The Summer of Love
I was sixteen when the summer
of love took place, and I didn`t really know it was the summer of love until I
heard about it sometime during the autumn. Story of my life!
But was it really a summer of
love, anyway? In the `canyon` of Los Angeles, it probably was – lots of flowers
in the hair, and marijuana, and promiscuity – but as I remember it, the hype
was one thing and the reality another.
I did believe, though, that my
generation had a liberated view of love and sex which my parents` generation –
poor people – had missed out on as they worked their way through post-war
austerity towards creating, unintentionally, the permissive society in which
their sons and daughter were so eager to take their part.
I once read a letter to a newspaper,
which said: I get sick of hearing of these young hippies who think they
invented sex in 1969. Please tell them that it was in fact me who invented sex
in 1937.
Point taken!
Have the rituals of sex and
courtship changed that much, over the years? I wonder how much.
When I, a sixteen year old,
eagerly awaited my turn to be launched into the permissive society of free love
and promiscuity – bring it on! – I fondly imagined that sex-before-marriage was
a new concept!
How wrong was thatI!
Of course, the rules of the
game were probably a bit different. The thing about sex is that it was really
discovered, as we all know, in the Garden of Eden, and the trouble with that
discovery is that, again as we all know, it led to trouble. And if you define
the trouble, you define the rules of the game.
In the 1950s, a girl`s worst
imagined trouble was getting pregnant, outside wedlock, to a man who had no
intention of getting thus-locked. No man would want to marry a girl who was
bringing up another man`s child, or even – and this is maybe important –
marrying a girl who had lost her virginity to someone else. It was very
convenient to men, I guess, that they didn`t have a virginity to lose. A
cherry, maybe – but that was just a rite of passage!
If you travelled by bus in the
1950s and 1960s, as most people did, the other trouble with sex, advertised in
little public service rectangles, at eye level if you were standing, was the
trouble of venereal disease. The dreaded V.D.
My parents` generation still
talked of `courting`. “Are you courting yet, young man?” We talked of `going
out with…` which seemed more modern but which I suppose is a bit like `walking
out with…` which again is quaint and old-fashioned.
But the progress towards
intimacy was governed by a complex set of rules and conventions: as well as the
dangers of pregnancy and VD, there was also the background morality where sex
and sinfulness often lurked together; and there was, particularly for a girl,
the fear of loss of reputation and respect.
But despite the rules and
prohibitions, most people – if the people I knew were typical – managed to go
quite a distance down the path long before they got anywhere near to thinking
of getting married.
When the pill came along, it
promised to bring with it the sexual revolution, and maybe it did, because if
you take away the dangers you change other bits of the equation, too. Though in
less than a generation, the snake in the lovely garden had reared its ugly head
with the name of H.I.V., and the rules had to change again.
If we are to believe things we
hear, courtship rituals are now conducted through the social media, with
web-cams and electronic dialogue available 24/7. No need to rush to catch the half-past nine
bus so that she can get home when her dad told her. You can see its
attractions. Though given the choice, I think I`d still go for walking along,
hand-in-hand, on a rainy night, trying to find somewhere to sit, somewhere
affording a little bit of privacy…
Comments
Post a Comment