Ooh... What Does This Button Do?

“Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.” That is how it starts; two inquisitive children making an agreement to share the contents of their undies with one another. There is some poking, prodding and a few, “ooh… what does this button do?” moments. Little boys will pull on their penises and make balloon animals with their new friends. Girls will touch and push on their squishy new toy and wonder why it is so much fun. All of this experimentation is in good fun for children, but at some point becomes vilified for teens and adults. A child’s healthy curiosity and imaginative processes is shot, killed, maimed, stabbed, burned, shanked, ground, whittled, and curbed stomped into submission. All this is done to make way for the shame and embarrassment that is to be forced on us by our increasingly sex negative culture.

Some of us, like myself, where lucky enough to be given parent(s) whose rules for sexual activity where simply, “wear a condom.” However not all of us have been so lucky. Many of us where born to parents to whom the very idea of sex is just cause to have a mental breakdown. Sexual growth under these, or similar circumstances, removes the fun and enjoyment from sex. We stop experimenting. We stop pushing and twisting and wondering what the button does, because we fear reprimand from the omnipresent hand of society. This is so wrong. This is not how sex is supposed to be. Sex should be something that we are proud of; a look at what I can do experience. Sex is wonderful and we should be willing and, more importantly, able to explore our own sexuality, without fear.

By its very nature, sex is a cause of anxiety for humans. Sex forces us into a situation where we are exposed to someone who could reject us. The fear of rejection, like the desires to eat and reproduce, is instinctual and a very real fear. It is rare for us to see other naked bodies except in explicit sexualized situations. The people that we see naked are pillar examples of what we ‘should’ be, and probably are not. It is even rarer to be in a position where we are naked in front of others. For all its positives, clothing is really a hindrance to the growth that we need to be secure in our sexuality. Shame is not something animals ever experience; being naked all the time essentially neuters that emotion. Animals, the lucky bastards, also do not have religion, bad sex education, shitty parents, or confusing and misleading media screwing up their perception of themselves and others, but we do.

Our parents, the media, society, peers, clothes, religion, with all of these forces eroding the sense of fun and exploration from sex we forget the simple things. Simple things like the joy and youthful optimism that true unassuming curiosity and experimentation bring.

I pose these questions to you: Why can’t we play, explore, try, laugh, giggle, smile, jump, run, and tumble through the exuberantly blissful experience of sex? Have we been so expeditious in our ascent to adulthood that we traded joy for independence? Have we traded creative license for driver’s licenses? Why are we so willing to accept and perpetuate these shenanigans? Why have we allowed ourselves to become victims of this tomfoolery?

It appears that these stuffed shirt jive-talking crooked tooth swindlers parading themselves about claiming to know the answers to everything have bamboozled us. We have allowed these snake oil salespersons to muddy the already murky road of life with their sleight of hand. They have made us believe that one of the most purely enjoyable things we can ever do, is somehow grounds for social, emotional and spiritual damnation. However, I am here to tell you that that is just not true.

Go out and play, explore, try, laugh, giggle, smile, jump, run, and tumble through the exuberantly blissful experience of sex. Relearn to be proud of your sex, start with a crawl. Your curiosity is hungrier than Audrey II. Feed it, and you will see that what you thought was a little shop of horrors was in fact a cave of wonders. Don’t worry you can touch everything… including the lamp.