Abstract

Intercourse is often much more of an intellectual activity than a physical one. Desire mixes with the imagination to produce a narrative. At its base level, intercourse just requires two bodies, but the nature of those bodies – who they are, how and where they meet, the positions (both physical and intellectual) they adopt in relation to each other, and the manner in which they negotiate both the beginning and ending of their coupling – are determined by scripts that exist long before (and persist long after) any sexual encounter. ¹ The study of sex is really the study of storytelling.