LJ Idol: Week 13 - Sexual Ethics

“Did you hear? Sharon is pregnant!”

The person next to me on the hard orange bleachers turned to face the three of us. “Really?” she asked. “Who's the father?”

My friend shrugged her shoulders. “No one knows.”

“I bet it's with someone disgusting,” the second girl next to me—my acquaintance, since it was hardly accurate calling her my friend—said. “Did you see her teeth? Disgusting. She doesn't even take care of them. She can barely even take care of herself, let alone a baby.”

“I know,” my friend responded. “And her voice is super-nasally. Remember?”

“Yeah, I remember,” the second girl said. “I can't imagine why anyone would have to have sex with her of all people.”

Taking up my backpack and my laptop, I turned away from the conversation, heading to the doors of the gym so I could run from the hell-hole as soon as possible. As I passed by a group of freshmen, I heard “God, it was so terrible, I don't even know why I agreed to having sex with him.” I kept my head down, standing near the doors as I waited for the bell to ring. As it did, I heard a group of guys crack a joke—obscene, misogynistic, typical teenage boy crap—and rolled my eyes.

It was about time the day was over.

--

“So, don't tell your sister, but I was invited to go out to eat with Kara and Amber,” one of the youth group students, Martha*, said.

“And I wasn't invited?”

“You wouldn't have wanted to come,” Martha said. “It was really awkward.”

“Awkward how?”

“Well, she asked us if... we were virgins,” Martha muttered. “It was one of the first things she said too. It was like we sat down, and then she asked 'Are you a virgin?' And she asked us if we had ever held hands with a boy before, stuff like that. It was really weird.”

I agreed, shaking my head. It seemed that there was no escaping mentions of sex; even those self-proclaimed conservative Christians ended up butting into people's personal sex lives.

--

I live in a culture absolutely saturated with sex.

It's not often that I can tune into a TV show without some sort of hot couple steaming up the screen with their sexual tension or walk down the halls at school without some obscene joke. It's not all that bothersome to me, really—I've gotten used to it—but the big deal about it goes over my head. Why do people care so much about what people do in their bedrooms? And why has it become such a prevalent part of our culture (so prevalent, in fact, that most swear words happen to be sexual in nature)?

I admit, I don't have too much sexual experience. I am a virgin, as I expect to be until my wedding day, and the Internet is my major source of information about sex. My parents never had the “Sex Talk” with me (do parents even do that anymore?) and by the time my school started teaching me about sex, I had already run across my brother's porn files.

The thing that really blows my mind (pun intended) is the way that something that should be so private—or something I think should be so private—has become a nationwide obsession. All over gossip magazines, it's the same: who is sleeping with whom? And in TV shows, the drama regarding who is sleeping with whom and who is pregnant by whom is often the biggest plot line.

This might sound old-fashioned, but I'd prefer it if what started out behind closed doors would remain behind closed doors. Personally, I don't care who had sex with whom. I don't care if someone had sex with someone of the same gender or if someone got pregnant because they had unprotected sex.

I'm not in the position to say, considering I haven't even been close to having sex, but it strikes me as intensely personal. For the first time, you're baring all to that one person you trust, the one person you trust to give you pleasure instead of pain, or love instead of heartbreak. The one person you either want to get you off or the one person you want to love you forever. The one person who sees you at your most vulnerable, naked, stripped to the bone, all imperfections laid out. Every awkwardness, every small imperfection, every hesitation: your partner is able to see it all.

And it strikes me as highly intrusive to have that act, the most private of all acts we humans do, splattered across newsstands and TV shows and our conversations like it is so much old gossip. It strikes me as an invasion of personal space to decry a person for having sex too early, or too late. I don't understand why people feel the need to decry someone having sex for the first time at forty. To call a girl a “whore” if she has sex or congratulate a guy if he “hits that hot chick”... it doesn't seem right to me. None of it does.

Sure, I might be optimistic. I might not be realistic. I might not understand the whole fascination with sex since I am so very young. I might not know everything about sex.

But you know what?

I do know what I want, and I want to wait until my wedding day. Otherwise, I don't think I'd be able to bare my whole heart and soul to someone. I wouldn't want to have sex with someone just because I felt attracted to them for one day; I'd want to build a connection, to be so in love that I would want to give that piece of my heart to that one person—and hope that they don't break it.

And if they do, then at least I would know that I did what felt right. And no one could take that peace away from me.

*Names changed.

--

This has been my entry for week 13 of therealljidol. This week was another intersection week, but there was a twist: we had to pick a new partner. My partner for this week was twistersflower. You can read her entry here. Our votes are tallied together this week, so if you like my entry, please consider voting for her as well. Thanks!