Had by Sex
As a wordsmythe, I’ve for a long time had trouble with the term "have sex". Probably because "have" is a verb and can be applied to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an earache, and a lotta work to do. So in the context of "having sex" "have" just doesn’t seem magical enough.
Another problem with the term is that it’s not really accurately descriptive. I mean, do you have sex, or does sex have you? And not just in the sense of your mother having you; another good illustration of a verb lacking full meaning. I meant how a body is taken over by the feelings; that up to and through the moment of ecstasy, there is little going on between the ears, thinking-wise.
In the screenplay "My Dinner with André", in a line that I don’t know made it into the film itself, André notes that the French refer to that moment of transition from soaring to descending as "le petit mort", the little death. Indeed, there is a note of the ultimate sacrifice in the moment of creation; your basic life-death-rebirth sequence. And certainly an event of that magnitude needs a more emblematic verb, though I wouldn’t offer an alternative at this time.
Speaking of sex, why do you supposed whatever loving god that created us allowed men to be interested in other women, even when married, bound, partnered, committed, etc. women, too, but not apparently as much. I asked a friend who’s getting married in a couple of months and seems happier than he’s ever been, why it is we still look at a shapely figure. He said he’d done enough reading about it to be convinced that it’s just an instinctual thing about keeping the species alive.
It’s our job, he said, reverently. That’s why there are more women than men. Not because of lotsa wars, I asked. No, he replied, because men can service more than one woman. And we’re not allowed to, he went on, because that would upset the family unit. Yeah, right, I sorta knew that, but it still doesn’t answer my question. If we are in a committed, heart-’n-mind relationship and the species is over-populated anyway, why doesn’t the external urge drop off, and interest simply be focused on the mate.
Makes you think that the Greeks had figured out god better. They kinds felt that people were some sort of interesting video game for the capricious gods who sat on Mount Olympus divining disasters and disruptions often just to relieve boredom. For when you consider how much anguish and simple tragedy is visited on people because someone got randy elsewhere, ya gotta wonder who thought up such a system.
Of course, there is an alternative explanation, and that is that our culture has chosen a set of rules that are in conflict with the natural order. Again. More. Still. Maybe we needed that order to prevent chaos. Maybe we will expand our consciousness so that we put our sexuality in a new perspective, more fitting to our true nature.
No, dear, not in my lifetime.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.