Fantasyland

Until recently, and for centuries before, our fantasies were regarded as Satan’s “doings”: “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed,” spake the Bible. Great book. Our innermost desires were swaddled, then quietly smothered with the spare pillow of Judeo-Christian repression. Meanwhile, in the East, they were writing the Karma Sutra, and in Japan, the artist Hokusai was creating woodblock prints of two giant octopuses pleasuring a woman. Such is life.

In particular, women’s sexual fantasies were regarded as abnormal, a sign that she was in possession of psychological defects, that she was a bit “cra-zizzy”.

“I had sexual fantasies and I assumed other women did too. But when I spoke to friends and people in the publishing world, they said they'd never heard of a woman's sexual fantasy. Nor was there a single reference to women's sexual fantasies in the card catalogues at the New York Public Library, the Yale University library, or the British Museum library … not a word on the sexual imagery in the minds of half the world.”—Nancy Friday, My Secret Garden.

But thanks to Nancy and other brave harlots, the West now regards fantasies and their related activities as “normal”:

“I finally realized that being grateful to my body was key to giving more love to myself.”—Oprah Winfrey.

Gross. Fantasies now seep from our ears like warm custard; we say things like “What are you thinking, Darryn?” and, “Postmen are hot” and, “We should get a love-swing”. It’s all quite beastly.

So what depraved creatures of thought scurry through the minds of modern men and women? What sordid fantasies colour our “me time”? What scarlet scenes cause passion’s hand to gently caress the thigh of our imagination? I don’t know, but I’m willing to learn. Until recently, fantasies were one of the most neglected areas of scientific examination. In 1995, two psychologists from the University of Vermont carried out the first major examination of the subject. Among the many surprising discoveries made about our fantasies by Harold Leitenberg and Kris Henning was the fact that most of our imaginings are routine encounters with past and present lovers. It takes a lot of effort to imagine yourself being ravished by a team of East European trapeze artists until I just can’t take it anymore. Sometimes it’s easier just to work with what you’ve got. Leitenberg and Henning also discovered three main “styles” of fantasy: “forbidden” imagery including unusual settings and taboo partners; scenes of seductive power: whereby you overwhelm a reluctant or indifferent lover with your awesome sexuality; and dominance and submission fantasies.

Affairs are easily the most common fantasy. A trip away to a conference, glances exchanged with a fellow traveller, small-talk offered and accepted with the flutter of hearts and lashes, Mojitos, the realisation that you’re both just lonely travellers at the third Annual Regional Conference of Life, more Mojitos, an hour and twelve minutes of scarcely bridled passion. Then, room service. A flight home full of smiles and whimsy. Why do people daydream about deceiving the one they love? Is it mental-infidelity or a healthy way to sublimate our desires? "It might relieve some of your guilt to know that many happily married individuals who have no thought or intention of ever betraying their spouse have sexual fantasies about someone other than their spouse," said Dr. Joyce Brothers. That’s what she thinks. Personally, I think you’re going to hell in a coin-operated bed. But at least in your mental tryst you don’t have to explain the room-service receipt for two bottles of Lindauer and a pot of whipped cream.

Or how about the dangerous liaison, is that your thing? In the back of the car at a lonely rest area, in the bushes on a camping trip, (we call this “The Deliverance Motif”,) in your old bedroom while your folks are out getting in the hay. Why is the chance of being caught a bit thrilling? And why, when you get up the courage to say “I’m just popping into the bushes for a bit, you wanna come too?” does he reply “Have you got the trots? There’s a loo at the campsite.”

Or maybe voyeurism is your thing: they’re two women, just talking, and you’re just watching. Then a pool-guy arrives and say’s “I’ve come to check the temperature,” and one woman say’s “The temperature of what? Of me?” And they all laugh, and you think, “Why are these people using my pool? I should probably go out and speak to them.”

Or maybe it’s just some slight improvements you’re after. We’ve all imagined the love of our life being … enhanced: slightly taller, or better endowed, or more romantic, or less gassy, or more virile, or less, or not so inclined to leave my things all over the house, or not so inclined to dismiss the possibility of a freak bisexual misadventure out of hand, (I mean, how do you know until you’ve met every woman? Never mind.)

These days we’re also about gender equality and not being a “sexualist” but in our interior world things still have the tinge of yore. She still dreams of being pulled from danger by a handsome prince or lifeguard; he still dreams of being the rescuer, he who flings himself into the furious surf and lets you ride him back to the beach like a floatation device. It’s win-win. This is one of the few sections of the fantasy Venn diagram where the desire-zones of the two genders overlap. And yet we’ve spent most of the last few decades curing ourselves of these impulses.

