Rumpus contributor Conner Habib has a new series on his blog called “Guys I Wanted To Fuck in High School,” which details his “frustrated” adolescence in small-town Pennsylvania.

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At Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory gathers the input of professional dominatrixes to shed light on male desire for submission, which was glaringly absent in Kaite Roiphe’s Fifty Shades of Grey.

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Last weekend I rode the subway towards two indulgent firsts: I spent half of my latest paycheck in a swanky, mirror-lined restaurant with a coat check, and then I walked across the street and spent the other half on a vibrator. Both felt good. One feels better. 

Like everyone in this world and out of it, I have a relentlessly complicated relationship with sex. Sex is my back-rubbing, silky-voiced soulmate who sometimes—more frequently than once a full moon—goes werewolf on my physical, psychological, and emotional makeup. Sex is my self-love and my self-hate. Sex is my pride and my shame. Sex and I go way back, but we need to be re-introduced every time we run into each other. Sex feels right and wrong; it is gentle and rough and meek and overpowering and safe and dangerous and vanilla and deviant, and all of those are good and bad and everything in between. I’ve launched into A Tale of Two Sexes to establish two things: both that my contradiction-laden sex-life is utterly inseparable from my life-life, and that, aside from that very fundamental connection (and contrary to all evidence thus far), sex has very little to do what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is orgasm. Or, more specifically, elusive orgasm.

Until very recently, I had no experience with orgasm besides observation, frustration, and failure. Any concrete reasons for that last one, failure, were—and still are—pretty murky; a gynecologist helped me rule out physical inability as an explanation, although it was easier for me to insinuate to my partners (and for them to believe) that something was vaguely broken down there. As for the psychological factors at play: of course there were many, all equally dark and present, all as real as my body itself and the dense history it has traveled through. So in order to continue having and enjoying sex, I accepted some widespread wisdom: that sex wasn’t all about the climax. It wasn’t all about the climax, I was quick to tell myself, so it didn’t really matter that the climax had failed to show up. And, of course, it rationally followed that if it wasn’t all about the climax, it could be not at all about the climax. I clung to that fast-moving train of logic, even as it became increasingly difficult to for me to hang on as sex continued to culminate with me in a state of agitated confusion and with someone else, crashed against me, assuring me that “it had been great.”

Sometimes, it had been great. But always, stretching out alongside us like another naked body, was the non-event. I knew, in pretty non-negotiable terms, what orgasm was supposed to look and sound like; When Harry Met Sally taught me the basics of that vernacular long before anything more pornographic entered the equation. The telltale orgasm signs, that crescendo of gasping and thrashing, informed nothing about my own physical experiences, however. Like Sally, I could fake it in bed or over a turkey sandwich. I had the culmination memorized, but none of the process.

I’m the progeny of two English teachers, so my go-to analytical tool, for better or for worse, is the close-read. It is telling, I think, that the two words I tended to associate most with my anti-climax were “stupid” and “failure.” Let’s start with the first. Orgasm was a concept my body seemed too stupid to grasp. It refused to learn, or was incapable of learning. I imagined myself, as in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Tulips,” a frozen and “stupid pupil”—an open, unseeing eye; a blank-faced student—taking everything in but feeling nothing. The distance between not coming and coming felt cognitive: I wanted to master my body like I wanted to master a language or a narrative device. If I practiced sex enough, surely I should be smart enough to learn how to feel and speak its tongue.

I’ve already half-consciously dropped the second word into this piece a couple of times. Considering myself an orgasm failure has become almost second-nature at this point. My inability to come felt like just that: a lack where there should have been a presence; a block of ice where there should have been a thaw. With that word, “failure,” the theory that sex wasn’t about the climax had already come unravelled. If it wasn’t about the climax, how could I be so consistently failing to perform? My stupidity was causing my failure; my failure to realize this stupid feeling was stupid.

“Stupid” and “failure” took on an oppositional set of meanings, too, which was paradoxically meant to push orgasm into the realm of irrelevance and frivolity. In the back of my mind, there seemed to be something inexplicably weak and absurd about that mysterious moment of climax. Coming implied a letting go that felt ludicrous and shameful. It seemed to be a relinquishing of bodily control—the very opposite of that mastery I so craved. Orgasms were careless, dangerous moments of surrender, and I wanted to be in control, damnit! On some level, I needed the bizarre agency that faking gave me. I wanted to be the brazen Sally-over-a-sandwich, knowing that I could scream and feel nothing and have everything feel like my choice. I never fundamentally questioned that about myself. I never fucked anyone who asked me to question that.

