PART SIX of an interview with a woman who works with men as a sexual healer and with women as a coach in the erotic arts.

I

Sex, like religion, is not about the ego, but what lies above and beyond it; below it, in the depths of the unconscious.

Norman Mailer, in an interview, while acknowledging that the average one-​night stand can leave much to be desired, went on to say: “All the same, one-​night stands can be exceptional; and when that happens, one often has a sense of wonder that is not unlike religious sentiment. For the experience is separate from the person – you don’t know the person – it comes from something in sex itself. Sex may be something that’s outside of people, something out there.” Prior to making these comments, he had talked about the recognition which can follow your first experience of a profound sexual act – that God exists. “The conditions are better in sex than in love for such a recognition to occur, because it’s got to happen quickly, a sudden revelation.” [i]

[i] “Norman Mailer on Love, Sex, God, and the Devil,” interview with Cathleen Medwick, Vogue December 1980, reprinted in part in The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing, Random House, 2004

II

In Mitchell Smith’s novel Daydreams, there is a long letter of worldly wisdom written by a mother to her daughter, who is now a young woman. The mother, who happens to be a high-​class call girl, writes: “A good friend of mine says that men can be satisfied by a blow job, kids by a peanut-​butter sandwich. And in a way, she is right. Men, like kids, enjoy specific pleasures very, very much. Physical pleasures.“