Sometimes the hilarious can turn serious fast. A case being brought to the Ontario Court of Appeals contains all the necessary elements for comedy: twins, a mistaken identity, lots of wine and sex. Such a set-up has turned ugly, as bitter questions of consent now pollute the otherwise humourous scenario known as The Old Switcheroo. In an unspecified southwestern Ontario city or town, an unspecified woman had sex with what she thought was her long-time lover. Turns out it was the lover's identical twin brother, who is now claiming that she gave proper consent. I do not wish to dwell on the moral aspects of the case, I do not condemn or condone any party. Instead, I would like to explore the Switcheroo and its multifarious appearances. The Switcheroo is a manifestation of the chaotic nature of sex.
In an ideal world, the motion of human sexuality would be harmonious and natural. We would all 'come together' in a unified field of orgasm and good times. The notion of spontaneous flow of sex, flower power love-ins, and guilt-free Grindr hookups is utopian in conception. This is a fantasy that is not represented even in our most fantastical pornographies. Truth is, the principles of chaos rule the sexual realm just as much as they do in modern physics and bad movies. Dissonance in the bedroom (and the bathroom and the chapel after hours) is driven by the desire for Sovereignty. The struggle for Sovereignty is a prime motivator for much strife and comedy. I lean towards Georges Bataille's definition of Sovereignty as “the enjoyment of possibilities that utility doesn't justify (utility being that whose end is productive activity).” It is an enjoyment of life, it is the ownership of your own life, untethered from either future or past. It is what the sages call Samadhi. It is certainly present in all instances of the Sexual Switcheroo. It is transgressive and transcendental. As such, it is considered a scandal to those on the lower rung of consciousness and consent.
The sex scandal is our oldest type of scandal. It will never go away. A look at the headlines of any given tabloid will reveal the basic agonies and alienations of the human condition. Even going back before the mass re/production of popular texts, the basic discord of life (life being the basic discord of sex) is found in the literature of the peasant class. Take for example the 'loathly lady' myth found in minstrels' songs as far back as the 10th century and in oral folk-tales before that. The story, best remembered in Arthurian romances and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, goes like this:
A knight, fraught with chivalry, rapes a wench in a wheatfield. He is given a year to answer the question that sizzled Sigmund Freud: What do women really want? After months of searching, he finds an ugly bitch of a woman who claims to know the answer, but she won't give it up unless he marries her. So he does. It turns out that what women want most is Sovereignty. Remember this, as it is going to come up again in my article (it is in the title after all). In this context, Sovereignty means autonomy, authority, and rule. Basically, a woman wants to hold dominion over the man. In popular vernacular, she wants to wear the pants of the relationship. The story concludes with an interesting twist. The two lie together in the marriage bed, the knight is quite distraught at his chivalric obligation to pleasure his new cow of a wife. He starts with a modest kiss. Before he can go any further, she, thank god!, transforms into a smoking hot babe. She gives him the choice between being hot in the daytime and ugly at night, or vice-versa. Basically, will the wife be publicly flaunted or privately boned? The knight allows his wife to choose, he gives her the sovereignty. Because he transferred the power of choice to her, it turns out she will be beautiful at all hours of the day, forever. Win-win.
This story functions well as a myth, but should not be taken too literally. I learned this the hard way. For years I was a submissive to a series of caustic dominatrices, each one more dog-faced than the last. I never received my trophy wife. Personal gripes aside, this story is significant in that it correctly links the desire for sovereignty with the sexual Switcheroo. The Switcheroo is a very simple and popular concept. It is when someone thinks they are going to bed with one person and in actuality they have sex with someone else. There are many configurations in which this scenario can take place. The Switcheroo can be wrangled via darkness, disguise, or transformation. In all cases it has three common characteristics: 1) It is a transgressive instance in the already chaotic sexual realm, 2) It is fun for at least one party, and 3) In the transcendental moment of the Switcheroo, a divine sovereignty is experienced.
The beast-to-beauty transformation is rare in the actual world, yet rife in representation. In our day-to-day existence, the Switcheroo often takes on a prankish nature. The double-image of identical twins is often associated with the Switcheroo, though it is not always necessary. I do not have a twin, but have been involved in many devious Switcheroos. When I was in high school I had a friend who bore a close physical resemblance to me. We had similar mannerisms and way of talking. We had the same birthday. Even his name was extremely close to mine (R. Nonzen). That is where the similarities end, for he had a much stronger moral compass than I. So much stronger that he had not lost his virginity until long into adolescence. He was a dope with the ladies. So, good doppelganger that I was, I pulled the Switcheroo with him nearly almost every time I got a lady into my bedchamber. I would get the girl all good and wet, then turn off the lights and walk out. Then my friend would walk in and reap the benefits while I went to study thick tomes of Hegel. This one time we pulled the Old Switcheroo and I heard a scream coming from the other room. It turns out that the girl we had switched on did a switch herself! Double-Switcheroo! After we figured it out, we all had a good laugh and a foursome.
In those days we were not serious about ourselves at all. We experienced Sovereignty on a regular basis. So what if the ethics of it were dubious? All objects of thought, such as morality and consent, are suppressed in the moment of the illicit coital act, provided by the Switcheroo. This is a moment of Sovereignty. Enjoy it, then clean up after. Each experience is always new, so why get hung up on questions of consent?
Let's look at this recent case in Toronto from the new formation of the Switcheroo-as-Sovereignty. Every person involved was drunk. Drunkenness itself is liberating. The woman was sleeping in a bed, the man went in to sleep beside her. The woman wakes up, believes she is lying next to her lover. She initiates foreplay. The twin follows along. They have intercourse, but his body feels strange. She realizes it is not her lover, but his brother. So she stops. In my world, this would be the end of it, but now the case is on trial. Whenever a student asks me advice, I always answer, “embrace the chaos of everyday life!” That is the same advice I would give to these switched-off dupes. Remember the famous fragment of Heraclitus: “One cannot step in the same river twice.” It is not the same self, it is not the same river. Flux is constant. Updated to our discussion, the fragment reads, “one cannot have sex with the same partner twice.” Each sexual encounter is bound to be different than the last. If that is the case, what does it matter if you wind up going to bed with someone's twin brother? Embrace it as a Sovereign moment.
The Switcheroo is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It can come as a transformation from ugly to beautiful, as a switch in the dark, or from one guy to his identical twin brother. It has positive and negative aspects which manifest themselves not as inherent qualities to the Switcheroo, but as a reflection of how it is approached. If it approached as a violation of consent, that is obviously bad. If it is approached as a fun trick, it is a little better. If the Switcheroo is approached as a vehicle for transcendental Sovereignty, it is absolutely sublime. Take your pick. Try it today.
Sources:
Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share; vol. III, Sovereignty.
McLean, Jesse. "Was woman duped into sex with lover's twin?." thestar.com. Toronto Star, 04/03/2010. <http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/775231--was-woman-duped-into-sex-with-lover-s-twin?bn=1>.
Robinson, T.M. Heraclitus. Fragments.
