What’s Wrong with Sheer Pleasure?

Recently Chris Erskine, the “life support” columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, did a piece entitled “Look Out, Here Comes Cupid,” the subject being love in its many manifestations. Erskine’s point was:  “There’s nothing to love about love. It comes with no guarantees. The health risks are legion. There are all sorts of unexplainable rashes.” He went on to detail the different varietiesof love (“For the most part, love is bad poetry and guys jumping off bridges…Love is Ryan O’Neal movies and Ali MacGraw in a hospital bed, Code Blue…Love is risky behavior aboard the Ferris wheel at the pier…Or in the band room after math class”) and to acknowledge that while love can be and is a very good thing, he basically knows of only four kinds of love: “Romantic love…Puppy love…Family love…The love of a good and memorable book.” He concluded by expressing sorrow for “the man who loves more than I” and wishing us readers “Happy Valentine’s.”

All of this was very witty and, at times, incisive, but at no time did Erskine address the real issue. Namely: Does the entire emotion of love need to be stressed in the first place? I mean, think about it: Is it really necessary to always put the emphasis upon Love Everlasting and Hearts And Flowers and Happily Ever After? What on Earth is wrong with pure enjoyment, with sheer pleasure, with a simple roll in the hay? In the classic film An Officer And A Gentleman, Factory girl Paula Pokrifki (Debra Winger) gleans the (then) essential attitude of her man, naval-recruit-in-training Zack Mayo (Richard Gere): “To have a good time until you have to leave.” We would have been robbed of that iconic ending—Zack carrying Paula out of the factory accompanied by the cheering of her best friend and by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes crooning in the background—but, otherwise, what would have been wrong with Zack and Paula’s concluding the relationship upon Zack’s leaving the naval base? He and Paula had “a good time”; would either of them have been seriously hurt? The fact is, the concept of a relationship based purely upon fun and laughs has, over the years, gotten an unfair press. Indeed, in our longtime embrace of Puritan values—an embrace also epitomized by intellectuals’ continous focus upon “excellence”—we’v e overlooked the reality that the sexes solely enjoying each other, without either seeking anybody’s Hand In Marriage Forever, can not only be a solid kick but, in its way, genuinely liberating. From the time we’re little kids, we’re taught that wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am (or, as some of us would call it, a relationship without stifling emotional ties, without smarmy emotional baggage) can be a joyous and, indeed, freeing period for both parties as long as it is mutually acknowledged that that’s what it is. For all the prevalent talk concerning Pure Love and Stand By Me, the fact is that the scene in the hit comedy Good Luck Chuck where Dane Cook “bones” various babes on multiple screens is many, if not most, men’s secret fantasy, just as the relationship Robin Givens has with Eddie Murphy in the hit comedy Boomerang is most, or, at least, many, women’s secret fantasy.