The first time I slept with an American, I was in culture shock: instead of being swept away by his own carnal sensations, that boy was toiling! He worked my body like an only slightly elaborate, predictable mechanism he'd read the instructions for and taken apart and put together enough times before. He set upon me with an impassioned drive to succeed that I can even now only describe as a sexual work ethic. The European boys I'd been intimate with had been great talkers, superb seducers even as teens. The Americans were all business. They couldn't conceive of spending hours, days, weeks waxing lyrically and fatalistically about the pelagic beauty of my eyes or the play of light and shadow on the valleys and peaks of my anatomy. But what they lacked in verbal skill, rhetorical bravado, and poetic imagination, they made up for in physical stamina and commitment, spontaneity and interest in detail. Even when the more artistic among them took the time to gaze at my moonlit mouth outlined as I lay on the hood of a parental car parked on some beach, I could see them thinking: "I gotta find her clitoris before I can come," preparing the execution of our foreplay like suicide bombers on a mission for God. Back home, I had been bad at swearing undying love, or using sex as a path to security, or at hiding it, and felt restricted and out of place. I didn't know I had a clitoris until I came to America. (Along with landing a man on the moon, the best scientific contribution of America in the sixties was the rediscovery of the clitoris--thanks in part to a Dr. Kermit Krantz who dissected the genitals of dead women). When my first American lover pulled out at last, and triumphantly said something I'll never forget--"See what an American lay can do?"--I realized I myself was, by nature, an American.

            Americans have as much sex as anyone in the world (most polls say more) and are often considered the best lovers in the world in most polls. America likes extravagance and theatricality--the staple of the masses. Because it's the most powerful and most abundant country, it expects its libido and its plethora of sexual options to match. And if America wants big teats and big dicks, it can invent implants and pumps so every American can flaunt them. Its most recent fabulous invention, the Internet, is the single greatest sexual aid in the history of humanity. Open global communication has done more for sex than was ever dreamed possible in perv heaven. As a result, we know more about sex than any generation before us, we have more access to more varied pornography than ever before, and more singles and couples are enjoying it. Our sexual imagery is so far removed from good old missionary sex, which not long ago was still the climax of all porn, that I would wager missionary sex is dead even among missionaries in the bedroom.

            So it's mindboggling that many Americans and most of the world think America is sexually repressed. Partly that's because of how we choose to publicize our sexual reality. Talking about sex provides a culture with the means to regulate sex--to tell us what we shouldn't do. Every society tries to put sex in a container, to put the fear of sex in us, to ostensibly keep us from going overboard into a precivilized life of endless copulation. So what every generation says about itself is too fraught with agendas. Take Victorian England, the last third of the nineteeth century, long considered the epitome of sexual repression. We now know Victorian Brits were screwing just as much as Brits before and after them. But what they wrote about sex was enormously misinforming, designed to keep people's sex lives focused on reproduction; ironically, because of that, prostitution flourished as never before in London (one third of all young working women were hookers) and homespun lesbian or mutual-masturbation clubs became an unspoken commonplace. Take America's own sexual revolution, the 20 years (1964-1984), between the Pill and AIDS, when the birth-control pill and legal abortion made sex an arena of public play never seen before. We now know that there was little increase in premarital sex (25 percent of baby boomers born after World War II had been conceived before their parents walked down the aisle). The "revolution" was the freedom people felt from unwanted pregnancy and secrecy--the impression that to fuck outside the conventional bounds of dating or marriage was a physical, psychic, political liberation. Rubbers became dinosaurs. (Then there was another turn of the screw, and "sex frees" became "sex kills.")

            From watching the American political scandals of the last several years, you'd think the sixties never happened, at least not to the media. The conventional wisdom nowadays is to chalk up the obsession with Bill Clinton's and Gary Condit's sex life as a retrenched Puritanism America can't shake. But the legacy of a few hundred exiled families of religious fanatics, who damned devious behavior they secretly envied, has been left in the dust by the crashing waves of successive immigrants from every diverse, unpuritanical corner and culture of the planet that have since descended on these same shores and become integrated into the unprecedented nation that is America. Besides, puritanism died the moment it saw the local wealth of natural resources and embraced capitalism, because capitalism can't afford to make religious distinctions. Despite Christ's tenet about the poor inheriting Heaven, Americans pontificate best from their limos.

            It's not puritanism that makes America vulnerable to scandalmongering, but our unique juxtaposition of capitalism and voyeurism to feminism and moral stiffness. Like the rest of the world, most Americans assume that politicians live at least double lives. I used to frequent the same bistro in Paris where Giscard d'Estaing, the President of France, brought his girlfriend, who was younger than his daughter, through the front door and waved to the room. Clinton's sexcapades, in their details (trying to avoid having an orgasm), were adolescent in comparison. I was less fazed by their sex than by the lovers' disparities. The press roasted Clinton because Monica was no trophy; had his twenty four year old been Kate Moss, a famous wealthy world-class model, they might have been forgiving. The media took on the Condit case because it upped the ante. Aside from Condit's hypocrisy during the Clinton impeachment, his only offense is that the media's daily obsession with Chandra demanded a catharsis, and Condit, smiling to cameramen as he dashed between meetings, forgetting that Chandra was the reason he was being photographed, begged to be blamed. Condit became his sex life. As I see it, regardless of whether Condit is a tomcat or a sleazebag or a scapegoat, he's not my representative, and, so long as he's done nothing illegal, I don't care about him at all, just as I did not for the years he was in the House before the Levys put his name into the national consciousness.

            It's a fallacy that a vocal fundamentalist minority has an undue influence on our national ethical agenda. In fact: 85 percent of Americans are morally tolerant; Bill Clinton is the most popular man in the world and would have been re-elected, had he been able to run in 2000; Al Gore would have won the electoral vote had he not been misled by feminists and straight-arrows like his wife and Naomi Wolfe, into believing that Clinton would hurt his candidacy and not sending Clinton to campaign in Arkansas, New Hampshire, and Tennessee; finally, we would be living in a totally different America, and none of the above would have happened, and the name Monica wouldn't have been forever associated with a mouth under a desk, had Clinton stuck to his decision to settle with Paula Jones before the grand jury investigation and not caved to the demand of his wife that he legally clear his name without an implicit admission of guilt. In short, before blaming our forefathers, "cherchez la femme".

            The big revelation of the sexual revolution was that women had a sex drive, had orgasms, could have free sex, and could choose whom to fuck. The emancipation of women and sexuality from the clutches of biology lasted the short time it took the culture to rebound and re-confine sexuality in the name of 'protecting' women from sexist males who colonized women's bodies. Women's Lib turned against men, went from sexual to political lib, and broke up the party. And, ironically, the sexualization of our public lives started when feminists infuriated conservatives by advocating that the personal is political. Intended to promote empowerment and equality, the feminist argument that all sex is an abuse of power at the expense of women, denied women their free mating will and power. Religious, family-values, right-wing opportunists took up the cause, because it empowered them to investigate the sexual probity of any man.

            The public was introduced to it in 1991 during the Clarence Thomas hearings. Thomas's distasteful but legal office banter defined sexual harassment: the emphasis was placed on the grossness of his conduct and not its impact on Hill's ability to work. Instead of attacking Thomas' thorough judicial inexperience, Democrats presented Hill's allegations to discredit his candidacy; Republicans found it expedient not to quibble on the definition of sexual harassment, but to exonerate Thomas from a personal stain by attacking Hill's credibility. After his confirmation, Congress passed a civil-rights law that allowed jury trials and punitive damages for sexual harassment. The conservative Supreme Court ruled that sexually inappropriate, verbal or physical, behavior that created an atmosphere that would be offensive to a reasonable person, constituted sexual harassment; the definition of 'reasonable' became the gray line. In 1991, a hostile environment meant a continuing pervasive offensive conduct; today it's a slap on a butt.

            It doesn't take a genius to know the difference between fun and misconduct: fun is mutual. But that unholy alliance between the misogynist Christian right and the monolithic feminist movement robbed feminism of its mission. By arguing that a public official's competence could be judged by a pubic hair on a Coke can and some off-color jokes, feminists eradicated the difference between offensive personal conduct and offensive public policy.   The feminists have had it wrong: sex isn't be a major public issue. Sex isn't the trouble at all. What defeated the sexual revolution, and every other revolution in history, was the belief in linear progress and resolution. Life is cyclical. Whatever our squabble with society, whatever our call for change, we are all libidinal, lustful, hormonal, impulsive beyond our capacity, or desire, to control. Desire drives us.

            And that's where capitalism comes into play. It's not what happens in the bedroom that counts, but rather what the media say happens in the bedroom. The media are capitalism's whores: bumps in the ratings, not morals, decide what constitutes a hot story. Since the Hill/Rice days, the media has made its own profane alliance with the extreme right to manufacture scandals out of semiotic and ethical missteps that were considered run-of-the-mill before the advent of 24-hour live TV. Cheap to produce and especially profitable during national crises, 24-hour news-TV uses mass terrorism, natural disasters, and general tragedy to earn a windfall. The only problem with this compunctions-free capitalism GW-style is that fabrication and hype end up passing for truth and urgency, in a self-fulfilling way. Since 1964, America's consciousness of recreational sex has moved, by leaps and bounds, from sex-as-sin to sex-as-diversion, from sex-as-medication to sex-as-mental-illness, and from sex-as-politics to sex-as-political-weapon.

             Basically, America is drawn to extreme swings of fortune. Like Wall Street, it's easy prey to moods and the mercurial psychology of the masses. Trendism makes the rich poor again and the poor rich and gives us new things to crave. Basically, Americans care about the bottom line and not the exposed bottom. But if America loves a winner, America loves even more a winner turned loser. It only pretends to be shocked when its "role models" go goofy with power and lust. Americans don't care who screws whom, but those who don't have limos get a kick out of denuding those who do. Capitalism is invested in keeping us curious, insecure, and unsatisfied. Capitalism is tolerant of all sexuality because it can convert the sex instinct into the instinct to consume. Sex is socially useful as a floating image that sells everything from milk to news. America is one gigantic sex ad, including its violence. We live the paradox of a sexed-up culture that can't help fearing sex. Like Berlin under the Weimar Republic, just before the arrival of Hitler, we've compressed the distance between our public and private selves too much.

            Capitalism loves to suck at its own teat. It's not news that we're a narcissistic generation. The one characteristic that permeates our particular narcissistic moment in America is that we've made voyeurism the central sexual metaphor. Our enjoyment of sex scandals is entirely voyeuristic. We're awash in sex scandals because the vicarious thrill that comes with intruding on the privacy of public people is like the kick we get from watching hardcore amateur porn, but more authentic. Much of the pleasure of porn was in violating people's privacy. That's now being superseded by the pleasure of having others violate our privacy (so long as we stay anonymous).

            Narcissism makes us more demanding about our sexual options and less judgmental. The acceptance of edgier sex practices in our popular culture is the flipside of our scandalmongering. Today America is an unprecedented sexual playing field, abundant in new discoveries. Thanks to Bob Dole and the alarm bells going off over prostate health, a friend of mine recently discovered that he loved to have his girlfriend strap on a dildo and ramrod him, and she discovered that the power reversal aroused her. Another friend used to avoid sex because he suffered from delayed ejaculation; he recently learned that men too could come several times and only later, if at all, spooge. He started to tell his dates he was multi-orgasmic, and discovered that every woman loves a man who doesn't produce a single explosive moneyshot before rolling over with exhaustion or nausea. Yet another friend whose wife was breastfeeding discovered he got turned on watching her use the electric pump. She didn't share his enthusiasm for milking herself as a panty moistener, but changed her mind when he showed her gorgeous women online looking for men who got off on lactating. After watching some how-to videos that made it all sound like brain surgery, complete with a check list, his wife discovered she liked to masturbate while he pumped her swollen breasts during foreplay. For all three, their sex lives have never been better.

            The multiplicity of sexual alternatives at everybody's fingertips is a continuation of the sexual paradigm shift begun in the sixties, away from traditional power and into play. If the internet is an indicator, sexual yearning for the new new thing has become mass hysteria and not only for guys. Because of the blurred line between fun and harassment, we are staying away from the risks of improptu sex, seeking refuge in the safe boundaries of designated sex clubs or personals. For every fetish there is today an organization prepared to celebrate it: shoes, socks, jocks, the pierced, the tattooed, the obese, the tiny, old age, new age, the hairy, the hairless, the legless and armless. Women exhibit themselves on thousands of homespun sites every day. Men don't mind if their wife shows herself having sex to thousands of other men. Couples swap photos online and swap spouses at seaside resorts. Since women aren't property anymore, more people are giving up jealousy, shame, anxiety, isolation. Sexually restless Americans are coming out of thousands of closets because they've discovered like-minded people in the world. Everybody's getting their day in the sun as a turn-on for somebody else. It's democracy in X-rated action.   

            The end of the millennium came and went with a whimper. Right now, heterosexuality is cool again, Playboy is an anachronism, the consent-condom, already big in Britain, is about to hit the U.S. stores (when your woman opens the wrapper, an inner sleeve automatically records her fingerprints, which prove her consent, and marks the day, month, year), our sex laws, already obsolete, are becoming stricter. Soon enough the pendulum will swing the other way again. There's nothing new, sexually, under the sun. Whatever leaves our mouth hanging open was already depicted, thousands of years ago, on pottery and papyri and cave walls. Basically, Everyman's priority is getting laid, taking care of the kids, and making ends meet.

            In 2001 the intellectuals, the experts, and everybody who's anybody will tell you that sex is a social construct, meaning that it's not an instinct, but a learned act. (Then they'll charge you to teach you how to do it right.) Ignore them. Sex scandals are the modern American version of paradigmatic Greek tragedy: from watching a powerful man get destroyed because of a minor personal error, we experience the "pity and fear" that teach us morality by example. And that's why the puritans have been resurrected from the history books to run our public conversation and life. Don't fall for it. We've left that morality behind. As the Greeks discovered 4500 years ago, self-examination is endless. Politicizing sex is a conservative strategy. Theorizing about sex is too unsexy. So stop thinking about sex as anything but what gives you intimate pleasure.

            This is the land of abundance--libidinal as well as financial, religious, civic--created for the pursuit of happiness, with liberty and justice for all. We don't need to recite "and sex for all" and salute the flag to know that it is doubtlessly implied. Because good sex will set you free.