" there is lovemaking that is bad for a person, just as there is eating that is bad. that boysenberry cream pie from thrifty-e mart may appear inviting, may, in fact, cause all nine hundred taste buds to carol from the tongue, but in the end, the sugars, the additives, the empty calories clog arteries, disrupt cells, generate fat, and rot teeth. even potentially nourishing foods can be improperly prepared. there are wrong combinations and improper preparations in sex as well. yes, one must prepare for a fuck - the way an enlightened priest prepares for the ring: with intensification, with purification, with a conscious summoning of sacred power. and even that won't work if the ingredients are poorly matched: oysters are delectable, so are strawberries, but mashed together...(?!) Every nutritious sexual recipe calls for at least a pinch of love, and the fucks that rate four-star rankings from both gourmets and health-food nuts use cupfuls. not that sex should be regarded as therapeutic or to be taken for medicinal purposes, but to approach sex carelessly, shallowly, with detachment and without warmth is to dine night after night in erotic greasy spoons. in time, one's palate will become insensitive, one will suffer (without knowing it) emotional malnutrition, the skin of the soul will fester with scurvy, the teeth of the heart will decay. neither duration nor proclamation of commitment is necessarily the measure. there are one night stands in jersey city more glorious tht six month affairs in paris- but finally there is a commitment, however brief; a purity, however threatened; a vulnerability, however concealed, that must be present if couplings are to be salubrious and not slow poison.
-Still Life With Wood Pecker, by Tom Robbins
