Getting to Know You

3.10.07

Last week's New York Times magazine featured an article about sexual voyeurism on college campuses. Students posing in the nude, simulating sex and sharing erotica now seem as de rigeur as pledging fraternities. What interested me most about the report, though, was the statement that dating now includes meeting someone at a bar, then googling on one's blackberry the person you have just met to find out about them via Myspace or Face Place or some other social search engine. This is very strange to me. You are in the physical presence of someone to whom you feel some sort of attraction or interest (otherwise, why pull out your little PDA) and rather than inquire to the human you are with, you consult the web to find out whether they are a democrat or a green, prefer sushi or salami or have an arrest warrant out on them. Call me old-fashioned, but if I'm that intrigued by someone, I'll at least wait until I get home to look up their bio. The face to face is where we feel the chemistry and that you can never cull from the net.

I'm wondering if we have a generation of youth raised on chat-rooms, text message-ing,i-m-ing, blogging and 24 hour cellphone access who really have little inter-personal skills because they are so used to having a screen between them and the person they are communicating with. Another notice in the article was about how sex is so easily come by with all of our relaxed mores these days. Internet porn and self generated erotica often serve as video wall-paper at young people's parties so there would seem to be little mystery left to this aspect of coupling. Condoms are as easily accessible as shampoo and hook-ing up just another pastime.

So we have generation of horny young people who don't know how to navigate the nuances and vagaries of relationships and romance, yet who can jump into and out of bed with each other as easily as having a cup of coffee. Sex as sport or hobby. But the article also reported, and I have been reading for years now, that this casual attitude towards the whole "friends with benefits" movement leaves everyone, girls especially, feeling untethered, un-fulfilled and confused. There's so much choice on college campuses now that kids don't know what to do, according to one of the co-eds interviewed. How ironic that when all the rules are relaxed, people find it easier to just go home and masturbate. And be photographed doing it.

As a mother of 2 kids, one of whom just now paying attention to the opposite sex, I often think how I wish to counsel them on sexuality. Over the years I have sneaked in various lessons on reproduction and responsiblity in response to their questions or whenever I feel it appropriate to bring the subject up. But I am myself of mixed opinion about the role sex plays now-a-days in relationships, especially as diseaeses run rampant and "safe sex" holds out the promise of fun without the risks. The biologist in me wants to tell them to honor their bodies's signals and understand sex is natural and wonderful and necessary but also risky. The romantic wants to protect their hearts and the hearts of the people they get involved with and hopes they'll curb their urges until they have the maturity with which to deal with all the complexities of sexual congress.

But when do we ever get "mature" when getting sexually involved with someone? How many of us are in mutually sexually satisfying rellationships, no matter what our age? There are no end to articles featuring the sexually "dysfunctional" woman or underserved man, often times married to each other. Some marriages last years and years with either spouse going unsatisfied until one day they walk. What kept them together? Why couldn't they talk until it was too late? Some couples have perfectly matched appetites and others have to negotiate when they have sex or romance or just a few minutes to connect. Relationships change over the years as well with illness, family, finance and life challenges getting in the way of intimacy.

So who's to say a 14 year old with clear motives and needs isn't mature enough to handle what comes so naturally to an adolescent body, when all around them, people of all ages are making "immature" choices in their relationships? Sweden seems to avoid much of the negativity about sexuality by acknowledging its primal role and giving kids information, protection and permission to explore it safely. Is it that simple? Take away the guilt and celebrate safe sex and youth will manage their sexuality in a healthier way than we are now?

I guess it's the romantic or the artist in me that wants it to not be that easy. Or maybe it's really biology that wires us to crave a certain connection with the body we're rubbing up against. For men, sowing their seed freely makes sense on a base, animal level. But for women, on that same level, it's vital to know whose seed has been sown and what investment the sower is making in you and whether he's going to stick around to mow the lawn he's just spawned. And this is where putting a screen in between two mating people makes things mushy. It can create a false sense of knowing someone else, an all too easy intimacy that cannot be real until tested with flesh and sweat and frissons and farts and late night trips to the pharmacy for Pepto-bismal.

If this generation of youth does not learn how to sit with someone and hear the stories that come out of their mouths, look into their eyes as they share the moments that add up to intimacy and hold a hand with sincerity, how can they become lovers in a real world that is not easy, that has sharp points and bad smells and curbs which trip one up? When reality bites, as they say, do they just skedaddle back to MySpace, break up on-line and then crank up the search engine for someone new with a better blog or nicer specs?

I was heartened, however, to read that the erotica being photographed on campus is un-retouched and that the student models are proud of baring their all without Photo-shop. To be unashamed of one's body and one's sexuality is a gift, especially in this guilt ridden and perfection seeking culture. If all of this gadget assisted experimenting with exposure and social intercourse leads us to more comfort with the most driving instinct we humans possess, then I guess it is a good thing. But I admit that I hope when my kids come of sexual age, that it is with a peer group that is better equiped to handle sex and intimacy and relationshps than what I read and hear about now. I think I long for some kind of innocence which seems impossible to retrieve in a culture that blasts us with sex on the one hand but also reminds us of its complications daily, whether it's disease, dysfunction, unplanned pregnancy or unwanted attention and abductions.

I can do my best to model behaviour I hope my kids will value. I can give them the "talks" and the condoms and a safe place to explore their feelings, both physical and emotional. But I cannot give them a world that is simple. I cannot find them well-balanced mates. I cannot prevent mistakes. I cannot make it easy. And there-in lies the wonder and rich-ness of love and desire. For it's the complexities of connections that make a relationship work or not work; it's the different levels of knowing and feeling with and about another that test the bond. If PDA's help get us closer, then so be it; I just hope we all remember to look each other in the eyes now and then and sniff each other out a bit before opening or closing our ever tender hearts.