public sex: what's all the fuss?

'Oh, and for those of you who want to discuss your sex life on your blog: don't, it can only come back to bite you, and you gain nothing in doing so. If you must include some sex, feel free to steal this paragraph:

And then I [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] with my [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] and couldn't feel [censored] [censored] [censored] tuna salad.'

Those who occasionally stop by here know that, occasionally, I mention the fact that I, in fact, do have sex. Not always with the same person but the dry spells have been so far in between, the matter is pretty moot. (Or 'moo' as Joey would say.) So it's no wonder that I heartily disagree with the advice from Nathan at WebPronews.com (who can't seem to spell 'embarrassment' correctly.)

The nanny story from last week was pretty horrific; I don't think I can recall reading anything quite so self-righteous, self-indulgent and faux-thoughtful than Olen's piece about why she fired her nanny. I found her wide-eyed dismay in the face of her nanny's brief mentions of sex bourgeois (not 'seeming bourgeois' as Olen says in her essay but actually bourgeois). Olen can't be much older than I am and so she's surprised when a healthy woman in her mid-twenties has sex? She's shocked when a young woman mentions (again, briefly) that she's attracted to both men and women? Sweetie, please. I think the words you're actually looking for here are titillated and aroused.

Most of the response has been supportive of the nanny, who's off to grad school for her lit degree where she will undoubtedly encounter the same kind of 19th century squeamishness and prudery (there is nothing more hetero-coersively normative than graduate school), but always with a bit of avuncular advice thrown in: tut, tut, you should have known better than to write about your sex life.

Really? Why? How should women write and talk about sex? Where is the appropriate place to write about sex?

We're free to rant on about politics - just as long as it's not about sex. We're free to spew forth about religion - but, hey, nix the sex. We could rail about pop culture, current events, our latest recipes and even our job (whoops, maybe not that) but never ever about (shh) sex. Is it too embarrassing? To whom? The sexer or the person who reads about the sex? Who blushes when you read that the last time me and a certain someone got naked we experienced a total prophylactic malfunction and a condom got stuck inside my girly parts and it took me FOREVER to remove it, contorted in a funky yoga position in the bathroom while the boy knocked hesitantly on the door offering help and I, through gritted teeth, told him to fuck off?

Something happens when you write in/for the public. I daresay the same thing happens when you go onstage. A transformation takes place. The truth becomes Story. The truth becomes a narrative, one chunk of story set in place next to other chunks of narrative. My Prophylactic Malfunction becomes part of the dubious collection of stories about misplaced rubbers, emergency room disasters, broken off cucumbers and other such tales of modern sex. [This is not to say that feelings (especially for those intimately involved) should not be watched over; but that is an ethical issue with which all writers who write memoir or creative non-fiction struggle.]

So why the squeamishness? Some whisper that sex should not be spoken of in public, but I think that if you hang out with the average office worker on a Wednesday evening at a bar in the Loop, near the trading houses, you'll hear just about the same thing. Or during a girls' night over wine. No one's throwing up their handkerchiefs about that. In other words, it's already floating in our public discourse. Some whisper that it's indecent but I think that's a matter of taste and degree - there's a difference between writing like Washingtonienne and writing that you have sex, like it, and look forward to having it again soon.

Enough with the titters about sex. Enough with the horrified gasps that someone, especially a woman, writes about her sex life. Enough with the bullshit patriarchal words of advice to women about protecting ourselves when we mention our sexuality. Sex isn't a crime. It's not a shame.