Non-Kama-Sutra'd Sex and Dinner

^{*Where this all went down}

It's weird how dinners can turn into blessings.

I was having dinner with two friends (of the pretty lady kind) earlier today, and from the outset, the conversation was focused directly on sex. The beginning, our conversational appetizer, started with pornography-what do women like? is it similar to how men and women differ on sex?--but then slowly turned into a wide conversational feast really, and maybe only so openly in a New York setting, all about sex.

The reason it is blessing because this conversation was as much personal as it was natural. We all could unpack our own histories, our own fun anecdotes, our own stories, our personal struggles and issues, without the fear of being picked apart. Better yet, it was a time where we could hand out ideas and share them, no qualms of being judged or ostracized, all the while better understanding ourselves in the comfort of the intimacy of quality friendship.

After dinner, on the train ride home, I did some mental unpacking over what we had talked about and then quickly once I got home I emailed my friend with some of the insights I had put together from the conversations over dinner. It's not that I'm so damn proud of my observations, but really, I'm happy that I learned something new about myself. I learned, to some degree, why I feel so damn insecure about certain things. And in so doing, I don't have to be vulnerable to it anymore, but rather, I can learn to be better. This is what my email said:



I think how in the way for you, and probably for a lot of women, that porn reinforces a depreciation of one's own body vs that of the pornstar, and it does so through habit and over time, so too for men, can porn reinforce a similar misunderstanding that we glanced over in our conversation earlier:

We talked about my worry that a possible amazing night of almost nuclear style sex trumps normal sex therefore invalidating my masculinity. My fear or worry that women can value one amazing experience over a long-term relationship and the sex involved, is reinforced by pornography. A common storyline, whether explicit or not, is that a woman reaches an exaggerated but still euphoric climax in a very truncated sexual experience, and one that because there is no denouement or even preface leads the bystanding audience to assume that for the woman, the peak or climactic sexual appreciation is in this type of sexual situation that is not in the confines of a loving long-term  relationship. (Caveat: Men forget that women moreover appreciate safety over climax. I forget that for a woman, love, and all its ramparts, is the ultimate aphrodisiac) Therefore by highlighting this type of sexual dynamic, and by the continual subscription to this type of experience by a male audience, it is then easy to see where I like many men, have this fear reinforced and can feel invalid by not being as explosive. 

Again men and women are very different in the effects but conversely we are very similar in that we are still equally affected (I may have screwed up the whole affect/effect thing, but you get the picture; I hope). 

It was a safe dinner. And it was fun and absolutely natural conversation. And I'm blessed to share the world with such beautiful people I call family.

Without Relent,

Peace

Remoy