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...what if we said, for example...that the value of sexuality itself is to demean the seriousness of efforts to redeem it? (emphasis in original)-Is the Rectum a Grave? Leo Balsani (1987)
The first sentence is the most famous sentence Prof. Balsani ever wrote. I like it because I don't like sex. But Balsani did not survey me, nor did I call him up and tell him, and apparently no body of people has ever been surveyed on that question, which I agree with Balsani is far different than the other, or with presumptive questions like "How many times do you have sex a month?" Neither does Balsani, to my grievous aggravation, attempt to inform his "rather irresponsibly announced findings of our nonexistent poll" with reasonable anecdote, like "Aristotle, how goes it in old age?", by Plato. "It goes well. My mind, body and soul are at last freed from the voracious beast of sexual desire."; like, doesn't the alternative survey question that Balsani assumes is asked or the one that I know is asked nonetheless shine some light where the sun don't shine? (Balsani's question is alarming; it sounds like the question one would ask sex offenders.) More on those questions next. To finish this introductory paragraph Balsani does not attempt to give flesh to his speculative statement, instead he forces the reader to pick his way through the rectum's muck to try to find the golden nugget, which after twenty-eight pages on gay anal sex at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in America is not there.
"Need": A bodily need, like the need to eliminate waste from the body three times a day? Like the need to eat three times a day? Or does Balsani use "need" more like "impulse"? (I doubt that “Do you often feel the need to have sex?” is commonly asked of Americans.) Sex is not a "need" in either of those senses of the word. I would have been dead about five years if sex was a need like food. I have had intense sexual desire but never so strong as an "impulse" that I became a rapist.
Where would Balsani get any mass anecdotal support for his lead statement? Not in the gay community of the late 20th century, that's for damn sure! Not in the highly popular dating websites like Tinder and that other o...Ashley Madison--in the early 21st century! (I know a man who has been on Tinder for a few years and has had sex with 400 to 500 women. My impression is he likes sex.) Those are the freaks? Perhaps so. Survey research shows that the average number of sexual partners is 4-8, and that's over a lifetime. Perhaps so but that's a lot of freaks.
Now this is not direct evidence but shining-deflected-light-indirect-evidence: Porn. "Rule 34". Porn is freaking ubiquitous in America. I know I know I know porn is for "self-fulfillment," is even considered destructive of actual sexual relationships. Still, doesn't the ubiquity and popularity of pornography "tend to show" that a TON of people "like sex," at least the idea of having sex? It do and if you disagree then we have no common ground.
Academia: How. Many. Fucking. Professors. are there whose focus is on sex? My. Goodness. Gracious."Ooh, my only interest in the subject is from the academic perspective. I am a scholar." Oh, so you don't like sex then, it's just your job? You don't have sex? Just talk with and write about those who do? Why'd you choose the sex field, classes in computer software design filled? My God X's and Y's, sex is ONE FACET of human existence. Whether it's Tinder stats or the 4-8 stat PEOPLE DO OTHER SHIT! How frequently do people have sex? (once a week) There are 52 of those in a year. How long does their weekly sexual exercise take? I don't know, half an hour? So let's say an hour to make the math easier for me. There are 168 hours in a week, 8,760 hours in a year. You're going to devote your LIFE to the study of something that occurs one hour of those 168? What about the other 167?! "Ooh, I'm just interested in that one hour. And I like to watch."
With all of these felled trees and used gigabytes devoted to the subject how many are on the post-sexual? The never-sexual? The asexual? There are some of those too! By contrast with the sexual the undersigned spends 168 hours a week not having sex. Which brings us back, as all learned essays should but which Professor Balsani's essay did not, to the beginning. Why do I, why would some, not like sex? I refer you to the Platonic Dialogues but I have already done that. It is a great load off, really. I did not like, not a'tall, getting distracted at work with a chance glimpse of a comely lass. One time that happened as I walked down the hallway on the way to my secretary's desk and it took me about 15 minutes to get my mind back on my work. Did. Not. Like. That.
