I had a high school biology teacher who taught us that “sex is friction.” Thinking back on it now, it makes me wonder what his sex life was like. Yes, sex is about nerve endings, the tingle, the push, the pain even. Build and release, I get it.
We all know it’s more than just that, though.
Sex is a craving at the cellular level of our bodies. It’s the wanting that drives us so hard. Sex is a mad rush of neurochemicals. The bigger the dose of desire, the more primal the having becomes. It’s one of the most dynamic human experiences, whether we have it every once in a while or multiple times per day. If you consider it at the biological level, sex is quite basic (think: friction). That’s not how most of us think about it, though. We know, all of us, that sex is transcendent, or at least can be.
How could I not write about something so essential to our humanity, so pivotal to our emotional lives, so moving to our spirit?
In the 2005 documentary “Gay Sex in the 70s,” almost all the subjects talk about finding someone special. Whether they were cruising the piers or the bathhouse, sex wasn’t the end goal. It was the means to something greater. I think that’s why sexual liberation has always been at the center of LGBTQ liberation. Sex is how we discover each other, how we discover ourselves. We hook up and fall in love. Our community of friends is our former and sometimes concurrent lovers. We fuck first and ask questions later. I’m sure it’s true of some straight people as well.
Sex isn’t just the spice in the storyline of our lives. Sex is the key through line in the plot. Maybe our societal angst about which body parts go where makes it interesting to write about. Maybe not, though. We all remember our first. We all can imagine who we’d like to have next. The feelings are visceral and deeply emotional in equal measure. What an amazing entry point (double entendre proudly owned) to the human condition. Our most fragile vulnerability lay here, so too our longing to realize how we are all connected, one human spirit to the other. That’s the stuff writers live for. At least, I do.
I’m the guy who watches Only Fans and wonders, does he love him? Are they friends? Do they really play video games together? Like the guys at the piers and the bathhouses before them, is this how their story begins? The way he looks into his partner’s eyes, that touch, the half-smile, that right there, that’s what I want to write about. Who are they? What’s all this to them? Where’s the plot twist? When they climax, how long will it go on? Could it be forever? Is he the one?
Carrick Moore’s latest novel, Normal Boys, is available on Amazon.