A Natural History of Love

by Diane Ackerman

  Of course, there is nothing wrong with exciting daydreams; they serve us in countless therapeutic ways, and sometimes inspire romance, love, works of art. “For most of us,” Stoller continues, “unadorned reality would boil our eyeballs…. Who, of those who buy tickets to war movies, would also buy a ticket to the war?” It’s when sexual fantasies of hostility, debasement, and harm enter the picture that the emotional lighting changes. Why is it hostile to need perversion to become sexually excited? Because perversion is the “erotic form of hatred.”

  Let’s consider exhibitionism. One version of it, the one that most often springs to mind, is of a flasher. Most flashers are male, and repeat offenders, because being caught is essential to their satisfaction. Typically, a man goes to a park or some other public place, approaches a woman sitting on a bench, and yanks open his coat to reveal his penis. The woman shrieks and runs for a policeman. What happens next sheds some light on the man’s motives. The flasher rarely runs away. Flashing the woman fills the smallest part of his need. His real goal has many aspects, including the woman’s upset and disapproval; the police coming; the bystanders gasping in a fit of shock and anger; the humiliating arrest; the appearance in court; the embarrassment to his family; the risk of losing his job. These are the critical elements of exposure for the flasher. A flasher is nearly always someone with low self-esteem, a bankrupted vision of his sexual worth, and a deep sense of failure as an individual. In his own eyes he is the unmanliest of men, a limp member of society, a worthless male. By hauling out his penis in public and causing consternation, shock, and chaos, he proves to himself how important his penis is after all, important enough to stop traffic, to make a woman faint, to get him arrested, to ruin his career. That’s a mighty powerful penis; so he must be quite a man after all.

  Love is an act of union or merging with a beloved, which is sought greedily by most, but there are some for whom that is a frightening thought. What if they get suffocated, swallowed up, dismantled? Intimacy takes high-wire courage; it’s dangerous. One could be humiliated, lose face, be forced to relive old traumas. Perversion is a defense against that intimacy. Instead of facing the vulnerability and complexity of a real relationship, where everything is at stake, one invents a fantasy that is violent and taboo enough to be erotically exciting, but where people are dehumanized. People can’t be trusted, only parts of them, or fetishes like knives and whips, or people offering themselves as fetishes. The sexual theater is exciting, not the partners. Once they’re dehumanized, the would-be partners pose no threat. But there is still the sexual excitement. Most often, unknown to the players, this is a revenge drama. The exhibitionist is typically someone who was humiliated as a child and feels driven to humiliate or dominate others, usually strangers, in public. Perversion is what people resort to when intimacy fails.

  Why should intimacy be so frightening? When you tell the truth about your life or feelings you give someone kryptonitelike information about you that can be translated into any language, converted into any currency; you never know when it may be used against you, or how far it may travel, or in whose unfriendly hands it may end up. Compared to that, donating an organ is impersonal. Family members risk being more intimate with one another, but they still keep a simmering portion of their lives private. Children discover that they have little privacy about their bodies and sexuality, both of which are open to view and discussion, whereas their parents’ bodies and sexuality are mainly hidden. Their parents—who happily teach them how to eat and act, how to pee and reason—do not teach them how to be erotic. That equally natural activity is just too shameful and embarrassing to discuss. They learn it haphazardly from friends, books, movies, spying on elders, television, magazines, advertisements.

  After being shocked, the mind adapts. A certain psychic numbing comes from repeatedly seeing sexuality as fashion. We are not unique in this. The codpiece, as we’ve seen, became a fashion statement for generations. One might glance at an especially fashionable Elizabethan young man and discover an upturned, mightily erect leather codpiece with a gargoyle face staring back. Somewhere underneath, a normal member was hanging with the homeboys. This is like being cowed by the big booming voice of the Wizard of Oz only to discover a modest-sized man with a megaphone hiding inside the wizard’s costume. Ultimately, that is what we will find underneath all the sawdust: another glimpse of our humanity, one more piece of a huge jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle piece I’m holding at the moment, trying to fit into place, shows the bare thigh of a man or a woman and, in the background, something unsettling and mysterious—a pair of dark, fascinated eyes.