In October, I met a Dear Sugar column that grabbed me by the face, looked into my eyes, and told me in no uncertain terms to question that. It was Sugar’s interview with Lidia Yuknavitch, a conversation in which those two bold women first deconstruct, and then discuss the “hottest sex” they’ve ever had. Now, my moments of “epiphany” tend to happen as gradual, quiet processes. They’re as un-sudden and unromantic as a fine, beneficent dust gathering in certain corners of my brain. But upon reading Yuknavitch’s “hottest sex” story, moments of religious epiphany—moments that are said to shake and rattle the core and blow all the dust from the tiniest thought-crevices and clap an entirely new lens over all of existence—began to make some sense to me. Because suddenly I knew several profoundly unsettling things at once. One of those was that I needed to leave a relationship with a person that, so many months later, I’m still in love with. The somehow more urgent and terrifying revelation, though, was that I had to learn to love myself like this:

“The hottest sex I’ve ever had was not with anyone. Or it was with myself. Or it was with water. What I mean is, I was in a hot spring by myself. I was twelve. I was at some kind of summer camp. There must have been counselors or other pubescents nearby, maybe they were roasting marshmallows or singing kum-ba-ya or something nearby, but in my memory at least, I was alone in water. The water was heat and stillness like it is in natural hot springs. The night sky wore her black hair nestled with stars. I put my fingers between my legs and played with everything about myself, the inside cave of myself and the outside skin and lips and folds of flesh. I opened my eyes I closed my eyes I laughed my throat got tight. It was the first time I’d discovered my actual clit — the beautiful small roundness of her rising and waiting. I’d already masturbated in my life, but it involved a lot of rubbing against things or rubbing things against myself in sort of not very gentle ways. A lot of panting and grunting and teeth clenching. In this warm water I found the site of sexual pleasure on my own. And it was just. Mine.

I peed when I came. Everything water.

All thought blasted into the night sky.

I’ve never shivered and convulsed as hard in my life.

And that’s saying something.”

Just those words awakened longings and sensations that were blissfully beyond my realm of control. Just those words fucked me more powerfully and completely than anyone else’s body could. I wanted that pleasure, and I wanted it to be just. Mine. The wants were new, or they had been there all along and they were finally opening themselves to me. Whatever the case, I apologize to Yuknavitch for stealing her sexual reverie, and I thank her deeply for putting it out there for the taking.

Entering that warmwater exploration loosened everything inside of me because of the pure love and ownership that its author—and her younger self—took of her body. The moment wasn’t just a sexy discovery of the clit: it was a hyper-awareness of the throat tightening, the skin hot and cold against the water, the body belonging completely to itself. My body had never experienced such ownership, such belief and delight in its selfhood. Or if it had, I couldn’t remember the occasion. My memories are all cluttered with the nearby counselors and pubescents, roasting marshmallows. I had never torn myself away from all of them to locate something of my own. I had never been profoundly alone, and profoundly mine. Reading and rereading Yuknavitch’s words, I shivered and convulsed. I needed to break away from the bonfire and head for the water.

Sportswriter Bill Simmons once asked Isiah Thomas to share with him the “secret” of basketball. Thomas responded, “The secret about basketball is that it’s not about basketball.” Fuck yes, Isiah Thomas. Because isn’t that that always the secret? The secret about sex is it’s not really about sex. The secret about orgasms is they’re not really about orgasms. The thing itself is important, but what it’s about and what’s about it—what surrounds it and sustains it and makes it worth the search—is always secretly more important.

I do a lot of reading about women and our navigation of the whorls of body and mind. Often, I get a thrill from reading pieces that celebrate and claim female sexuality, exalting pleasure and shouting orgasm from the rooftops. Similarly, I find strength and solidarity in the writers who so bravely share their experiences living through some combination of sexual pain, trauma, and self-doubt. But rarely am I able to find stories that speak to both sides of this divide, which—in my case—critically inform each other. Rarely do I read about those of us presently engaged in the search to locate our bodies in the midst of sexual contradiction and cacophony.

