1 post tagged “sex”
Did any of you grow up in the era of the Rice Purity Test? I realize that there are other purity tests and can imagine that this particular bit of high school social hazing may have been in vogue long before or after the period I am thinking of. However, I am referencing the early nineties when students would take the test at parties or surreptitiously in the back of classrooms (oooooh!) and an individual's score would be reported quickly (though who knows how accurately) up the gossip chain and become the immediate topic of heated lunchtime debate.
As with everything even remotely sexual in our society low scores (meaning the subject had performed --answered yes to-- most of the items on the test) were both awe-inspiring and scandalous.
Who has that much free time?
How did they get alone to do it?
Isn't that disgusting? I think that's disgusting
Oh my gosh! She's such a slut! --No she's not. Shut up! --No, you shut up!
And as with anything even remotely controversial in this society there were the predictable opinion-factions: the bandwagon, the antithesists, the intellectualizers and, at least in my home town, those who find x offensive or invalid not for any factual fault or flaw but because it is not equal or inclusive enough. That's right, according to that last group the Rice Purity Test (RPT) may indeed be an excellent measure of the purity (whatever the hell that is) of any individual but we will never know because the questions seem too slanted towards heterosexuals.
I woke up this morning thinking about the RPT and with some concern that I might score rather low. I took from this that I may have trespassed against my own morality which has led me to wonder why?, how? and what to do about that.
My sex-life is, if I am being generous, episodic. My imagination of my potential sex-life on the other hand is rigorous, regular and ribald. I fantasize floridly and I have enjoyed (more than I think my sex should admit) some friendly groping (by known parties) that seems to have blossomed with the spring weather. I don't think that any of these individual, miniscule improprieties make me a bad person or even sex obsessed. The human body is a magnificent object and the desires to touch and be touched are part of all our instincts, yet at some point yesterday I crossed the line. I think it was the phone call with a potential blind date who, for all his good qualities, I was only wondering if he would have certain...talents and when I could justify going to bed with him. And as I reflect here I am coming to understand that it's not my craving for sex that disturbs me --to each their appetites, live and let live-- it's the fact that I was operating (if only mentally) with no regard for another person's humanity and disrespecting their identity as a whole being. And perhaps, more importantly, it seems like my impulses could lead me to make a bad decision (or several). I don't like that latter part one bit. But I am strangely relieved that this isn't about some moral high ground.
Cheers!
Oh and please go pleasure someone on my behalf would you (yes, someone includes yourself).
