But ya know, my homegirl Kim referred in a recent note to my current disinterest in sex -- and really, I was momentarily baffled about what she meant. So, as my internet connection is still quite iffy enough that I'm being quite a brave soul to try and write a whole entry, I won't go back to see if I actually claimed complete disinterest in sex back when I declared my celibacy. If I did, I may even have meant it at the time. Alas, if so, I would have been sadly mistaken.

No, though I am still quite committed to celibacy (and sobriety, too -- s'funny, my life is much more boring but overall much more pleasant this way. who knew?) it would still be an untruth to claim disinterest in sex. Quite the contrary, I am quite as preoccupied with sexual thoughts as I've tended to be -- um, yeah, pretty much my whole life. This is to say, I think about sex constantly. Which, to clarify even further, is to say that at least once a day (and most days I'm sure quite more than that) it occurs to me how very loverly it would be to find myself deep in the -- um, embrace -- of some fetching young lass. So wherefore the celibacy then, you might ask? Well, I'm glad that you might.

Y'see, just because I've a natural drive for sex doesn't mean at all that I've ever necessarily gone about expressing or exploring that drive in any natural or healthy way. Y'see, it has occurred to me that I've come of age in a society that, as a whole, is really quite screwed up about sex. I believe I did mention when I originally declared celibacy how I am bothered at the almost universal connection sex seems to have with guilt. (Funny joke I saw Tina Fey tell on SNL's Weekend Update last week: "A recent survey revealed that over seventy percent of women in America say that they are ashamed of their genitals... And from what I've seen, they should be.") I do think that having removed my sex drive from any possibility of leading to sexual activity has made me more thoughtful on the whole matter. And why not, I'll go ahead and share some of my thoughts, here.

For one thing, I think that many of the problems come from the horribly confused messages society as a whole tends to send to its children. Because clearly, without anyone ever even telling us so, each of us will at some point realize that there are certain parts of us that, massaged or whatever in a particular way, seem to reward us with decidely pleasant if peculiar sensations. And pretty much invariably, we will all come to be told that these certain parts are, in so many words, our "naughty bits". Right there we have a pretty good mind-screw. "You mean some parts of me are just bad ... just 'cause?" Ah, but it gets worse young one. Not only should you be ashamed (or at least quite defensively private) about certain parts of your anatomy, but you will find that allowing any one else to touch those bits of you (or your touching anyone else's) pretty much approximates the highest conceivable sin of your young life. Why, it's downright horrific.

Now y'see, from my memory of my own childhood, this strange sort of consideration did seem, well, strange to me, but I suppose seeing as how I had no hormone-driven urgency on the matter it really wasn't a big deal. But, as we all know, that blissfully non-hormone-soaked brain only stays with any of us for so long. At some point, when clearly we and those around us are going through some fairly significant changes, what might have been a passing curiosity can quite easily become an all-consuming obsession. But here's where society will screw with you once again. Every cell in your body seems to be screaming that you absolutely must find yourself frolicking alone in nakedness with the object of your newfound lust? Well shove all that noise down into the cellar youngster, 'cause till you've got a magic number of years under your belt any such indulgences are morally, socially, and legally verboten. I don't know about you guys, but where I grew up there was hardly a social character more invariably the target of both pity and scorn than a young girl who was definitely known to have put out. And sure, there tends to be that double standard as far as girls and boys go ... but, seeing as you could hardly claim the defense of love and such as the girls are vilified, there must clearly be some aspect of at least moral corruption to even a young boy who's known to be sexually active.

Because you're just supposed to wait. There's no hurry, you're young. In fact, most young people don't even enjoy their early sexual experiences. Trust me, it'll be better when you're older. And if you're in love. And yadda yadda yadda.

Can we be for real for just a second? I'm gonna put fairly even money on sex between two utterly inexperienced people as being awkward and at best passibly enjoyable regardless of the age at which they're doing it. Furthermore, while as a whole person sex with someone you love is ultimately more fulfilling on more levels, the simple truth is you can have absolutely mind-blowing sex with someone for whom, emotionally, you feel really very little. In fact, be it good or bad, fantastic sex doesn't even require that you like the other person. Hell, in some cases (and maybe this is where is starts being twisted?) it's fantastic because you can't stand each other.