The vibrator is small and white with clean lines a nubby tip. In all its sleek simplicity, it looks like an Apple product, except that its only application is to my clit. I appreciate that there is nothing remotely phallic about it. I appreciate that the box explains, as if it’s a watch or a pair of boots, that it’s waterproof. But the secret about the vibrator is, it’s not about the vibrator. It’s about finding myself in the middle of a lake, looking up at a start-sprent sky, and asking me to be mine.

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Bell currently lives in Amsterdam and speaks at film festivals, porn festivals, and feminist porn festivals. Her life is full of the dualities of life, parenthood, marriage, career. She has a toddler and has been searching for preschools recently. Several years ago she set up her own production company, Blue Artichoke Films, to make and distribute the movies she wanted to see. Now she’s working on a series of three interlinked films and is just finishing a documentary in which she followed a woman embracing her submissive side around Amsterdam for three years. We spoke about film theory, porn, sex and ethics.

***

The Rumpus: How did you become a filmmaker?

Jennifer Lyon Bell: I’ve always wanted to make erotic films. I’d seen porn when I was younger and I had thought that it was really ridiculous and nowhere near as sexy as the fooling around my friends and I were doing. So when I was a teenager, I thought it would be neat to do something better. Only I went off to college, to Harvard, and it didn’t really occur to me that that was a legitimate career option. I was into sex-positive feminism, reading Susie Bright and Carole Queen, but I didn’t really consider that erotic film was something I could do. Instead I went into advertising and had a career there for ten years.

Rumpus: So what changed?

Bell: I moved to Europe with my boyfriend and thought it might be time. I’d talked about making erotic films to everyone, friends and family and strangers on the street. In Amsterdam I decided to get a masters in film theory just to study erotic film and come up with a template for why I believe film is sexy. Is it just a matter of showing body parts or is there more to it than that?

Rumpus: A few years ago the New York Times did an article I think in the Sunday Arts and Leisure section about someone trying to make porn films for women. It was all about the Prada shoes, like if you get the fashion aspirational enough, women will be turned on. But that did nothing to change porn or the tropes, say, of what is sexy, which is what you’re trying to do. We’re conditioned to see porn in a certain way and you’re trying to subvert what that is.

Bell: It’s true. We’ve created a separation between sex and the rest of life that’s unnatural, so I want make films that bridge the explicit sexuality in, let’s call it, porn with the artistic expression and emotions and plot lines you’d see in art films. It’s not just a way to make interesting film but is a metaphor for what’s compelling about sexuality. It’s part of life, so acting like it’s some kind of separate ghettoized experience that we need to hide and not discuss is silly.

Rumpus: How did grad school help? What did you do there?

Bell: Specifically I was thinking, does having character and narrative make you feel more erotically charged by a film and if so why? There I had a framework to understand why I believe making something sexy isn’t just about showing body parts, and I stumbled on cognitive film theory, which talks about why everyone – not just women but men and women – feel what they do when they look at the screen. I became interested in sympathy and empathy.

Rumpus: Do they relate to that weird truism you hear spouted off about women and erotic material, that women need character development and narrative and men need visual stimulation? Is that even true?

Bell: I don’t believe men and women are terribly different when it comes to looking at erotic materials and getting aroused. Culturally we act like women need to have a huge complicated story to feel connected to a sexual relationship, but I don’t think that’s true. Plenty of films that don’t have much character I find arousing. Still there’s a basic statement a film can make that enables you as a viewer to become much more engaged. Having sympathy and empathy means you get more turned on.

Rumpus: So, obviously we’re talking something more involved than just tits and dicks, say. More than just anonymous consumer porn.

Bell: Yeah, the statement a movie can make is that these are basically decent people. These are moral people, and that sounds funny to talk about morality when you’re talking porn, but for all kinds of film, porn included, being engaged with the story and its characters involves you in their choices and actions and how you ought to feel about them. One way of talking about it is it boils down to morality. Is what they’re doing good or not? And, when people are basically good, you feel bonded with them and you want to feel what they feel. Use that in an erotic move and we can really get into the action. You can create that bond in an erotic documentary with real people’s stories and personalities and showing what they’re actually like and that they’re basically good people. Or, you can do it with fictional characters. Watching them struggle with their morality makes it more interesting and enhances that erotic bond you have with them.

Rumpus: Which you’re doing now in a bondage documentary, right?

