In the City of Men - Day 18

It is very easy to understand why I find myself at the point where I am now. I come from a reality in which eroticism, as I understand it, i.e. as a sustained, complex and sophisticated practice, has been completely absent from the cultural landscape; I come into a new reality in which eroticism, or at least sex, may initially seem as easily available as the internationally famous Amsterdam City Water. But at a closer consideration, it may not be so; the thing is a privilege anywhere in the world, even in Amsterdam. The type of problem, the whole situation I face, and the fact of facing it at this stage of life, is a rare privilege. I should see it as such, in the aura of exception.
It is very easy to lose faith in love, romance, and good sex as a performance, not a narration. Those theological treatises from my shelf in Leiden postpone it to the afterlife, an idea that will certainly bring a bitter smile to any post-Christian Westerner. And even the imams from a thousand years ago say it is basically a metaphor.
What makes me suddenly such a literalist?