As publisher of a risqué internet magazine, I am periodically mistaken for someone who knows something about sex, technology and the future. I am happy to play along, of course I enjoy a little armchair speculation about the future of sex as much as the next guy.
From my vantage, I would say that the next generation of pharmaceutical aphrodisiacs will change our experience of sex in the next few decades more dramatically than anything else. While Viagra facilitates tumescence, new drugs that will cause it are currently being developed by a number of companies (Pfizer sold $1 billion worth of Viagra in its first year on the market, after all). This will enable us to order arousal as we would chicken wings or a chocolate soufflé.
This may not be all good. Viagra seemed in many ways the perfect sexual solution for the '90s a decade in which the word "solution" was overused. Loudly championed by the resurgent Hugh Hefner (editor of a popular 1950s magazine), Viagra is no doubt a wonderful thing for those who really need it. But just as climate control has numbed us to the whimsy of nature, causing us to forget that our ancestors danced and prayed for rain and thaw, so Viagra and its successors threaten to reduce our sensitivity to the vagaries of arousal. As these drugs become more pervasive and recreational, we may lose a little bit of humility and gratitude a little bit of the preciousness of a boner.
Of course anything that becomes more durable seems less worthy of our affection think of the shift from delicate, stutter-prone records to unperturbable cassettes; imagine polymer champagne glasses that bounce when dropped. Surging, marathon erections may soon seem as unexceptional as three-ply trash bags or steel-belted tires.
From the outset we at hooksexup.com have been friends of the flushed face, the stuttering voice, even, on occasion, the sagging dickmoments of weakness that keep us human. Perhaps the various innovations that will make it possible to airbrush out vestigial human imperfections the new aphrodisiacs, drivethru plastic surgery, genetic engineering will end up making flaws fashionable.
Just as the photograph increased our appreciation for conspicuous brush strokes in oil painting, so plastic surgery may cultivate in us an affection for the delicate crosshatch of wrinkles, for the sag of seasoned flesh. Maybe silicone is increasing our appreciation for the incomparable give of an unaugmented breast; maybe Viagra and its successors will make us nostalgic for the flighty glory of unabetted arousal. On the other hand, maybe we will be so busy with our pharmaceutically-enhanced gymnastics that we will have little time for such reflections.
Rest assured that we will find time. Though troublemaking acquaintances have suggested over the years that sex was too narrow a focus for a magazine, the more words and photographs we dedicate to the subject, the more we are convinced of its breadth. Monet painted haystack after haystack not out of an interest in hay but in the nuances of light and color; in the same sense we are fascinated by the way the full range of human responses joy, anxiety, vulnerability, braggadocio reveal themselves on the mattress, the kitchen floor, the eighteenth green.
As we expand Hooksexup into other media in the coming months and years audio, print, television, film and, most importantly, the HooksexupCenter community space we will continue to encourage, with your help, a broad view of the ever rapturous and befuddling sexual experience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Rufus left his reliable salary and position as an editor and director of new media at Cader Books, a publisher of bestselling humor and entertainment titles, in order to co-found Hooksexup in 1997 with Genevieve Field.
Before working at Cader, he was managing editor for two years at August House, a publisher of contemporary storytelling and folklore. Earlier still, he was book review editor at The Free Press in Little Rock, Arkansas. His writing has appeared in Publishers Weekly, The Baltimore Sun and The Wall Street Journal, among other places. He graduated from Brown University in 1991.
