The Joy(lessness) of Sex
Thirty-three years ago, Dr. Alex Comfort published The Joy of Sex. It was the first down-to-earth, no nonsense, part medical, part psychological, sex manual to be published in the United States.
Prior to that, all we had were cryptic books that attempted to describe married sex that were published by various religious denominations, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover, some stuff by Anais Nin, and several bad translations of the Kama Sutra.
I usually like to peruse the sex and relationships section of the local Barnes & Noble. Sex isn't perfected in my life. I still have questions and don't understand certain aspects of sex. I sometimes naievely believe I'll find a book that will explain or maybe even help me with my connundrums.
But lately, as I discovered glacing over the shelves yesterday, there has been an absolute explosion of sex manuals that don't appear to be saying much about the complex, intimate nature of sex inasmuch as they say about the mating and sexual mechanics. Books with titles like "The Ethical Slut," "How to Be a Sex Goddess," "Blowjob," "The Multi-Orgasmic Woman," "The Multi-Orgasmic Couple," "How to Make Love to a Man," "How to Make Love to a Woman," "Different Loving," "The Secrets of Sensual Lovemaking," "Satisfaction: the Art of Female Orgasm," "How to Make Love All Night," "Sexual Secrets," "Great Sex Techniques, "10 Secrets to Great Sex," "101 Nights of Great Sex," "Great American Sex Diet"...and so on....
I got tired, and got a headache, just looking at the titles.
"I'm overwhelmed," I mumbled to Steady Eddie....and realized that all this talk, and all these books about sex were making me, well, depressed.
Every single book seems to want to tell us how to make sex bigger, better, grander, longer lasting and more kinky than sex has ever been for any other generation of individuals at any given time. The books are all about techniques of seduction, or techniques of touching, or thrusting, or licking, or...
The thing is all the books seem to be either dour discussions or cheeky digressions about the mechanics of sex.
The intimate nature of sex, or the importance of sex as a means of communication between two individuals, or of sex as something more than a temporary dissolution of ego boundaries (sometimes accomplished only with complex equipment), doesn't seem to be discussed in alot of these books.
Oh, there's a chapter or two...a bit of lip service...but more often than not, the advice is a combination of visually titilating images and quasi-medical explanation of dos and don'ts. In many of the books there is little discussion of the psychological apsects of sex (unless it has to do with one partner or another having been abused--and there are special manuals for that) and even fewer that discuss a profound spiritual aspect to sex.
Looking at all these books made me think more and more about the American desire to be more European in our attitudes about sex. Yet I wonder what we are saying with this declaration. Are we looking for a world where buying and selling sex is a normal, everyday occurance--where sex is reduced to a mechanical allevation of a need, and not an intimate act of communication between two individuals?
Oh, yeah, I've heard the accusations: but don't *you* sometimes just have sex to meet a need??
Sure, but not all the time. More often than not, for me anyway, sex is more than that.
And the reason it is more than that might be that I've learned all the techinques, both vanilla and kinky, that any one person could learn in a lifetime. Yes, I can honestly say I've seen it all and done most of it. I can also say that I've been on the performance end of sex, and know what it is to put my own needs and desires to one side to provide a certain kind of kinky sexual activity for another person who's paid pretty darned well for it; and found the money to be little compensation for the amount of Me that I had to give up in the performance.
So, sex is, for me, a little different...but isn't perfect.
Yet what truly I don't understand is why we, as a culture, seem to be so obsessed with the mechanics of sex at the exclusion of the emotional and spiritual intimacy of sex--why we give more merit to techniques than to connection with another individual.
Perhaps it's that many people have a certain wish-fulfillment--they look at and read all these books so that they can feel like they have experienced all manners of sexuality without ever leaving the comforts of their bourgeois existence--and without every really experiencing another individual. Perhaps reading all these different sex books is a way in which to have sexual experience without every really having it.
If you read enough, you can talk about something, even sex, like an expert. Heck, you can even tow the party line that says sex is *just* sex--a animal, mechanical act--and that it has nothing to do with an individual's personhood or that it is an intense, intimate means of communication.
Or know that truly good sex touches the spirit, not just the body, of another individual.
All I can do is shake my head and walk away from that particular part of the store. For me, it's alot of been-there-done-that.
Oh, well. Guess I'm on my own again.
Prior to that, all we had were cryptic books that attempted to describe married sex that were published by various religious denominations, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover, some stuff by Anais Nin, and several bad translations of the Kama Sutra.
I usually like to peruse the sex and relationships section of the local Barnes & Noble. Sex isn't perfected in my life. I still have questions and don't understand certain aspects of sex. I sometimes naievely believe I'll find a book that will explain or maybe even help me with my connundrums.
But lately, as I discovered glacing over the shelves yesterday, there has been an absolute explosion of sex manuals that don't appear to be saying much about the complex, intimate nature of sex inasmuch as they say about the mating and sexual mechanics. Books with titles like "The Ethical Slut," "How to Be a Sex Goddess," "Blowjob," "The Multi-Orgasmic Woman," "The Multi-Orgasmic Couple," "How to Make Love to a Man," "How to Make Love to a Woman," "Different Loving," "The Secrets of Sensual Lovemaking," "Satisfaction: the Art of Female Orgasm," "How to Make Love All Night," "Sexual Secrets," "Great Sex Techniques, "10 Secrets to Great Sex," "101 Nights of Great Sex," "Great American Sex Diet"...and so on....
