ABSTRACT
Many commentators have pondered the contemporary Euro-American obsession with erotic pleasure. Some of them have also reflected on the puzzling gap that usually seems to separate erotic fantasies from the actual experience of sexual pleasure. This chapter describes ethnographically what kind of sex makes a Huaorani man or woman happy, and, by comparing their ideas about sex and love with those found in other Amazonian societies as well as in ours, to explain why their way of behaving sexually, as opposed to their way of fantasising about sex, is best described as diffuse sensuality. It discusses some of the fantastic representations of human sexuality contained in myths. The chapter compares Huaorani sexuality with that of two other Amazonian societies, on which two well-known ethnographies of sexuality have been written. It concludes with a few remarks on the challenges of studying the general and the particular when talking about the human condition.