  Let’s look at the most commonly practiced act of love, in public or in private, for contrast. The following section, “Kissing,” first appeared in A Natural History of the Senses in somewhat different form, but belongs here, too, as kissing must in any contemplation of love.

  KISSING

  Sex is the ultimate intimacy, the ultimate touching when, like two paramecia, we engulf one another. We play at devouring each other, digesting each other, we nurse on each other, drink each other’s fluids, get under each other’s skin. Kissing, we share one breath, open the sealed fortress of our body to our lover. We shelter under a warm net of kisses. We drink from the well of each other’s mouths. Setting out on a kiss caravan of the other’s body, we map the new terrain with our fingertips and lips, pausing at the oasis of a nipple, the hillock of a thigh, the backbone’s meandering riverbed. It is a kind of pilgrimage of touch, which leads to the temple of our desire.

  We most often touch a lover’s genitals before we actually see them. For the most part, our leftover puritanism doesn’t condone exhibiting ourselves to each other naked before we’ve kissed and fondled first. There is an etiquette, a protocol, even in impetuous, runaway sex. But kissing can happen right away, and, if two people care for each other, then it’s less a prelude to mating than a sign of deep regard. There are wild, hungry kisses or there are rollicking kisses, and there are kisses fluttery and soft as the feathers of cockatoos. It’s as if, in the complex language of love, there were a word that could only be spoken when lips touch, a silent contract sealed with a kiss. One style of sex can be bare bones, fundamental and unromantic, but a kiss is the height of voluptuousness, an expense of time and an expanse of spirit in the sweet toil of romance, when one’s bones quiver, anticipation rockets, but gratification is kept at bay on purpose, in exquisite torment, to build to a succulent crescendo of emotion and passion.

  When I was in high school in the early sixties, nice girls didn’t go all the way—most of us wouldn’t have known how to. But man, could we kiss! We kissed for hours in the busted-up front seat of a borrowed Chevy, which, in motion, sounded like a broken dinette set; we kissed inventively, clutching our boyfriends from behind as we straddled motorcycles, whose vibrations turned our hips to jelly; we kissed extravagantly beside a turtlearium in the park, or at the local rose garden or zoo; we kissed delicately, in waves of sipping and puckering; we kissed torridly, with tongues like hot pokers; we kissed timelessly, because lovers throughout the ages knew our longing; we kissed wildly, almost painfully, with tough, soul-stealing rigor; we kissed elaborately, as if we were inventing kisses; we kissed furtively when we met in the hallways between classes; we kissed soulfully in the shadows at concerts, the way we thought musical knights of passion like The Righteous Brothers and their ladies did; we kissed articles of clothing or objects belonging to our boyfriends; we kissed our hands when we blew our boyfriends kisses across the street; we kissed our pillows at night, pretending they were mates; we kissed shamelessly, with all the robust sappiness of youth; we kissed as if kissing could save us from ourselves.

  Before I went off to summer camp, which is what fourteen-year-old girls in suburban Pennsylvania did to mark time, my boyfriend, whom my parents did not approve of (wrong religion) and had forbidden me to see, used to walk five miles across town each evening, and climb in through my bedroom window to kiss me. These were not open-mouthed “Fr
ench” kisses, which we didn’t know about, and they weren’t accompanied by groping. They were just earth-stopping, soulful, on-the-ledge-of-adolescence kissing, when you press your lips together and yearn so hard you feel faint. We wrote letters while I was away, but when school started again in the fall the affair seemed to fade of its own accord. I still remember those summer nights, how my boyfriend would hide in my closet if my parents or brother chanced in, and then kiss me for an hour or so and head back home before dark, and I marvel at his determination and the power of a kiss.