I got tired, and got a headache, just looking at the titles.
"I'm overwhelmed," I mumbled to Steady Eddie....and realized that all this talk, and all these books about sex were making me, well, depressed.
Every single book seems to want to tell us how to make sex bigger, better, grander, longer lasting and more kinky than sex has ever been for any other generation of individuals at any given time. The books are all about techniques of seduction, or techniques of touching, or thrusting, or licking, or...
The thing is all the books seem to be either dour discussions or cheeky digressions about the mechanics of sex.
The intimate nature of sex, or the importance of sex as a means of communication between two individuals, or of sex as something more than a temporary dissolution of ego boundaries (sometimes accomplished only with complex equipment), doesn't seem to be discussed in alot of these books.
Oh, there's a chapter or two...a bit of lip service...but more often than not, the advice is a combination of visually titilating images and quasi-medical explanation of dos and don'ts. In many of the books there is little discussion of the psychological apsects of sex (unless it has to do with one partner or another having been abused--and there are special manuals for that) and even fewer that discuss a profound spiritual aspect to sex.
Looking at all these books made me think more and more about the American desire to be more European in our attitudes about sex. Yet I wonder what we are saying with this declaration. Are we looking for a world where buying and selling sex is a normal, everyday occurance--where sex is reduced to a mechanical allevation of a need, and not an intimate act of communication between two individuals?
Oh, yeah, I've heard the accusations: but don't *you* sometimes just have sex to meet a need??
Sure, but not all the time. More often than not, for me anyway, sex is more than that.
And the reason it is more than that might be that I've learned all the techinques, both vanilla and kinky, that any one person could learn in a lifetime. Yes, I can honestly say I've seen it all and done most of it. I can also say that I've been on the performance end of sex, and know what it is to put my own needs and desires to one side to provide a certain kind of kinky sexual activity for another person who's paid pretty darned well for it; and found the money to be little compensation for the amount of Me that I had to give up in the performance.
So, sex is, for me, a little different...but isn't perfect.
Yet what truly I don't understand is why we, as a culture, seem to be so obsessed with the mechanics of sex at the exclusion of the emotional and spiritual intimacy of sex--why we give more merit to techniques than to connection with another individual.
Perhaps it's that many people have a certain wish-fulfillment--they look at and read all these books so that they can feel like they have experienced all manners of sexuality without ever leaving the comforts of their bourgeois existence--and without every really experiencing another individual. Perhaps reading all these different sex books is a way in which to have sexual experience without every really having it.
If you read enough, you can talk about something, even sex, like an expert. Heck, you can even tow the party line that says sex is *just* sex--a animal, mechanical act--and that it has nothing to do with an individual's personhood or that it is an intense, intimate means of communication.
Or know that truly good sex touches the spirit, not just the body, of another individual.
All I can do is shake my head and walk away from that particular part of the store. For me, it's alot of been-there-done-that.
Oh, well. Guess I'm on my own again.
posted by Tish Grier at 7:03 PM
3 Comments:
Whether it sex, religion, recovery groups, blogging, etc, I think we're all looking for that magic Something that's going to make us less alone. In the end we each live isolated within our skin, apart from the people around us, no matter how much we wish it differently. Sex at its best dissolves the aloneness for a little while.
I will agree that most of the manuals are meant for couples who have a certain level of psychological maturity and are in long-term, monogamous realtionships.
But many of the books alongside the manual types end up being sex advice books for insecure singles--and rarely talk about the emotional side of things other than that it's "fun" and that one should get as much as one can without considering that emotional context or consequences....not to mention the physical consequence of pregnancy.
To some degree, it seems that hetero sex has become divorced from what it can result in--pregnancy. And that pregnancy engenders a certain amount of responsibility--no matter what decision we might make to do about it.
Another funny thing about some of the manuals is that they are actually sociological studies of sexuality, and therefore, have a certain objetivity to them that makes the reading rather arid and joyless. Kind of like a vivisection.
I often find sex with Lucky Bastard to engender such a profound dissolution of boundaries for both of us that it ends up creating a huge amount of drama. We both have a degree of lonliness that is accentuated by our attraction and then causes an almost hysterical/neurotic need for bonding. Depending on where each of us is, we can be more or less dependent on the other...and can always tell where the balance of power is by the number of phone calls made, frequency of return, or lack thereof.
yet I always wonder what the interaction truly is for either of us. He likes to believe he has the same playboy mentality he had in his 20's and is often caught up by the fact that he doesn't....and I just like that I can be reflected in the eyes of someone like him, yet not be consumed by him.
my relationship with Steady Eddie, however, is far more worriesome because I am a real person to him, as he is to me, without the drama and neurosis, and I just don't know how to handle something as normal as that.
I have a very distinct sex/love split that I've been working to overcome for many years but still have a great deal of trouble with. It's that way for alot of reasons...which, in part, is why, had I been younger, I would have made a very good escort. But years of wrangling with that split, and wanting desperately to get sex and love on the same page, has made it so that I really can't do that kind of "work" (if you want to call it that) at all.
I envy people who understand what sex and love together can be like. I'm not sure I've ever totally experienced that. I have, though, experienced sex on a very profound and spiritual level. Thing is, I do not ever get the chance to love those persons for any length of time.
I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get sex and love on the same page. I don't know if it has to do with an inability to commit, or a fear of loss of identity, or if it has to do with needing a man to be a father and another man to be a lover because the two togther are verboten...
I'm a very complicated person.
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