ANONthology: The Political Obligations of the Lover, by Rudolph Delson

This story was originally published anonymously as one of the stories in Fourth Estate 25th anniversary publication, the ANONthology.

The Political Obligations of the Lover

If you live under a repressive regime, you may have the duty to die for love. Go to the capital, stand in the central square, distribute pamphlets urging a general strike and compose a revolutionary song with the refrain: “I am loyal to nothing but love!” The imperial guardsmen will then shoot you dead. Be assured that it is better to die young and ecstatic than to suffer impotence, irrelevance and bureaucracy—the humiliations of old men who conform to oppression.
If you live under a regime that is not repressive but is merely corrupt, the guardsmen may not kill you. You may have to hold public orgies in order to be shot. I have never attended a public orgy, but I certainly would organize one if I lived under the graft and negligence of a puritanical petty tyrant. Make certain that if you are not shot dead but merely jailed for life, then your friends are prepared to break you out. Tell them: “It is only fair that you help me escape, given that I invited you to my public orgy.”
However, if you are the citizen of a democratic republic or if you are a member of the governing class of some other sort of regime, then you have a responsibility not merely to dissent, but to actively shape policy in favor of love. Justice requires that all citizens enjoy equal privileges as lovers; liberty demands that governments allow love to flourish unhindered. Therefore, as a lover, you are bound by your sacred humanity to follow a three-point program:

Point One—Hopeful Children:

First, it is your duty as a lover to ensure equal access to love for all the disparate peoples of future generations. An illiterate is simply not a suitable lover for you, nor for your sons or daughters, and so the public schools must be funded lavishly. However, neither should the public schools be allowed to become bulwarks of chastity and prudery. It is your duty to ensure that the Bible is not the only work of fiction available to young students, and in particular that the Song of Songs is not the only work of erotic fiction available to them. Do your public libraries make illustrated sex manuals and pornographic novels readily available to children? If not, they should.

Point Two—A Healthy Planet:

Second, you must ensure the enactment and enforcement of uncompromising statutes that protect from any human degradation:

• Rivers where girls ride inner tubes;
• Glades and grottos;
• Creeks that chortle loudly enough to conceal lovers’ moans;
• Beaches with dunes high enough to thwart prying eyes;
• Mountainside meadows with succulent mosses for soft reclining;
• Mountainside glaciers where scientific lovers can set up their tent for the night without fear that the light of their propane stove will reveal their amorous researches;
• Wildernesses and forests;
• Wetlands where a canoe can be anchored to the reeds for the length of an afternoon f**k;
• And, in general, any place in nature where lovers can escape to find their pleasure.

No developer has the right to build, and no petit bourgeois has the right to occupy, a sprawling four-thousand-square-foot mansion with a million gallons of air-conditioning and a hundred acres of lawn. If a class emerges in your nation that is so wealthy as to demand the right to construct and live in such ostentatious dwellings, you must see to it that they are taxed back into humility. Otherwise they will capture the government for their own uses, bulldoze your lovers’ woods, and eventually institute meddlesome bans on sex. They will seek to replace sexual joy with television. For example, in America they have instituted laws that allow lovers to be ticketed for opening a bottle of wine in a city park, or for making love in the ocean, or for reading pornography aloud on the radio. It is your duty as a lover to thwart such evil tendencies of the loveless classes.
As a corollary, because it is the most vibrant and least expensive venue for finding lovers, it is your responsibility to ensure that public transportation receives generous funding. Similarly, just as they have reserved seating for the elderly and the handicapped, buses should be required to reserve seats for beautiful girls who need to be loved. This will help young suitors identify new prospects. If spending cuts must be made in order to finance public transportation, those cuts must come from the military, because the army is a terrible venue for finding lovers.

Point Three—Church and State:

Finally, you must struggle to end political favoritism for the domestic classes.
Marriage is a matter of indifference to the lover. It might be nice to marry a girl you love particularly, and to have children, but that should not make a difference to your love life. So it is your duty as a lover to support a constitutional amendment barring the government from granting marriage licenses. Anyone who wants a wedding can go to church; leave the city clerk out of it. As a lover, the only permissions you need are from the chambers of your own pounding heart, and from the lips of your beloved.