Es Muss Sein
June 21, 2010 | by Clothilde Lu
I would never have had my very first orgasm, missionary style, on a twin-size futon in the middle of a school day had he not given me the book. It was The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In the inscription, he wrote he didn’t want his first gift to me to be something as fleeting as flowers or chocolate. They die, they get eaten, they disappear. How could I not be impressed? I was a teenager, a California girl from the quintessential southern part, where I’d probably been too preoccupied with all that, like, sun to get entangled in post-exile, Czech-communist literature.
Days later, I gave him my virginity. It was his first time too. We did it the way humans are meant to, without rubbers or other prophylactic nuisances. Afterward, he put on my bathrobe and sat out on my balcony, holding a wine-glass of orange juice in one hand, a cigarette in the other. I took a snapshot. We laughed.
I won’t lie and say I burned my way through it. In fact, I could barely get past the first sentence:
The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum!
Goddamn, it was a doozy of a line—a harbinger of many more that I also didn’t quite get. Several pages in, I’d suddenly come out of a haze and realize I’d just lost the last ten minutes of my life. It was like leaving Los Angeles on the 405 late at night, lulled by miles of darkness and speed, and then remembering: I’m still driving.
But he was right—the book has endured. There are parts I’ve kept with me throughout the years, initially gleaned between midterms and multiple orgasms (so many that when I smugly tried to count them all, I could only marvel at the math). As a coed inevitably hopped-up on Ortho Tri-Cyclen, I would fixate on Kundera’s vertigo: “the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us . . . against which, terrified, we defend ourselves. ” Then there was his passage on the closing movement of Beethoven’s last quartet: Muss es sein? Es muss sein. Must it be? It must be. I’ve used it like a mantra in the many years since, when making life decisions that harbor complexities I’m just not in the mood to deal with. Muss es sein? Should I sleep with this womanizing sadist? Es muss sein.
When the relationship was over or, you know, mostly over, I tried searching the novel for clues as to how it should resolve, a possible parallel narrative that would give me some kind of sentimental insight. Was he Tomas, the philandering surgeon, and therefore I Tereza, the long-suffering woman he wanted to die with? Were we destined to be together until the end? For chrissakes, I hoped not. I could never devote myself to a cheater. Once more, I gave up—until recently, when I decided to give the book another go.
This time, I immediately recognize I’m more like Tomas, with his rule of threes and his natural ability to compartmentalize, or his favorite mistress Sabina, with her pathological aversion to kitsch. I also have a broader view on infidelity and the unfaithful. Though I’m not that, I understand it. In any case, I finally finished the book. Yesterday. Over a decade since that seminal afternoon. I got through it surprisingly fast and, finally, I think I’m starting to get it. Of course, as Nietzsche might have predicted, I’m going to have to read it again.
Clothilde Lu is the pseudonym of a writer whose mother has Google Alerts.
Pat | June 21, 2010 at 10:41 am
“We did it the way humans are meant to, without rubbers or other prophylactic nuisances.”
That is a dumb and dangerous line.
Žert | June 21, 2010 at 10:54 am
Just the latter.
Edward | June 21, 2010 at 11:02 am
Love this article. And what an awesome memory for a first sexual experience.
The books we put down but come back to always seem to be the best.
@pat, talk about missing the entire point of the article. And dangerous? Only for the uneducated and moronic. It’s a turn of phrase, which is factually correct. Must everything be fraught with societal implication for you?
JvdV | June 21, 2010 at 11:06 am
“Google Alerts”, surely.
Pat | June 21, 2010 at 11:25 am
I just think humans are meant for sex. Maybe I’m just ignorant and moronic.
Maybe I just dislike things that begin or end with phrases such as “like humans are meant to.”
It was just soooo real you know? I just felt sooo human and everything just seemed so right. We were like two grains of sand, but one universe.
Mark | June 21, 2010 at 11:26 am
Very nice. This was a great metaphor… “It was like leaving Los Angeles on the 405 late at night, lulled by miles of darkness and speed, and then remembering: I’m still driving.”:
Pat | June 21, 2010 at 11:27 am
I just think humans are also meant for safe sex*
Thessaly La Force | June 21, 2010 at 11:50 am
Thank you, JvdV.
M. R. Otto | June 21, 2010 at 3:41 pm
I agree with Mark, striking metaphor… and at least you had an orgasm when you lost your virginity.
DaBone | June 21, 2010 at 4:10 pm
My three favorite from him are “Immortality”,
“Laughable Loves” and “Art of the Novel”. The latter is lit crit but,
it coming from a major writer, makes it more interesting than academic
lit crit. I re-read ULB years later but it didn’t hold up for me. I
think it’s Kundera as virtuoso but not at his wisest.
katy | June 21, 2010 at 4:24 pm
wow. what subtle and romantic confessions. “I’m still driving” is a particularly nice analogy. Keep ‘em coming; I’d like to read more.
Yael | June 22, 2010 at 1:44 am
Surprisingly, this ‘review’ does not urge me to pick up Kundra and read his book but to wait for more words from you. Exquisite.
