The story shows up everywhere

King Kong, after all, is just

Beauty and the Beast writ large

Last year's Fur: An Imaginary

Portrait of Diane Arbus,

was a modern, sophisticated version of the tale

And let's not forget Shrek

What we might (without any denigration) call 'fucking'

contains at least one stage where

the male displays his power and force

Exhibiting his quality as a beast in the jungle,

with a lion or tiger's fierceness,

growling, roaring, biting,

he shows his protective strength.

This display of force need not be asymmetrical

The female can answer (and initiate)

with her own ferocity, snarls, hissing,

scratching, growling, biting,

and she shows too her capacity

to contain and tame his ferocity

All men are beasts

At least, if you listen to fairy tales, it seems that way. How many beauty and the beasts can there be?

The story of the young woman who comes to appreciate a big, hairy man-beast and whose love tames his raging heart is a staple in the world of art, fiction and fable.

But the story shows up everywhere, from adult fiction to comic books to painting to fairy tales to poetry to movies.

King Kong, after all, is just Beauty and the Beast writ large. Last year's Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, with Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr., was a modern, sophisticated version of the tale.

And let's not forget Shrek.

The most common understanding of the story is that Beauty has to learn to leave her father and explore her sexuality.

Beauty overcomes her fear of the Beast, and with the agreement of her father, transfers her Oedipal love in a more 'conventional' love for a person of her own age.

The Beast is the representation of a terrifying sexuality and of the taboo it represents for the young girl.

And it is by accepting that sexuality as normal that the enchantment dissipates and the Beast is transformed into a prince.

Far from her father, the girl will learn how to listen to her own feelings and to decide which direction to give to her life."

That interpretation is given wide currency by psychologist Bruno Bettelheim in his book The Uses of Enchantment, which extols the importance of fairy tales for the psychic growth of children.

"Despite all warnings about the dire consequences if she tries to find out, a woman is not satisfied with remaining ignorant about sex and life," Bettelheim writes.

"Comfortable as an existence in relative naivete may be, it is an empty life which must not be accepted. Notwithstanding all the hardships woman has to suffer to be reborn to full consciousness and humanity, the stories leave no doubt that this is what she must do."

The most intense way we relate to another person is sexually

Nothing so concentrates the mind, Dr. Johnson noted, as the prospect of being hanged. Nothing, that is, except sexual arousal and excitement:

Rising tension, uncertainty about what will happen next,occasional reliefs, sudden surprises, dangers and risks, all in a sequence of heightened attention and tension that reaches toward resolution.

A similar pattern of excitement also occurs near the end of closely matched athletic contests and in suspense films. I do not say our excitement at these is at base covertly sexual.

Yet the sexual is so preeminent an exemplar of the general pattern of excitement that these others also may hold sexual reverberations. However, only in sex is such intense excitement shared with the object and cause of it.

Sex is not simply a matter of frictional force. The excitement comes largely in how we interpret the situation and how we perceive the connection to the other.

Even in masturbatory fantasy, people dwell upon their actions with others; they do not get excited by thinking of themselves or of themselves masturbating while thinking of themselves.

What is exciting Is interpersonal: how the other views you, what attitude the actions evidence. Some uncertainty about this makes it even more exciting.

Just as it is difficult to tickle oneself, so too sex is better with an actual partner on the other end. (Is it the other person or the uncertainty that is crucial?)

Sex holds the attention. If any wanderings of the mind from the immediate sexual situation are permissible, it is only to other sexual fantasies.
It bespeaks a certain lack of involvement to be ruminating then about one's next choice of automobile.

In part, the focus of attention is on how you are touched and what you arc feeling, in part on how you arc touching the other person and what he or she is feeling.

At times we focus in sex upon the most minute motions, the most delicate brushing of a hair, the slow progress of the fingertips or nails or tongue across the skin, the slightest change or pause at a point. We linger in such moments and await what will come next.

Our acuity is sharpest here, no change in pressure or motion or angle is too slight to notice. And it is exciting to know another is attuned to your sensations as keenly as you are.

A partner's delicacy of motion and response can show knowledge of your pleasure and care about its details.

To have your particular pleasures known and accepted, to linger in them for as long as you will without any rushing to another stage or another excitement, to receive another's permission and invitation to loll there and play together.

It is not surprising that profound emotions are awakened and experienced in sex.

The trust involved in showing our own pleasures, the vulnerability in letting another give us these and guide them, including pleasures with infantile or oedipal reverberations, or anal ones, does not come lightly.

Sex is not all delicacy of knowledge and response to nuanced pleasure.

The narrative that begins there, and occasionally returns, also moves along to stronger and less calibrated actions, not so much the taking of turns in attentiveness to each other's pleasures as the mutual growth of stronger and broader excitements --- the move from the adult (or the infantile) to the animal.

The passions and motions become fiercer and less controlled, sharper or more automatically rhythmic, the focus shifts from flesh to bones, sounds shift from moans and sighs to sharper cries, hisses, roars, mouths shift from tongue and lips to teeth and biting, themes of power, domination, and anger emerge to be heated in tenderness and to emerge yet again in ever stronger and more intense cycles.

Orgasm is not simply an exciting experience but a statement about the partner, about the connection to the partner; it announces that the partner satisfies you. No wonder partners care that it happen.

Here, too, we can understand the unitive force of simultaneous orgasm, of feeling the most intense pleasure with and from the other person at the very moment that you are told and shown you intensely please him or her.

There are other statements, less about the whole person, more about parts.

The penis can be made to feel a welcome entrant in the vagina;

It can be kissed lovingly and unhurriedly;

It can be made to feel nurturative;

It can be delighted in and known for itself;

In more exalted moments its fantasy is to be worshiped almost.

Similarly, the sweetness and power of the vagina can be acknowledged in its own right, by tender kissing, long knowing, dwelling in the tiniest crevices and emitting those sounds this calls forth.

Knowing a partner's body, meditating on the special energy of its parts without rushing anywhere else, also makes a statement the partner receives.

Unlike making love, which can be symmetrical, tender, and turn-taking all the way through, what we might (without any denigration) call 'fucking' contains at least one stage where the male displays his power and force.

This need not be aggressive, vicious, or dominating, although perhaps statistically it frequently slides into that.

The male can simply be showing the female his power, strength, ferocity even, for her appreciation.

Exhibiting his quality as a beast in the jungle, with a lion or tiger's fierceness, growling, roaring, biting, he shows (in a contained fashion) his protective strength.

This display of force need not be asymmetrical, however. The female can answer (and initiate) with her own ferocity, snarls, hissing, scratching, growling, biting, and she shows too her capacity to contain and tame his ferocity.

It is even more difficult to state in quite the right way matters of more delicate nuance, the special way a woman can at some point give herself to her partner. Robert Nozick