A Natural History of Love (43 page)

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

What the eyes caress, the memory fondles. As infants, using our fingers as eyes, we learn the world has depth and all of life a quirky topography, a three-dimensional feel. Then the merest glimpse of a clamshell or a shoulder is enough to kindle the touch-memory for
curve
. Then seeing a naked man lying in a shallow riverbed is enough to recall the feel of
round, hard, flat, bulging, knobbly, interflowing
. Then a woman holding a photograph of a large airy feather applied to an anonymous woman’s nether parts can’t help but imagine the feel of the feather. Then a photo of a woman’s face, her eyes closed in carnal reverie, her cheek muscles limp, blissed-out by love, as a man’s thumb gently presses open her bottom lip, is enough to make one utter a vicarious sigh.

The hands have already been where the eyes long to go, and we can imagine the terrain in painstaking or delight-taking detail. That is enough. Indeed, it is the all some people desire. PET scans show that it makes no difference whether we experience an event or
imagine
it—the same parts of the brain light up. No wonder we are ardent voyeurs, savoring the visual Eden of photograph and film. They offer us homeopathic doses of love, exhilaration, mystery, sexual adventure, and violence—all enjoyed from a safe remove. To feel but not feel. To gamble but not risk. To undress and unravel and penetrate with mere thought. These are heady thrills. A creative brain makes its own virtual reality every day. In a certain frame of mind—that of a devoted paramour—all of life is erotic. To love the world with the eyes, one uses them as hands; to love the world with ideas, one uses them as eyes.

Visual images are sticky. They attract meaning and emotion, and then quickly become unforgettable. No image is an island; it includes much that lies unseen. The lithe, giraffe-like woman nakedly feeding a real giraffe had to take her clothes off somewhere. Soon enough the giraffe, with a long insinuating tongue, will reach for the leaf she offers. And what is her relationship to the clothed person standing in the shadows behind her? Images work somewhat like pictograms. For example, in the scrapbook of my own memory, the image of a man holding a woman’s face in his hands means “tenderness.”

I remember the time a friend picked a ripe apple from his tree, took a bite from its firm flesh, and offered it to me to sample. We were not lovers. But, biting into the crater his teeth had just left, I joined him in the apple’s flesh, which tasted sweet, sex-wet, and open. In that small oasis, our mouths met. Now when I see a photograph of such an apple, I don’t think of Mom, Country, and Apple Pie. The image is tinged with the erotic. I think
kiss
.

Someone may find a telephone receiver sensuous, because it reminds him of the hot calls that inflamed an entire summer, and the delicious hours he held a phone’s smooth, plastic knob as if it were his beloved’s hand. Someone else may have more straightforward tastes, and be set atingle by a curvaceous back, a mischievous smile, or a ravenous glance.

What is erotic? The acrobatic play of the imagination. The sea of memories in which we bathe. The way we caress and worship things with our eyes. Our willingness to be stirred by the sight of the voluptuous. What is erotic is our passion for the liveliness of life.

PATTERNS IN NATURE

In the diamond quarter of Amsterdam, where hearts are cut every day, I sat on a bench during the violet hour, watching the sun drain out of the sky and a half-moon rise like an Inca god. A woman in a blue scarf, hurrying home with a net shopping bag full of produce, swerved awkwardly to avoid something in the road. A moment later she swerved again, and it wasn’t until the third swerve a few steps on that I saw the pattern in her gait. Perhaps caused by a hip injury?

Just then I realized that a necklace of lights had been forming across the throat of the brick buildings along the canal. At night, Amsterdam opens its veins and pours forth the neon milk of cities. We are obsessed with lights. Not random lights, but carefully arranged ones. Perhaps it is our way of hurling the constellations back at the sky.

We crave pattern. We find it all around us, in sand dunes and pinecones; we imagine it when we look at clouds and starry nights; we create and leave it everywhere like footprints or scat. Our buildings, our symphonies, our fabrics, our societies—all declare patterns. Even our actions. Habits, rules, rituals, daily routines, taboos, codes of honor, sports, traditions—we have many names for patterns of conduct. They reassure us that life is stable, orderly, and predictable.

So do similes or metaphors, because seemingly unrelated things may be caught in their pincers, and then the subtle patterns that unite them shine clear. This is how the mind sometimes comforts itself, and often how the mind crosses from one unknown continent of perception or meaning to another, by using the land bridge of metaphor. In conversation, we meander like a river. Rocking with grief, a mourning woman keens like a wind-bent willow. The river sings. Unanswered letters dune on a cluttered desk. Families branch. Music curves, spirals, and flows. The spidery mind spins a fragile, sticky web between like things, gluing them together for future use. Patterns can charm us, but they also coax and solicit us. We’re obsessed with solving puzzles; we will stand for hours before a work of abstract art, waiting for it to reveal itself.

Why do the world’s patterns require our attention? Perhaps because we are symmetrical folk on a planet full of similar beings. Symmetry often reveals that something is alive. For example, the five deer standing at the bottom of the yard right now all blend perfectly into the winter woods. Their mottling of white, brown, and black echoes the subtle colors of the landscape. No doubt the deer were there for some time before I detected them. What gave them away was the regular pattern of legs, ears, and eyes. Then all at once the word
deer
flashed through my mind, and I retraced them with my eyes, this time picking out some flanks and noses, too.
Deer!
my mind confirmed, checking the pattern.

Once is an instance. Twice may be an accident. But three times or more makes a pattern. We crave something familiar in a chaotic world. Thought has its precincts, where the cops of law and order patrol, looking for anything out of place. Without a pattern, we feel helpless, and life may seem as scary as an open-backed cellar staircase that has no railings to guide us. We rely on patterns, and we also cherish and admire them. Few things are as beautiful to look at as a ripple, a spiral, or a rosette. They are visually succulent. The mind savors them. It is a kind of comfort food.

In the courtyard of my house, two doves are strutting like petitioners. Bobbing and posing, tossing in the occasional operatic warble, they are caught up in a drama whose goal is to establish territory, make alliances, and keep the peace. Each knows the dance steps the other will perform. It is the habit of the dove to bob and strut. Societies like to invent new rituals, to cushion nature’s laws under some of their own. So they agree upon rules for everything, even for flirting, courtship, marriage, and the other so-called customs of love. But, when all is said and done, they reflect one of our oldest and deepest needs: to fill the world with pathways and our lives with design.

THE COURTSHIP

A man and a woman are seated at a small, candlelit table in a restaurant. He has invited her out to dinner, and as they eat and talk their eyes meet often. They hold each other’s gaze a little longer than normal, an extra second or two. She smiles, tilts her head up, and looks shyly at him, then drops her gaze and glances away for a moment. She looks back, laughs, tosses her hair. As they talk, he rests his arm near hers on the table. His blue eyes shine with animation, excitement, and a tinge of nervousness. The pupils, normally narrow as pencil leads, now are swelling open wide like the shutter of a camera, allowing more and more of her in. The couple talk about everything, about nothing. They try to present themselves as positively as possible to each other, and yet also to reveal their real selves, hurts, and dreams. Gradually, subtly, because they are in step emotionally, they begin to move to the same rhythm, to mirror each other’s gestures. When he leans forward, she leans forward. When she takes a drink, he drinks, too. They are like unconscious ballroom dancers. As she flirts with him, her pupils swell like his. It signals emotional or sexual interest, but she can’t help herself. Nor does she wish to. They are not teenagers; they have been down this road before. Neither of them mentions how much they long for the taste of the other’s mouth, the touch of the other’s caress, the scent of the other’s body, the heat of the other’s passion.