Ana Carolina Soares Nakamura - (Carol Nakamura), Brazilian dancer (classical ballerina, Jazz etc) and actress, born in Rio de Janeiro, is 29 years old, she will be 30 in 3 months from now (May 2013) and is the mother of one child. She works in a popular TV variety show and acts in several movies, from drama to comedies. She is a typical middle class girl which loves beaches. Carol is indeed the living proof that the union of Latino and Asian people works very well. I strongly believe that the marriage of people belonging to two different racial groups, e.g. Caucasians and a black African person, Asians, Natives, you name it, produces some of the nicest, prettiest, most intelligent and smarter children as the end product. They inherit the best genes of their parents. She is considered the quintessential sexy woman for SouthEastern Brazilians.

I bet that caught your attention. Few things attract more the attention of human beings than sex. I will do my very best and try to navigate in these waters, which involve so much, so many anatomical, physiological, cultural, emotional, religious and psychological aspects.

I firmly believe that sex and love are two thoroughly distinct entities. It is possible to love without having sex and having sex without love. Be that as it may, if we have both together the three letter word and the four letter word will add up to 7, which is the number of perfection for Jews and Christians. The ideal would be to have sex with the person you love, so it would transcend a simple physiological urge, not too different of peeing or having a bowel movement. If you have sex with the person you really love, than it is no longer labeled “sex”, it should be called “to make love” and you should reach the Seventh Heavens.... “To make love” could be just a figure of speech, but I sense that it has a far deeper meaning.

One of my nieces holds a PhD in Psychology from a prestigious British University, her field is Sexology and a first cousin is also a PhD in Psychology and studied 5 years in France under Jacques Lacan, the great French Psychologist. I learned a lot with both, my niece and my cousin.

Lacan's conception of desire is central to his theories and follows Freud's concept of “Wunsch” (desire). The aim of psychoanalysis is to lead the analysis and to uncover the truth about his or her desire, but this is possible only if that desire is articulated.

Lacan wrote that "it is only once it is formulated, named in the presence of the other, that desire appears in the full sense of the term”. This naming of desire "is not a question of recognizing something which would be entirely given. In naming it, the subject creates, brings forth, a new presence in the world”. Psychoanalysis teaches the patient "to bring desire into existence."

The truth about desire is somehow present in discourse, although discourse is never able to articulate the entire truth about desire—whenever discourse attempts to articulate desire, there is always a leftover or surplus.

In "The Signification of the Phallus," Lacan distinguishes desire from need and demand. Need is a biological instinct that is articulated in demand, yet demand has a double function: on the one hand, it articulates need, and on the other, acts as a demand for love. Even after the need articulated in demand is satisfied, the demand for love remains unsatisfied. This remainder is desire.

For Lacan, "desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction nor the demand for love, but the difference that results from the subtraction of the first from the second." Lacan adds that "desire begins to take shape in the margin in which demand becomes separated from need." Hence desire can never be satisfied, or as Slavoj Žižek puts it, "desire's raison d'être is not to realize its goal, to find full satisfaction, but to reproduce itself as desire”.

It is also important to distinguish between desire and the drives. The drives are the partial manifestations of a single force called desire. Lacan's concept of the "objet petit" is the object of desire, although this object is not that towards which desire tends, but rather the cause of desire. Desire is not a relation to an object but a relation to a lack (manque).

In my humble opinion, sex without love is meaningless it is a two people masturbation. It may reward you with physical pleasure but lacks the most important, which is a total involvement, even at the spiritual level, with your partner. Sex per se, our fellow animals, the dogs, the pigs and the rabbits do far better and more often than us. Pigs seem to be the ones that enjoy the most (Gosh, they make a lot of obnoxious and rude noises too).

I hope to stir enough controversy with this article to entice the reader to read the next articles of this series. I also hope to learn in the process from other people’s comments, criticism and ideas. I feel I am opening the “Pandora Box” here.

Recently I read an article, which questioned whether one should or not take a shower before having sex with his/her partner. I realized that this, more than anything else, has to do with cultural aspects and with the climate of your country or the place you are engaging into intercourse. I noticed that in tropical countries and tropical islands it is a must, a paramount necessity to shower before jumping into bed. It is unromantic to offer a sweaty and smelly body to your partner and it might turn him/her off or be outright unacceptable.

I was born in Rio de Janeiro, a very hot place in every aspect. People in Rio, on average, take three showers a day. For people in my region of Brazil, it is a No No, even insulting, to come to bed without showering. A Brazilian wife would tell her husband “take a shower or go sleep with the dogs” and the husband would not be pleased with his wife if she did not take a shower before going to bed, he would invite her to have a shower together and this would be an opportunity to start foreplay right there and sometimes even make love under the shower.

I really do not mean to suggest that we are cleaner or more hygienic than anybody else. As I said, I feel that this has to do with climate and cultural aspects. On the other hand, Brazilians feel that if their partner runs to the shower as soon as they reach the climax, it looks like they are feeling noxious or as if the other person has leprosy, is dirty or something like that, it is an insulting move. Unless it is very hot, they both are awash in sweat and don’t have an AC, there is no excuse to rush under the shower. Sweat is not romantic, but the smell of the skin of the person you love sticking to your body should be.

We also feel that people which as soon as they finish getting their satisfaction turn to the side and go to sleep leaving the other one staring at the ceiling send a very negative message. To make love should be divided in “before”, “during” and “after”.... I am addressing to an adult audience here, you all understand what I mean.

I just hope to get you to read the next article of “Sex, myths and reality”. Happy New Year, the year of the snake, to all members of our community
and their families.

NOTE from CLM/ALM: Sex, Myths and Reality Part 2 will be published within 24 hours. Look for it.