PASSION & PACIFISM
- by Eleanor Tennyson -
In an attempt to get people fucking, the U.K government pushed the policy: monogamy is for peacetime. Britain and her enormous mind is thought to be a chalky peaceplace—her restless seas protecting against invasion, the Bishop of Rome, mutiny, polygamy. Yet like much of the world, Britain’s monogamy had mutated into total cold-blooded sexual abstention. Blood and hunger no longer drived the fate of the native masses. Desireless monogamy had taken hold.
Apologetic and Britishly, we unconsciously withdrew from fornication, quietly muttering our “sorry, sorry, sorries”. I watched Will, whom I always considered kind and gentle, become craggy and untouchable. His firm human walls became tense and colder, less delicious, less exquisite, until he eventually became an inscrutable fortress. Someone whom I was unable to digest or screw, like a kitchen faucet, separated from me, and impenetrable. I found myself, only twenty-six, locked into an impossible impasse of sexual avoidance.
“These are supposed to be the wild years of my life Will, surely there must be some female viagra for me. I was thinking about going to see a private GP, who might, you know, have the good kind of medication for this…Why don’t we try and kiss? I mean, I don’t really want to either. War is sick as hell. I just read somewhere it might help us mentally to schedule intimate time.” Sensitive as a nerve, his eyes glaze over the quiet leafy street before they glaze over me, “Medication will not solve everything Une. When will you learn that? And don’t forget what you always promised me, you’d never go private.”
Will concocts entertaining excuses to avoid touch. He won’t even let me touch his clothes. One of his nicknames for me is “pig-pen” after the American comic Charlie Brown. He says I am always so mucky, and that he cannot take me anywhere– he’ll say, I can map everywhere you’ve been all week by the muck on your clothing, Une, you mucky pup, aren’t you? My mucky pup. Even when I wash my hands and hold up my fingers to him and say “look so clean!” he will shake his head, and insist only he could hang up his trench in the closet, “these are just the rules my dear, Une”— closing the closet door. We both lost the knack of sensibility, of earthy sweetness, we became what we always most feared we were—atomised individuals.
At our house, there were flowers: daffodils, carnations, thistles, hydrangeas everywhere. As if their short-life-spans, snipped stems and asexuality could rescue and offer some condolence to the deep prozac grey of our sexless deprivation. And it wasn’t just us— it was a pandemic. We no longer saw other “couples” because everyone hunkered down like low-lifes, busy with their jobs, tired from their days. We used to believe hedonism was an act of defiance, but we no longer felt that way. We couldn’t even afford good cocaine anymore, spiritually or financially.
During its first year back in power, the Labour Government passed THE POLYAMORY LAW:
To allow (and encourage) drafted soldiers to fuck other soldiers, no matter their relationship status on the homefront.
The only way we can win a war is with happy virile soldiers, the Prime Minister urged peers in the House of Lords during a secondary reading. Once the soldiers returned back from deployment, however, the law stated that they were not allowed any contact with their “war-time” lovers, so as not to disturb the “peace” of the nuclear family–any contact would be punishable by a minimum of 5 years jail time. The government rubbed its mischievous and grubby hands together, now this will encourage soldiers to sign up to the draft. The government hired psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers to develop a scheme to stimulate love-making at home for those monogamous ‘frigid’ families, and a poly-scheme on the front.
At home, Valentines Day has become Valentines Month– sex shops are receiving subsidies, cabaret bars are led by local municipalities, dark-rooms are taking over leisure centres. Even dildos are becoming VAT exempt. On the front, polyamory is encouraged by replacing individual camp beds with football field sized mattresses. Most barracks are in the process of becoming vegan, nudist, pyramid schemes based on some model polyhouse from Oregon in the early 2000s.
Will and I watch this sexual madness unfold like cockroaches post-nuclear blast. How similar and dissimilar to Weimar Germany it all seemed, we’ll murmur repetitively to each other. Sex was everywhere, and nowhere. It’s all we thought about, and yet… sticky sexual ‘acts’ were special memories. Will and I retained a morbid curiosity for sex, but found ourselves confined to our minds, fidgety hands, our mobile phones.
The special thing about us is, if we did make love, we’d hate each other afterward. And this goes for most of the nation– it is a misdirection of desire. Desire which had always seemed so intrinsic to human experience, had become awfully stiff and depleted. It is a strange ailment, abstinence. Though I am young, I feel decrepit. Not bland, but wethered, rough as chalk. Acutely conscious that over the past hundred years, advertisements had pushed lust as the topline. And it is those tyrants and fat-cats who are rich, horny, botoxed, upwardly mobile. Moving our minds like chess-pieces with products and subliminal ideology.
Will and I still flirt with the world, even if we aren’t fornicating with one another (which we aren’t), or anyone else. Since the sex is so scarce, flirtation becomes even more dangerous and slippery. A nervous giggle, a lingering eye, a late-night message, hold enough potential for an advance, which implies the destruction of ‘us’. We rotate from person to person, hand in hand, brushing here, rubbing there, making sure we can still attract other people. It is a delicate dance, a means of preserving the last vestige of power amidst the contract of frugal monogamy.
Whatever hour we wake there will be a message incoming from one of our flirtations. We, like the old sleazy souls, continue to enjoy an infinite admiration of beauty— a now pointless need to be wanted by the splendid and the symmetrical. It didn’t count as long as we did not touch another persons ‘private parts’, for everything we wanted, and wanted to become, had become digital. Online, we could experience an algorithm tailored to our needs: peace, porn and promiscuity. We no longer seeked ‘it’ out, for most of life’s experience was waiting in the wings by way of an algorithm and wandering hand.
“U up?” HungDaddy62 on my mobile. He and I both know, it ain’t gonna happen. But we text a little bit. “Bored. You?” Come over, multiple orgasms, I have a compound, I like to give. I’ll send a cab. Unmatch.
The first night we moved in together in his inherited semi-detached in Clapham Common, Will screamed “You only want me for my money, Une”. His maternal grandparents had left it to him, “You didn’t want to move to London, you hate London, you hate southerners, you hate being this close to Surrey, I don’t know why you did it.” I’d only asked if he’d like to christen the bedroom. My sexual advances threatened his self-concept: any touch, kiss, or comforting word. Like Church and State, Sex and Intimacy were severed by a vexed spleen, because they demanded what we both lacked: presence, generosity, safety.
An ex-boyfriend once told me stories of the Bosnian War, how everyone in the villages fucked like rabbits and drank like fish because who knew when the next bullet was heading into the shelter. Now, it was different: the wars made us abstinent, cold, unresponsive, inert in action, adulterers in thought. As if we had all slipped our souls into a tyrannical slither of light, a machine that quivered beside our pillows, sat in our pockets, and exploded inside our minds.
In the dark nights when Will is sleeping, I lie awake twisted and gagged by insomnia. He rubs his groin into me restlessly as though he is balancing on a surfboard. Just like the old days but without conscious awareness. There is a constant ache, a continual paranoia, knocking like the pulse of a heart underneath daily life– theoretically we are able to attract and be attracted to others, outside of the very concept of ‘us’. And yet. And yet. What is a partnership without sex? A friendship? Yet, what is a friendship wrought with bitterness? Diplomacy?
I’d normally meet Will in town after he finished work. He’s a human-rights lawyer, working within the Treasury Solicitor Department for His Majesty’s Government. He hates it when I call it “town”. He’ll say, “Do we live in a town? Do we? Tell me. No, this isn’t fucking Lancashire, Une. It’s London. If you must, just call it central Une. Central.”
After the Polyamory Law passed, Britain split into two groups: the Monogamists (right, conservative, heterosexual, male, OAPS, religious groups), and the Polyamorists (left, queers, women). Monogamist groups protested in the streets of London, Brum, Leeds, Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester. Since the monogamists were typically very old, they weren’t very good at protesting. One of the chants they sang: "We choose love, we choose one, monogamy, our chosen sun!” I sprayed a banner “Fuck The Police” and “Once a Week Better Than Thrice With Dirty Mice” and hung it in our window, I even bought a bumper sticker for our VW Polo, “ONE4ONE”.
The Polyamorists believed that the liberalisation of sexuality had made sex unenjoyable. They wanted draconian laws to be in place to bring back the illicit thrills of sexuality. I pretended to be part of the Monogamists, as a liberal may pretend to be a conservative, since deep down I craved hegemony. I attended mutual-aid meetings for the military families, co-dependent support groups, I even volunteered at the Monogamist-led speed-dating events; where there was a dark-room with private ‘missionary-themed’ bedrooms built inside. The dark room has a rolling cassette tape which mimicked the rhythms: pounding umph, umph, umph, and a ee-er, ee-er, ee-er of the bed frame.
