The Ontological War

In Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Ann and Graham are talking in a café, and Ann tells Graham “something personal”:

Ann: I think that, um … I think that sex is overrated. I think that people place far too much importance on it. And I think that stuff about women wantin’ it just as bad as men is crap. I think they want it, I just don’t think they want it for the reason men think they do.

I’m getting confused.

Ann is starting to think of sex in new way. Many people consider it to be just a physical or biological drive and activity, and maybe in the past Ann accepted that definition of it. But now she is starting to sense that sex should be something else, something more. Sex as strictly a physical act is becoming “overrated” for her because once one begins to get a sense of one’s realself and of realself-to-realself relationships, socialself sex starts losing its appeal.

Ann, however, is still in the beginning Transition, and so she says “I’m getting confused.” It takes a while to figure all this ontological stuff out.

The conversation continues. Graham says that he was in therapy, it didn’t work for him, and

Graham: So I just formed my own theory that you should never take advice from someone that doesn’t know you intimately.

Ann: Well, I know my therapist intimately.

Graham: You’ve had sex with your therapist?

Ann: No! No. No.

Graham: Oh, no, I’m sorry. That’s what I meant. Somebody you’ve had sex with.

Ann: Oh.

…

Ann: So, let me see. You said, um … you said that I should never take advice from someone that I haven’t had sex with, right?

Graham: Basically.

Ann: Right. And, uh, we haven’t had sex. Right?

Graham: No.

Ann: So I guess from your own advice, I shouldn’t take your advice.

Graham: I wouldn’t.

Ann: You wouldn’t? OK.

Most of the conversations ontologically sensitive people have with others stop at the surface of the people they are talking to because that is where the self, the socialself, the other people are being is located. Occasionally, though, an ontologically sensitive person will meet another ontologically sensitive person, and the conversation may move almost immediately to deeper levels within each of them.

This appears to be happening with Ann and Graham. Graham is at a deeper degree of realself, and he communicates from that deeper level. But for Ann, talking more from who she is sensing she truly is and talking on a deeper ontological level to another person, and to a man, is something new.

Her relationship with Graham started innocently enough: Graham used to be her husband’s good friend, and Graham has dinner at Ann’s house and stays there a few nights. All of this made it possible for her to become aware of Graham in a realself way, without her ever feeling pushed or pulled in that direction by anyone.

Without really thinking about it, she finds herself talking to someone and developing a deeper ontological relationship without her really being aware that that is what the relationship is developing into.

And she does like her developing friendship with Graham, as shown by her giggling when she says “And, uh, we haven’t had sex. Right?”

So at this stage of her ontological life, on the one hand Ann says sex is “overrated,” and on the other hand she laughs with pleasure and deepening friendship when she says to Graham “we haven’t had sex. Right?”