Thinking Approach

Care for Some Sex?  - an excerpt from The Bridge Across Forever by Richard Bach

Read the text and try to decide which of the characters you sympathize with.

Care for some sex?

“I had an hypothesis, almost a theory, well on its way be­fore you stopped my research: beautiful women, they don’t much care for sex.”

She laughed in surprise. “Oh, Richard, you’re not serious! Really?”

“Really.” I was caught in contrary pressures. I wanted to tell her, and I wanted to touch her, too. Time for both, I thought, time for both.

“Do you know what’s wrong with your hypothesis?” she said.

“Nothing, I don’t think. There are exceptions and you’re one, thank the Maker, but generally it’s true: beautiful women get so tired of being seen as sex-things, when they know they matter so much more than that, their switches turn off.”

“Nice, but no,” she said. “Why not?”

“Sexist goose. Turn it around. I have a theory, Richard, that handsome men don’t much care for sex.”

“Nonsense! What are you getting at?”

“Listen: I’m defended like a fortress against handsome men, I’m cold to them, I keep them at arm’s-length, don’t let them be a part of my life, and somehow it doesn’t seem as if they enjoy sex as much as I want them to…”

“No wonder,” I said, and in a flying shatter of broken con­jecture I knew what she was saying. “No wonder! If you weren’t so cold to them, if you’d open up a little, let them know how you feel, what you think—none of us really hand­some men wants to be treated as a sex-machine, after all! Now, if a woman shows us a little human warmth, there’s a different story!”

She moved her body very close to mine. “Class?” she said, “What’s the moral of this story? Richard?”

“Where intimacy is not, is not the finest sex,” I said. “Is that the moral, teacher?”

“What a wise philosopher you are becoming!”

“And if one learned that, if one found someone whom one loved and admired and respected and for whom one had spent one’s life looking, might one find the warmest bed of all? And even if the one that one found was a very beautiful woman, would one find that she might care a very great deal for sex with one, and might enjoy sweet carnality as much as one might, oneself?”

“Fully as much as one might, oneself,” she laughed. “Could be, more!”

“Teacher!” I said. “No!”

“If you could be a woman, you might be surprised.”

(Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever)