Taming the monster

So what lengths would you go to for good sex, or in fact any sex? Apart from the fact that the first sentence of this blog contains a corny pun, it’s actually a serious question. I have been dipping in and out (another dodgy pun) of a fascinating collection of research and essays on sexuality called The Prize and The Price: Shaping Sexualities in South Africa, edited by Melissa Steyn and Mikki van Zyl. If sex is the prize (sometimes it can be the booby prize when it doesn’t match up to our expectations) what price are you prepared to pay?

In my moments of internalised homophobia (rarer now than they used to be) I think that gay men are obsessed with sex and will do anything to find it: work the internet, travel across town when a “booty call” comes off, pop into a sex venue on the way home from a dinner party, or even drive to a neighbouring country as sex tourists (enabled sometimes by dating websites which allow you to meet potential partners wherever you go: hmm instant gratification is a bit slow for this lot). But actually I think all men go a bit gaga when sex is in the offing. But then on further reflection, maybe all human beings are a bit obsessed with it, no?

And perhaps the deeper issue is that sex is a passage (no comments on this word please) to something else: intimacy, contact, abandonment, pleasure and relinquishment of control. And even represents a conduit (enough with the puns already) to merging with our fantasy lover who will make everything alright. Do you remember that United States astronaut who travelled thousands of kilometres WEARING A DIAPER so that she didn’t have to stop to pee, because she was so obsessed with getting a man? Sadly, the feelings were unrequited and she made the news not for her space walking skills but for her spaced out psyche. I suspect he felt he’d had a lucky escape. 

Right now the HIV/AIDS world is in the grip of circumcision fever because research shows that circumcised men are less likely to contract HIV than their intact brothers. One of the key challenges to this, though, is that men are having sex too soon after the chop, before the wounds have healed enough, thereby putting themselves at risk. I mean, have you ever? All they have to do is wait for six weeks but they are willing to pay the price (HIV) for the prize (sex). Is it just me or is this totally wack? Why can’t men wait six weeks? They won’t go mad or lose their partners in such a short space of time, yet they will risk everything for a moment’s pleasure. I used to work in a sexual health clinic and the number of men who were still having sex with large clusters of painful penile warts evidently interfering with their performance was shocking. It also made me wonder about their partners: was this sex happening in the dark? Did they even have a conversation about sex? I guess foreplay was out of the question!

And it’s not only wellness that people are willing to relinquish, it’s reputations, families and careers too. Bill Clinton had it off with an intern when he was president of the United States, a number of Catholic priests have been involved in paedophilia scandals across the globe, women run off with the friends of their sons, fundamentalists get caught up in gay scandals. Recently Oprah featured a story of an apparently heterosexual religious man who got caught out with another man (and no he wasn’t counselling the chap). Well he lost his job but he kept his wife. Now, they are being rehabilitated: to his credit he doesn’t deny that he has gay feelings but what seems tacky is that they paraded their now renewed sexual intimacy via the queen of the couch. I don’t trust these instant rehabilitations – but the world seems to love a sinner when she or he goes back to the marital bed: it’s so neat and tidy and reassuring. And when it’s on national TV and the couple hold hands and are coiffed and well turned out, well we just want to forgive them even more. Nothing like a glossy sinner I always say.

But what these rehabilitations mask is the darker side of our human nature – because we keep falling off that damn wagon. Perhaps there is no social, legal or religious institution which can quite keep that sex monster under control. We’re sold the illusion that it’s possible, but we know that’s a myth don’t we?