lOOKS
309
of the idea that sex was permissible only in marriage and then only
for the sake of a family. At the same time, to be "promiscuous"
W:lS
to
assert the validity of sexual experience in and for itself. The "meaning"
of Bohemian sex, then, was at once social and personal, a crucial ele–
ment in the Bohemian's ideal of civilization. Here again the contrast
with Beat Generation Bohemianism is sharp. On the one hand, there
is
a fair amount of sexual activity in
On the Road
and
The Subter–
raneans.
Dean Moriarity is a "new kind of American saint" at least
partly because of his amazing sexual power: he can keep three women
satisfied simultaneously and he can make love any time, anywhere (once
he mounts a girl in the back seat of a car while poor Sal Paradise is
trying to sleep in front). Sal, too, is always on the make, and though
he isn't as successful as the great Dean, he does pretty well: offhand
I can remember a girl in Denver, one on a bus, and another in New
York, but a little research would certainly unearth a few more. The
heroine of
The Subterraneans,
a Negro girl named Mardou Fox, seems
to
have switched from one to another member of the same gang and
back again ("This has been an incestuous group in its time"), and we
are given to understand that there is nothing unusual about such an
arrangement. But the point of all this hustle and bustle is not freedom
from ordinary social restrictions or defiance of convention (except
in
relation to homosexuality, which is Ginsberg's preserve: among "the
best minds" of Ginsberg's generation who were destroyed by America
are those "who let themselves be
in the -- by saintly motor–
cyclists, and screamed with joy, / who blew and were blown by those
human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love").
The sex
in
Kerouac's books goes hand in hand with a great deal of talk
about forming permanent relationships ("although I have a hot feeling
sexually and all that for her," says the poet Adam Moorad in
The
Subterraneans,
"I really don't want to get any further into her not
only for these reasons but finally, the big one, if I'm going to get
in–
volved with a girl now 1 want to be permanent like permanent and
serious and long termed and I can't do that with her"), and a habit of
getting married and then duly divorced and re-married when another
girl comes along. In fact, there are as many marriages and divorces in
On
the Road
as in the Hollywood movie colony (must be that Cali–
fornia climate): "All those years 1 was looking for the woman 1 wanted
to
marry," Sal Paradise tells us. "I couldn't meet a girl without saying
to
myself, What kind of wife would she make?" Even more revealing
is
Kerouac's refusal to admit that any of his characters ever make love
wantonly or lecherously-no matter how casual the encounter It must
