I seem to have been surrounded, this past weekend, by Sex and Aggression. Walking in and out of a room, last night, while the Grammy Music Awards was showing, most of the performers looked "pretty and hot," their lyrics were "if not pretty then hot," and the sets for these performances were "either hot or ejaculatory" (with explosions going off like fireworks on the Fourth of July.)
When I wasn't trying to catch some lyrics that my Fourth Quarter brain couldn't process and my ears couldn't quite make out, I was reading a friend's writing on sexual morality among health care providers and clergy-folk. He made it sound rather simple ... too simple for me. He could imagine having "the hots" for a patient but, with a sense of morality and a sense of the Other as "a subject in their own right" (an expression we've both used in our writings for quite some time), he could never act on it. He was largely arguing from Martin Buber's position on the difference between I-It and I-Thou forms of relating. In the former, the Other is an Object who, at least for the moment, is little else than the thing through which gratification is achieved. In the latter, the Other is, to use the phrase again, a subject in their own right.
Then there was last week. Visitors to my office had referred to "Birthday sex," "Anniversary sex," "Buddy sex," and "Decrease the anxiety sex." Sex, Sex, Sex and More Sex.
By the time someone reaches the Last Quarter, they've likely had sex between 3,000 and 4,000 times, not counting multiple orgasms and -- what to say? -- solo horizontal aerobics. I'm relatively confident in my belief that even our most acclaimed artists fail to produce that many great works of art and that much sex fails the Grammies criterion of loud music, wild lyrics and flames shooting out of all corners of the stage.
I remember living in New Hampshire 40 years ago during the Winter of 1973-1974, the Winter of OPEC's discontent. It was freezing and the Heating Oil wasn't refined enough to keep furnaces burning. I don't recall whether "the Sex was Up" or "Down" that Winter, though I have clear recollections that M and I and the Kids not infrequently slept in our goose-down coats and Kazimierza Kuratowski the Saint Bernard often slept between us ... not certain whether she was there to be kept warm or to warm.
I don;'t recall any longer whether I was present in this particular Bar-Lounge or was the recipient of a Bar-room tale told by someone else. Any case ... At the bar were seated two youngish men, sitting and drinking, together ... and an old Geezer nearby drinking alone. The young guys were describing their sexual exploits. "The Sun, the Moon, the Moving Heaven and Earth" talk went on ... and on ... and on. The Old Guy finally turned to them: "You young whipper-snappers ain't got nothin'. When I fuck there are sparks." Of course, it's not clear that for any of these three men, sex was more than expressions of aggression and the need for tension reduction. Who knows? Maybe they were the last of the great hot lovers?
Anyway. Old sex? Young sex? I don't know. Ask Masters and Johnson! For me the question is far more what we humans are looking for in the sack, against the tree or on the pool table. I didn't -- I might add -- get the answer from my friends' writing. A bunch of folk in a reading group are getting together tomorrow night ... mostly Old Farts from the Last Quarter ... to discuss these writings. I'll get back when the scholars have spoken.
Meantime? As the Capitol Steps used to say: "Keep yer Bousers Truckled" ... or not.
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