10.9.08: Good ol' fashioned desire | New York Social Diary

Good ol' fashioned desire

Looking north towards the Empire State Building from 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue. 6:30 PM. Photo: JH.

“What makes love and sex addiction even harder to understand and treat is that sex is not an illegal substance in our culture. When you tell your friends you are addicted to cocaine, they will be concerned; they will look for help. When you tell your friends that you are buying a new car, they will wrinkle their brows and ask if you are sure you an afford it; they will advise you about makes and models and payment plans. But when you tell them you are in love, even that you are in love with a man you shouldn’t be in love with, they will smile knowingly and often give you their blessing.

For all these reasons it is difficult to overestimate the power of emotional addiction to another person – whether brief, as it is in casual sexual encounters or lengthy, as it can be in drawn-out love affairs. Sex addiction is the superpower of addictions. It has a history as old as Ovid, who in The Art of Love advises the afflicted to consume white onions from Megara, honey, pine nuts, and radishes.”

From Desire; Where Sex Meets Addiction
By Susan Cheever.

Susan Cheever is a neighbor of mine, living a block up the avenue. We sometimes see each other walking up the street, in and out of the Gristede’s or the cleaners. We’ve known each other for a number of years now although I can’t remember how we met. We share a good mutual friend Erica Jong; perhaps it was through Erica. Susan is also an animal person like me, so we have that in common. And she is, to my way of thinking, a distinguished writer/memoirist, from a family of distinguished and accomplished writers (her father John, her brother Ben, her sister-in-law Janet Maslin).


	Susan Cheever with Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction. Click image to order.

That rates very high in my book of dreams. It is impossible for me to disassociate her from her famous novelist father whose journals excerpted in The New Yorker quite a number of years ago, I will never forget for their rapturous descriptions of the nature around him and the tortures of the damned dancing war-like in his head. I am drawn to all that, like an addict.

Off-stage, off the written page, as a neighbor and occasional conversational friend, she’s wonderful company, really smart, really nice; a lovely person.

When I first heard she was writing a book about sex addiction, I thought to myself that she’d decided she wanted to have a best-seller, because let’s face it, sex sells. And sex addiction is one of the newer (although not that new) compulsions in our contemporary hip world. Who was it, I was reading about recently who had gone into rehab for sex addiction? Some well known actor. His wife had talked him into it, the magazine article said. The first thing that came to mind was that she’d caught him cheating.

I grew up in a household where if I’d thought about it, my own parents appeared to be chaste. As in chastity. Their most intimate moments that I was aware were the long drawn out and dramatic domestic altercations that often ended in tears (hers) and shouting (his) and the occasional throwing of the plates crashing on the kitchen floor.

Otherwise she slept in the bedroom across the hall from his bedroom and since as I child I knew nothing whatsoever about bedrooms and physical intimacy, I never gave any of it a thought, except that then there was quiet. And peace for a moment.

So I was surprised to learn, when I was twenty-four, that my father not only had sex besides the obvious moments with my mother (two birth children – me and a sister), but that he had, in fact, another wife and another family living at the same time in another part of the world (New York versus Massachusetts). Bigamy it is called, but not sex.

Shock is not an adequate enough word to describe my emotional reaction to acquiring that explosive bit of knowledge. Turmoil would be more like it. But then I was young and would remain so for quite some time, so that eventually, I came to understand (if that’s the word) it and take it in stride.

I was 48 when I first learned that my mother had affairs, or at least one affair, or at least an occasional sexual dalliance with another man. My sisters who spilled the beans inadvertently (they thought I knew) didn’t think highly of the matter although by that time in my life I was glad to hear that the old girl who had such a rotten time with the old man, found a few moments of satisfaction in the arms of another. I’m sure if my mother were alive to read these words, she’d be mortified that: 1. I knew; and 2. I repeated it. But she’s been gone to Heaven for a long long time now and really it doesn’t matter. As it shouldn’t.

These things came to mind when I was reading Susan Cheever’s book and I’m still not sure if addiction is the right word to articulate sexual desire acted out over and over by needing/needy parties, although I’ll take the author’s word for it. And I don’t doubt that many many others will not only take her word for it but highly identify with what she is willing to reveal about her own relationship to physical intimacy with another (or others). Me, I’m the prude in the soup.

That said, our mutual friend Paige Peterson gave a booksigning party for Susan last night at her apartment on Central Park West. I was looking forward to that party not only because I really like those two girls – really good, frank, smart, enthusiastic women – but also because I knew what “kind” of crowd it would draw.

Only in New York can you find this sorority-fraternity of authors and sundry artists who know each other, who know each other’s work, each other’s partners, mates, children and friends. And so when there is a “book party” for one of them, it’s a little like attending a family reunion, an extended family, very gemutlich, even if you’re not a member you feel welcome. This is one of the romantic things about New York for me, and I was not disappointed.

There were far more people than I got to take pictures of because I found myself in addictive conversation with several people.

Doug and Anky Leeds

Carol Victor, Andy Stein, and Eleanora Kennedy

I was telling Judy Collins how much I love her version of “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” and she told me that Jimmy Webb wrote it (along with several other standards that she named) and that she was going to soon record a new one that he’s written called “Gauguin” that she says is the greatest song he’s ever written.

Erica Jong and I talked about the current state of the world financial system, something that she’s been following closely for a long time. Her daughter Molly Jong-Fast, another writer who is working on something for NYSD was telling me about the fire that destroyed Amanda Burden’s East 79th Street apartment yesterday; that that was the apartment where Molly’s paternal grandparents lived out their lives.

Pat Birch the choreographer/director and I talked about dancers and Hermes Pan, whom I knew well when I lived in Los Angeles, and Fred Astaire (about whom – Fred – she is working on a project).

Ed Victor was telling me about life at Sissinghurst, the National Trust held residence of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson where he and his wife Carol lived for many years on weekends, and which they grew tired of because, as Carol put, she got tired of lugging the same cheddar cheese down to the country every weekend. When you’re around this crowd, the words come pouring out with almost everyone, and everyone is happy for the author. Author, author!!

Check it out: Desire; Where Sex Meets Addiction, by Susan Cheever. Could it apply to you? To him? To her? Maybe once upon a time? Never? Sometimes? Are we crazy? Maybe. Will a good night’s sleep help? Maybe. Would it help a good night’s sleep? Possibly. See for yourself.