Sex on the Beach

Many people seem to be excited by the thought of sex on the beach, despite the gritty reality of sand. But considerably fewer people desire to have sex with the beach.

And yet, the latter seems infinitely more pleasurable and full of possibility than having to penetrate another human body with all the usual built-in features: the same limbs, the same organs, the same expectations and responses. How dreary even love becomes when it never flickers or wavers or changes and becomes a mechanical exercise in pure repetition: in-out, in-out and shake it all about. If that's what sex is all about then, frankly, it's hardly worth the effort.

But, of course, sex needn't be so limited and repetitive: so human, all-too-human. It can become bestial, or object-oriented, elemental or even cosmic in character. I know of a woman, for example, who took the sun as a lover. And in The Trespasser, Lawrence describes with all his usual perverse brilliance the inhuman and purifying erotics of sun, sea, and sand.

Although ostensibly on a short holiday on the Isle of Wight with his young mistress in order that they might spend some time together and momentarily forget about his domestic entanglements, Siegmund seems to get more satisfaction from the beach than he does from the body of Helena. One day, whilst the latter frolics in the waves, Siegmund swims off to explore a tiny hidden bay, inaccessible from the land:

"He waded out of the green, cold water  ... Throwing himself down on the sand ... he lay glistening wet ... The sand was warm to his breast and and his belly and his arms. It was like a great body he cleaved to. Almost, he fancied, he felt it heaving under him in its breathing. Then he turned his face to the sun, and laughed. All the while, he hugged the warm body of the sea-bay beneath him. He spread his hands upon the sand: he took it in handfuls, and let it run smooth, warm, delightful, through his fingers.
      ... And he laid his hands again on the warm body of the shore, let them wander, discovering, gathering all the warmth, the softness, the strange wonder of smooth, warm pebbles, then shrinking from the deep weight of cold his hand encountered as he burrowed under the surface, wrist-deep. In the end, he found the cold mystery of the deep sand also thrilling. He pushed in his hands again and deeper, enjoying the almost hurt of the dark, heavy coldness. For the sun and the white flower of the bay were breathing and kissing him dry ... holding him in their warm concave, like a bee in a flower ...
      Siegmund lay and clasped the sand and tossed it in handfuls till over him he was all hot and cloyed. Then he rose and looked at himself and laughed ... and began to rub himself free of the clogging sand. He found himself strangely dry and smooth. He tossed more dry sand, and more, over himself ... Soon his body was dry and warm and smooth ... his body was full of delight and his hands glad with the touch of himself. He wanted himself clean. ... He went painfully over the pebbles till he found himself on the smooth rock bottom. Then he soused himself, and shook his head in the water, and washed and splashed and rubbed himself with his hands assiduously. ... It was the purification. ... He felt as if all the dirt of misery were soaked out of him ... So white and sweet and tissue-clean he felt, full of lightness and grace."

- D. H. Lawrence, The Trespasser, ed. Elizabeth Mansfield, (CUP, 1981), pp. 88-89.

When was the last time you felt like that after a quick fuck on the beach with some local picked up in a bar?