Site Presented By
Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
The technologies that make affairs possible also contain the seeds of their exposure.
Feb 28, 2003 |
Send me an e-mail
And tell me
I love you.
-- Pet Shop Boys
When I see my girlfriend's name in my inbox these days, I get excited. I anticipate arrangements -- dinner, a movie, a long walk together. I am caressed by her beautiful use of language, stimulated by her rock 'n' roll prose, and delighted by her deft deployment of irony. I keep watch for shared jokes, references to things that are known only by us two. And if I send an erotic message and she responds with a request for me to get charcoal for the barbecue, well, that's sexy, too.
When I reply, I put on my writing hat and do my best to be amusing, clever and real. I am courting her all over again, after four years, and I know perfectly well that the skillful use of language turns her on. When we were first dating, pre-e-mail, on the telephonic apparatus, she used to correct my grammar. "You mean I, not me," she would say, a little harshly. I would often joke, although I am not sure it really was a joke, that I started falling for her when I realized she cared so much about language that she was prepared to jeopardize a perfectly nice phone conversation by arguing about syntax.
We have a linguistic dynamic in play that is every bit as important as the way we touch, dress and move. And I know that the e-mails really matter, not just for the content but also for their tone, because they keep us close during working hours and remind us of who we are -- that lovely thing, a couple. Whenever since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution have lovers had so much opportunity to stay in touch?
I know how important words are. I know this for sure. I know this in part because I have read the e-mails to (and from) my girlfriend's lover. I know what the two of them said. I know what they did. And I can put a precise time and date on every act of indiscretion.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
The evolutionary development of romantic communication technologies has tended toward ever increasing levels of privacy. The humble love letter worked well enough in the correspondence of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. But when deception is intended, the epistle becomes the device that drives a thousand love plots. A letter can be opened by a third party; and even if it is not, the very fact of its existence is often too public for containment. For discreet chatter the telephone offers the public call box -- scene of the hilarious opener to Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" -- but the calls can be a little disruptive when they are taken at home. The answering machine sits there in the corner of the room, next to the sofa, on the floor, or in the hallway. You might recall a distant time when that machine was turned down or off if you had company coming over to which you were not (yet?) fully committed. Less than useless for the conduct of affairs, the answering-machine message is essentially a letter that has been ripped open and left lying on the kitchen table for all to see.
With the arrival of cellphones, voice mail and e-mail, things have gotten interesting. If others are monitoring your cellphone calls, you might really have a problem -- as Prince Charles and Lady Camilla discovered. But most of us have love lives that are of little interest to strangers -- indeed, one suspects that our erotic lives these days are, for the most part, not really all that interesting even to ourselves. The FBI might soon be listening in to your calls and reading your e-mail, but unless you are a celebrity or a politician, your sex life is not on the public agenda.
The private, secret nature of the new technologies of desire has changed our relationship to the erotic. The shifty stroll from the car to the local adult store has now been replaced by downloaded images that sometimes seem to be circling around and exploring themselves in a bizarre solipsistic dance. Virtuality has made perverts of us all; we are conscripts in the land of the fetish, each one now honed to a dull point of desire so specific that it lies beyond any joke you can imagine.