Bell: Yeah, it doesn’t have a title yet, but I’ve been following the main character Lotus around for three years. It’s the true-life coming-out story of a submissive discovering her BDSM side in Amsterdam. She approached me because she’d seen the other films and wanted me to film her life as she went through this. It took her a while to convince me. I didn’t think she was serious but was just being flattering. We just shot the final scene recently and she’s happy with how everything turned out.

Rumpus: How is stuff for Lotus now? What’s her life like?

Bell: It’s changed so much. She’s much more sure of herself.  Before she questioned herself and wasn’t as happy in her love relationship. Now she’s in a satisfying one with a man who she’s been with for quite a while. That happened during the filming, and she’s had fantastic BDSM experiences that have made her more happy and has this boyfriend who loves and supports her. The movie’s message matches up with my personal belief in sexuality, which is that only when you feel safe enough to be honest with yourself, with what really turns you on and what you really want in your heart of hearts that you can live your life to the fullest.

Rumpus: As we’ve talked about morality and character that’s made me think of Russell Banks new novel Lost Memory Of Skin about a kid committed for a sex crime. Basically he’s a porn addict, and it’s beautiful, very sensitively written. Banks gives him humanity and depth. As you were talking about a moral sense, it made me think of the Kid (which is what he’s called in the book). He’d been a consumer of internet porn and there was no human aspect to it, just a consumption-addiction driven thing where he was inured to porn. In a way the book was about how and why he couldn’t be open to something slower and deeper and more emotionally driven. It was partly about the larger culture of how that happens, that deadening.

Bell: We contribute to a culture where the only ways of engaging are turned on or not turned on – orgasming or not orgasming, as if it’s binary. Being aroused can have a very different flavor based on what kind of film you’re watching or what kind of situation you’re in and they’re not all the same. Arousal is not all the same. Some people maybe want to have the option of a really quick, not very involved orgasm sometimes. That’s okay, but I think it’s on a broader psychological and philosophical level it’s important to say, there’s arousal that’s more fulfilling for you if you want to find it.

Rumpus: So how does that actually come into your movies?

Bell: My first film Headshot – it’s a remake of a classic Andy Warhol movie from 1964 – and in the original, Warhol detaches the viewer from the image by never letting you see who’s giving the blowjob. You get no sense of the relationship between the two people. And, it’s a silent movie, which also goes a long way towards distancing you. I thought, wow, wouldn’t it be cool to do the same thing and bring in the emotions that come from sound and from seeing the relationship. I remade it with a man and a woman, and you still never see the person who’s giving the blowjob but I tried to bring out his personality.

Rumpus: You get a really quick sense in it that he’s totally up for this, a bit charged by on-screen sex with someone he’s never met, but also that she is too.

Bell: When he and this woman meet each other, it doesn’t take long for you to understand what’s exciting to both of them in this situation, so you’re invested in their having a great time for a couple of minutes because that’s all it takes.

Rumpus: How did you find him? He seems so very dude, like kind of some ur notion of male up-for-it guy?

Bell: At the cast party for Matinee, one of the crew members said he’d like to be in a film for me, and I immediately thought of Headshot. He had no experience at all. He was just a regular guy who wanted to explore his sexuality on film, so when I had the idea he was the first person I called.

Rumpus: How did Matinee work?

Bell: It’s a story of a couple portraying lovers in a play  in Amsterdam and the woman, Mariah, struggles with whether or not to actually have sex on stage with her partner on stage. The play is a struggle and she wants it to be a success. It’s very much her, Mariah’s, story. I want people to be into her and invested in this boundary she decides to overcome. She doesn’t let him know what she’s decided to do, so when it comes to her making this move and having sex with him, you’re completely into it, and you want her to have a good time.

Rumpus: Your movie Skin Like Sun has no dialogue or story, so how do we invest in the characters there?

Bell: It was commissioned for a feminist porn festival, and I made it with Mureille Scherre, who’s also a DJ and lingerie designer. We wanted to bring to life the female character’s experience. One way we could do that was taking a lot of shots that represent how she feels in sex. Those are likely to be shots you won’t see in straight porn since it’s oriented towards men. We tried to take close-ups of when she’s touching his hair and ears and meld that all together so it feels like one continuous experience and you feel their relationship in a broader, closer way. The most important decision was to make it feel like real time. We wondered if it would make us feel closer as viewers to her experience.

