How Do They Do It? [#cosign]

Was talking to one of my god-sisters tonight, and we somehow brought up the poem "Sex Without Love" by Sharon Olds. This is one of those poems that led to interesting conversation my summer at SWP (shoutouts to Carleton!) and that I still cling to. Mainly because it's opening question is one that I really want to have answered. Some people are capable of seperating the physical from the emotional, or so it seems. How do they do it? Or even better, is it possible to have sex without love? And if it isn't possible, doesn't that mean that the people who think it possible are lying to themselves?

Check out the poem. It's one of my favs:

Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love

without love? Beautiful as dancers,

gliding over each other like ice-skaters

over the ice, fingers hooked

inside each other's bodies, faces

red as steak, wine, wet as the

children at birth whose mothers are going to

give them away. How do they come to the

come to the come to the God come to the

still waters, and not love

the one who came there with them, light

rising slowly as steam off their joined

skin? These are the true religious,

the purists, the pros, the ones who will not

accept a false Messiah, love the

priest instead of the God. They do not

mistake the lover for their own pleasure,

they are like great runners: they know they are alone

with the road surface, the cold, the wind,

the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-

vascular health--just factors, like the partner

in the bed, and not the truth, which is the

single body alone in the universe

against its own best time.

Mhmz.... food for thought. What side of the fence do you sit on?