My Final Word on Sex (Down, Boy!)
Perhaps my least appetizing memory of sex was in an improvisation class meant to help us free our minds to become better playwrights. We were given some simple situation with which to make free associations, and the key instruction of improv…go along with whatever your partner says or does. A geeky boy, whose name I didn’t know, interpreted this as permission to fly across the room and grab my then younger and perkier breasts; stand on his toes and shove his tongue down my throat. I pried him off and quit the group, but this is what often happens, at least metaphorically, whenever women try to talk about sex.
Now, I’m a bit
old fashioned. I believe that sex is to be performed by two consenting adults
of any gender who want to get naked and jump into the fray. I don’t really
believe in talking, I believe in doing…just not with random men in a writing
class…or any educational setting. I have received two different phone calls
from two different Facebook men and did not realize until later that they were
looking for that legendary hot phone sex I had heard of, but never learned. I
just cheefully talked about the weather and what I had had for dinner. WELL, I
DIDN’T KNOW! I’M AN OLD LADY!
We didn’t need
to talk about it back in the nineteen seventies Free Love days. The most verbal
we ever got was reading the pages of The Joy of Sex old loud to my husband
while trying to place our knees and chins in the correct places that the flabby
Hippie Couple in the drawings were demonstrating. This usually ended in a
hysterically funny tangled crash to the floor followed by just DOING IT the
same old way but on the carpet instead of the bed.
Although I can
write a fairly hot seduction scene in a play (Talking God) and give dirty
details (Amour Americain), I really never contemplated talking about any of my
own excited protrusions or tunnels. If I attempt it, I sound like Lilith
Sternin of “Frasier” with her emotionless, flat voice going “Oh do it, Baby. Do
it hard.”
Alas, no.
Despite my age and illness and unattractive body, I still believe it is
something to do in reality, not on the phone or on Skype. I’ve heard it can be
done so well in chat rooms that people pay, and you’d think as I playwright, I
would be interested. God knows, I could create a false identity for myself, become
Bambi the yodeling seventeen year old shepherdess, but you can already see I
simply can’t take it as seriously as the chat room experts need.
And what I
miss most about men is laying my cheek on a strong, denim covered shoulder, while
we talk about our day. I miss their scent and their laughter. I miss having our
fingers entwined as we walk silently breathing in Autumn air. Those little
closed mouth kisses hello and goodbye, which was my last physical contact with
a man and I’m smiling to remember it. So, I’m going to retire from all that and
formally announce that the VIP box is closed. My last experiences with actual
sex got worse and worse until that last pathetic, unexcited, inept tussle with
the wrong man. But my final memory of men will be a sweet, friendly kiss on the
lips with the right one. What more could
a girl want?
