Sex With Other People

"Yes I said yes I will yes."

Sex, she said, and I want it to be dirty. Sex on campus, sex with (the unspoken spoken) professors and students, sex clubs and sex in clubs. Ok, so that's a really rough paraphrase of what the editor of the SBGradMag wanted to center this edition around, but it's all I took from the assignment. Sex.

Sex is what made me look for one of my first loves (well...) on MySpace today. I won't say much, but I still remember the greyest blue eyes I ever saw follow me across the room and the most perfect hips I ever held onto slide into a pair of dirty jeans. (Yeah, I'm a parts person. Sometimes the parts equal more than the whole; sometimes the whole will be less than the parts. But not always.) Sex is what made me burn a countless number of cigarettes down to the filter and, yes, drown myself in countless bottles of vodka.

Seeing as to how my other article in the SBGradMag this month is going to talk about sex addiction (and, more specifically, Sex Addicts Anonymous), for this one I only find it fitting that I also talk about the thing itself, the thing that causes all the trouble, the act of sex in all it's glory. And, mainly, sex with other people.

Yeah, I know that sex without other people is generally considered masturbation. Though I argue that masturbation can also occur with others, we'll leave this aside and now tackle that sneaky word "other." I mean other people. People that you have sex with while you're also having sex with someone else, either synchronically or diachronically. As either dressing on the salad or on the side.

Also on MySpace today was a bulletin from one of my friends, an organization that puts together parties where "like-minded individuals" meet, maybe dance a little or eat hors d'oeuvres or make small-talk, and then eventually strip down and have sex with each other. There are all kinds of these parties and organizations, various places, spaces, and clientele, across the Unites States and, I can only imagine, the world.

"What to Expect When You're Expecting [a sex party]"

So the first part of this section will explore the party itself, the places and the people; the second will consider the residue of such spaces. Because whenever one chooses to have the dressing either on the side or on the salad, there will always be a residue of some translucent something in the salad part of the relationship--the trace, perhaps, of a third body.

The entrance of such acts begins with, well, the door. This door may be accessed by means of the bell-hop to the hotel or the bouncer at the door of a southern mansion or the stairway to a Manhattan loft. Incidentally, the person at the door will often determine the kind of party it will be. Bell hop to the hotel and one is there for swinging (partner-swapping, sharing, "the lifestyle"). The clientele might be approaching middle-age or are of that age, they have houses in the suburbs, they might not make as much money as they would like to. The southern mansion will be about the same with a few orgies thrown in; there will be a few more younger couples and maybe a few more single girls. And in a NY loft? A patron of such probably appreciates voyeurism, exhibitionism, and multiple-partners who are not necessarily partners. Inside the door now one will usually get a locker, closet, or room; there will be finger foods and a bartender who will mix the BYO alcohol with fruit juice or soda; there will be music, and, usually, films. One must always make sure that, whatever the door might look like, the party inside promotes, or at least does not oppose, safe-sex practices.

Once one walks, in exit, out the door, it is this residue that one must deal with now.

(Interestingly enough, I began this article several hours ago, several hours ago I typed the word residue on the page and left the article ending with the "now" you just read. Late tonight, after a few drinks at the bar, in the warmth of a second-floor apartment overlooking 112, a dear friend used the same word speaking of the things one cannot help but carry away from one's not-ever quite ended relationship. Now that I'm back at my laptop, feeling the fatigue of such a life, I've somehow found a complacency in the residue of this evening and all evenings prior...Thank you, J, for that.)

But: to speak of residue, I must digress a bit. To tell a story, to make solid a moment of writing and of experience. In one of the most beautiful passages I've ever read, Helene Cixous writes:

We have already fashioned the place of our immortality: it is located at the intersection of both our desires straight out, sprung from the same side of our silent united tongues, and, having fathers and mothers, origins and infinity, it appears all at once on the other side, in the form of a third body which in the mirror of my eyes is in his image which in the mirror of his eyes is in my image--in this body we are exchanged up to the last degree of resemblance; in this body we translate each other. What will be born of my desire? The unique and unknown body of our silence: we must find that wordless, limitless language that will perpetuate us without error and without weakening. --The Third Body

Of course the Third Body that Cixous speaks of is not a physical body. It exists not materially nor manifests substantially but rather springs forth in a relentless mirroring of desire. This Body is created in an exchange of self with an/other so complete that what is new, is created, exceeds the two bodies of flesh and yearning that brought it forth. But there are similarities between the Third Body and a third (body), an incomplete replication of the mirroring and the intersection of desires that deserves attention. And it is this incompleteness that leaves one with not a "wordless, limitless language," but rather that which is impossible to speak of. The residue.

When a third (or fourth, or a several) has been brought into the relationship, the mirroring that occurs is, in many aspects, similar to Cixous' articulation. The third will be a reflection of what the one wishes the other would see. It is always an act in the subjunctive. The one wishes that the other would see the third as the one wishes to see the third. The other wishes that the one would see the third as the other wishes to see the third. But the mirroring, instead of becoming an act in and of one another, becomes deflected on this alreadt-present third; this thereby shattering the degree to which the lovers may exchange (with) each other. The exchange is now with the self; the desire for the other or the third is a desire of the self. It becomes, in essence, sex with one's self. That just so happens to include two other people, maybe more.

The point of impasse: residue, as a thing, isn't evil. Nor is having sex with one's self when others are around. It isn't even just plain ol' bad or wrong or yucky or damaging. But residue that accumulates without a conscientiousness of its accumulation is. Communication is key.

Please: stay safe, sane, and consensual.