THE MASK THAT WONT COME OFF

The need to mask is often so deep that the process becomes self-perpetuating, and the mask cannot be taken offor let down. There are certain situations, such as sexual intercourse, where the masking should be stopped in order to enjoy lovemaking to its fullest, and yet many of us are only able to unmask in complete darkness. We are so afraid of what we may tell our partners by body language, or of what we may reveal with our faces, that we attempt to cut off the visual end of sex completely and we raise moral bulwarks to help us do this. ' It's not decent to look.'' The sexual organs are ugly.' 'A nice girl doesn't do that by daylight.' And so on. For many other people darkness is not enough to allow unmasking. Even in the dark they cannot drop the shields they have put up to protect themselves during sexual intercourse. This, Dr Goffman speculates, may be partly responsible for the large amounts of frigidity found in middle-class women. But in terms of sexual practice, Kinsey has shown that there are just as many shields, if not more, among the working classes. If anything, the middle class tends to be more experimental and less apt to shield its emotions. The key to most masking in our society is often contained in books of etiquette. These will dictate what is proper and what isn't in terms of body language. One book suggests that it is wrong to rub our faces, touch our teeth or clean our fingernails in public. What to do with your body and your face when you meet friends or strangers is carefully spelled out by Emily Post. Her book of etiquette even describes how to ignore women. She discusses the 'cut direct' and how to deliver it, 'Only with the gravest cause if you are a lady, and never to a lady if you are a man.' Part of our knowledge of masking is thus learned or absorbed from our culture, and part is taught specifically. But the technique of masking, though it is universal among mankind, varies from culture to culture. Certain Aborigines, to be polite, must talk to each other without looking at each other's eyes, while in America it is polite to hold a partner's eyes while talking to him.