Now, am I advocating that underage types should be given free reign and encouragement to experiment with impunity? Well, no. After all, sex in the end really is about more than just the physical act, and I do think there's some truth to the concept that a certain level of emotional maturity is necessary for any kind of healthy sexual interaction. Nonetheless, I am saying it's a guaranteed screwed-up sexual program to say that for 16-18 years (or more) choosing to indulge in what is clearly instinctual behavior is pretty much the ultimate evil, yet somehow magically after a certain birthday you'll just become mentally, physically, and emotionally "adult" enough to be just fine and dandy with it. I'm even saying that 16-18 years of screwing with the way you think of it probably leaves a lot of people pretty darned UN-fine for many, many years after their teens. (Reference the SNL joke above.)

I think in my previous post I'd somewhat ascribed the sex/guilt association as being a primarily female phenomenon. If so, allow me to retract that now. Y'see, guys are supposed to be able to just sleep with whoever and have it not matter. They might even act like it. But trust me, I've known as many a guy to feel "used" after a particular sexual tryst as I have women. More or less, I think that one depends on who (if anyone) was more emotionally vested in the experience. Or, maybe, just who enjoyed it more. I dunno. But, as the endless streams of penis-enlargement spam overflowing all of our mail-boxes can attest, clearly men have some pretty deep-seated sexual concerns of their own.

In fact, now that I think on it, I can right away give you a major insecurity in most men: If the woman he was with is horribly, utterly, completely unimpressed with absolutely any aspect of his sexual prowess. For some reason, being a sexual dynamo seems irrevocably tied to manliness in our society, and obviously this must cause problems for not a few guys -- after all, does not the very concept of "exceptional" guarantee that we all can't be?

Now, with all my rantin' and ravin' up to this point, I can see how one might quite easily think I'm just absolutely negative about sex as a whole. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm sure most of you would agree with me when I say that, really without too horribly difficult to attain circumstances, sex is absolutely the bombdiggity. Thus my admitted preoccupation with it. Y'see, much like the herb that grows naturally like, ahem, a weed in whatever place you put it, I personally believe that sex is one of the happy instances of life put here to offset all the strife that inevitably comes with being human. Really, nothing can quite wipe out your stress and lift your spirits like a nice intensive shagging. (Btw, Becky -- good to hear that you're on top o' the world these days, even if semen ain't the reason. Tho honestly -- allow me my perhaps biased suspicions that it still might be. ;) ) I believe George Micheal said it best: "Sex is natural, sex is good, not everybody does it, but everybody should..."

Yep, I really could end with that, but I won't. Nope, onward I'll plow. 'Cause y'see, while on a social and intellectual level I truly can understand and respect anyone choosing to be single ... for nearly all of us, at some point, the sheer hassle-filled complexity of it all makes that the only reasonable choice ... nonetheless, on a basic human level, I have to say that I think such a decision being final must inevitably be faulty. And I'll tell you why.

Most of us these days are quite familiar enough with the proven knowledge that infants absolutely need to be touched in order to thrive, right? If you're not, I'll just breifly refer to that experiment with the baby chimps or whatever they were ... in a nutshell, even if they're fed and such and every other detail of their care is provided for, if they are not soothed and cuddled and, in a word mothered, these poor infant chimps will be listless and frail and sick, and perhaps ultimately even die. Along the same lines, sociological evidence shows us that human infants who are not held and comforted and such develop much more slowly than normal babies, and tend to have developmental problems follow them throughout the rest of their young lives.

So, does the need for physical contact and affection end in infancy? As far as I know, that question has not been quite as conclusively answered, but once again sociological evidence does seem to suggest greater emotional stability, a higher rate of development and achievement, and a better ability to relate to others in those families where physical affection is the norm. Not saying, of course, that you're just absolutely screwed if your mom and dad never hugged you very much. But really, statistics do tend to point at something.

So stick with me here -- while we may have these highly evolved minds and all, and this might inevitably lead to a quite complex societal structure which also complicates the rules for touching and such, we are nonetheless physical creatures and there is undeniably some facet of us that needs physical contact with other creatures. Now, as we human creatures mature from childhood to adulthood, clearly for the vast majority some basic biological drive towards sexual contact develops. How difficult is it then, to make the simple jump from our needing familial love expressed as physical affection to needing sexual love expressed in the same vein? See, I think the problem is that, in our development of society, we have mistakenly chalked up the sexual drive to being ultimately about mating, spreading about your genes and such. I mean certainly, we really have to acknowledge that that must be some of it ... thus, most likely, all the taboo attributed to teenaged sex, because no one wants "babies having babies" as it were.

