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The Sex Column

5/17/04

Although I may often claim that I don't read, in fact I DO read two things quite regularly:  video game magazines, and traditionally-for-men, non-skin mags.  That latter category is "traditional" because they are meant to be read by 25-to-40-year-old straight men, and this category has incrementally expanded over the last ten years to include gen-X mags like Stuff, FHM (For Him Magazine) and the daddy of 'em all, Maxim.  Lately, old school faves like GQ and Esquire have lowered their standards ever so slightly, so that they will still appeal to their more aged readers (30 years old and up for GQ, slightly older for Esquire) but also feature at least a couple of articles featuring near-naked women for effect and younger-skewing entertainment features, on video games, or the latest Jack Black endeavor, or extreme sports.

The one thing that all of these magazines have in common, of course, is the monthly sex column, the column that strives to advise us on what we can do to improve our abilities in that all-important area.  The thing you may have not realized is that apparently, we as Americans totally suck at intercourse.

I was thinking about this recently, as I browsed through another sad-sack sex column, in last month's Esquire.  One woman had written to the magazine looking for ways to make her husband stop masturbating to online porn, hoping to instead make him actually have sex with his life partner.  One month, there was a more informative column on the different ED (erectile dysfunction) drugs out there, which I realized was useless to me but really might be quite important for those that periodically, you know, can't throw a spiral through a hanging tire in the backyard.

Although I don't talk about it very much in this column, I do talk about sex quite regularly with, well, almost anybody in "real life" (as it is) and just from conversations I have had with people over the last six months, I am sure of a few things.  I'm sure of these things because I ask.

You'd be amazed what you can learn about people by just asking.  I always laugh when people refuse to talk about something like sex, then claim that their sex life is great, then go on to talk about other things that they love:  their job, maybe their apartment, maybe their social life, maybe their pet terrier.  Why don't you feel good talking about your sex life?  If it's something you love, why isn't it something you feel good talking about?  Obviously you can't share with me EXACTLY why your sex life is so good with your partner (or, uh, partners), but talking about some of the things that make the connection work makes most Americans uncomfortable.  I agree that your sex life is private, but I didn't ask you to have sex with me...I just want to know how your sex life is, which gives me a good indicator of how you are.  Most folks are still so shocked by the question that they don't want to give a definitive answer.  If you are fearful that I will judge you based on how your sex life is, well, you probably don't want me as a friend anyway.

Hence, the sex column--an anonymous way for people who like sex, whom in theory might be everyone, to learn more about ways to make it better.  For me, my research background makes me always want to learn through execution or first-person information gathering, so reading the sex column--while amusing--is only the first step in learning more about the inner workings of intercourse anyway.  But, as I make my way towards "adulthood", you can never soak up enough knowledge, positive or negative, about sex, right?

So, anyway, here's what I have learned.  Many people I know have very average, occasionally unfulfilling sex lives.  The frequency is low (much lower here back East than it was for serious/married couples back in San Francisco), sometimes relegated to "date night" or a once-a-week sessions that are more form-and-function than fuckfest.  On the weekends, life here in DC seems to be just as charged as any place that I go...but, I felt like Tuesday and Wednesday nights carried more possibilities on the other coast.  The only explanation I have for that is the work/commute/TV weeknight of my average suburban friend; maybe hot sex does follow a night of work-till-seven, 40-minute commute, "Frasier" and "The West Wing", but I would imagine it's not as often as off-by-five, happies-with-friends, chill-out-over-Mos Def-at-the-casa socialites.

At least with the friends that I regularly talk to (most of whom are newlyweds, those in committed relationships or those that seem to "get lucky" more than your average American), the men I know seem to be mostly happy with their sex lives, but the women are a mixed bag.  It kind of runs the gamut:  I've got a couple of friends out west that claim to regularly be having the best sex of their lives; a couple of women I know here not only are bored with their sex lives, but are doing nothing to change it (in terms of communicating this news to their partners).  A couple of the women I regularly keep in touch with love the kinds of sex they are having...but lament that its frequency is like a cicada sighting, only slightly more frequent than once every seventeen years.  I know a couple of women that--during this calendar year--have dropped men after four or five sessions because they were sleeping with men that, from a creativity perspective, were moving along a bleak, unchanging horizon, and I have been hearing that among females more often than I used to...but, I do know a guy that dropped a girl because she didn't seem to know what the hell she was doing.  (I have always said that you know things are bad when men dump women because they are no good at sex; most guys my age are not willing to invest in a project, no matter how hot a girl is.)

These things, and many others, seem to be issues for lots of American couples as they try to improve their sex lives.  But, why is it that sex columns almost always serve us such useless information?  I recognize that--even from my admittedly small survey sample--many of us could use a little advice when it comes to our sex lives, but why do I instead get columns like the one in Stuff last year, where we get roundtables from hot women about how much they love receiving oral sex?  Is this news to anyone?  I don't think I know a woman that doesn't love meeting a good old-fashioned muffdiver, but there we have it--a whole column dedicated to the resident sexpert's advice that going down on women in a good thing.

Holy fucking shit!  Are you serious?

If this is news, this is a bad thing, because this means that in general, men don't do a lot of that for their women, and that is nearly inexcusable.  Another bad thing about that column was that there was very little on the subject of technique, which I would imagine everyone could learn something from; instead, it was mostly on silly throwaways like

"I love it when Bob comes home and just goes to town on me!"

or something similar.  Well, okay, great, but how about what makes it such a good time?  You could afford to be more explicit in a dirtier mag like Stuff, but we get nothing useful as a takeaway.  Or, how about in a recent Esquire, where the sexpert fielded a question from a reader:  "Female ejaculation?  Fact or fiction?"  It was almost sophomoric, hearing the man's question, referring to a porn flick he had been watching where a woman had been literally spewing from the crotch, and wondering if this was even plausible.  The question isn't ridiculous--certainly, it's quite a provocative query--but does it have any place in a column that purports to be good advice?

Most of the time, we're left with things like that annual column in Cosmopolitan, where we get something like "12 Positions to Purify Your Partner" or "172 Ways to Turn Him On", only to read and see that this is roughly the same column you read 20 years ago, and regardless of how many ways you might have to turn him (or her) on, you use no more than five of them at a time, since sometimes we treat our partner like our jobs--we do just enough to seal the deal, and we don't drop a penny more in the process.  I think many of our so-called sexperts are the same way--if they just gave a little more effort in the creativity department, just imagine the possibilities.

Imagination goes a long way.

 

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell & Longer Community Trust:

• DJ Enferno:  Opening Weekend

• Sunny, 78 degrees, dry:  $9.50 Show

• The Original Chicken Sandwich at Burger King...with four-day-old lettuce:  Matinee

• Bobby Brown:  Rental

• Bailing out on a club night because you have to get up "early"...at 9 o'clock in the morning:  Hard Vice

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com