Sex Education Shouldn’t Be Kept Under the Covers

“Sex is natural, sex is good. Not everybody’s doing it, but everybody should.”

George Michael’s voice was heard singing those words as this hunky guy was writhing around on the stage in this teeny, tiny thing called a T-back, which looked like it must hurt.

The lights were dim and I was watching. The dancer was from Chippendales, a Los Angeles nightclub that was supposed to, finally, make fantasy sex in the spotlight respectable even for nice middle-class women with children and station wagons.

But I was there for professional reasons.

If I weren’t, maybe you’d think I was a pervert, or unfulfilled, or weird. Maybe you still do, because I was taking notes.

That’s what happens when sex--the subject, the suggestion, or the actual act--comes up. People tense. They freak. They get scared. They don’t know what to do.

In other words, sex makes us uncomfortable. It is not very polite, not in real life, not here. These days it can even give you a fatal disease.

And even before the advent of AIDS and a slew of sexually transmitted diseases, sex was never as simple as it may seem. We are not dogs. (OK, most of us, that is).

Now we have the matter of the proposed nude juice bar in Garden Grove. The idea here is that patrons would drink juice from, say, peeled vegetables and fruits, while watching dancers peel clothing from their bodies.

This is supposed to be erotic and good for you too.

The Garden Grove City Council, however, said it didn’t like the idea. Inadequate parking and the threat of lowered property values were officially cited as the reasons for rejecting the proposal, but everybody knows that wasn’t the whole truth.

The whole truth centers on the belief that a nude juice bar, while good for a laugh, is not the kind of place that you’d want to visit with your parents when they’re in from out of town. One can reasonably wonder about the kind of clientele it would attract.

This is not to say, however, that nude juice bars should be banned. In America, there is still a Constitution to defend.

And the nude juice bar is just one of several, oh, innovative ideas to capitalize recently on America’s obsessive-repressive fixation on sex.

A converted chiropractic office in Brea called Queen Lingerie charges patrons $40 to watch women walk around in underwear for 20 minutes. Tips are extra.

The city, suggesting it was duped when it gave Queen Lingerie permission to open, now says it will stop the show. Neighbors near the place want it closed. The owner says too bad and has vowed to fight till the cows come home. He is expanding, to draw an even bigger crowd.

In Newport Beach, meantime, there is a temporary ban on new massage shops and tanning salons that offer lingerie shows.

Luana Stone, owner of LJX Inc., protested before the City Council that this was unfair.

“Mr. Mayor, my business is legitimate,” she said. “It is innovative. It provides tanning with a little bit of entertainment and fun. But we only provide as much fun as the law allows.”

Still, most of us know that the law doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. How else to explain the arrest of Pee-wee Herman impersonating a dirty young man named Paul Reubens doing something private in a public place?

Well, sort of public. We assume that decent people would never step inside a movie theater that shows X-rated films. (Not X-rated for violence, silly, but for sex .)

Anyway, decent people are supposed to have VCRs.

Yet what else can we expect? We are a nation of cowardly hypocrites when it comes to sex. Officially, we are prudes. Privately, exceptions are always made. Confusion is rife. The results range from the comic to the insane.

Flip through your television dial and odds are very good that you’ll catch somebody “getting even” with a gun, a knife or a fist. This is “reality.” This is “the way it is.”

But the networks say no to condom ads because they might promote sex. Where such ads have been given a tentative OK, only their use in disease prevention may be brought up.

Sex for pleasure is not something that decent people discuss.

This is shortsighted, if not flat-out wrong. Sex education must take the lead. Yes, talk about the who, what, where, when and how. Just don’t leave out the why.

Certainly kids are going to figure that one out on their own. Without any guidance, they might figure it out wrong.

Nude juice bars, women in next-to-nothing lingerie and other kinky variations on fantasy sex look to be with us for a while. I wouldn’t want any of it in my neighborhood. I would be worried as to what else might come in its wake.

But I understand it. Repress healthy sexuality in one place, then maybe a not-so-healthy variety will sprout someplace else.

And this is America. There is always money to be made.