ALLAN MORRIS
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Sex - everyone's at it!? Not if you're a heterosexual man with HIV, says Allan Morris
I really don't understand all this talk about sex in
the media. I turned on the telly the other day - before the watershed
- and was confronted by two people making steamy, passionate love (under
a quilt). Programmes about teenagers nearly all seem to focus on their
rampant sexual relationships - I wonder when they ever find the time to
study - probably they don't. I look at the magazine racks in my local
newsagent and see a kaleidoscope of male and female hardbodies in varying
stages of undress. Tabloid newspapers thrust massive breasts at my retinas,
alongside screaming headlines about who's doing it to whom lately. In
short, everyone seems to be getting more than their fair share and everyone
is talking about it - except me. Ironically, it was sex that got me into
this mess in the first place, and now it's an extremely distant memory.
Even PosNation is guilty. Recently, my colleague Simon Mwendapole was
writing here about 'negotiating sex' (whatever that is). Almost all the
articles in this magazine refer to people all over the world having sex
of some description. But I don't even get out and meet people, let alone
get to the point where I can 'negotiate sex'.
Who are all these people fornicating all over the place? Why, when I'm
good-looking, intelligent, good company and available, aren't women falling
over each other to sleep with me? I'm not gay, but, dammit, I don't even
get propositioned by men anymore. What's happening?
I think (or at least I hope) that the answer is that it's a fallacy that
people are fornicating all over the place. I'm trying desperately to convince
myself that I only get this impression because it's PosNat's job to report
on sexual behaviour. It's the TV companies' job to make us all believe
that people from 13 to 130 are regularly indulging in sweaty, buttock-slapping,
raucous, multi-orgasmic sex at all times of the day and night. It's the
job of the tabloids to inform us of the marathon sexual adventures
of anyone who's ever been mentioned in the media, however
briefly.
All of which does absolutely nothing to satisfy my ever-growing and far
too long unsatisfied
