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One obvious topic still needs to be addressed concerning my whole pursuit of pleasure
thing in Italy: What about sex?
To answer that question simply: I don’t want to have any while I’m here.
To answer it more thoroughly and honestly—of course, sometimes I do desperately want
to have some, but I’ve decided to sit this particular game out for a while. I don’t want to get in-
volved with anybody. Of course I do miss being kissed because I love kissing. (I complain
about this so much to Sofie that the other day she finally said in exasperation, “For God’s
sake, Liz—if it gets bad enough, I’ll kiss you.”) But I’m not going to do anything about it for
now. When I get lonely these days, I think: So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneli-
ness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.
But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own un-
fulfilled yearnings.
It’s a kind of emergency life-saving policy, more than anything else. I got started early in
life with the pursuit of sexual and romantic pleasure. I barely had an adolescence before I had
my first boyfriend, and I have consistently had a boy or a man (or sometimes both) in my life
ever since I was fifteen years old. That was—oh, let’s see—about nineteen years ago, now.
That’s almost two solid decades I have been entwined in some kind of drama with some kind
of guy. Each overlapping the next, with never so much as a week’s breather in between. And I
can’t help but think that’s been something of a liability on my path to maturity.
Moreover, I have boundary issues with men. Or maybe that’s not fair to say. To have is-
sues with boundaries, one must have boundaries in the first place, right? But I disappear into
the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You
can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog’s money, my
dog’s time—everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all
your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will
project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself
and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain,
and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all