“… Lucas would kneel to rescue me, perhaps using a little gentle CPR that would bring his attention (not crudely, but he could not help noticing,) to the demure but definite bosom that, like the doll who grew breasts with the twist of an arm, I had arranged for my imaginary self. He would save me and become captivated. Not by anything I did; … He would be captivated by what I, inertly, was.” —Naomi Wolf, Promiscuitie.

But for the busy or the harried, all these saucy thoughts pale when compared to the simple fantasy of, for example, a good nights sleep. The kids are at your Mum’s, your man is off with his mates destroying fish of many colours. At least, that’s what he says. No, nothing, I didn’t mean anything by it. Anyway, you have a bath, then you take a book and slide between clean sheets and before you’ve even finished the first page, you’re gone.

Time is perhaps our ultimate fantasy object. We want it, bad, we lust for it, and yet it slips through our fingers like sand. My earliest fantasy (excluding maybe Wilma from Buck Rogers) was waking up on a rainy school morning and trying to freeze time with my mind. These days I’d kill to exchange the pressures of the modern world for getting to my desk at 9am to practise joined-up writing for six hours.

Anyway, while you’re slumbering, he’s fishing, and by God is he excited. It seems that every woman has a “cute” fishing-trip story about their man. My Mum tells me that my Dad forgets how to spell his own name in the week before his annual trip. One woman (let’s call her … Morgan, magazine editor. No, that’s too obvious. Mandy, dancer. Yes.) Anyway, “Mandy” told me just such a story. Apparently, her husband was due to be picked up at 4.30 am. He rose slightly early. 1.30. When 4.30 finally came he tripped gaily out to find that his mate had been parked outside his house since 3.30.

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”—Herman Melville, Moby Dick.

Revenge is another common fantasy. Oh, sweet revenge. Is there a better drug? Laudanum, maybe. Admit it, you’ve sat in that boardroom while your smug boss tore your ideas to shreds and thought, “What was the name of that undetectable poison?” You’ve sat across the table from a plain brown box filled with your cheating ex’s fetid belongings and thought, “How can I get some of that radioactive stuff the Russians put in their tea?” You can tell me, we’re just talking.

As Freud said, “The very emphasis of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours. It’s unlikely that you’ll actually murder your boss, but chances are you’ll think about it.

Speaking of “unlikely” and “chances” have you got your Lotto ticket? It’s gonna happen this weekend, I can feel it in my waters. Every week, several hundred thousand of us participate in the ultimate national fantasy: Lotto. We toddle down to the shop to get our tickets; we shrug off the odds of a ba-jillion to 1 with hardly a thought, because, hey, someone has to win. Right? Right? Meanwhile, the Henderson Modern Interpretive Dance Society gets a new pair of leg-warmers and the Lotteries Commission members throw back their heads and laugh like Nazis!

“The lottery is a tax on people who flunked math,” said Monique Lloyd.

In the end, God only knows what mental vampires gnaw at the neck of your longing. Your true fantasies are hidden in the darkest recesses of your mind, only to be revealed to Satan or a trained therapist. And with good reason, usually.

"Tell me what you are thinking about," the man I was actually fucking said, his words as charged as the action in my mind … I didn't stop to edit my thoughts. I told him what I'd been thinking. He got out of bed, put on his pants and went home.”—Nancy Friday, My Secret Garden.

Before you juge, Nancy’s fantasy was to be roughly taken by a stranger in a crowded stadium while the quarterback ran in a touch-down. Desire is in the mind of the withholder and, mostly, should stay there. Yet fantasies are vital creatures, the foundation of our romantic art, literature, music, and film, even science:

“All of my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. Perhaps that is why I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex.”—Stephen Hawking.

Our fantasies may also reflect a truer reality than the one we actively participate in each day. While we grudgingly join the ritual of contracted society—job, family, fidelity—our minds hold our real wishes. The few who get to enact their wildest dreams are the great or the doomed; or both:

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”—T.E. Lawrence.

But in the absence of the will (or in the presence of the good sense) to make our visions real, most of us still stroll from home to job, peacefully mute about our secret dreams. We know that our desire to be grabbed roughly in the bathroom would be simply overwhelmed by our instinct to yell “Nob off, can’t you see I’m cleaning your pubes out of the drain.” We know that our carefully rehearsed tirade to our boss would emerge like a meek burp of submission. That’s the beauty, I suppose, of a glorious fantasy kingdom: it’s a life-long project, our master-work. We might slouch around the house like a ghost, but in our mind, at least, we walk like a god.