst men informed by total ignorance of what it takes to please and pleasure a woman. The subtle suggestiveness of Playboy has given way to the crude and brutal monotony of the Viagra-driven hardcore porn industry. With Viagra, men flex the muscle of their third leg in the face of every one that catches their fancy with an “I am the answer to your problem” attitude. But such insensitivity to understand women and their real needs, is leading to divorces not disconnected from the Viagra syndrome. More and more women are impatient with the “acts of lust” that have come with Viagra to replace the “acts of love”.

  Lilly Loveless couldn’t wait to see Desire again.

  26

  ˝When I started teaching here at the University of Mimbo, it was as an instructor,” began Desire, as soon as Lilly Loveless was seated. They were sitting on the veranda watching the night approach, as the sun retired behind the mountain like a tired traveller.

  Desire opened the soft drinks she bought, Lilly Loveless having declined to take a beer, not wanting to miss even a word of what she had convinced herself was going to be a great story.

  Desire continued: “I was paired up with a tall, dark, handsome, sophisticated senior lecturer, Dr Sexwale, who was supposed to teach me the tricks of the trade. I won’t hide from you. What is there to hide? He was a manly man, a real man with brains. I fell in love with the guy the first day I watched him teach. I fell in love with how at ease he was! He seemed to enjoy himself. He made me imagine that teaching can be fun when one can see students understanding, when both students and teachers are motivated.

  “What I remember most from that class though was the pleasure I had in just watching him speak, the reality of him sitting calmly at the desk mixed up with imagined memories of his smooth skin rubbing against mine, his tender caresses, a myriad of sensations flooding my thoughts. There was something very exciting in trying to reconcile the two worlds of his public, professional appearance with the intimacy I imagined we shared. Just like it turned me on to find him working on his papers for publication at his office, or to hear him talk with colleagues about this or that university committee meeting when what I wanted most of all was to get rid of those colleagues and have him all to myself so that I could make mad love to him until the end of time.

  “I was lucky he eventually fell for me, but cruel as life is, it happened just two weeks before he took up a prestigious professorship with a university in Muzunguland.”

  “How sad,” interjected Lilly Loveless.

  “So often I have considered love and sex to be disjunct spheres – both appear easier to handle that way – but with Dr Sexwale they seemed to have melted together into one overwhelming complex of intense happiness and – now that he was so far away – fervent longing, longing to have him, to discover him, to discover with him, to talk, to laugh, to be with him in every possible way. I wanted to make love with him with my entire soul, I wanted it never to end, and I wanted it so badly that sometimes it frightened me, lest I should lose him. I would imagine myself in-between actually saying to him in letters that took forever to arrive: ‘Sexwale, Sexwale, I don’t think I’ve ever longed for anyone as intensely as I long for you. Every day without you seems like an entirety. I live my daily life here, teach bloody Women’s Studies, tend my flowers, play with my thesis, involve myself with the usual happenings in the house, but there’s always an important part of me that’s not participating, a part that is waiting, waiting to be together with you again, waiting for you to bring that part of me to life again. It really hurts to miss you like this. I wonder how long it will be before I can feel you in my arms again.’”

  “That’s powerful,” remarked Lilly Loveless, “very powerful.”

  “I lived daydream after daydream: ‘Sexwale, my dearest, how I would love to hear your voice again! So many times I’ve replayed in my mind moments that we had together – even our very first meeting is etched in my memory in sharp detail, every word you said, the way you looked, the strange ease with which we – total strangers – conversed. I know exactly what you were wearing and how you
were leaning on the table at your office. There are so many moments with you that I remember in every minute detail. Do you really think we’ll have a chance to increase the repertoire? I often catch myself imagining how it will be to see you again (to feel you again! to have you so close again!)’”

  Lilly Loveless was itching to interrupt with comments of how passionate Desire’s reveries were, and how much she had never thought her name so appropriately chosen. But she thought twice, not wanting Desire to lose her train of thought.

  “I fell in love at a very difficult time, when communication was not as easy as it is now. There was no email, no cell phones, and even the regular phones were difficult to come by. We relied on the good old capricious postal service. Often I would find myself complaining: ‘Oh, Sexwale, this long-distance communication is becoming too difficult. I must see you live soon. Telephone conversations like the one this morning make me feel so helpless and far away. And the slow postal service is evidently creating a huge time lapse in the letter business. You said you received my dream-letter, but to me it seems like ages ago that I sent that one off, and since then I’m sure I’ve sent more than one letter each week.’

  “Silences were often frustrating and cause for serious concern both ways. Sometimes, I would write explaining my apparent silence at the same time as I complained about his: ‘Sexwale Dear, forgive my silence if you haven’t read from me, but I’ve been writing non-stop. You are always on my mind! And I haven’t heard from you in such a long time – how are you? Sometimes, when I check my mailbox only to find it empty again, a little pang of pops up. Is something wrong? Are you still there? Did a letter get lost in the mail? Are you too busy? Angry? Tired? In love with some Muzungulander beauty? How I wish I could just hear your reassuring voice! How I wish I could surprise you at your office at the university to drag you off somewhere for some of whatever beer you drink out there, the quiet night enveloping us into our own sweet world, away from Women’s Studies and Puttkamerstown rain, away from every other woman in red, white, black or any other colour, for that matter, away from the harsh reality of this huge distance between us, together, close together, so close that your breath becomes mine and I no longer know where my skin ends and yours begins. So often I dream of you! So often I imagine the touch of your hands, the tinkling of your voice – I don’t hear it. I feel it somewhere in the depths of my stomach, where your voice resounds, filling me with a warmth and hunger, a yearning to become one with you and never to separate again. I imagine you and me together, endless walks along the Sakersbeach coast, endless talks, and endless nights. I imagine you in my bed, I imagine falling asleep beside you knowing that you’ll be there when I wake up again – how I wish I could put into words the feeling of complete and intense joy that would give me. I don’t know if it will ever happen. I don’t really want to consider that – it is just a fierce wish, an absorbing fantasy that I relive almost every night before dropping off to sleep. And sleep is what I intend to do right now, as it is 2am and many unpleasant tasks at the University of Mimbo await me tomorrow. I’ll get back to you soon, I promise. In the meantime please know that I’m missing you badly, longing for you (and for more time, to write a longer letter).’”