Now Balsani emphasized this passage from The Rectum: the value of sexuality itself is to demean the seriousness of efforts to redeem it? I confess I am not sure that I understand that. To me it meant that the "money shot" is not really worth the effort. If so, that's how I feel (If not, that's how I feel). I mean, I have to take a bath, rid up my apartment, get dressed, clean out my car, drive to pick the girl up, spend money at a restaurant, drive back to my place, take all my clothes off--that's a lot of time, effort and money FOR ME to do once a week for one hour. And that's what I did when I was a young buck who got distracted by a colleague walking down the fucking hallway. Nowadays I gather you can have pussy delivery, but not in my (sexual) time. All that for an orgasm? I could always do that myself and save the rest.
"You like that big dick in your pussy!" "Oh! Oh! Oh!" "Okay, now this position. Now this one." Sex is Olympic gymnastics ("Let's see if he can nail his landing") or sumo wrestling, a seemingly violent assault, the psychic trauma of accidentally viewing which is imprinted on children's minds forever. It is exercise. I got sweaty. Now, I gotta take another goddamned shower. Sometimes it made my back hurt. Tired. "Night." Or worse, now I gotta drive her back home when I'm tired, probably with .08+ in my blood and shouldn't be driving at all. So now I'm risking arrest for DUI and the other 8,769 hours of my life-year.
All of that for the 15 sec orgasm, an uncontrollable, involuntary spasm which you cannot stop once your eyes roll back in your head. Do you like the feeling of involuntary, uncontrollable bodily action, like say vomiting? Vomiting on somebody you don't really know (or somebody you do, like your wife?)? Does the woman like being the toilet you barf into? I never liked throwing up, I know, I'm such a fuddy-duddy, and I didn't like my penis giving me seizures. I didn't like expending the extra pint of perspiration to discharge the spoonful of semen. So I didn't! The vast majority of the times I fucked I didn't cum. I faked it. I went through the--thoroughly enjoyable!--motions of sex, but usually stopped short. "Was it good for you, too?" Even in my sexually active years, increasingly the honest answer was, no, it was not good for me, too. The value of sex was demeaned by the effort. And like all exercise it's sort of repetitive. The physics is pretty standardized. B-o-r-i-n-g. I would watch the clock on the bedroom nightstand. Once I tried talking to a girl in the middle of sex, e.g. "I read again the Smallweed family chapter in Bleak House. Hilarious!” She got pissed.
If people only had sex for pleasure there would be very little sex taking place. We do it because, for many reasons, we must: to have a child, either man or woman; the motherly instinct; wifely duty; manly duty; third date rule--which I gather has been obsoleted by Tinder, et al; to prove to ourselves we’ve still "got it"; to get another notch on our belts; love. Hate that one. "What does Love got to do with it?" Dating myself, but seriously. Love your wife? Love those once-weekly writhe sessions? Why don't you do it more often then?
We must eat every day whether we like it or not or we starve to death. We must evacuate our bowels once a day or we die of poisoning. Eating can be pleasurable, shitting is underrated as a satisfying bodily function, but we have to do both of them, if we take pleasure in either all the better, but our bodies do not have to have sex or we will die, okay? Sex is not a bodily need as eating and eliminating bodily waste are. People go their entire lives not having, or having very little, sex, so it is also not that "can't-miss" pleasurable. The sexual climax is intensely pleasurable for all human beings but it is a frisson not a way of life and it comes with costs: of potential long-term disease, (unwanted) pregnancy among heterosexuals; it comes at the cost of time, effort, often vigorous; it usually involves monetary expenditure; it comes at the cost of physical discomfort and frequently of pain for the woman (or gay receiver); it comes at the cost of energy depletion; it is distraction from other activities of which we human beings are uniquely capable.
Most people, most of the time, don’t like sex. I believe that.
