taking care of the place
sex as a spectator sport
There are two sex shops nearby amid the shoes, discounted make up, flimsy summer dresses and cheap suits. Assuming they don’t sell sex itself any more than garage sales sell garages, I am guessing they sell implements. Outfits. Toys. Exciters & enhancers.
I’ve never been much interested in football. If someone turns up at my door with a ball, saying, Come down the park & let’s play – I’ll be there. But why watch other people doing it? Pornography seems to me strange like this. Sex is not a spectator sport. It happens between, and within. And the sex shops with their bristling array make me feel sad for their clients. If you need the Red Bull, the special lighting, the tools and the costume drama – if you are not overwhelmed by the breathing closeness of the one you want, standing before you in their naked body that has carried them here over worlds you will never know – it seems you are missing the point somehow. The reality. The experience.
How is it not unbearably moving, exciting, to take hold of someone you long for? Years ago in a trash magazine I read a confessional interview with an American rock teenager. His band is not up to much. But he fell in love with a famous girl, and had married her, and was boasting. He told how their first encounter took place in a famous hotel – o! the fame! the fame! the glory! – and in that hotel the bedroom had a long mirror behind the big bed. He said, I was pinching myself, I was saying, man, you’re balling Actress X! And you’re watching it in real time!!
11 comments on “sex as a spectator sport”
Leave a comment
You might also like to read:
The grandiose way of telling this would be to say, I am flying back to Ghana for the premiere of a film in which I played a small role. The truth is, I fell in ...read more
Late night supermarket in Berlin's wild west. Two pretty girls in their pretty outfits are queuing ahead of me, they have high arses and high heels and high ponies, their hair spilling from the crowns ...read more
Eddie McGuire, prominent Australian broadcaster, compares Adam Goodes, respected Aboriginal footballer, to King Kong. The conversation, outraged on both sides, focuses on whether or not Eddie "is" racist. Thus it gets nowhere because no one ...read more
Beautiful Cathoel. How true, intimacy, real intimacy, with the one you love, ideally surpasses all other incarnations of sexual want.
some tough teenage boys were ribbing me about porn, trying to get a reaction. i told em if they are curious they will find it and stare but if they keep watching they might think its real and start to think that the world is really like that. that they will not really understand woman or man from that and that they will be fooled and they will not make the loving realationship that they wanted. i expected the oooooo, youre so straight sorta line but the “toughest” arsehole of the lot almost started crying and said youre right (sir). they all shut up after that. i think its the commercialisation, turning into a product that makes it artificial. like i dont care if its a famous trophy footer game or footer over the back fence, they might be just as much fun to watch. i think thats what i wantd to say
Bloody beautiful, Jeff. You offered them the example of your manhood, something only another bloke, an older bloke, can do. Maybe little by little we can unravel this compulsion to dehumanise one another. Thank you for this very moving story. Cathoel x
That’s how I feel about porn. That I’d just be trolling the wares looking for the one I love. And I wouldn’t find him there. So why even look?
Denise that’s such a beautiful way to put it. I feel the same.
Interesting that he looked at it this way when Actress X probably didn’t. There is always that divide, especially with younger people. I hope he matured during their married life!! Thanks for joining in Blog Gems. Jen
You’re a great writer! I know, because I have a Masters degree in writing and I teach it for a living. You should submit, or compile for a book.
Thank you Timothy. I’m glad you’re enjoying the reading.
Wonderful. <3 R
I never understood it, either. And now it turns out the easy accessibility to hard core porn is causing ED in young men. Gee, didn’t see that coming.
It’s ironic, isn’t it, that this almost heroically misguided effort to lift both manhood and womanhood out of their chains of human imperfection and ramp up male into a lifelong erection and female into perpetually receptive & rubberised-glam has actually backfired… depleting our own sexual energy and often actually obscuring our ability to relate honestly to one another, to be sexual, to be fearless, to be close.