I can't easily substantiate this idea, but I feel like it's safe to say there are more euphemisms for sex than for any other word in the English language. Many of them are cheap puns that help to take the edge of the mysterious vulnerability that happens in the throws of animated sex. The more carried away with arousal and affection a person becomes, the more irrationally transcendent everything seems. All while a person is sweating, breathing like a galloping horse, and swiveling their hips to some erratic and primal rhythm. It is definitely not a thing that someone "gets," like finding a twenty-dollar bill in between the sofa cushions.
A woman I was seeing asked me to come over after work one night to help her move some old furniture out of her apartment. As I was trying to negotiate the small puzzle of hallway, doorframes, and an ungainly couch, she said, "I'm pretty sure you're going to get laid tonight for all the trouble." "I'm pretty sure that was going to happen regardless of moving the couch," I told her.
At my worst, I'm prone to improvising sanctimonious sermons about the terms people use around me. A flirting phrase of affection can, through my prism of logic, become grounds for a quasi-legal discourse about the etymologies of sexuality. I had never heard her use that phrase with me before, and I hadn't yet expounded on my deep loathing for the implied passivity and possession contained therein. Like love, sex is not something you get, it's something you already have which you agree to share with someone. I don't get vagina; it's not a status symbol waiting to be unwrapped and embraced like a new iPod waiting under the Christmas tree.
The "laid" part doesn't do much for me either. It makes me think that I'm going to wind up flat on my back with sex miraculously happening to me while I watch in a comfortable recline. It makes sex seem like getting a massage. The implication is that there is a possessor of this mystical "sex" and a person is lucky to find himself or herself in the passive role of the receiver.
There's a larger gender stereotype at work in the phrase, in the way I see it. It reaffirms the overbearing necessity of the man to always be the pursuer, foraging for sex like a bear in a thawing wasteland trying to find berries. Men are taught to celebrate their ability to get sex, to demonstrate their prowess to their peers based on the volume of their encounters. Men don't talk about the qualitative experiences with sex, only the underlying arithmetic that can be used as competitive leverage. Blowjob? Check. Doggy style? Check. Titty fuck? Check. Facial finisher? Check. Got 'em all. I'm that good.
Hauling the couch down the rectangular staircase, trying to keep from knocking all the pictures off the wall, I kept chewing on the phrase. I gnawed at it, wondering if I shouldn't pipe about all the ugly images it connoted for me. I felt slighted almost. That wasn't the kind of sex we had ever had, and if it was going to start being that way, then I didn't want it.
When I was in high school, I remember raising my hand in English class to answer an open-ended question about something we had been reading. I don't remember what we were talking about or what point I wanted to make, but I remember the feeling of smug urgency emanating from inside. When I finished my ramble, my teacher B, looked at me for a quick second. He jutted his chin out and furrowed his brow, then turned away and walked towards the center of the class. "You know, Mike, if you were half as smart as you think you are, that would really be something," he said.
When I got the couch to the curb my jaw loosened, and I let all the flustered thoughts of indignation fall down. Those were mine; they existed in my head, and weren't transported there by the words she had told me. It would have been an argument with myself to protest any further.
It makes me a little sad now, to think that I had the momentary impulse to contort her words for my own subjective reasons just to make a point. It was a small thing, probably not even worth remembering in the larger scope of things, but those small choices are the ones that form behavior patterns in relationships. We choose what's acceptable and not acceptable to ask our partners to put up with. It becomes easier and easier to expect them to shoulder the brunt of our worst tendencies as a relationship ages.
This is part of what I fear most about being in a long-term relationship. I don't want to become someone cruel, but I'm afraid I'll lose the ability to separate my best self from my worst self in the rhetorical fog. In the end, every relationship becomes a fight with yourself.
We walked back upstairs together and looked at the new empty space in her living room. I grabbed my bag and put on my jacket. She put on her jacket and took her purse. We walked back downstairs, found somewhere to eat. Then we went to my apartment and had sex until three in the morning, until it was so late I had to stop because I had work in the morning.
We should have stayed up all night. The sleep wasn't worth it.
Previous Posts:
Love Machine: I Was a Six Year-Old Virgin, or Is There A Happy Ending?
Date Machine: Getting Pierced on a Date
Love Machine: Hitting Snooze on the Morning After
Date Machine: Let Me Seduce You With The Cardigans
Date Machine: I'm Too Sexy For Your Blog
Love Machine: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, or Leaving Home
Date Machine: Super Macho Man Slumber Party
Sex Machine: Having Sex in Your Parents' House During the Holidays
Date Night: Trying to Behave on a Boring Coffee Date
Sex Machine: Sex with Older Women, or How I Would Make Love to Gloria Swanson
Love Machine: Using Your Words, or I Like Pap
Date Machine: Drunk Emailing with J, or How To Fail at Seduction
Sex Machine: Listening to the Neighbors Have Sex
Date Night: In Which I Try To Believe In Aliens
Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines Redux
Love Machine: Loyal as a Dog
Date Machine: Rate My Politics
High School Machine: Ten-Year Reunion Fantasies
Date Machine: Setting Up Your Friends
Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings Redux
Love Machine: Making Love to ESPN
Date Machine: 5 Things I'm Thankful For