Conversation About Orgasm

i think he meant currently, with his hands, tongue or some other body part

I think he means that he could and still can make a woman orgasm, but he has deliberately chosen not to be that intimate and vulnerable with a woman for the past 9 years. If you watch that scene and that conversation over again it makes a lot more sense.

He says that he didn't used to express himself verbally and that it frightened people, so I think that by talking to women about sex he was taking interacting verbally with people to the extreme. Maybe he focused on the mental aspects of sex so much that he felt he'd lost his ability to take care of the physical ones. I think that was the cause of his impotence.

So I think he could make a woman orgasm, even through intercourse, but that he hasn't tried to in so long that he considers himself physically unable to do it. (c)

-Caroline

"Let the lovefeast begin."
"People are dying. The dialogue has to be up to it."

[deleted]

My immediate interpretation of it was also (b) that he still is, just based on that they're speaking in present. But thinking about it, doesn't he go on - as she ask if he can do that for her - to say that he "can't because I won't". It could just be regarding Ann, but in the context it sounds as if he is referring to his entire decision not to have sex.
I guess that that would be (a), though it couldn't really be called impotence then, as it would be something he had chosen himself...

I suspect that it may be (d) "none of the above". He says, "I can't. I mean, I can't because I won't". By saying this it seems that he isn't really addressing the impotence question at all. Whether he simply demurs, perhaps because he sees it as not relevant, or whether he retreats, because he is unwilling to address it, is not at all clear. But what he does seem to be indicating is that he wants her to sense that it is his UNWILLINGNESS that is the reason he is not going to bring her to an orgasm. He wants her to know that there are other more important reasons involved than his sexual potency. The questions of: in what way, under what circumstances, and on what basis he should become "intimate" with her, are priorities for him. This is his first declaration of love. He doesn't want her to suspect that, even for a moment, she would fall into the category of other women that he has had relations with in the past. I don't think that this is a cerebral based decision, but gut instinctive honesty. He won't, because he needs to get other things in order in his relation with her first, before it gets complicated or imperiled by some compulsive sexual encounter. This is actually the turning point in his return to "normalcy". He is more concerned about having a right relation to the beloved (Ann), than a subsidiary question of sexual responsiveness. It is precisely this "forgetting about himself" and wanting to be right with her that empowers him. For the first time in his life things are in alignment. There is a right regard for the other. She in no way undervalues his inward and sensitive nature, nor overlooks his awkward way of sublimating it (she says its "pathetic"). At the same time she opens herself up to him revealing a similarly shielded inwardness. This aspect of herself lay dormant and sheltered from the world of banal and superficial people that were her lot. In the final analysis, it would appear that these two characters who appeared to be the most dysfunctional got that way simply because there was no healthy stimulus or outlet for their more sensitive characteristics. Who was in their environment? We know about John because we plainly see his crudeness. He was either unaware or disinterested in the fact that Ann even had an orgasm - ever! What could he offer Ann? He was content to screw Ann’s sister in the same bed where they slept together as man and wife. And of course, her sister says she hopes to get off on that very fact. The mysterious Elizabeth, we find out, also slept with John, before Graham started having problems in the relationship. She was “great in bed” and was also calculating enough to be able to conceal it from Graham. Her relationship with Graham was deceptive, dishonest and totally on the surface. Meanwhile both Ann's superficial sister and self-centered husband, who at first appear to be the strong and stable ones, show themselves to be the most empty and pathetic in the end. I found it very interesting that, after her interview with Graham, Cynthia was in a fever pitch that she attempted to quell with John, but afterwards realized that John didn’t really touch her where Graham had – and Graham never laid a hand on her. Perhaps for the first time in her life Cynthia became aware of a deeper layer of experience that never had a chance to come out because she was always drowning it out with sensual stimulation.


"The truth does not make it easier to understand." Sophie Zawistowski