A Plea for Eros

mystery of attraction and are happy. But why?
    Contentment in love usually goes unquestioned. Still, I don’t think enduring love is rational any more than momentary flings. I have been married to the same man for fifteen years, and I can’t explain why he still attracts me as an erotic object. He does, but why? Shouldn’t it all be worn out by now? It is
no!
because we are so close or know each other so well. That solidifies our friendship, not our attraction. The attraction remains because there’s something about him that I can’t reach, something strange and estranging. I like seeing him from a distance. I know that. I like to see him in a room full of people when he looks like a stranger, and then to remember that I do know him and that 1 will be going home with him. But why he sometimes strikes me as a magical being, a person unlike others, I can’t tell you. He has many good features, but so do other men who leave me cold as a stone. Have I given him this quality because it is efficient for me, or is it actually in him, sonic piece of him that I will never conquer and never know? It must be both. It must be between us—an enchanted space that is wholly unreasonable and, at least in part, imaginary. There is still a fence for me to cross and, on the other side of it, a secret.
    Love affairs and marriages stand or fall on this secret. Familiarity and the pedestrian realities of everyday life are the enemies of eros. Emma Bovary watches her husband eat and is disgusted. She studies maps of Paris and hopes for something grander, more passionate, unfamiliar. A friend of mine told me about evenings out with her husband, during which they seduce each other all over again and she can’t wait to get home and jump on his beautiful body; but if on the way into the house he pauses to straighten the lids on the garbage cans, the spell is broken. She told him, and he now resists this urge. These interruptions disturb the stories we tell ourselves, the ready-made narratives that we have made our own. A combination of biology, personal history, and a cultural miasma of ideas creates attraction. The fantasy lover is always hovering above or behind or in front of the real lover, and you need both of them. The problem is that the alliance of these two is unpredictable. Eros, after all, was a mischievous little imp with arrows, a fellow of surprises who delighted in striking those who expected it least. Like his fairy reincarnation, Puck in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
he turns the world upside down. Hermia prefers Lysander to Demetrius for no good reason. Shakespeare’s young men Demetrius and Lysander, as has often been pointed out, are as alike and interchangeable as two pears. When Theseus points out to Hermia that Demetrius is just as good as Lysander, he isn’t lying. It’s just that Demetrius is not the one she likes. After much confusion and silliness, the lovers are set right by magic. Demetrius is never disenchanted. The flower juice remains in his eyes and he marries Helena under its influence, the point being that when we fall in love we’ve all got fairy juice in our eyes, and not one of us gives a jot about the sane advice of parents or friends or governments. And that’s why legislating desire is unwieldy. A child rushes over and kisses another child in a New York City school, and he’s nabbed by the authorities for “sexual harassment.” Maybe it was an aggressive act, a sudden lack of control that needed the teacher’s attention. Maybe the kissed child was unhappy or scared. And maybe, contrary to the myth of childish innocence, it was
sexual,
a burst of strange, wild feeling. I don’t know. But people, children and adults, do bump up against each other. Everywhere, all the time, there are scuffles of desire. We have laws against molestation and rape. Using power and position to extract sexual favors from an unwilling employee is ugly and shouldn’t be legal. But on the other side of these crimes is a blurry terrain, a borderland of dreams and wishes. And it isn’t a landscape of sunshine only. It is a place streaked with the clouds of sadism and masochism, where peculiar objects and garments are strewn here and there, and where its inhabitants weep as often as they sigh with pleasure. And it is nothing less than amazing that we should have to be reminded of this. All around us, popular singers are crooning out their passion and bitterness on the radio. Billboards, advertisements, and