  A kiss seems the smallest movement of the lips, yet it can capture emotions wild as kindling, or be a contract, or dash a mystery. Some cultures don’t do much kissing. In The Kiss and Its History, Dr. Christopher Nyrop refers to Finnish tribes “which bathe together in a state of complete nudity,” but regard kissing “as something indecent.” Certain African tribes, whose lips are decorated, mutilated, stretched, or in other ways deformed, don’t kiss. But they are unusual. Most people on the planet greet one another face-to-face; their greeting may take many forms, but it usually includes kissing, nose-kissing, or nose-saluting. There are many theories about how kissing began. Some authorities believe it evolved from the act of smelling someone’s face, inhaling them out of friendship or love in order to gauge their mood and well-being. There are cultures today in which people greet each other by putting their heads together and inhaling the other’s essence. Some sniff hands. The mucous membranes of the lips are exquisitely sensitive, and we often use the mouth to taste texture while using the nose to smell flavor. Animals frequently lick their masters or their young with relish, savoring the taste of a favorite’s identity. (Not only humans kiss. Apes and chimps have been observed kissing and embracing as a form of peacemaking.) So we may indeed have begun kissing as a way to taste and smell someone. According to the Bible account, when Isaac grew old and lost his sight, he called his son Esau to kiss him and receive a blessing. But Jacob put on Esau’s clothing and, because he smelled like Esau to his blind father, received the kiss instead. In Mongolia, a father does not kiss his son; he smells his son’s head. Some cultures prefer just to rub noses (Inuits, Maoris, Polynesians, and others), while in some Malay tribes the word for “smell” means the same as “salute.” Here is how Charles Darwin describes the Malay nose-rubbing kiss: “The women squatted with their faces upturned; my attendants stood leaning over theirs, and commenced rubbing. It lasted somewhat longer than a hearty handshake with us. During this process they uttered a grunt of satisfaction.”

  Some cultures kiss chastely, some extravagantly, and some savagely, biting and sucking each other’s lips. In The Customs of the Swahili People, edited by J.W.T. Allen, it is reported that a Swahili husband and wife kiss on the lips if they are indoors, and will freely kiss young children. However, boys over the age of seven usually are not kissed by mother, aunt, sister-in-law, or sister. The father may kiss a son, but a brother or father shouldn’t kiss a girl. Furthermore,

  when his grandmother or his aunt or another woman comes, a child one or two years old is told to show his love for his aunt and he goes to her. Then she tells him to kiss her, and he does so. Then he is told by his mother to show his aunt his tobacco, and he lifts his clothes and shows her his penis. She tweaks the penis and sniffs and sneezes and says: “O, very strong tobacco.” Then she says, “Hide your tobacco.” If there are four or five women, they all sniff and are pleased and laugh a lot.

  How did mouth kissing begin? To primitive peoples, the hot air wafting from their mouths may have seemed a magical embodiment of the soul, and a kiss a way to fuse two souls. Desmond Morris, who has been observing people with a keen zoologist’s eye for decades, is one of a number of authorities who claim this fascinating and, to me, plausible origin for French kissing:

  In early human societies, before commercial baby-food was invented, mothers weaned their children by chewing up their food and then passing it into the infantile mouth by lip-to-lip contact—which naturally involved a considerable amount of tonguing and mutual mouth-pressure. This almost bird-like system of parental care seems strange and alien to us today, but our species probably practiced it for a million years or more, and adult erotic kissing today is almost certainly a Relic Gesture stemming from these origins…. Whether it has been handed down to us from generation to generation … or whether we have an inborn predisposition towards it, we cannot say. But, whichever is the case, it looks rather as though, with the deep kissing and tonguing of modern lovers, we are back again at the infantile mouth-feeding stage of the far-distant past…. If the young lovers exploring each other’s mouths with their tongues feel the ancient comfort of parental mouth-feeding, this may help them increase their mutual trust and thereby their pair-bonding.

