‘Scene’

subgirlygirl:

My sex is not a ‘scene,’ there’s no beginning and no end. It starts when we meet and the glint in your eyes and the hitch in my breath tell me This here, this is something, and we live our lives, our families and our work, and from time to time each other until there’s more and more and then we’re one, and that glint and hitch collide in pain, in joy, in us. There’s no set, no stage, no quieting of a crowd, only you inspiring and me obeying, the two of us being. Not a ‘scene,’ but a life.

Nicely said!

In one of my college-level sex-ed textbooks there’s an infographic showing the results of a very large survey of “what counts as ‘sex.’”

The results were predictably all over the map.  One thing that surprised me were how many people felt that penis-in-vagina (PIV for short) intercourse didn’t “count” as sex.  There were one or two who didn’t even agree that PIV to orgasm “counted!”  

This wasn’t too long after both President Bill Clinton and his bitter opponent Speaker Newt Gingrich had advised other public figures (and private individuals) that blowjobs “don’t count as sex.”

🙄  

I’d always had a much more expansive definition of “sex” than “PIV intercourse” anyway, and had always been impatient with the distinction between “foreplay” and “sex.”  But after taking in the results of that survey I took it waaaaay the other direction.

To where @subgirlygirl puts it: “Sex” begins when each of you starts thinking of the other in non-platonic terms.  Yeah, by this definition, many people never end up having any other kind of “sex.”  But since a lot of them do, and since people can be fucking delusional about the other end of the continuum, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

Subgirlygirl’s point of view is also awesome because both “foreplay” and “aftercare” kind of melt away into… you know… both sex and care!  (And shush, even if it’s fly-by-night Tinder hookups there’s still enough care involved to get dressed or at least answer the door when your partner knocks.  It might not be much but it ain’t nothing.  And it still fits the “you both want to have sex together” threshold.)  

Final note: if I want to have sex with you but you don’t with me then it can be sweet or gross, flattering or stalking, but if we’re not both into it we’re categorically not “having sex.”  Don’t be a nuisance about it.  Oh, and if it doesn’t work out?  Then you’ve only had sex – it’s not “sex” again unless and until you’re both interested again.  Just wanted to make that clear.

But if you are both interested?  Then it’s lovely to know that “sex” begins after orgasms, after you say good night, after the door closes and you both lean against it going “woohoo!” too.

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