Eroticism is one of the few forms of play permitted to adults. It occurs in a world parallel to the habitual one; it frees us to adopt new personas; it has a tendency to generate enduring communities whose members are "apart together" even when its excesses have come to an end; and, finally, it is dispensable and therefore indispensable.

For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing.