By Shane Dingman
Fucktastic. Fuck-a-doodle-doo. Fuck me. Fuck you. Fuck’s sake. Fuckable. Clusterfuck. Damn it, I just love the word Fuck.
Oh, boo hoo, it’s a coarse word, a curse word, a word for little boys and construction workers. All that is true, but it also means sex. Everyone has heard the cheeseball definitions, ie. that it means ‘for unlawful carnal knowledge’ or some such crapulousness. Maybe William Safire, The New York Time’s in-house word historian, knows but honestly, nobody cares. We know what the word communicates now, and it is perfectly designed for the task.
Fucking is something all the lucky people get to do this time of year because ye olde Valentine’s Day sex is a cultural imperative, not to mention a bucket of fun.
I think about sex a lot… though not just the act or the effort of obtaining it. I think about it from the perspective of buttoned-down North America, which, though not quite in the Netherlands’ league, has a surprisingly seamy underbelly. You really do have to look at the pervasive influence of sex in our civilization and conclude that it is a religion. An honest-to-God cult, with all its obsessions, rituals and bizarre politics.
Now that I’ve laid that sick trip on you, I should back it up. Tough but fair, eh? Well the first hammerjack twist is that just like any other religion there is guilt and a constant struggle for forgiveness and fulfilment. The television version of the sex addict is always saying that pouring sex into the spot where belief is supposed to go is a surefire path to disappointment. Same thing with sex. Pouring belief into the sex hole just isn’t going to get the job done. Besides, if sex doesn’t fill you up, you’re having the wrong kind or not enough of it.
E Pluribus Unum, says the currency of the United States of America, one nation under God. A religious tone high and dry on the unassailable symbol of America’s might. The dollar. But what makes the most dollars on the Internet in the now tiresome information revolution? Sex. What word do advertisers use when they decide if the campaign they are designing for some sundry product is going to work? Sexy. What central theme do all the popular comedies on television keep returning to for a passel of cheap laughs? Sex.
We do act schizophrenically about our love affair with sex though. Let’s not forget the most primal and lurid type of scandal is a sexual one. Then there’s the hysteria over sexual messages in literature taught in schools. Nevermind the sexual paradox that says it’s respectable for men to marry rich to get ahead but not women, they can’t sleep their way to the top. In fact Candace Bushnell’s Frankenstein-like creation, Sex and the City, makes it meagre impact entirely because of the mature sexualisation of women on television is so rare. Yes we truly do love fucking someone, but taking undue pleasure in it or spreading the news around is just too gauche.
Complex as the relationship is, it is truly rewarding. The sexual revolution is more obviously a product of the corporate democracies than the socialist revolution Marx called for, which never really worked out. Only in a civilization that allows things like market forces and free speech to protect and promote basic human lewdness could sex reach the peak it has. During the 2000 Republican primaries, a video popped up online that showed a drunk-sounding George Bush riff on the guests at a Texas wedding. He kept repeating the line, “Only in America.” Amen Mr. President, yahooo!
But of course, not only in America, here in frowzy old Canada too. We get the freakish knobs of Canada’s musty literati to say things like “having sex in a canoe is a uniquely Canadian act.” Whatever man, I guess being Canadian is like being American beer, fucking close to water.
But jingoistic ravings aside, did you happen to catch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics? It’s important to remember that perverted sexual appetite is linked to nationalistic lust for land and power. Hands down, favourite part: Feeling my eyes stretch wider as first America’s First Peoples were paraded around only to go bug-eyed with horror as the destroyers of their civilization, the settlers, came right after them. Damn, there were dudes dressed up in U.S. Cavalry uniforms driving some of those covered wagons. Talk about dramatizing a national fucking.
Sex certainly can screw with you, and not in “leather bindings and plastic love implements” way. If you haven’t already read the erotic fiction on pages 12-13, go ahead and read it before you read any further. The story is shocking and appalling, so understanding the value of it requires some reflection. Didn’t you feel aroused reading it? And then weren’t you confused as the disgust kicked in? How could you be so distributed by something you were enjoying a moment ago? It isn’t a cheat, it’s not a trick. The writer, a friend of mine, said it very well so I’ll let them have the last word. “It’s kind of like okay, you were turned on by this, so now you can imagine the sick rational of pedophiles. It in no way condones it, but just show the relative nature of eroticism and how conflicting those notions can be.”
Any way you slice it, we can’t get enough of sex. I’m whacking off right now. Ahh. I just came.
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