Cold Fuck

The stress of looming deadlines begets frustration. Frustration that yearns for the relief provided only by sexual release.

I encountered that cute barista at the coffee shop again. I fantasized about accompanying her to the storeroom, pressing her up against the wall, and fucking her mercilessly. I don’t even know her name. A zipless fuck was all I wanted.

Afterwards I discreetly called Joyce. To my delight, I discovered that Sara had returned from her hiatus. Despite my busy schedule, I set up an early evening appointment.

I arrived at her old city loft in the brisk winter twilight. Her athletic body was covered only by red Santa-themed lingerie. There were a few friendly words between us, but no substantive conversation. No matter. My attraction to her was purely carnal.

We sat on the couch and immediately started making out, our tongues exploring each other’s mouths. My hand reached underneath the fabric of her lingerie and clasped her breast. I positioned her to sit on my lap; I wanted her to feel how hard I was. Our bodies writhed, signaling their immanent coupling. She suggested we move to the bed. I got up, unbuttoned my shirt, pulled off my pants and boxer briefs. She tossed aside her thong panties. We positioned ourselves on the bed.

Then we fucked.

Sex is nothing but sex. Sex is not love. Sex is furor and rapture, the quest for the self-oblivion of orgasm. As I vigorously fucked Sara, overcome by Dionysian fury, “lovemaking” was not my intention. It was a cold fuck. It was sex without emotion, without attachment, and without meaning. Nothing more than a robotic release of sexual tension.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of a book entitled (no joke) Kosher Sex, admits of a disconnect between sex and love:

“What I don’t understand about sex is the fundamental contradiction it poses to love…. [S]ex is stifled by relationship and routine. It seems to thrive most through novelty rather than intimacy, through new flesh rather than old love.”

This insight should lead us, one critic of the rabbi’s approach to kosher sex says, “to internalise that we are – despite everything – animals, and that we have fierce desire to match.”

I recall my hookup with April, the girlfriend of a classmate. Her unsubtle flirtations in the bar led us straight to her bedroom. There I learned that the hookup code stipulates that displays of affection are verboten: no kissing, hugging, caressing, cuddling. In our sexual sophistication, we had no intention of making love. (“We’re going to fuck, right?” she asked to reassure herself of our intentions.) We quickly undressed. There was a certain coolness between us, as if any earnest display of emotion would sabotage our lust. Certainly no professions of caring and concern could be voiced. Only my erect member demonstrated any excitement. There was no need for niceties. As I looked down on her pleasuring me, I felt a dark lustful pride. In fact, lust was the only emotion I felt. We were strangers to each other, united only by having surrendered ourselves to lust and our cold, mechanical fucking. As soon as we finished having sex, our bodies disengaged. There was no kiss goodbye.

I am quite adept at separating emotions from sex. In fact, I can only have sex when the emotional component is minimized. Even when I was with someone I had affection for (such as Rhonda), I emotionally detached myself during sex. Generally, men more easily separate sex from emotional attachment than women. (Samantha on Sex and the City famously wanted to “fuck like a man.”) Sexual liberation, moreover, emphasizes the removal of restraints and the exploration of expanded possibilities (i.e. multiple partners, varied activities). Emotional commitment is an obstacle to sexual freedom. It may also be antithetical to the nature of the sexual act itself.

“But the cold fuck is the fuck,” philosopher Alan Soble writes. To conceive of sex in terms of consideration and mutuality “ignores (what Augustine did not) the spontaneous, uncontrollable arousal, the turbulence, the frenzied passion, the involuntary jerkings, the quest for omnipotence, the primitive infantilism, the acquisitiveness, and all the rest of the eros in the sexual.” Sex is not nice. To pretend otherwise “disregards the essentially amoral, Dionysian dimension of the sexual.”