All Things Are Too Small

Eroticism is one of the few forms of play permitted to adults. It occurs in a world parallel to the habitual one; it frees us to adopt new personas; it has a tendency to generate enduring communities whose members are "apart together" even when its excesses have come to an end; and, finally, it is dispensable and therefore indispensable.

Sex can teach us to relish the tumult of true equality. It can show us that the self need not remain imprisoned behind the eyes. And it can prove, if anything can at this late date, that there is a realm beyond rational exchange, a realm in which the profligacy of play is its own recompense.

…a philosopher by training, I, too, am prone to regard reality as thin fodder for theorization. Yet as dull and distasteful as the facts may be, they make up the edifice on which principles are erected…