Sex in Your City

It’s funny just how different sexy is for all of us. I found myself trapped yesterday by an Antonio Banderas cologne commercial, grimacing as I wondered if his scent was something akin to grilled eggplant, heavy on the olive oil. He just seems so slick, so smarmy, like he might be Fabio’s long-lost, darker-skinned cousin, the one the townsfolk say seduces the elderly nuns. Chicks seem to dig him, however, enough that one network saw fit to pimp his pheromones to females scrambling for gifts for their distinctively unslick men. I suspect that these are the same women who once upon a time watched and quite possibly fantasized about CBS’s Beauty and the Beast. I weep silently.

I spoke to a man who recently had sex with a woman, a partner with whom he does not want to have sex again. Ever. He said it was her face that did it. Not her God-given face, he clarified, which was quite pretty in the daylight and appealing enough for the two to cross lawns to get their intercourse on (she is his across-the-street neighbor, which only adds to my delight given the months if not years of uncomfortable curbside greetings that are sure to follow). It was her sex face, he said. I believe he called it “gruesome,” and I needed ask no more. Upon hearing this, I ached not for this man who will surely find a sex kitten with a more appealing mug, but for the woman who thought that whatever it was that turned him off – biting her lower lip in a Clintonesque moment or flicking her tongue against her two front teeth – was actually sexy. That it upped her bedroom quotient. That it would get him excited, a surefire bet to rile him up.

In my early days of such encounters I did not have a clue as to what I was doing. Becoming comfortable with my sexuality was much like learning to walk in four-inch heels: there was a surplus of awkward hip movements and even more unpredicted stumbling. I recall several bold statements and exaggerated motions that were made in those early days, whether it was whispering to a boy what I thought Lauren from the Young & the Restless might to Paul (a breathy “I wahhhnt to make lohhhve to you” while wearing five days worth of lip gloss) or what I considered a more advanced move, that of dramatically rolling my eyes backward towards my brain. “Euphoria!” I thought this screamed to my partner during sex. “Seizure!” was apparently one boyfriend’s translation, as he stopped abruptly when I did so to ask if I needed help. Sadly, this was the third guy with whom I had sported this move. I was mortified and could only hope that the first two hadn’t noticed, that maybe, if I was lucky, they too had been rolling their eyes into the back of their heads in their own personal crusade to bring sexy back.

Things are not vastly improved. A similar effort of mine went off course recently when I texted a man I wanted to leave weak in the knees. I racked my brain for something we hadn’t yet discussed, something racy but still below the grade reserved for those fantasies involving monkeys and soft serve ice cream and ceiling fans. “What about me in thigh highs?” I asked via a frenzy of thumb activity.

“Stop,” he wrote back. Ouch.

I immediately questioned my version of sexy. Like Ghastly Sex Face Neighbor Lady, was it something about me that put the kibosh on his interest? Maybe he was more into fishnets? Nude knee highs? Control tops? Maybe I just should have gone for the monkeys. Or at least the midgets.

Turns out he misread the missive as “men in thigh highs.”

Maybe we're all just safer sticking with the monkeys.