Sex. (I bet you’ll read this column now.)

I saw a display at the student store selling sweatshirts that
said, “My Weiner Does Tricks.” No wonder mine can only
play dead.

It is much debated whether the openness and saturation of sexual
discussion in our culture is destroying our moral values. I’m
more concerned about our erotic values. Just as premarital sex
destroyed the honeymoon, pre-sexual chatter is destroying the
practice of sex altogether.

The sexual revolution forged a firm new convention, featuring
explicit sex-speak that crosses generational and situational
boundaries. By no means would I prefer the old days, but the
aesthetic casualties of the new convention must be
acknowledged.

Gone is the subtlety and double-meaning through which sexual
content used to be presented. What goes on between the sheets is
best conveyed between the lines, but as that sweatshirt shows, this
is the era of the 1.1 entendre. Pop culture has observed the
dressing-down of nudity. Sex education, once confined to the black
market, has become institutionalized.

Teens discuss their sex lives with condom-dispensing counselors,
while Planned Parenthood has a Teenwire Web site where
“experts” answer sex questions from pre-teens.

“My grandma said I have a lot of pimples because I get
horny. Is that true?”

“Your stupid pamphlets and Web site have drained me of
sexual desire,” I wrote them. “What should I
do?”

No answer has been posted. Too bad. As a libertine, I’m
disgusted by all this frank discussion. After my father gave his
talk about the birds and the bees, I emerged with a vast knowledge
of falcon nesting habits, but not, thankfully, of anything
else.

It’s revolting that anyone discusses these clinical
details with his lover, let alone parents and grandparents. The
only family involvement should be of a safely distant cousin or
uncle, preferably of a slightly perverse nature who, therefore,
wouldn’t look down on you.

Nora Gelperin, “Oral Sex Lady” of Rutgers
University, says on the Planned Parenthood Web site, “We must
not forget that the desire of early adolescents to feel sexual
pleasure is normal and natural and should be celebrated, not
censored.”

Celebrated? Is she serious? Should Trojan release a “party
hat” series?

The liberality of our current sexual atmosphere would indeed be
cause for private celebration, were it not being so publicly
celebrated.

As it stands, the openness has rid sex of tension and thus
deprived it of lust, making the act akin to a doctor’s
appointment. It all makes the picket-fence, mom-and-pop monogamy of
the 1950s throb with eroticism by contrast, and the only thing that
now feels even moderately freakish is cuddling.

There is a simple explanation for why overexposure and
informality are turnoffs. Tension is the soul of drama. Drama is
the left elbow of lust, giving it an edge. Take out tension and you
get the domino effect ““ that is, dominoes becomes a more
thrilling option than dominatrix.

The destruction I speak of is literal. Oral sex is now so common
that it’s no longer erotic enough to qualify as
“sex” for most people. “Oh, it wasn’t
sex,” you’re soon to hear a friend say, “just
intercourse.”

Before long, the only act to qualify will be some
gravity-defying acrobatic feat, the type that can only be attained
through perfect psychic balance and an ecstasy pill.

The old, contrary convention of marital monogamy was much
hotter. Marriage is an evil institution ““ but evil is wild.
Let’s face it: Committing your entire life to someone at a
premature age, in a grand ceremony, and saving the point of
consummation for an exotic locale, is far more glamorous, exciting
and risque than drunken, pantsless collisions at parties. It may be
stupid, but you can’t deny its appeal. Clearly, it’s
causal over casual on the heat scale.

One might argue that the current excess, though devaluing, is
still better than the repression of old. Surplus, after all, is
better than deficit, right?

Maybe ““ if there were evidence that actual sex is more
prolific than before. Except for oral sex, which officially
doesn’t count, there isn’t any.

All we have are some inflated numbers reported by the least
trustworthy sources in humanity: adolescents. Even collegians lie.
My friend considers it a date any time he steps on a
stranger’s foot on Bruin Walk and she says
“ouch.” So our surplus is in mood-killing words and
unwanted visuals, not in pleasures.

The big social lesson of this decade will be that, for all the
vulgar bravado, the biggest playas in the United States turned out
to be Catholic priests.

E-mail Mouhibian at [email protected]. Send general
comments to [email protected].