Friday, November 30, 2012

Hedonism Day (a date idea)

"Oscar, so far as I know, your culture is the only semicivilized one in which love is not recognized as the highest art and given the serious study it deserves."- 'Glory Road' Robert Heinlein

As per my mission statement, I mean to write about the problems that actually impact the people I care about. And one of the most important day to day issues that is the most devastatingly misunderstood in this culture of ours is sex (the verb). Calm, rational, and practical thinking about sex is almost never stated in public, which is an enormous shame. That being said I am occasionally going to write about sex in this vein because as someone who was raised without religion (and without any kind of secular guilt about sex) I have somewhat of an outsiders view on sex; a perspective I plan on sharing.

On to the idea. This is an idea for a date you can have with your lover. This is not a "get to know you" kind of date, this is an "enjoying each other" kind of date. It is very simple, here is what you need:

a) Picnic food that doesn't need to be prepared (think bread, cheese, fruit, finger food).
b) Intoxicants to flavor (again, picnic quality stuff is appropriate here, no one is supposed to get blasted).
c) Light entertainment. Nothing too engrossing, this is a time filler.
d) A domicile to yourselves.
e) No pants, at all, all day.

The plan is that you make out¹ all day, as much as you (can/want to) with enjoyable food and stuff to read or watch while everyone recovers from the intermittent make outs. None of this pretending "we're going to bed" stuff, this is a day set aside for sex with your person. As I have taken to saying recently, anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

This is the kind of idea that comes from a frank and unapologetic enjoyment of sex and your lover. It is not hard to come up with once you admit that sex is a fun and critical part of a romantic relationship. We need to think about sex as what it is, a joyful human necessity. Enough with the guilt and the recriminations and the shame, sex is fun and should be treated as such.

Like many pass times there are risks and the precautions that should be taken, but sex is not in a category of one. Sex is a number of things but one of them is recreation and one of them isn't a sin. This is the kind of conversation that we can have once we stop engaging with the religious conservatives and declare victory. We don't have to listen to them or their "moralizing" nonsense.



¹I generally use the phrase "make out" to mean anything sexy and naked. 

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