The Course of Love Read Online Free PDF

moment he was finished. A chasm opened up between who he had to be for his family and who he knew he was inside. The disjuncture was perhaps most painful in relation to his mother. It didn’t help that the onset of puberty coincided for him almost exactly with the diagnosis of her cancer. Deep in his unconscious, in some dark recess immune to logic, he nursed the impression that his discovery of sex might have helped to kill her.
    Things weren’t completely straightforward for Kirsten at that age, either. For her, too, there were oppressive ideas at play about what it meant to be a good person. At fourteen she liked walking the dog, volunteering at the old people’s home, doing extra geography homework about rivers—but also, alone in her bedroom, lying on the floor with her skirt hiked up, watching herself in the mirror and imagining that she was putting on a show for an older boy at school.Much like Rabih, she wanted certain things which didn’t seem to fit in with the dominant, socially prescribed notions of normality.
    These past histories of self-division are part of what makes the beginning of their relationship so satisfying. There is no more need for subterfuge or furtiveness between them. Although they have both had a number of partners in the past, they find each other exceptionally open-minded and reassuring. Kirsten’s bedroom becomes the headquarters for nightly explorations during which they are at last able to disclose, without fear of being judged, the many unusual and improbable things that their sexuality compels them to crave.
    The particulars of what arouses us may sound odd and illogical, but—seen from close up—they carry echoes of qualities we long for in other, purportedly saner areas of existence: understanding, sympathy, trust, unity, generosity, and kindness. Beneath many erotic triggers lie symbolic solutions to some of our greatest fears, and poignant allusions to our yearnings for friendship and understanding.
    It’s three weeks now since their first time. Rabih runs his fingers roughly through Kirsten’s hair. She indicates, by a movement of her head and a little sigh, that she would like rather more of that—and harder, too, please. She wants her lover to bunch her hair in his hand and pull it with some violence. For Rabih it’s a tricky development. He has been taught to treat women with great respect, to hold the two genders as equal, and to believe that neither person in a relationship should ever wield power over the other. But right now his partner appears to have scant interest in equality nor much concern for the ordinary rules of gender balance, either.
    She’s no less keen on a range of problematic words. She inviteshim to address her as though he cared nothing for her, and they both find this exciting precisely because the very opposite is true. The epithets bastard , bitch , and cunt become shared tokens of their mutual loyalty and trust.
    In bed, violence—normally such a danger—no longer has to be a risk; a degree of force can be expended safely and won’t make either of them unhappy. Rabih’s momentary fury can remain entirely within his control even as Kirsten draws from it an empowering sense of her own resilience.
    As children they were both often physical with their friends. It could be fun to hit. Kirsten would whack her cousins hard with the sofa pillows, while Rabih would wrestle with his friends on the grass at the swimming club. In adulthood, however, violence of any kind has been prohibited: no grown person is ever supposed to use force against another. And yet, within the boundaries of the couple’s games, it can feel strangely pleasing to take a swipe, to hit a little and be hit; they can be rough and insistent; there can be a savage edge. Within the protective circle of their love, neither of them has to feel in any danger of being hurt or left bereft.
    Kirsten is a woman of considerable