Rumpus: The movie has a sweetness to it in all the touching and affection. Those are the telling details that make it clear they love each other. Somewhere I read that in looking at erotic images men are more likely to look at faces first, then genitals, which I thought was interesting and unexpected.

Bell: If you’re looking to understand how someone feels in a certain situation, the look on their face tells you a tremendous amount that can make you feel connected to that person. In traditional porn, men’s faces are largely absent. We see the woman’s face and body and genitals but we don’t see much of his body, and we definitely don’t see his face. But I want to. I miss it. In moments where characters go through a change where they get much more aroused I don’t want to be looking at their body parts but the reaction in their faces.

Rumpus: What movies inspire you?

Bell: Larry Clark’s films, hands down. He has a real feel for how complicated sex can be and that there are different kinds of arousal that being anxious or nervous and how those negative emotions can play in an erotic way. I really love how he has focused on that and made it the emotional centerpiece of his work, showing how sex is so much more than intercourse. He’s particularly interested in adolescents because at that age we don’t have words yet for everything we’re going through, and that makes it a really volatile and exciting time. I’m interested in those same phenomena for people of all ages. Sex is much more complicated and dynamic and electric than it looks on film. I also love Lars von Trier’s movies and how they show people pushing their own boundaries. I love the idea of incorporating that electricity of boundary pushing into my erotic filmmaking. I’d like to think everyone who’s worked on my films has a positive experience. I’ve never had anyone have a nervous breakdown like Bjork was reported to on his, but I respect that he’s not making a simple easy film. He’s throwing his whole self into making it and he expects his actors to do the same.

Rumpus: So how do you balance being married and having a kid, with making sexy movies? You don’t look or act like you have a dual life.

Bell: People always say to me, ‘You don’t look like someone who makes erotic films. I expected someone to be wearing a leather outfit or a vinyl bustier,’ but that taps into what I really want to be saying about sex. There aren’t sex people and non-sex people. Sex is part of everybody’s life and that you can be incredibly sexual and wear a flowered dress. Also making a film of any kind puts you in a vulnerable position. Well, I feel vulnerable making erotic movies because they have to be sexy to me. Each one is like saying this is what I personally find sexy. That’s scary for me even now.

Rumpus: Yeah, I was a stripper but don’t want to write about it in my fiction because I’m uncomfortable with people thinking that was/is/could be me. And, I don’t really like talking about my own sexuality partly because I have a hard enough time not judging myself for it. So, how have you gone beyond that?

Bell: I spend a lot of time managing my boundaries. I need to feel free and comfortable working with my actors and writing my scripts and doing the things that I need to do to make a movie that’s moving and exciting to me. I often spend months building up relationships with the actors. On set there are also all these fine gradations that I’ve learned to manage where someone says, well, how do you feel about – anal sex, say? Or, if someone says, how do you feel about sex doggie-style? I have to be careful to separate out my feelings about whether doggie-style sex makes sense in this film from how I feel about it in all erotic films and how I personally feel in my own bedroom. It’s a balancing act that can come down to a pronoun or else talking to fewer people at one time. Everyone on set has a different comfort level but I have to be able to talk about sex bluntly, and I have to respect my partner’s privacy too. Like, he may or may not want me talking about sex in a way that exposes him and his feelings.

Rumpus: Respecting a partner is one thing but you have a daughter? Wait, I didn’t mean that to sound like I’m shocked. At some point you’re going to have to have a discussion with her though.

Bell: I feel really lucky to have the opportunity to practice what I preach and raise a daughter who’s sex positive. I think I make the kind of films that I’m proud to stand behind. I think they say something good about sex and the way sex really is, and I hope to raise her with open and body-positive attitudes and to talk when the time is right about what I do and she’ll appreciate that.

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Artist Jason Novak brings us his tale “Depressing Sex: An essay in pictures.”

Enjoy:

***

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A NY Times Magazine article on the state of sex education highlights a Philadelphia Quaker Friends high school teacher’s comprehensive approach to teaching sex ed. With Mr. Vernacchio’s emphasis on pleasure as well as emotional complexities, acknowledgment of gender biases, and lessons on female ejaculation, this looks like possibly the best course ever.

