Pornosophy: Edging

Elizabethan Topiary at Levens Hall (1833)

Edging is what landscapers often do with lawns and flowerbeds, but it also refers to a technique by which one becomes sexually stimulated without having an orgasm. Why do that? One of the reasons is ostensibly to increase pleasure. To point out another form of sensusal satisfaction, think how good food tastes after you’ve had to starve yourself to clean out the colon in anticipation of a colonoscopy. When you finally have your orgasm after repeatedly coming close and then stopping before the show gets on the road, you’re most likely going to have a real bells and whistles experience. However this begs the question of sensation itself. Way back in the era before licensed promiscuity when sex was considered a biproduct of romance and no one had ever heard of hooking up, idealization may have supplanted the synechochic interest in body parts. Yes the Kama Sutra was written thousands of years ago in the pre-Christian era, but it’s influence may have been countermanded by the advent of notion of love. Denis de Rougement wrote a famous tome on this subject, Love in the Western World. Chivalry and honor were all by- products of a concept of behavior in which humans found value rather than sensual pleasure in each other or shall we say that the value imputed to an individual overrode their importance as a receiver of giver of sensual delight. Edging falls into the category of the discussion of vaginal or clitoral orgasms in women, where consummation becomes an increasingly materialized experience. Tristan or Isolde, Romeo or Juliet are too busy navigating the shoals of their respective liebestods to think about what's going on downtown—which may be one of the reasons theatergoers find these works uplifting, in a world where relationships are devoted to vibrators, anal plugs and getting off.