The Monogamists are mounting a major case in the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the “Polyamory Law” was a breach of four of the human rights principles:
Article 8: Right to Respect for Private Family Life
Article 3: Prohibition of Torture (namely in the case of the Monogamists, mental anguish)
No one shall perform forced labour (sex)
Will had been working-hard on supporting His Majesty’s defence, invoking articles:
1) Article 5: Right to Security
2) Article 15: Derogation in Times of Emergency
3) Article 13: Right to Effective Remedy.
The line of argument Will’s team were struggling to express was ‘the truth’ of monogamy on the home front: “If we were monogamous beings, Une, we would be with the little-girl or boy we kissed in Primary School! But we need to stimulate monogamy on the home front, because we need mental-stability, a new generation of hard-workers, and upward mobility–but that is philosophically hard to express to a nation full of drunks, who are out getting “gazeboed” before they are out sick with a flu.” We need to give them something to wake up for Will! I’d reply. Sex! To which he smiles, and shakes his head, “don’t worry your pretty mind, my lovely little Une. You are very fierce. But let beauty be the main taste you impress upon people, not your intellect. My lovely Une.”
Will often rants about how, “We’re all fucking poly, we (the humanities Russell Group generation) have just been hard wired by French people like Rosseau and Foucault to put every ounce of destiny into the power of family. And vw-lah! THERE YOU HAVE IT. Suddenly, every desperate feeling of self-worth mutates into monogamy. Trust me, I would know, Une. But the stupid smelly warehouse dwelling unemployed hippies who actually practise polyamory just spend half their lives crying because it hurts so damn much. It is an unfortunate but factual congenital malformation of the species to seek one ‘mummy’ or one ‘daddy’. It’s maths, I mean, read Freud for fucks sake not this “polysecure” bullshit. THAT WORD IS A PARADOX. Well, If I was unemployed like you Une, I’d be poly. So do it if you want, fuck whoever, what do I care. I bet you think this is just because I’m Southern, and I’m a tightly wound workaholic boring bastard. I’m not. I just choose to prioritise mental stability. Heck, I have a real fucking job. I don’t want to spend my life sitting down and having the same fucking conversations about how I do really want you, and only you, but I have needs blah de fucking blah. I have a FUCKING JOB!!” Spit particles sprayed my face as he spoke like a fog.
Today, Will waited for me outside the Legal Department, sipping straight from a Pepto-Bismol bottle. A pink ring of liquid encircled his lips like the rings of saturn, and we sat on the tube opposite each other, we liked to keep the appearance of anonymity. It aroused us both.
I sat looking around the subway-train thinking about the particular moment of ecstasy all these sad looking people were ejaculated into some form of existence. Will sits on the train reading his biographical novel about chess. This week we’re in Russia, Alexandra Kosteniuk. I kick his shin from the seat across and giggle aloud, “everyone here is semen!”. He asks me to let him read his book in peace, “just this once”. Just this once, I smile back.
A few moments pass until Will kicks my shin, and grits his teeth and mimes wiping something off his front teeth. It takes me a minute to recognise this is his way of telling me I have a lip-stick stain on my buck teeth. I use the sleeve of my white silk shirt to rub it off. I kick his shin back, and grin and ask through the gritted teeth, “is it better?”. He lifts his hands to his lips to shush me, meaning, it is better.
As we jolt along, I watch the pink Pepto stain dry up and crust around the corners of his mouth. And go back to looking at all the people as if they were their moment of pleasure, their conception.
I love him and he loves me, like he loves the doom-scrolling light in the palm of his hand, the new sidewalk.
Amidst the tragedy of global conflict, celibacy is the only tangible act of disobedience. We will not be happy, we will not be contained, we will not reproduce until we can serve a brighter, quieter morning. The idea of peace is a beautiful day, though windy. As a non-believer, I pray for humanity.
Eleanor Tennyson is a writer from London. She is the author of The Hairy Manifesto, which she published with the support of Creative Scotland - it can be found at The Good Press. She received her Poetry MFA from Columbia University.
