Sex and the Suburbs

I had never before seen an episode of Sex and the City, but when I found it for seven dollars per season during a Black Friday shopping spree I couldn't help myself. At the very least, I figured, it would be a fun distraction over my winter break at home in Connecticut; I bought the first three seasons, and counted it as a Christmas present.

It proved to be the perfect post-holiday diversion. I loved the show, despite the fact that the self-indulgent air of it all took some getting used to. And in a house in which working DVD players had been dropping like flies, equally important was that my sister enjoyed watching it too, and I didn't have to fight for control of the TV when I wanted to put it on.

Things became more complicated when my mom began to join us at night after she had finished her shift at work and made a cup of coffee. My parents and I had been open and sharing about many things over the years, but sex had never been one of them. We never had "the talk," and they shielded my sister and me from sex for as long as possible; when that became impossible, they shielded themselves from acknowledging that we knew about it, much less might be having any. It therefore felt odd to be watching this show with my mother in the room.

But she was less awkward than I had feared. She didn't make her "holy shit" face every time intercourse was mentioned, and she didn't try to keep herself from laughing when a dirty joke was made. She covered her eyes from time to time when a woman was shown topless or when the bedroom scenes got a little too intense, but then again I felt a little uncomfortable watching women undress myself. I wasn't one to judge.

It was my father I was really concerned about. Whenever a character on television or in a movie would talk about sex or be shown in the act, he would sarcastically remark "oh, that's nice" as if something awful had occurred. Unlike my mother, in the month since I had come out to my parents he had yet to say a word about it, so the whole topic of sexuality seemed off limits at this point. I knew that he would inevitably walk in at some point while we were watching the show, see someone fucking a stock broker, and get pissed that we had been watching it in his living room. And that's exactly what happened.

"Why are you watching this shit?" he asked one day after he had walked in with his lunch in hand and sat down on the couch. "I can't believe I'm watching this with you."

"I warned you when you walked into the room," I told him. He hadn't heard me - his hearing was dropping faster than Samantha's pants at a cocktail party.

He left the room shortly thereafter, but the topic wasn't over yet. It came up a day or two later, when he made some pissed off comment about all the sex the women on that show had (and this despite the fact that Kristin Davis was the only one he found attractive). Having sex, in the eyes of my father, seemed to be more of a crime than anything else, at least if it wasn't happening discretely and as part of a serious relationship. It prompted me to ask myself, in a perfectly Carrie Bradshaw fashion - why do some people think sex is such a bad thing?

For many in the religious crowd, sex has something of an evil quality to it. Even when it is with their heterosexual spouse, in the missionary position, and monthly at most, they still feel guilty about it. Sex should only be a means of procreation, and even then it is to be regretted. Coming from a part Irish and Italian Catholic family, I can tell you that this is why a lot of people have lots of kids and little fun.

But my dad is not religious at all. He's conservative and traditional, though, which makes me believe that maybe all this ill will towards sex comes more from culture than anything else. In suburban Connecticut - the land of the puritans of yesteryear, the WASPs of today and the resulting fucked up kids of tomorrow - sex was crude, scary, trashy, peculiar, and utterly taboo. My small coastal town is nothing like the Manhattan depicted in Sex and the City, if such a society even exists. In suburbia, sex is like that old friend at a party who you know is calling out to you but who you try your best to ignore.

I've never done well with taboos, with following the cultural laws of what is and is not okay to discuss or wonder about. I think it makes life more interesting to go on this way, and hopefully it makes me a more interesting writer. But it has also made me a horrible WASP, and an even worse suburbanite.

As a case in point, last week my sister and I had shopped for lingerie for her at the mall. She settled on matching leopardskin pieces, which were part of yet another recession-enhanced sale. I had started to recount this to my mother, who was asking about our day, when my sister suddenly looked like she was going to punch me. Perhaps it was just the way I phrased it - that we had been "looking for sex clothes." Realizing that I had committed a Connecticut faux pas, I quickly laughed and said that I was joking, and my mother bought it - maybe just to avoid the possibility of us actually having done so.

I couldn't help but wonder what was really upsetting to my sister: that I had shared news of her purchases with our mother, or that in calling them sex clothes my sister had to acknowledge herself what it was she was after in that store. Of course you wouldn't buy those clothes if you didn't want to look hot for your significant other. They weren't meant to be comfortable, casual pajamas - you could make clothes of floss more comfortable than the thongs at Forever 21. But it made her uncomfortable to think about things in such crude, honest terms. She could only make that purchase if she detached herself from the sexual implications.

Maybe everyone has their limits in acknowledging and being okay with sex. For my parents, especially my father, these limits are pretty extreme. For my sister, she can be comfortable it as long as it doesn't hit too close to home. Some people have no problem with thinking about sex, as long as it's between married couples, or heterosexual couples, or attractive couples; outside of those bubbles, they'd rather pretend it's not happening, or at least not have to hear about it.

Sex is the one thing that everyone wants, and yet it is always the last thing parents want their kids to hear about. It's the one thing you can't show on television. And governments, cultures, religions, and everyone in between try to restrict it every chance they get. I really don't understand it.

And for that reason, I will probably never get the politics of sex in suburbia.