Screeds
Monday, September 20, 2004
A Thorough Wallow
July 24, 2004
Apologies for the lack of a column yesterday. I was going to write a follow-up to Anarchism that focused on whether rights, the most fervidly disputed abstraction of all time, are real or notional. Honestly, I was going to do just that, in my best and most involute style. You would have been dazzled. You would have proclaimed me the supreme genius of all the ages. You would have begged me to accept the Throne of the World. (I would reluctantly have declined, as my agenda is already rather full and my large staff of secretaries and publicists can hardly keep all my appointments straight already.)
But I found that I couldn't, because of my sex life.
I had sex of various kinds a total of 537 times last week. That's right, one for every Florida margin vote. I had normal sex, oral sex, anal sex, nasal sex, navel sex, and sex through the Eustachian tubes. The Kama Sutra was no challenge; I was through all of those positions by Wednesday noon. I had to buy a stack of back issues of Penthouse from a fourteen-year-old kid for additional ideas. My every waking moment was devoted to sex...and I can't help but suspect that a few of my partners had their way with me while I slept.
I had sex with a huge assortment of human beings, including various marquee-level celebrities, sports figures, Nobel Prize winners, and persons in high office. (Oops, almost forgot: Anna Nicole, thank you for a lovely evening, and for being so gracious toward all the other girls.) Wonkette and The Washingtonienne ain't got nothin' on me. I had sex with persons so sensitively placed that the CIA has officially denied their involvement.
Don't ask about the non-human partners. Hey, you! Put down my canteloupe!
I had sex in every setting you can imagine: hotels, restaurants, cathedrals, commercial airliners, public parks, and once right on the set of The Hollywood Squares, during a live broadcast. (There's no whoopie in Whoopi, by the way, so don't bother with her.) I wanted to have sex on the Space Shuttle, but NASA was afraid my legendary ardor might destabilize the more sensitive onboard instruments. They can't afford any more in-flight explosions. I'm looking into the Lincoln Bedroom as we speak. As loony as she obviously was, Mary Todd had to have a little something extra to keep Honest Abe faithful for all those years. And we know he was faithful. What else would explain the long face? Do you have any idea how it can stress you out to know you're sleeping next to a crazy woman?
I and my many sex partners employed every sex device you can imagine, and quite a few that you can't. I'm confident about that last because I, for thirty years a writer of fantasy and science fiction, can invent my own words for such things, secure in the knowledge that you would be unable to dispute their existence.
Every sex act challenged Henry Miller's most extreme fantasies. My partners flushed, moaned, trembled, throbbed, convulsed, spasmed, and screamed out my name, complete with all my titles both academic and dynastic, in thirty-seven different languages. One of them recited the complete Elder Edda, including J. R. R. Tolkien's annotations, at the moment of climax. On Tuesday, seismographs in Pomona went briefly off the scale, during my three-way with Pamela Anderson and Britney Spears.
The press was stunned. The government was shaken. (National Bureau of Standards officials will be arriving later to, ah, calibrate my equipment. They'll be bringing a representative from Guinness.) The world of entertainment is on its ear. I've been asked for my autobiography by Simon & Schuster, offered a recording contract by Arista, and proposed for the starring role in five miniseries. Westar has offered me my own satellite, if only I'll agree to "perform live." Motley Crue wants to know if I'm anywhere near as good with a musical organ.
The North Koreans have threatened to nuke Long Island if I don't stop seducing their women. The Red Chinese have offered me a seat on the Politburo if I'll agree to do something to warm theirs up. France has proffered its unconditional surrender, owing to the obviously unstoppable power of my "weapon of mass destruction."
So, as you can see, it's been a busy week.
What's all this about, I hear you ask? Aside from the fun of it, that is. It's really quite simple. I can capture it in two words: Enough already!
Sex is wonderful. We all know it by now. We could hardly help knowing it, the way the entire world blasts us with the urgency of it morning, noon, and night. But sex ought to be a private matter, conducted in private and with a high degree of discretion. This is not the treatment sex receives today.
I'm resigned to the embrace of terminal lubricity by television, broadcast and cable both. TV programmers are driven by the desires of sponsors for maximum viewership. That's made them bottom-fishers, who seek to hook the lowest common denominator, which, like hydrogen and stupidity, is both very low and quite common. But the Web should have at least a few pockets where we're required to comport ourselves like ladies and gentlemen.
The standard for public behavior isn't nearly as high as it was fifty years ago. Overall, I find it hard to be harsh about most aspects of that trend. But as regards sex, some of the changes are definitely for the worse. While rules about sexual behavior in the workplace grow ever more restrictive, such that a man can be fired merely for calling a female colleague "dear," the "rules," if we can call them that, of completely public spaces don't appear to forbid anything at all.
We can still manage to be discreet, if we put our minds to it. I maintain that this would not be a loss, but a gain. A little mystery adds spice to any story. Didn't anyone ever tell you?
To those members of the Internet Commentariat who obsess over sex and sexual orientation: SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT IT! This is especially addressed to all the in-your-face homosexuals. One Andrew Sullivan is all the world needs, if not 5% more. I don't want to know which genders, species, positions, settings, and accoutrements you prefer for your playtime activities. You'll find that a great many persons will respect you far more if you keep such things to yourself, even if they know or strongly suspect your divergent tastes.
Thus endeth what has locally come to be called a "Frant." Forgive me, please, but this one has been building up for a long time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to jump the C.S.O.
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