Waiting-Room Sex
The come-on is always the same: “10 Super Sexy Secrets to a Hot Date Night,” screams the cover blurb. “The Sexy Move He Wants You to Try.” Here’s one from the cover of September’s Glamour: “Your Top 10 Sex Questions, Answered at Last.”
Finally, a publication has the courage to speak the forbidden truth. Now, thanks to Conde Nast, I can rank my top five touch-me zones.
With my wife eight months pregnant, I’ve been spending quite a bit more time than usual in doctors’ waiting rooms, flipping through magazines I would usually only reach for with a lighted match: Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Self, Seventeen (though I usually splice that last one inside an issue of Field & Stream). I find it astonishing that young women in one of the most pervasively carnal countries in the world could be so benighted on sexual matters that these rags could offer any guidance. There are some interesting tidbits here and there. I was not aware, for example, that women are getting collagen injections to plump up their G spots. Mostly, however, these sex-advice articles are dispatches from the frontiers of the obvious. How to tell if your boyfriend is gay? If he likes having sex with men, that’s a sign.
No man should write about sex with an air of absolute authority, so let’s just pretend I’ve never had sex or been in a relationship or been married three times. The simple truth is, sex isn’t that complicated, and whatever variations you might think you’ve discovered and whatever dark fetishes you might savor, you’re probably about 2,000 years late to the party. After Caligula’s Rome, all is epilogue.
In other words, these magazines market a mystery that doesn’t exist. The September Cosmo promises to reveal “His #1 sex fantasy.” Can you guess? That’s right. “He”--men are as undifferentiated as livestock in these articles--wants to be thrown down and had on the kitchen floor. No way! What National Security Agency code breaker deciphered that?
I feel sorry for the implied audience of these articles, these young women who apparently are groping in the dark for some handle on sex and intimacy. Much of the material is basic physiology, the sort of thing a decent high school sex-ed class would have covered if the instructor weren’t afraid of being burned at the stake. And it’s entirely too much to ask parents to unriddle these matters in frank heart-to-heart discussions of clinical detail. (If one of my soon-to-be daughters asks me about oral sex, I’ll run screaming into the night--Lah-lah-lah, I’m not listeniiiing. . . .) And so they turn to their glam-glossies for help.
Plainly, young women are horribly confused by it all, and small wonder. A generation of porn-addicted young men is being schooled in postdoctoral caddishness; adoration is lavished on the most vapid, hyper-sexualized, remorseless moving mannequins of Hollywood; and, should a young woman stumble in her sexual self-seeking, the forces of repression are there to shame her as if it’s the 15th century. Dear Cosmo: I hooked up with three guys on my trip to Ibiza, and now I feel bad. Well, yeah.
Interestingly, there appears to be such a thing as too much expertise. Glamour’s sex columnist “Jake” has a name for some women’s scary, pole-dancing, toys-in-the-drawer assertiveness: “Sexy 9.0.” Here’s a hint, ladies: Love and acceptance never walk in on 5-inch acrylic heels.
If there is a thread running through all the advice, it’s how to communicate with men--who for all their bluster come off as startlingly fragile beings--without appearing to criticize. “I’m dating a slobbery kisser, but I don’t want to crush his ego . . . “ “He’s not pleasing you . . . but thinks he is.” Women are obliged to play the role of flute-playing fakirs, trying to keep the cobra from falling back into the basket.
Sexual advice in men’s magazines is typically less love poetry and more owner’s manual. For a noisy girlfriend, for example, GQ’s sex columnist, Rebecca Newman (a total nom de femme, if you ask me) suggests not a gentle hint but a gag. That’s gittin ‘er done.
Also in August’s GQ, in the mag’s “guide to summer loving,” Newman offers this helpful tip: “Location is key. Sardinia and the South of France are excellent bets if you like the Heidi Klein bikini/orgy-on-a-yacht vibe. . . . Target events such as Cartier International Polo and Royal Ascot.” Right, and while you’re at it, buy her a plane. Chicks dig planes.
I think I can break this down for women: Ask for what you want, give him what he wants, demand respect and return it in kind, be imaginative, be safe, remember to stretch. If he’s having “technical difficulties,” as Cosmo coyly puts it, it’s not stress, poor diet or fear of intimacy. It’s the picture of your all-American quarterback ex-boyfriend on the fridge.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my touch-me zones.
