Sex Without Love

SHARON OLDS (B. 1942)

Sex without Love

How do they do it, the ones who make love

without love? Beautiful as dancers,

gliding over each other like ice skaters

over the ice, fingers hooked

inside each other's bodies, faces

red as steak, wine, wet as the

children at birth whose mothers are going to

give them away. How do they come to the

come to the come to the God come to the

still waters, and not love

the one who came there with them, light

rising slowly as steam off their joined

skin? These are the true religious,

the purists, the pros, the ones who will not

accept a false Messiah, love the

priest instead of the God. They do not

mistake the lover for their own pleasure,

they are like great runners: they know they are alone

with the road surface, the cold, the wind,

the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-

vascular health - just factors, like the partner

in the bed, and not the truth, which is the

single body alone in the universe

against its own best time.

"Sex without love is merely mating with genital, but sex with loving intimacy is mating with the soul" (Unknown). As seen through my eyes, Sharon Olds is exploiting the modern day mixed emotions of casual intercourse. She cleverly and clearly narrates the poem with inventive imagery and not even once having to use the word sex. She challenges the idea of how two people can be in an intimate relationship without real love while exposing the loneliness of casual intercourse.

"Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other's bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away." These actions are meant to amuse the mind but not satisfy the emptiness of the heart. I understand this as a vivid description of libido, another word for sexual desire. It is wonderful on the outside, just as dancers are pleasing to the eye, but sex without love has no depth and provides no internal comfort. On another note, some people may never understand the true greatness, closeness, and comfort of love. Some pretend to share their souls and some don't know how to give themselves to a lover. Instead they solve the solution with simple sex. As Woody Allen claims, "Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty damn good."

"How do they come to the... still waters, and not love the one who came there with them, light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin? These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God." It seems like when suggesting a false Messiah, the context refers to intercourse as false sex. These true religious, people who believe in true intimacy and companionship, will not accept sex without real love. "Love the priest instead of the God." Priesthood is the power to perform religious rites. They are an act of God. I see this as a person loving the act of sex rather than the emotions and concept of love. I feel this is a form of sexual narcissism, a selfish person loving only himself, making a God of himself, and ending up alone with himself. The first line of the poem states, "How do they do it, the ones who make love without love?" I see this as if Olds is revealing, possibly discretely mocking, the immorality and concept of casual meaningless intercourse.

According to Wikipedia, Sharon Olds was raised as a "hellfire Calvinism" which is explained to be "a theological system and an approach to the