Part 1 The Victorian world: the power of desire and the danger of pleasure - transfiguring Eros true love Victorian style - a spiritual longing. Part 2 Modern times: intimacy - sexualizing love, eroticizing sex bringing sex back in - the birth of a culture of eroticism. Part 3 The contemporary period: constructing sex as an autonomous domain of pleasure homosexual desire gay intimacy - patterns of sex and love in the gay subculture.