tacky

Today, like most everyday, I made the rounds of the journal/blogs I read regularly. These are your typical day-to-day blogs: nothing obscene, usually not even anything slightly racy. Today was different, because I ran across my own personal "ick" factor more than once.

It weirds me out when people declare "I had sex last night," sometimes in those exact words. There are other techniques for communicating the same information, from the slightly more oblique "Got some," to a wink-smiley at an appropriate place: ... ;)

It's just not something I do, and I really don't understand other people who do. I'm not all repressed or a prude, either. I'm married, I've got three kids who sleep very soundly through the night, and there's zip chance of me having more pregnancies. Under these stress-free conditions, sex is optimal. It's the blogging about the dates and times that mystifies me.

Please, people. Are we in high school, that we need to be bragging about it? Does it happen so infrequently that you need to make note of it so you can refer back to your blog when you're preparing to hurl accusations during your next argument? Do we really need to know? If you're feeling particularly good about your relationship, could there be a better way to express it?

I don't get it. I can see blogging about sex (or problems with sex) generally, as I have done a few times. My string of health crises hasn't been kind to my sex life, and I know I've whined generically about it from time to time. But talking about it like that is useful. Like every other significant part of your life, it sometimes benefits from some contemplation.

But "I got some last night"? Unless the event was the trigger for something else, I don't want to hear about it. Once I get past thinking, Ick!, I'm left thinking, Why did you tell me that?

Sex is way too important to be reduced to a wink-smiley. Our culture has devalued our sexuality to such an extent that people feel comfortable talking about it much the same way they'd discuss getting their hair done or taking out the trash.

I know I'm old fashioned but some of the old ways are best, and this one custom I will not budge on: intimate moments should remain private. Once they're made public, they lose their intimacy, and their value. When the characters on Seinfeld ("The Contest") were "masters of their domains" years ago, they were hip and funny mostly because they were violating a long-standing taboo in a clever way. But that was TV, and this is real life, and people in real life are rarely clever enough to get away with casually exposing what should be private events. When we discuss our sexual activities in public, we're just cheap.