What we think about sex probably reveals more about us than we’d like to admit – especially more than we’d like to admit to ourselves. And that, perhaps, is why so many people get so damn angry when someone admits, “Hey, I like sex!”
Well, I like sex, too.
I like sex a lot.
And not just doing it, either. I like pretty pictures of pretty girls in (and out of) pretty clothes. I like the little whiff of sex you get from perfectly innocent flirtation. I like teasing emails from my bride. I like songs about sex. I like getting reminded of sex I’ll never have again, when I walk past the counter of some long-forgotten perfume at the department store. Even better, I like the promise of the sex I’ll be having later this week, when I get a whiff of a more recent vintage. I like those random sex thoughts that pop into my head when I’m trying to get some work done.
I like sex as a married man, and I liked sex with women whose last names I wasn’t entirely clear on, and I liked all the sex in between. I like to make love, and sometimes I just like to fuck. I like sex jokes and sex talk and sex sex sex sex sex sex sex.
Now, before you go thinking I’m some oversexed freak (even though you’d be exactly right), there’s a lot of sex stuff I don’t like. I don’t like leers or wolf whistles or grab-ass-without-an-invitation. I don’t enjoy sex as a power game. I don’t like the risk of unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. I don’t like anything dealing with anybody either too young or too drunk to make an informed decision – anything that smacks of rape, really.
And I love women. Girls. Babes. Broads, chicks, skirts, fillies, whatever. I’m a leg man, an ass man, and a breast man. I love that line that runs from just behind her earlobe to just off the center of her collarbone. I love the small of her back and the inside of her wrist and the palm of her hand. Ankles, backs of knees, insides of thighs. Short hair, long hair, curly hair, or straight. The little hairs on her arms that stand up when you touch her just right. And the scents! There’s not a place a clean woman doesn’t smell good (and a healthy, sweaty woman doesn’t smell better) – and no two places on no two women smell quite the same. Or even on the same woman. Variety is the spice of life, and endless variety can be found in just one person – if you know how to look.
I don’t mind men, either. I’m might be straight, but I never could get upset when a guy made a pass at me. Hell, I’m too vain not to be flattered at least a little bit. Besides the cliché about gay bars having the best music (and they usually do), I also found I never got carded in one, way back before my 21st birthday. Thanks, gay guys, for all those free drinks in the late ’80s, and for always understanding that my “no” meant “no.”
But some people don’t like sex. Or at least they don’t like it when unapproved couples are doing it in unapproved ways at unapproved times under unapproved auspices. Those are the folks who sent the InstaPundit a “surprising amount of hatemail” over the weekend.
Glenn always struck me as the kind of blogger who wouldn’t get a whole lot of hatemail – reasoned, calm, and often sympathetic on hotbutton issues. Yet a simple admission that – gasp! – he enjoyed his not-asexual single days gets his inbox filled with angry letters. And I’m not going out on a limb here, guessing that those angry people probably agree with the good professor on a lot of things. Just not about sex.
This brings me back to my original point: What we think about sex reveals a lot of what we think about ourselves.
It’s only natural to get emotional about our own sex lives. What we’re doing – or not doing – reflects directly on our own value systems. If an otherwise-good Catholic vows to nail more hookers for Lent, then, yeah, he should question his goals and get angry with himself for his hypocrisy.
But most single people aren’t celibate – and they aren’t out sport-fucking passed-out debutantes, either. It is possible to have a healthy libido and a clean conscience at the same time – and judging by the emails, some God-fearing people seem to fear that fact more than they fear God, Himself.
Well, joke’em if they can’t take a fuck.
UPDATE: James Joyner probably likes sex, too, but isn’t pundit enough to admit it.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Beth Mauldin, however, is.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Conrad is an ambitious fellow.
ONE MO’ UPDATE: Sean Hackbarth writes:
We don’t have to play pop psychologists with Brooks. We have a pretty good idea what thinks about himself. He thinks he’s a better person because of his marriage. Green thinks he’s a better person because he’s married.
No, Sean, I think I’m a happier person. The mere fact that I’m married doesn’t make me a better person than I was, a better person than you, or even a better person than David Brooks. In fact, the simple act of marriage says nothing about a person, other than they were able to get some other person to marry them.
And it certainly, by itself, doesn’t say a damn thing about sex.
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