(Via Feministing)

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“…You can’t become free of influences. You can only become aware of them, and choose which you want to give more energy and attention to. Similarly, as parents, I don’t suppose you can ever not influence your kids. You can only be thoughtful about what kind of influence you’re being. And even that, imperfectly. Because you’re a collection of influences yourself.”

(Via Feministing)

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BBC takes a closer look at The Joy of Sex forty years after its publication. The piece examines how publishers sought to avoid obscenity charges by using hand-drawn illustrations rather than photographs, focusing on creating quality artwork, and including ancient pictures as “foils” to offset the explicitness of the illustrations. We also get a glimpse of the couple who ended up serving as the main models for the many positions.

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Calling for a return to “the golden age of dirty talk,” this Awl piece introduces us to a 17^th century pamphlet dubbed The Academy of Pleasure and reflects on the value of euphemisms.

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I’ll just come right out and say it: I enjoy books so much more when there’s lots of sex in them. And there is so much sex in Hannah Pittard’s smart, affecting, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Fates Will Find Their Way.

Inappropriate touching. Masturbation, both public and private. Some grateful fucking. The fetishized hemlines of private-school girls’ skirts. All the boys keep staring at the hot Russian neighborhood mom’s ass. It’s the male gaze times a million—everyone seems to be quietly violating everybody else, in one way or another.

The intertwined tale of a vanished teenage girl named Nora and the hometown boys who loved her—as told through their omniscient perspective—The Fates is The Virgin Suicides for a new generation. Pittard’s depictions of sexual activity are spare and straightforward, but they feel extremely (and credibly) dangerous. Take this scene between two teenagers:

“Just let me see it,” he said. “Just let me see it.”

She looked away and he pulled down the fabric hard, just enough so that her pubic hair was exposed.

He made sounds. She closed her eyes. One hand held down her pants, the other hand was around himself, working.

“Look at it,” he said.

She looked at his face instead, but she was crying a little, hoping it would be over, wanting him to have whatever he needed to finish.

It’s tricky territory, all this underage sex going on in the book. Some of it is innocent, and some of it is sexy, and some of it is disturbing. (There are also references to pedophilia and rape, although they are not rendered explicitly.) That’s sex in America, I guess. We’re a bunch of demanding hypocrites, greedy for stimulation, while we judge everyone around us for wanting the same exact thing—even (or especially) if it’s in a different form. I have done it, and so have you. Can we please have one day where we don’t lie about it?

Hannah Pittard

Pittard seems hell-bent on making her Greek chorus of narrators tell the truth about their own lives, even as they’re mired in fantasies about Nora’s. She tells the story in tight chapters that bounce back and forth between the boys’ youthful existence, their present-day lives, and the imagined possibilities of Nora’s life. Did she hop on a flight, never to be seen again? Did she hitch a ride out West and start life anew? Were there darker forces at work? “It’s the stuff of fantasies, not of real life,” the collective voice says of one possible scenario.

In fantasies, you can get into strangers’ cars. You can have sex with men you don’t know. They’ll love you and pet you and whisper things that high school boys don’t know how to whisper. They’ll fall hard for you and do anything you tell them to, including take you home whenever you want.

Each possibility is teased out deliciously, and the reader uncovers another side of Nora with each of her appearances—“real” or in the boys’ imaginings—in the book. And what of these boys, trapped in their hometown? They grow into men, still trapped: “It seemed, some days, that life was nothing more than a tally of the people who’d left us behind,” they say wistfully.

Meanwhile, we find out the deep, dark secrets of the boys themselves, from childhood to adulthood, together and individually. For the book to work, their collective voice must ring true, and Pittard nails that honest, smart-ass youthful energy. “We never understood why Minka Dinnerman’s dad kept a copy of Hustler tucked in the recess behind the base of the toilet in the first-floor bathroom of the Dinnerman house,” she writes.

Mrs. Dinnerman was the hottest of all the moms. In some ways, it was a shame that she had to be called a mom at all… we all thought it was kind of weird—Mr. Dinnerman’s greedy and unappreciative need to have more than one hot naked lady in his life.

If The Fates has any flaw, it is that Pittard poses perhaps too many questions, and these questions sometimes get in the story’s way. But these questions, distracting as they can be, are at the heart of this novel. And they are worthy of reflection, not least because they are surrounded by so many wise, lovely, and yes—sexy—passages.

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