Talking about Sex

Bring up the subject of sex?

This isn't a question, it's a riddle. It is a social riddle posed by many single people these days. As with other riddles, I always
wonder what it really means. Is this question coming from someone who is trying to think up a more seductive line? Is it a
rhetorical question to start a dialogue on gender relations? Or am I dealing with someone who, through no fault of their own, has had inadequate exposure to radio, television, books, and movies?

The question itself has a kind of flat and heavy finality to it. Bringing up the subject of sex . . . like throwing a big dead
fish down on the kitchen table (Thump! There!) we can't avoid deciding whether to cook it fast or get rid of it. Apparently, a
lot of people are trying to figure out how to slap that fish down in front of each other.

Good old Yankee ingenuity is clearly at work with some people when they bring sex into a conversation.

A certain dignified gentleman I know brings it up by casually mentioning his HIV negative status: he mentions it in his
personal ads. Yes. He mentions it in his phone conversations. The first call. He mentions it over the first coffee date. And on
every subsequent date after that, if he has any. What do you think he is trying to convey?

One stupefyingly attractive women is more fashionably flamboyant: at some point in the course of an evening she manages to show off her elegant condom carry-all, hand-crafted in an exotic, tie-dyed silk, with silken drawstrings and tassels.

She is always able to stimulate some discussion in this way. And she is making something perfectly clear.

And of course, many people have developed a personal version of that romantic classic: Say, let's talk about you and me and your last blood test, baby.

Bringing up sex indirectly by bringing up disease is certainly one way to make a point. But which point? The health test is
healthy but doesn't exactly convey desire. And to tell the truth, this approach doesn't provide the best answer to the original
question.

Again, I say that the question cited above is a real puzzle, because while it points to sex it is really about something else.
When someone asks how they can bring up the subject of sex, they don't really mean that. No, no, no. Millions of years have shown us that we don't have to bring sex up. It comes up on its own. It . . arises. It is bigger than our conversations. And by the time it has arisen, there are other critical issues to deal with.

The riddle of how to bring up sex is really about two sexually related issues, intimacy and safety, which sometimes seem
diametrically opposed.

Domesticated by talk shows, therapy, movies and live experience, many of us have reached the point where physical and emotional intimacy in general is recognized as essential to The Good Life. The same influences have shown us that physical intimacy can be health-life threatening. Intimacy and safety, these are the hot coals no one wants to toss back and forth very much. It is not sex, but the issues of intimacy and safety that have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the conversation.

The riddle could be restated more honest in this way: When sex comes up, how can I talk about the issue of protection without offending my potential partner? Or it could be expressed in a more down-to-earth way: How can I bring up safety without ruining my chances for sex?" Now it has become that good old-fashioned brain-buster of how to have your cake and eat it too. And in this case it is a possibility. Men and women are logistically capable of arranging relatively safe physical intimacy. So what's the problem?

The real issue is not how to bring up sex, but how to have it while avoiding open communication. In other words: How can I get close enough to someone to have sex without having to talk to them about intimate matters? Yep, a lot of people really want to know how they can be gratified sexually, have fun, stay healthy, and avoid intimate discussions. That is the dilemma that bugs so many contemporary, up-to-date, free-willed, single men and women now.

As a former guerrilla terrorist in the sexual revolution of an earlier decade, I hardly count myself a prude. But I know enough
to recognize that the-times-they-are-a-changin'.

For a lot of reasons, we recognize the need for more genuine intimacy in our lives and and we have to be more
survival-conscious on behalf of health issues. Caution cannot be thrown winds, darn it. Men and women are juggling these two things like flaming swords. It seems we don't know how to integrate them into our lives.

But at the risk of sounding like the good mental hygienist I am, I would like to offer one possibility: If it is too soon to talk
about something, it is too soon to do it. This is not a moralistic position. It is the basic common sense many of us cast
overboard in the Sixties and Seventies. We now know that it is not possible to reach a safe and reliable intimacy with someone while hiding out. Without gradual and appropriate self-disclosures on both sides, sex will surely come up, but
intimacy will not.

It is called "getting to know someone". Once that is accomplished you can talk about anything and that awkward question at the beginning of the page will disappear.