We spent the day at the MET and the night at 11 Howard. In the museum, I leered at Vermeers, admiring the detail on the Persian carpets and the domesticity of the Dutch masters, in which anything, even tooth extraction, became the subject of aesthetic expression. In the hotel, I perused the lobby, searching for similar products of eros—I relished a Calder mobile that reminded me of Josephine Baker, a Warhol portrait of Monroe that accentuated her full lips and long lashes, and a girl with a Hepburn hairband sipping an Old-Fashioned—only in New York, all for $279 per night, pre-tax.
When I see bodies in art, I imagine touching them. That day at the MET, standing before Canova’s third Venus, I dream about sucking her nipple. It is both warm and cool on my tongue, flesh mixing with stone. My girlfriend, however, preferred the Tang calligraphy, which she found to be less bougie. The minute we got back to the hotel, I ripped open her nylons and tasted her quivering. We put on Ang Lee’s Se Jie and let Tang Wei’s groans drown out our Song of Solomon. As breath became air and stars gave way to rosy-fingered dawn, dreams and restless thoughts came into my mind in the cut of a film noir and I let a blushing Eros into my soul. In the end, museums and hotels are not so different—in both rented spaces, I can stop guarding myself and let pleasure in, suspended in lost time. The best sex happens in museums.
Why write about sex in an essay on love? The reasons are a mouthful. First, everything is about sex—except sex, sex is about power. Museums and hotel lobbies, cinemas and coffeehouses alike strip me naked and render me utterly powerless against the faceless masses qua imperators of taste—my own imagination is pitted against me, waging war against itself. In crafting this piece, I liberate my lust from the unseen shackles of discourse that binds it.
Second, libido drives love through literature. From the tormented desires of Kafka and the fervent passions of Yukio Mishima to the beguiling allure of Nabokov’s eponymous nymphet, eroticism propels narratives to the heights of sublime rapture. Indeed, the great Goethe knew this better than anyone, for it was he who penned in the denouement of Faust, “the eternal feminine draws us on high.” This piece is similarly indebted to my girlfriend, who wanted from me a love letter.
Lastly, sex is hard to write. Only James Joyce could have made a trinity out of defecation, urination, and procreation. He taught a generation of young writers to enjoy the body with all its organs. Like Bloom, I enjoy thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, and fried hencods’ roes. Like Bloom, I hope to escape through perversion.
Of course, not all writing about sex is good writing. Edmund White believed that “sex is our most intense form of communication in a language no one can decipher or interpret,” but sometimes the passion is clearly lost in translation. My girlfriend’s favorite writer, Mo Yan, likened a woman’s breasts to “ripe mangoes” that “sag slightly in the center to form fluid arcs, the nipples rising gracefully, like the captivating mouths of hedgehogs.” Every midsummer day since I’ve averted my gaze from the ripe allure of yellowing bananas and the succulent promise of bursting jackfruits.
Ultimately, why should we describe the intimate acts people perform behind closed doors? Why should we look through Sartre’s keyhole? I believe it is to really talk about love, because the most important things in love are left unsaid. After all, how vulgar is Truth, that Truth which drove young Werther to despair and Schopenhauer to the hermitage? That’s why Nietzsche, the most ardent romantic, marveled at the Greeks for their ability to uncover depth by yielding precisely at the surface. Nietzsche, the madman, cautions us against staring into the abyss lurking within ourselves, lest we become entrapped in our own self-inflicted powerlessness. Instead, let us dance gracefully around the edges, embracing the delicate and mysterious interiority and depth that makes love so utterly captivating. Only in abandoning truth do we find liberation.
Back in the museum, I tailed my girlfriend and her Barnard class during their weekend tour of the Vermeer gallery, and I couldn’t help but be captivated by the vivid oeuvres unfolding before me. The young grad student leading the tour eagerly delved into discussions of mercantilism, but a whirlwind of questions consumed me. What secrets did the Woman with a Water Jug hold as she gazed pensively out the window? What thoughts swirled within the Maid Asleep, her dreams suspended in time? Vermeer masterfully captured the essence of these subjects in their most intimate moments, their inner worlds tantalizingly elusive and entirely their own. As if frozen in a sun-drenched afternoon, these works of art beckon us to peer deeper, seeking the truth behind the eyes of the subjects. It is precisely through the inaccessibility of their thoughts and emotions that Vermeer reveals to us the fullness of life, a testament to the beauty of the untold and the power of the unspoken.
In the same way I look at milkmaids and girls with pearl earrings, I look at Ang Lee’s tai tais. Cuddling with my girlfriend as the credits roll, I can’t help but wonder: did Mr. Yi love Wang Jiazhi? The master of spies for Wang Jingwei must have known she was a pretty little liar. The film gives closeup after closeup of Tang Wei’s Wang giving herself away—leaving lipstick marks on her coffee mug, say—something patrician Shanghai ladies would never have permitted, given due decorum. Yes, he knew, but he fell for her anyway. Or did he?
Of course, there were the sex scenes, the best parts of the film. Despite the hot lovemaking shot in the yang fangs of an old Shanghai, with all due wartime suspense and tension, we viewers never get a resolution, even when Wang and Yi orgasm in each other’s arms. As Wang Jiazhi peels back her qipao to reveal delicate silk stockings, Mr. Yi's response is swift and intense—he rushes over, grabs her hair and handcuffs her, as he does to his spies when he breaks them. Does passion overcome him? Or is he just checking to see if Wang hid a pocket pistol? Did he love her? Does she love me?
I glance at my girlfriend and see her ever-so-slightly-up-turned eyebrows, like Wang Jiazhi’s, before she becomes Mai Tai Tai. Her eye shadow was smeared by wet tears. I touch her body, and she touches mine in response. I turn stiff like a statue, Canova notwithstanding. She smiles like the milkmaid. I kiss her nipple and find it both warm and cool on my tongue. We surrender to our desires as if the hallowed halls of the metropolitan were our private hotel rooms. We have sex at the MET.
Amidst our passion, in-between moments of lost time, I asked her what she thought about Wang’s love. She reminds me of the poignant scene where Wang faces the firing squad, the camera zooming out to reveal the unfathomable abyss before her (a dead body landfill). Before viewers have time to catch their breath, we cut back to a wearied Yi, returning to Wang’s room to trace the contours of her absence on the linen. I allow myself to imagine, to place myself into the scene, behind the curtains, and onto the bed—only to be interrupted, like Yi, by my lover’s caress—and I halt in the light, realizing that in the unfathomable abyss of love, some things are best left unspoken. I feel the gaze from the chasm, but I do not return it. In knowing and letting be known, we forget why we want to know in the first place and let our interiority be reduced.
Ang Lee and Vermeer know not to let us know, and in so doing, they let us in on their little secret—we can love superficiality out of profundity. Perhaps, we can learn a thing or two from them. I tug on my girlfriend’s hair. She whispers that she does love it, and she coquettishly chides me for my madman’s rambling. She muffles my response with a pillow, just like in the film, and in that instant, we share a knowing smile.
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