I freak out when my married friends talk about their sex lives. Maybe it’s because I have too many married friends who are forthright about their lack of sex. So, in my steadfast commitment to no commitment, I’ve come to associate marriage with apathy-induced abstinence. Hearing otherwise challenges my Relationships blow! conviction.
I had cocktails recently with a girlfriend who, apropos of nothing, said, Things are still hot with my husband — I make him have sex in public, and as my In public? drove her to divulge details, I hoped the restaurant’s music would drown her out. She proceeded. Like in an elevator.
She starts talking positions; I start thinking logistics. When you push the stop button, does that automatically trigger the call button? How much time before maintenance shows up? Is maintenance a hot guy in a hard hat who pulls the door open with Need some help?
I kept quiet. She went on.
She told me her husband’s into it (duh). I don’t blame him (duh). The prospect of getting caught doing something you shouldn’t do, sexual or not, is always intriguing. See any rich, shoplifting celebrity. See those of us who learned, in Sunday School sex ed, that anything besides missionary was unnatural, who now insist on reverse cowgirl, despite the inherent exhaustion, because we were taught it was wrong and, thus, it’s badass.
My friend really tripped me up when she said she only wants to have sex with her husband if there’s a risk of someone seeing them.
Exhibitionism? Not that unusual. Voyeurism and occasionally wanting someone to voyeurize you? Not unusual. But only having sex under those circumstances seemed bizarre and unnecessarily exclusive.
As a nerd who thinks about sex as much she thinks about books, I had to get academic on this. I found an article titled “Crowd, Space, and the Politics of Resisting Subjectivity” by Andrea Zevnik, in a journal called Globalizations. The article says nothing about sex, but Zevnik talks about the power of a crowd as a specific embodiment of the power of coming together in a political space. No, I wouldn’t usually call two people a crowd; but it’s more than an individual. And sex is clearly political: power, control, submission.
Is my friend’s having sex in an elevator with her husband a kind of political act? She’s asserting the power of her sexuality and agency as a woman. And a hint of exhibitionism is a kind of power play, too. If you love a stage even just a little, you love attention. You love the legitimacy and reassurance that comes along with a captivated audience: Look at me. Yep, this is your jam. I’m cool. You wish you were me.
Back at the bar, I went ahead and asked my friend if they’ve ever filmed themselves. She was appalled. I said, Admit it. Porn’s fun. She said, Not when it’s you. I wondered why someone who gets off on the idea of other people watching her never wants to watch herself.
True: sometimes the logistics of you onscreen with your partner ain’t pretty. I told her missionary is a really great idea because you don’t really have to see yourself.
She said, But I still know I’m there.
Is an avoidance of seeing yourself while always seeking out the gaze of others political, too? You don’t want to see your own subjectivity, in a way, but want a stranger to objectify you.
That’s the nerd in me talking again. I called my friend later that night and told her, Yeah, you guys are still hot. Hopefully I’ll be that hot if I lose my mind and get married.
Maybe I should re-open the door to that possibility. Maybe I shouldn’t have walked around singing along to Aerosmith when I thought going down meant the lobby.
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2015.