‘Sex Without Sex’ Comes to a Complete Stop

The myth about fads is that they all begin in Southern California and sweep outward over the world like waves from a stone thrown into a pond. Living at the heart of this eccentric birthplace, I ought to be aware of every fad from its very origin.

In fact, by the time I recognize a fad it is already passe or on its way out. People who frequent the “in” restaurants were already tiring of nouvelle cuisine , having recognized it for the fraud it was, when I first discovered it. My wife and I took another couple to dinner at an expensive Italian restaurant one night and were disappointed, to say the least, when our entrees appeared: a morsel of veal placed artistically on a plate with two tiny carrots, a dab of spinach, a slice of jicama and a sprig of parsley. The bill was $250.

Of course nouvelle cuisine was a product of the 1980s philosophy that “less is better,” a notion that found expression not only in sparse dinner helpings but in minimal art, vacuous movies, schools without grammar and other aberrations of self-denial--none of which succeeded in curbing the public’s appetite for more of everything.

I was listening to the Michael Jackson radio talk show in my car the other day when I realized that another fad was well on it way. With his inimitable poise and wit, Jackson was interviewing half-a-dozen callers on what I believe was referred to as “sex without sex.”

My ears perked up. From the well-defined explications of the subject put forth by his respondents, it was obvious that Jackson was exploring the rationale of a new fad. Most of the women seemed to think that “sex without sex” was a perfectly workable outgrowth of the sexual revolution.

Refined somewhat, their argument was that a man and a woman could have a deliriously erotic time together--touching, kissing, hugging, rubbing and so forth-- without engaging in sexual intercourse. In that way, they seemed to agree, a couple could find fulfillment short of surrender.

Somehow I had the idea that Jackson wasn’t taking this particular inquiry too seriously. After all, it was comic relief after the West Bank, the Persian Gulf, the presidential campaign and all those other problems.

Nevertheless, it was obvious that we are in for a run of sexless sex. To me, the term is an oxymoron, a non sequitur. Naturally, every sexual contact does not necessarily lead to intercourse--any of us who had to negotiate the teen years knows that--nevertheless, the notion that adults can engage in a long siege of erotic play without going all the way is fraught with frustration and danger, to say the least.

A courtship of prolonged preliminaries, it seems to me, makes a joke of the very word preliminaries, and is likely to end in boredom, exhaustion, violence, or even friendship.

I thought this new fad would be dead by the time I got home. But my wife had brought home a new magazine called Self. It was one of those glamour magazines full of gorgeous young women in various stages of undress advertising lipsticks, lotions, cremes, panty hose, perfumes and the like. On the cover I saw the title: “Sex Without Sex.”

“How long has this been going on?” I asked my wife.

She said, “I guess it’s something new.”

The full title of the article was “The New Eroticism: Sex Without Sex.” That established it as a fad. It was by Stella Resnick, a Ph.D. As she says, “It’s the next step in the sexual revolution.”

She argues that while the sexual revolution broadened our perspective on sex in some ways, it also narrowed it. “In the ‘50s, ‘going all the way’ was off-limits, but people could ‘make out’ passionately for hours. The ‘60s changed all that: Gone were the hours of sensual buildup. Intercourse became the focus of every sexual encounter.”

Resnick’s article is a primer on how to “make out” without “going all the way.” The article is erotic in itself, and 20 years ago would have been considered pornographic. She even says, “You could think of all this as nouvelle sex.”

But I doubt if it will last as long as nouvelle cuisine . After all, a human being can go a long time without eating.