Fear of Flying
by Erica Jong.
The zipless fuck was more than a fuck. It was a platonic ideal. Zipless because when you came together zippers fell away like rose petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff. Tongues intertwined and turned liquid. Your whole soul flowed out through your tongue and into the mouth of your lover. For the true, ultimate zipless A-1 fuck, it was necessary that you never get to know the man very well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_Flying_(novel)
Introduction to E-book, October 2011 – Erica Jong is writing to her granddaughter Beatrice Jong-Fast Greenfield:
Because you are blood of my blood and bone of my bone, I hope it inspires you to seize your own life. Don’t be afraid of mistakes. Everyone makes them. Don’t be afraid of risk. It teaches us more than safety. Be true to your dream, whatever it may be, even if it wasn’t mine. Be proud of all the great women who came before you. And remember you are the daughter of a daughter of a woman who made her own luck — even when she had no idea what on earth or heaven she was doing.
The decision was, of course, further complicated by analysis—the basic assumption of analysis being (and never mind all the evidence to the contrary) that you’re getting better all the time.
…
I was not against marriage. I believed in it in fact. It was necessary to have one best friend in a hostile world, one person you’d be loyal to no matter what, one person who’d always be loyal to you. But what about all those other longings which after a while marriage did nothing much to appease? The restlessness, the hunger, the thump in the gut, the thump in the cunt, the longing to be filled up, to be fucked through every hole, the yearning for dry champagne and wet kisses,
…
It didn’t matter, you see, whether you had an IQ of 170 or an IQ of 70, you were brainwashed all the same. Only the surface trappings were different. Only the talk was a little more sophisticated. Underneath it all, you longed to be annihilated by love, to be swept off your feet, to be filled up by a giant prick spouting sperm, soapsuds, silks and satins, and of course, money. Nobody bothered to tell you what marriage was really about. You weren’t even provided, like European girls, with a philosophy of cynicism and practicality. You expected not to desire any other men after marriage. And you expected your husband not to desire any other women. Then the desires came and you were thrown into a panic of self-hatred. What an evil woman you were! How could you keep being infatuated with strange men? How could you study their bulging trousers like that? How could you sit at a meeting imagining how every man in the room would screw? How could you sit on a train fucking total strangers with your eyes? How could you do that to your husband? Did anyone ever tell you that maybe it had nothing whatever to do with your husband?
…
The zipless fuck was more than a fuck. It was a platonic ideal. Zipless because when you came together zippers fell away like rose petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff. Tongues intertwined and turned liquid. Your whole soul flowed out through your tongue and into the mouth of your lover. For the true, ultimate zipless A-1 fuck, it was necessary that you never get to know the man very well.
…
So another condition for the zipless fuck was brevity. And anonymity made it even better.
…
The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not “taking” and the woman is not “giving”. No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.
…
Notes
2 / “Every Woman Adores a Fascist”
Highlight . Page 15
“But don’t you see,” I shouted from the couch, “that’s just the trouble! Women using sex appeal to manipulate
Note . Page 15
Women being dishonest
Highlight . Page 28
who can make that quick transition from spirit to matter. Why waste time if the attraction is really
Note . Page 28
Grabbing ass
5 / A Report from the Congress of Dreams or Congressing
Highlight . Page 79
I go into states where I notice nothing about the landscape except the male inhabitants and which organs
Note . Page 79
States where I notice nothing except men.
9 / Pandora’s Box or My Two Mothers
Highlight . Page 150
Sex. I was terrified of the tremendous power it had over me. The energy, the excitement, the power to
Note . Page 150
Power of sex
Highlight . Page 152
I knew that what I was doing gave me a special kind of power over him-
Note . Page 152
Power over him.
On next page, NB she is 14 he is 17