The Course of Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

your . . . well, okay, I’m going to get shy now, too, so that may have to be it for the moment.”
    The idea that respectable-looking people might be inwardly harboring some beautifully carnal and explicit fantasies while outwardly seeming to care only about a friendly banter—this strikes Rabih as an entirely surprising and deeply delightful concept, with an immediate power to soothe a raft of his own underlying guilty feelings about his sexuality. That Kirsten’s late-night fantasies might have been about him when she had simultaneously seemed so reserved and so upright at the time, and yet was now so eager and so direct—these revelations mark out the moment as among the very best of Rabih’s life.
    For all the talk of sexual liberation, the truth is that secrecy and a degree of embarrassment around sex continue as much as they have always done. We still can’t generally say what we want to do and with whom. Shame and repression of impulse aren’t just things that our ancestors and certain buttoned-up religions latched onto for obscure and unnecessary reasons: theyare fated to be constants in all eras—which is what lends such power to those rare moments (there might be only a few in a lifetime) when a stranger invites us to drop our guard and admits to wanting pretty much exactly what we had once privately and guiltily craved.
    It is two in the morning by the time they finish. An owl is hooting somewhere in the darkness.
    Kirsten falls asleep in Rabih’s arms. She seems trustful and at ease, slipping gracefully into the current of sleep while he stands at the shore, protesting against the end of this miraculous day, rehearsing its pivotal moments. He watches her lips tremble slightly, as though she were reading a book to herself in some foreign language of the night. Occasionally she seems to wake for an instant and, looking startled and scared, appeals for help: “The train!” she exclaims, or, with even greater alarm, “It’s tomorrow; they moved it!” He reassures her (they have enough time to get to the station; she’s done all the necessary revision for the exam) and takes her hand, like a parent preparing to lead a child across a busy road.
    It’s more than mere coyness to refer to what they have done as “making love.” They haven’t just had sex; they have translated their feelings—appreciation, tenderness, gratitude, and surrender—into a physical act.
    We call things a turn-on but what we might really be alluding to is delight at finally having been allowed to reveal our secret selves—and at discovering that, far from being horrified by who we are, our lovers have opted to respond with only encouragement and approval.
    A degree of shame and a habit of secrecy surrounding sex began for Rabih when he was twelve. Before that there were, of course,a few minor lies told and transgressions committed: he stole some coins from his father’s wallet; he merely pretended to like his aunt Ottilie; and one afternoon in her stuffy, cramped apartment by the Corniche, he copied a whole section of his algebra homework from his brilliant classmate Michel. But none of those infractions caused him to feel any primal self-disgust.
    For his mother, he had always been the sweet, thoughtful child she called by the diminutive nickname “Maus.” Maus liked to cuddle with her under the large cashmere blanket in the living room and to have his hair stroked away from his smooth forehead. Then one term, all of a sudden, the only thing Maus could think about was a group of girls a couple of years above him at school, five or six feet tall, articulate Spaniards who walked around at break time in a conspiratorial gang and giggled together with a cruel, confident, and enticing air. On weekends he would slip into the little blue bathroom at home every few hours and visualize scenes that he’d will himself to forget again the