Steven Augustine | June 22, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Kundera’s “The Farewell Waltz”, Published in 1977 and written “in Bohemia in 1971 or 1972″, is related closely to “The Unbearable…” and interesting for packing lots of the same philosophical lunch that Kundera made a lighter, more satisfying snack of in “The Unbearable…” . Kundera hadn’t yet found his magically unassailable argument in the earlier book and too often relies, in TFW, on the conventional mechanics of moving characters around their stations of the cross as they hit the preordained plot-points. He got to the point he was able to transcend all that and finally produced TULB a decade later. But you can see so many future bits of TULB seeded here and there in TFW… the most striking examples being: a moment of extreme cruelty to animals perpetrated by Czech children (a cat with nails in its eyes in TFW and crow half-buried and stoned in TULB); a charismatic dog (“Bob” in FW and “Karenin” in TULB) and a rustic girl either ruining, or threatening to ruin, an urbane sophisticate with sex and/or love… plus Kundera’s apparent disgust with older women and the biological facts of fucking.
In TULB the congenially-academic narrator refers to sex as “absurd” (compared to what?) and in TFW there’s stuff about sagging boobs and cervical mucus and also a character’s unappetizing meditation on the saliva in an unloved woman’s mouth while kissing it. Reading TFW years after reading TULB made me want to re-read TULB in search of traces of worryingly lyrical Judeo-Christian Theological subtexts I never would have guessed, before, that Kundera was capable of.
TULB is great but not as “young” as we take it to be, reading it when *we* are young. It’s pretty fogeyish, in fact, and in a very Central European way.
Milosz | June 22, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Well done but I’m not sure he deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Kundera. Anyone can give you a book after doing the deed. I could give you Heidegger after an orgie. Does that make me a better person? And what kind of moron drinks OJ in a wine glass? Now that’s unbearable.
raluca | June 23, 2010 at 1:36 am
Brilliant and honest, Clothilde Lu always cuts to the chase!
Steven Augustine | June 23, 2010 at 7:16 am
–”Clothilde Lu is the pseudonym of a writer whose mother has Google Alerts.”
–”‘Google Alerts’, surely.”
JudV: it’s a condition, like Pernicious Anemia.
Clayton Peacock | June 23, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Clothilde, I commend your use of the word “seminal.” Clayton is a pseudonym too.
Mahn N.Z. Gray | June 25, 2010 at 2:02 am
An enduring reminder that I really do need to read Kundera’s novel and not just settle for Philip Kaufman and Jean-Claude Carrière’s screen adaptation.
masaye | June 25, 2010 at 5:35 pm
“how humans are meant to do” is a popular excuse for smart people making stupid choices…
beautiful ariticle that resonates.. I remember the inexperience of youth/ that passionate, vulnerable black and white vision. I’m not sure which is better, then or knowing. Thanks for writing this. xo
tacotuesday | June 29, 2010 at 12:19 am
I appreciate your words that captured the youthfulness and freshness of a first love. Chocolates are not fleeting.
B.H. | June 29, 2010 at 7:25 pm
Thanks for the poignant memory. I hope your multiple orgasms recur ad infinitum.
Eremi | June 29, 2010 at 7:26 pm
I like it. Though I’m not sure “post-exile, Czech-communist” is a very good description of Kundera. What is post-exile? Wouldn’t “Czech anti-communist” be more apt?
clothilde | July 1, 2010 at 11:55 pm
Let’s start backwards.
Eremi: I trust you.
B.H.: Likewise!
tacotues: Once again, I stand corrected. Particularly when I recall Vosges Haut-Chocolate’s “Vincent Gallo” taleggio cheese/walnut/vanilla bean truffle c. 2003
masaye: Then.
Mahn N.Z. Gray: Indeed.
Clayton: So relieved! Was ambivalent about that word choice.
raluca: You know it.
Milosz: It wasn’t his fault. We were underaged, and I’m sure it was my pour choice.
Steven: My, what a prolific commenter you are!
Yael: Exquisite.
katy: Merci. We shall see.
DaBone: You sound smart.
Otto: Rats! My diction must be flawed – I did not have an orgasm my very first time. Took about three weeks to reach that point.
Thessaly: Thank you, T.LF.
Pat: Fair enough. Though you seem — angry.
Mark: You’re a love.
JvdV: Such attention to detail.
Edward: It was great. I was a lucky one.
Zert and, last but not least, Pat: We weren’t as dumb as you might think…and as for dangerous? We were cherry poppers. Worse-case scenario? Probably morning sickness, etc. And how ironic that bare-backing teens are more worrisome than absent-minded speeding on the 405 late at night. Seems there’d be much greater potential for regrets and catastrophe, no?
Also, Oyster people: I like oysters!
And finally, Rewritten: No comment.
In any case, I do appreciate the feedback, all of it. And thank you for reading.
securedloans | January 6, 2011 at 8:31 am
Very helpful and interesting information. I found what I have been searching for years. Thank you so much. And keep writing!
Matthew (@thebibliofreak) | July 20, 2011 at 8:51 am
Haha, an excellent introduction to the post that really centres the book in your world! I recently read and reviewed the book (http://bit.ly/r99VI0) and really enjoyed it!
sly fox | May 30, 2012 at 6:36 pm
it’s just sex