Today’s quote of Veronika Decides to Die is a bit long. This would be shocking to many people, but I like what the psychiatrist in the Novel, Dr. Igor, said about each one of us sexual’s profile.

I quote:

During his medical studies, Dr Igor had read an interesting treastise on sexual dissidence: sadism, masochism, homosexuality, coprophagy, coprolalia, voyeurism, the list was endless. At first, he considered these things examples of deviant behaviour in a few maladjusted people incapable of having a healthy relationship with their partners.

However, as he advanced in his profession as psychiatrist and talked to his patients, he realized that everyone has an unusual story to tell. His patients would sit down in the comfortable armchair in his office, stare hard at the floor, and being a long dissertation on what they called ‘illness’ (as if he were not the doctor) or perversions (as if he were not the psychiatrist charged with deciding what was and wasn’t perverse).

And one by one, these normal people would describe fantasies that were all to be found in that famous treatise on erotic minorities, a book, in fact, that defended the right of everyone to have the orgasm they chose, as long as it did not violate the rights of their partner.

Women who had studied in convent schools dreamed of being sexually humilated; men in suits and ties, high-ranking civil servants, told him of the fortunes they spent on Rumanian prostitutes just so that they could lick their feet. Boys in love with boys, girls in love with their fellow school girls. Husbands who wanted to watch their wives having sex with strangers, women who masturbated every time they found some hint that their men had committed adultery. Mothers who had to suppress an impulse to give themselves to the first dilevery man who rang the doorbell, fathers who recounted secret adventures with the bizarre transvestites who managed to slip through the strict border controls.

And orgies. It seemed that everyone, at least once in their life, wanted to take part in an orgy.

Later on he continued describing how every human being has a unique sexual profile like everyone of us has a unique finger print.

I like this passage because many have been struggling with their fantasize of what they percieve as sexual illness or perversion while it seems each one of us suffer from a certain thing. While we can’t always act on our sexual fantasizes, I think that knowing that we are not alone would give a sense of comfort to us.

It is not easy to talk about sex in this part of the world, but I guess people should start learning and be more easy on themselves.