I wrote the following a couple of years ago: “Sex positive’ sounds a little too nice…a little too much like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Tame and tidy, not skanky enough.
“Because the best heteronormative sex is usually untidy and semi-objectionable in some way — rude, hungry, raw, animalistic, runting, howling, a tad pervy.”
There’s an old Woody Allen line (probably from Annie Hall or Manhattan) that answers a question about whether sex is dirty or not. Reply: “It is if you’re doing it right.”
In the mid ’80s I was “seeing” a pretty British woman in her early 30s. She had apparently come from a conservative family, or had gotten the idea from her mother that when it came to sexual congress and the “yes or no” moment…Christian momma told her that behaving in a cautious or conservative or even prudish manner was the only way to go.
But I’m telling you that one of the hottest things I’ve ever heard a woman say at the moment of peak surrender came out of this lovely lady — “oh, God, I love it!”
It wasn’t so much the “I love it” (which was fine) as the “oh, God” part that got me. What this meant, I determined, was that deep down she was apologizing to God the Father for enjoying being harpooned. “Oh, God” meant “dear Lord, I’ve tried so hard to be a more virtuous woman and here I am failing again…I can’t help myself…send me to a convent for I have no self-control!”