Sexclamations

By KJ Adler

When I was a little girl and just beginning to skim the surface of sex-ed and all of the baggage that came with it, there was one concept that I couldn’t understand: adultry.
All of my childhood consisted of the beautiful fantasies Disney movies managed to weave into marriage, magic and happily ever after. So naturally I was in complete shock when I found out that men and women, even with wedding rings fit snugly upon their fingers, could possibly commit an act of adultery. I refused to believe that this was allowed in the world and even proclaimed that people who do that should go to jail.
Now with time and experience slowly jading me out of the whimsies of my VHS tapes, I certainly understand, although don’t really support, why cheating can happen. But even today it still bothers me that people don’t orgasm simultaneously and have completely different views on what sex means.
I consider myself a pretty open-minded individual. Even if I don’t want to be a part of it, I certainly don’t have the time or dedication to stop you from going off and doing your dirty little deeds.
And yet, when a now ex-boyfriend attempted to tell me what sex and love meant to him, it took more than a few sips of wine to keep an understanding smile on my face.
He told me that he thought of sex as just another way of getting to know someone, that it could most certainly be casual and that jealousy was just a sign of that particular person’s insecurity. Sex is just fun, a physical way of communicating and emotions do not have to extend beyond friendship.
No matter how many times he tried to phrase it, I was still shaking my head in confusion.
I’m not saying that every time sex happens, wedding bells should be the end result. But I do think that you should be ready for changes afterwards.
People get emotional. It’s as simple as that. You have crossed the final frontier with a casual friend and now you know something about them that they aren’t willing to share with just anybody.
And don’t get this confused with one night stands or with fornication (forn) buddies. They are in their own special categories. I’m talking about a friend who decides that you and he/she have reached a comfortable enough stance in the relationship to communicate by physical means and act unfazed the next day.
How is that possible without a relationship or a forn buddy blossoming in the process? Am I missing some sort of key to the puzzle?
I decided to write off his views as just that, his own views. Then I came to learn that there are others like him who believe that the physical can be separated from the emotional. By some magical process there can be two friends who treat sex like shopping together or watching TV—a casual event that doesn’t need to be gossiped about the next day.
In theory, I think it could work. The potential of sexual tension would be eliminated, there would be satisfaction on both sides, and you would be able to tip off any spouses of the future on what that person likes in particular.
But the trade-off would be that we would all have to become robots. I just can’t see any way that emotions can be wiped off, even if they are denied in public. With emotions comes drama, with drama comes scarred friendships.
That is way too much trouble for this girl. So while the experiment sounds interesting, I think I will just stay at home and fantasize about potential sex partners. They’re much easier to get rid of. All I have to do is open a text book or call my mother and poof, they’re out the door.