Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

ecomes impersonal. ” 35 Passion becomes impersonal whenthere is no person inside, no complex human being who iswilling to know and to feel. It is not knowledge of someone elsethat makes passion personal; it is knowledge of oneself. Selfknowledgecreates the potential for knowing a lover in sex.Escaping identity, abandoning it—being absent from one’sown passion, one’s own history, the meaning of one’s ownneed— allows for ‘“ fever but no delight. ’” 36 In Giovanni'sRoom, a young, white man named David is running away fromhimself, this time from Brooklyn to Paris. He is especially runningaway from the emotional necessity, which is his, of lovingmen. One night, as a teenager, he made love with his bestfriend, then abandoned him the next morning, not able to facethe friendship after the tenderness and sensuality, the emotionalresonance too, of the lovemaking: “We had our armsaround each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare,exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happenedto find. ”37 That night it had seemed to him “ that a lifetimewould not be long enough for me to act with Joey the actof love. ”38But shame and fear, driving him toward ignorance,overcame sensuality and love.In Paris, he is engaged to a woman; when he wants to marry,she has doubts and goes away to think. While she is away, hestarts living with Giovanni, an Italian immigrant in France, abartender in a gay bar. Giovanni deeply loves him, but David isdetermined not to love, not to be loved, not to acknowledgeGiovanni as the measure of all love for him:I was in a terrible confusion. Sometimes I thought, but this isyour life. Stop fighting it. Stop fighting. O r I thought, but I amhappy. And he loves me. I am safe. Sometimes, when he was