Sex

This may be just me, but Viagra and Cialis commercials give me a lot to think about, and none of it's very pleasant. I mean I don't blame their advertising department because I doubt I could do any better. In fact, they do a pretty damn good job. Old white folks hugging each other at sunset is perfectly innocuous and sometimes evokes in me a strange sense of assurance that the world is ok. On a good day, it is cute and makes me proud to be an American. As President Obama would point out, they must have held a meeting before the first ever commercials were launched where they brainstormed possible ideas and then formally voted for the one that is broadcast in our televisions today. Can you imagine being present at that meeting? Each employee would have been asked to bring a sketchbook with ideas, and I get the feeling at least one person must have thought of hiding a phallic symbol in each image of the commercial. In each successive image, the phallic symbol would grow in size, paralleling the desired therapeutic effect of the drug. Ok, that would have been my idea. So I'm glad they have smarter people on board. But even after they cemented a successful series of commercials all echoing the theme of vague intimacy and romance, they dared to be innovative and avant-garde. Take the above picture, for example. It's infused with so much abstruse symbolic meaning that I am blown away every time. Why are they in separate bathtubs and not the same bathtub? Why is the bathtub located on a wooden plank in the middle of wilderness? There is definitely an element of academic rigor in analyzing these images, proving that Viagra and Cialis are committed to providing more than one type of rigor.

So why I do not find these commercials very pleasant? They've conditioned me to associate old couples I encounter in reality with bedroom passion. I mean I've come to accept that humans at all stages of life - growth, decay, and even the subsequent wrinklememlossgnarliation - want to experience pleasure, and they should have the right to. Sex happens to be a very rich source of pleasure, and I give all the credit to older couples with a healthy sex life for identifying their needs and obtaining the resources to address them. But that doesn't change the fact that now when I see an elderly woman calmly watering her lawn, checking her mailbox, or whatever else old folks do, I shudder at the thought of her going back into the house and giving her man a Viagra pill to take with his coffee as he reads the Sunday paper. Shit is crazy! You know those conversations you have with your friends about the perceived character of another mutual friend? You say so and so would not have been the one to steal the ipod or so and so is a more caring person than so and so. Here's a good test to prove to yourself that you don't know shit about other people: think of an adult you deeply respect and imagine that person having passionate sex. Yeah, totally mind-blowing, brah! Only problem is I've practiced this exercise so much that every time I meet someone, I am imagining that person having sex. It's worse when I meet a parent with a baby because I can be sure that what I feared has indeed transpired.

This confirmation usually triggers another set of responses, and I have to make conscious efforts to not reveal them in public. You know, you are chilling on a park bench and you spy a pretty attractive woman, oh let's say a Latina in her late 20's, taking a phone call on a lonely swing. She gets up, heads to a stroller with a baby under the supervision of some random guy and then when you connect the dots, you think to yourself, "How the hell did he get with her?" But I am a man who has to get all the details - right or wrong - so my imagination pushes on and my mind floods with other profound questions. Consider this example: you know a quiet, dignified male with a decent sense of humor who has a job working for some humanitarian NGO (this is NOT meant to be my future self). He is an idealist with a passion for helping others, a very hard worker, and has the kind of confidence to ask a question in a large classroom but normally keeps to himself. His wife is a good-natured, pleasantly rational, and calm but slightly vivacious high school teacher. She smiles a lot, but her words carry a certain gravity and she is deeply contemplative when people let her. Can you imagine how they would initiate sex? What kind of dialogue would take place before, during, and after? How does each deal with the refractory period? This world is so full of wonderful mysteries.

But you know what, those commercials also disturb me because I am not entirely comfortable with the idea that people need sex so much. It's a little pathetic, in my view. I mean as long as you don't cheat on your partner, I don't harbor any moral compunctions about it but must we really depend on sex so much? Are we so powerless in the face of our primitive instincts? If I measure up what I have said and thought about relationships in the past against what I would honestly want in a relationship, I would admit that I have downplayed the power of physical connection. There's something incredibly comforting about holding hands and exchanging hugs with people you care about. But I am not so sure if sex operates on the same principles. I think this because establishing a physical connection with someone is a form of loving and being loved, and if this were true about sex, people wouldn't find sex truly fulfilling unless they did it with those they loved. I mean, it would be one thing if say, you develop such a rapport with your girl's booty that others just don't do the trick anymore. You appreciate that booty for its unique contour and morphology and blessing it is in effect, loving your girl the way no one else can. But the reality is, we guys can tolerate variability in design as long as the function remains intact. Just ask Tiger Woods. He's been playing golf so long that every hole looks the same to him. Katt Williams would agree.

Sex, as ostensibly intimate as it is, does not derive its appeal from a special bond formed between two people. That's probably why Holden Caulfield in the Catcher in the Rye decides not to have sex with the prostitute. It's phony love. So being the idealist that I am, I am a huge fan of the intimate mental connection. But really, it's quite orgasmic. There is nothing quite like sitting next to the girl whose every idea and thought delight you, and listening to her voice breathe life into them, into the room and the moment, into you. Then she'll pause because she has finished her sentence and you haven't said anything but you are still listening, just in a trance-like state, because her presence renders everything else in your life insignificant that moment. You allow yourself the leisure to drift away and be carried away by the glory of that moment, a kind of lurid tranquility palpitating with your steady desire to live, until another single word or gesture lands on your consciousness like a raindrop and seeps into your memory, and now you are a time-traveler, experiencing separate encounters with her beauty all at once. I'll stop because I am about to climax.