Sunday, May 11, 2008
It's easier to talk to anonymous strangers about your sex dreams than about your future dreams.
Nov 27, 2000 | I am getting married in a couple of months, and I have been hiding my bridal magazines from prying eyes like a stack of porn.
I first encountered these magazines 10 years ago at my friend Rachel's house. She got engaged right after college, and I remember feeling shocked and a little embarrassed to see that she subscribed to Modern Bride. She had even earmarked certain pages that featured puffy white gowns and romantic floral arrangements. It was like seeing a Penthouse subscription on the coffee table with the owner's favorite spreads dog-eared: an open revelation of intense fantasizing.
When I got engaged at 31, I realized that I had spent my entire adult life repressing similar reveries. Somehow, despite a hippie childhood, divorced parents, feminist politics and a preference for black above all other colors, I had developed a wealth of bridal dreams. I had just never acknowledged them before, denying my arousal at the sight of a glittering diamond ring or a bouquet of tightly bound miniature roses.
I'm not the kind of woman who gets aroused by that stuff, I told myself. I don't want to be adored by my man for my poignant beauty, to press up against him as we dance in celebration of our union, to slice a sumptuous cake so tall it can serve hundreds, to make myself dizzy on champagne and then tumble into a lush hotel room, drop the crisp white folds of my gown on the floor and then ...
Well, of course I was aroused. I just didn't want to admit it. Bridal fantasies had always symbolized conventionality to me. They were manufactured by an industry dominated by purveyors of diamonds and $6,000 dresses. I would be a sucker to buy into those prefabricated romantic dreams, dreams that set up an antiquated ideal bound to be crushed by the pedestrian nature of everyday life. And since there was no one I wanted to marry, anyway, indulging the fantasies seemed stupid and self-defeating. I would only start to want what I couldn't have.
Later, when there was indeed someone I wanted to marry, I repressed my thoughts for a different reason. In today's society, I think, it's easier to share our anonymous sexual fantasies -- involving, say, a stranger in an airport lounge, or a team of lacrosse players undressing in a locker room -- than fantasies that suggest a future. Purely physical turn-ons, in our liberated yet commitment-phobic dating world, indicate a person is erotic and open. Bridal dreams, on the other hand, are shameful because they're about sex and love together. They may be incredibly hot -- doing it on the crumpled tatters of a white wedding gown below a gilded mirror, say, or sneaking a quick one in the coatroom at the Pierre while relatives dance a distinguished waltz -- but fantasizing about devotion (or indeed, any kind of emotional connection whatsoever) is tantamount to getting hot over a house in suburbia and 2.4 children -- simply not cool if you're a career woman, a feminist or just a New Yorker.
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