Now, while the realities of conception must clearly be acknowledged, how many of us can truly buy that our desire for sexual contact is really a masked desire for children? I mean, you might or might not want to have children. But personally, I don't buy the idea that we're sexually attracted to those who would produce healthy offspring for one second. You might be able to use that argument to suggest why society as a whole finds certain features "attractive" and others not, but I think we all know that what is generally perceived as attractive has at best a peripheral relation to what we personally find particularly lust-worthy. For instance, really quite often we're attracted to people we could say in an instant we would absolutely not want to raise children with. How does that support the theory of trying to produce healthy offspring? (Can't be just making the kid, right? The kid has to live to reproduce itself, or from a genetic standpoint it doesn't matter.)

Hm, forgive me if I tangent a bit here, but this brings to mind something else that's been bouncing around in my head. Perhaps some of you ladies out there could help me out on this one. I've noticed this thing where a girl can say that she's not attractive, and for some reason she has no problem whatsoever maintaining this opinion when one or even many boys are clearly driven to considerable distraction by them. To quote (or, more likely, mis-quote): "No one will find me attractive unless he has bad taste." WTF is that, I ask you?

Now, a woman is allowed to find a short, pudgy, balding guy attractive is she just happens to ... in the very least, the guy will accept it if she says she's into him. Yet I've heard the above sentiment paraphrased by many a girl. In fact, and here's the part where it gets really weird, I've known some girls who actually seem to think less of a guy who seems to make a beeline for her as opposed to some other girl she apparently thinks more worthy. For instance, give me rather nerdy, bookish, withdrawn-looking girl with glasses and a decidely non-hip fashion sense -- no kidding, for whatever reason these will often be girls I want to approach out of the blue on the street. And why don't I? Because, even if I'm really thinking it, if I go up to her and say, "Hi, I'm sorry, I just had to come talk to you because you're absolutely beautiful..." she's almost absolutely guaranteed to think I'm just bullshitting her. Or, perhaps more likely, that there's just something wrong with me.

Y'ever think, just maybe ladies, that we all really don't necessarily want the Playboy models? Sure, pretty is pretty. But pretty isn't necessarily what gets the ol' heart a'thumpin'. (Btw, my own guess as far as my attraction to that type of girl is that, typically, these will be really interesting people once they're actually able to be comfortable around you ... but even so, that's only a guess. Besides, it really isn't that I think, "Hey, she looks really interesting." For real, for whatever reason, I'll often think a girl who clearly thought it pointless to try and look "nice" is absolutely gorgeous. Mebbe I'm just weird. Um. Probably, now that I think on it.)

So, where was I? Oh yes -- as physical creatures we need physical contact to thrive. And I think that we need not only simple physical affection such as hugs and the like, but as physically mature creatures we need to connect sexually. To be honest, I've come to feel that there is a degree or type of communication (or, if you prefer, communion) that takes place when sex is actually done as it should. That is, a type of communication that cannot be replaced or even approximated in any other way. Certainly, solo-sex has its merits and undoubtedly even its own unique utility. But it isn't interaction with another. Likewise, no matter how deep, emotional, or open our verbal interaction, I don't think that can replace it either.

To refer once again to the infant/mothering thing, the simple fact is that keeping a baby warm, dry, and fed is obviously necessary, but essentially it just aint enough. A baby needs to be held and cooed at and such. Along those same lines, y'know that period in sexual interaction often referred to as "afterglow"? I mean, it may in fact be more like "taking-a-break-glow", but nonetheless I think there's something particularly nurturing about it. Just as there is about foreplay, and actually just revelling in one another's bodies. And, if you're doing it correctly, actual intercourse is a whole lot more than just an in-and-out thing.

Hey, I'm tellin' I'm way wise beyond my years, and I'm not even that young anymore. Assigning sex in such a way that it's vaguely shameful is something that has done a disservice to each and every member of society. I argue that we need sex as certainly as we need food, air, water or sleep. And thus, I will claim that you can never be completely happy unless sexual happiness is included somewhere in there.

And with that, I'll end mine. Myself, I'll stay celibate, but for the rest of yez -- if you're not gettin' any presently, I strongly suggest you do something about it.

Now you take care, kids.