  Our lips are deliciously soft and responsive, Their touch sensations are transmitted to a large part of the brain, and what a boon that is to kissing. We don’t just kiss romantically, of course. We also kiss dice before we roll them, kiss our own hurt finger or that of a loved one, kiss a religious symbol or statue, kiss the flag of our homeland or the ground itself, kiss a good-luck charm, kiss a photograph, kiss the king’s or bishop’s ring, kiss our own fingers to signal farewell to someone. The ancient Romans used to deliver the “last kiss,” which custom had it would capture a dying person’s soul.* In America we “kiss off” someone when we dump them, and they yell “Kiss my ass!” when angry. Young women press lipsticked mouths to the backs of envelopes so all the imprinted tiny lines will carry like fingerprint kisses to their sweethearts. We even refer to billiard balls as “kissing” when they touch delicately and glance away. Hershey sells small foil-wrapped candy “kisses,” so we can give love to ourselves or others with each morsel. Christian worship includes a “kiss of peace,” whether of a holy object—a relic or a cross—or of fellow worshipers, translated by some Christians into a rather more restrained handshake. William S. Walsh’s 1897 book, Curiosities of Popular Customs, quotes a Dean Stanley, writing in Christian Institutions, as reporting travelers who “have had their faces stroked and been kissed by the Coptic priest in the cathedral at Cairo, while at the same moment everybody else was kissing everybody throughout the church.” In ancient Egypt, the Orient, Rome, and Greece, honor used to dictate kissing the hem or feet or hands of important persons. Mary Magdalen kissed the feet of Jesus. Kissing the pope’s ring is a near-miss kiss. A sultan often required subjects of varying ranks to kiss varying parts of his royal body: high officials might kiss the toe, others merely the fringe of his scarf. The riffraff just bowed to the ground. Drawing a row of XXXXXs at the bottom of a letter to represent kisses began in the Middle Ages, when so many people were illiterate that a cross was acceptable as a signature on a legal document. The cross did not represent the Crucifixion, nor was it an arbitrary scrawl; it stood for “Saint Andrew’s mark,” and people vowed to be honest in his sacred name. To pledge their sincerity, they would kiss their signature. In time, the “X” became associated with the kiss alone.†

  Perhaps the most famous buss in the world is Rodin’s sculpture The Kiss, in which two lovers, sitting on a rocky ledge or outcropping, embrace tenderly with radiant energy, and kiss forever. Her left hand wrapped around his neck, she seems almost to be swooning, or to be singing into his mouth. As he rests his open right hand on her thigh, a thigh he knows well and adores, he seems to be ready to play her leg as if it were a musical instrument. Enveloped in each other, glued together by touch at the shoulder, hand, leg, hip, and chest, they seal their fate and close it with the stoppers of their mouths. His calves and knees are beautiful, her ankles are strong and firmly feminine, and her buttocks, waist, and breasts are all heavily fleshed and curvy. Ecstasy pours off every inch of them. Touching in only a few places, they seem to be touching in every cell. Above all, they are oblivious to us, the sculptor, or anything on earth outside of themselves. It is as if they have fallen down the well of each other; they are not only self-absorbed, but absorbing each other. Rodin, who often took
secret sketch notes of the irrelevant motions made by his models, has given these lovers a vitality and thrill that bronze can rarely capture in its fundamental calm. Only the fluent, abstracted stroking and pressing of live lovers actually kissing could capture it. Rilke notes how Rodin was able to fill his sculptures “with this deep inner vitality, with the rich and amazing restlessness of life. Even the tranquility, where there was tranquility, was composed of hundreds upon hundreds of moments of motion keeping each other in equilibrium…. Here was desire immeasurable, thirst so great that all the waters of the world dried in it like a single drop.”

  According to anthropologists, the lips remind us of the labia, because they flush red and swell when aroused, which is the conscious or subconscious reason women have always made them look even redder with lipstick. Today the bee-stung look is popular; models draw even larger and more hospitable lips, almost always in shades of pink and red, and then apply a further gloss to make them look shiny and moist. So, anthropologically at least, a kiss on the mouth, especially with all the plunging of tongues and the exchanging of saliva, is another form of intercourse. No surprise that it makes the mind and body surge with gorgeous sensations.

  *Last-kiss scenes appear in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (VIII, 860–61), Seneca’s Hercules Oetaeus, and Virgil’s Aeneid (IV, 684–85), among others, and in a more erotic form in the writings of Ariosto.

  †it used to be fashionable in Spain to close formal letters with QBSP {Que Besa Su Pies, “Who kisses your feet”) or QBSM (Que Besa Su Mano, “Who kisses your hand”).

  ON THE SENSUALITY OF LOOKING