by Eurydice(c) 1999
Sex in the Head
It's a normal day at work. As you walk by the desk of this ambitious Asian girl, you exchange a few words; at one point she leans back, props her feet on the edges of her chair, opens her knees, and reveals her crotch outlined against the cotton of her slacks?you could perform a pelvic exam on her right there. Minutes later, you're at the Xerox and a stacked black girl (notice the pancultural aspect here) is
waiting to use it; she wears a lycra T-shirt and, while you chat, she arches her back, knocking you over with D cups?you nearly hear her vertebrae snap. Back at your desk, another girl (21, WASP) leans over you explaining a document. Suddenly, she finds it necessary to turn her upper body slightly, causing her right breast to press into your left elbow and?as you aren't going anywhere?stay there while your heart pounds for 2 minutes. Now you too have breasts, and you know if they're touching someone. And these girls never lashbat you or ask what you're doing after work.
You can't help asking yourself, in the privacy of your bed that night: How does a normal guy respond to this phenomenon, commonly known as Prick Tease? Are women ignorant of what they do, or are they unkind and potentially sadistic, or are they being sensitive, kind and generous?
A guy could think of various responses to this dilemma. For example:
A. Between the ages of, say, 15-25, all women are sluts. (She doesn't want you for you, she wants anyone with a ready hardon, in fact she'd rather have a slave.) —You wish.
B. At the age of 15-25, women don't know that men crave their bodies like a drug. (It's not the girl's fault that she's built that way. She's a nubile innocent beauty: ripe yet raw.) ?You wish.
C. At any age women are uncontrollably narcissistic. (Even if they advocate sisterhood and equality for all, they're locked in rivalry for the sexual attention of every man. If they're not interested in a man, they want him to be interested in them. They need male desire like a drug. This is partly because there are more women than men in the world, partly because all women are insecure about their looks.)
D. Women are profoundly, ceaselessly manipulative; also vengeful. (Women don't feel sociopolitically empowered, so they devise covert ways of asserting themselves. Feminist girls subvert patriarchy by turning its oppressive weapons against it?that is, by treating their bodies as blatant sex objects while their minds are otherwise importantly occupied. They want to distract you.)
E. Women know the rules, and they're testing you. If tits touch your arm, the object of the touch, you, is under gag order. (Women run a blackmail ring; they know men love tit/arm smushing, which, if it were dick/lap smushing would constitute harassment; they also know men know that if men point it out, the tit/arm smushing will not only cease, but the pointing out may be used as ammo to deep-six a career?yours. At least she likes you enough to tease you.)
F. Women don't know what they want. (For centuries, they wanted male chivalry, the honor of virginity, the inevitability of true love; their body was a treasure that had to be safeguarded and rationed, in the fear that if women gave away the milk for free, men wouldn't buy the cow. Now they're after not a good husband but a good promotion. But old habits die hard.)
I'm here to tell you F. is the correct answer. I'll explain to you how modern womanhood works: first, consider atavism—atavism is when a characteristic reappears in a species after skipping generations. These girls' apparent mating signals are a trait left over from earlier females who, when they arched their backs meant touch my breasts; when they opened their legs meant come on in. Let's say in the Paleolithic era there was a chimpanzee gawking at a young female chimpanzee in the copy room, and she figured why not; she made a sign, and, bam, he was on her across the Xerox. Millennia later, a guy gawks at a young female, and her body has vague pulses of a faded memory telling her what to do (arch your back, lift your rump). But her mind tells her other things: to get an Ivy League degree, don't get pregnant, make money, compete with men, sue men who hit on her; and all the while go braless in a miniskirt and makeup and freely discuss her orgasms. With so many ideas and so many instincts telling girls what to do, it's chaos in there; a tempest in a T-shirt.
The second half of my explanation is this: we have in America two moral standards. Morality #1 is sustained by the forces in society whose purpose is to keep us from getting laid. Morality #2 is sustained by the forces in society whose purpose is to make sure we get laid. And we are a nation of lunatics because of it. (And yes, this column aspires to be a source of sanity and defiance.)
Moralism #1 consists of 5 branches: Religion, Feminism, Education, Family, and the Institution of Marriage. From an early age we're taught sex is bad, sex is sin, sex is harassment, sex brings disease, sex causes problems that you and I can't solve—in short, sex is unhealthy for individuals and the community (AIDS was a boon for #1). When you're a teen you're too young, when you're in college it's date rape, when you're a single person it's a meaningless quick fix. Moralism #1 loves censorship (the word "breast" on AOL) and regulations. Its objective is to convince us that sex is not in our control until after marriage, and then the missionary position will suffice (there are laws about that). Its linked branches surround us like a fence protecting civilization from the sexual wilderness to which men and women naturally fall prey. Civilization is control: chastity is refinement.
Moralism #2, the opposing pro-sex faction, (the rebels in berets, masks, leather, stilettos, and dildos from Good Vibrations slung over their backs a la rifles), is also comprised of linked divisions: MoviesTVAdvertisingMusicFashionPress, Shrinks, Your Friends, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms; (Calvin and Madonna, Eternity and Vogue and the Ford Modeling Agency); all of whom insist that sex is good for you, sex for you is good for them, sex is fundamental, and without it you're a loser. If you don't have a cool sexual psyche, don't have juicy exploits, don't have sex to stave off boredom, you should be ashamed. #2 promotes sex by converting the sex instinct into the instinct to consume; it bottles sex like a fragrance, the scent of something sweet or meaty, to lure you away from yourself and toward that stylishly throbbing mass of others. It makes capitalism look like it'll give you an orgasm, and your own life seem, at 25, like menopause. And it has a pantheon of experts, ennobled by names like Freud, Dr. Ruth or Drew, to teach you that sex is identity, status, safety, community.
The overwhelming pervasiveness of sex as the central issue in our public life over the past decade, in Congressional hearings, epic criminal trials, interminable scandals and innumerable talk shows, echoes our bafflement. In place of desire, we feel unease. Instead of gratification, we find addiction. Despite all our talk, we feel insecure in our overinterpreted world. Our puritanism is the other face of naked voyeurism. This is the sexual morass I'll dredge every month with the aim to separate the facts from the propaganda and call things by their names. My belief is that everyone is the genius of their own senses. But so long as the war between the two factions rages on, and you are the battlefield, the visceral depths to which both messages have penetrated who you are will only grow deeper. The short answer to all your sexual questions is: They've got you.
