Everything Old Is New Again?

I try to keep our Two-fer Tuesday topics around here unique. I’ve tried to not cover the same word or concept or theme multiple times. And yet, yesterday, playing to the most carnal common denominator, I went with “Sex”. Longtime astute readers may recall that once in the past, our Two-fer Tuesday topic was “Sex!” I’m going to throw up a feeble defence here. Those were two different topics.

The first time, Miz Pink and myself talked about: Sex!

This week, Miz Pink and myself talked about: Sex

See, one had an exclamation point. One doesn’t. So, that means at some point in the future, when I don’t have a better idea for Two-fer Tuesday…yes, you’ll probably get this one: Two-fer Tuesday: Sex?

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Two-fer Tuesday: Sex! by Miz Pink

Ya know, I’ve read some on this idea of what is it, 30 days of sex or something along those lines? The notion that you, as a couple, make a decision that every day, for a whole month, you will have sex. I’m a’thinkin that a lot of women are thinking “oh no” and a lot of men are thinking “oh yea” right about now. I don’t know how I feel about this.

On the one hand as a Christian wife I think it’s kinda cool as a concept and as a relationship experiment. Husbands and wives aren’t supposed to deny themselves to each other so go all out for a month (or a couple weeks or a few months or whatever y’all decide amongst yerselves) seems like it could be a good idea. A crash course, a boot camp of love. Mashing yourself together so that you become truly one unit.

Then there’s the part of me that thinks: Boy that’s contrived. Every day? Isn’t that forced? Isn’t that expecting too much of any relationship?

For me and Sir Pink, we have another kind of plan in place. Something that we want to do every day (excpet in cases of illness or geographic separation). Instead of sex every day for a period of time, intimate contact every day for at least five minutes.

C’mon, you know how busy our lives get. How easy it is to forget with the kids and the jobs and all that to just sit down and snuggle. Or kiss. Or just tease each other knowing that you won’t actually do full on sex for another day or two?

What’s lacking in too many relationships these days is intimacy. We love each other. We care about each other. We enjoy each others company.

But we don’t talk often enough about our feelings and desires. We don’t just spend time basking in the glow of the other person. We don’t just spend time listening or shutting up and holding the other person. We don’t connect.

I think a 30-day challenge can do a lot to encourage connection. But after that 30 days of daily sex, will you simply have had a wild and fun ride or will you still be feeling connected a month later? I think maybe all of us should try a 30-day thang at least once in life. But I encourage you to spend five or ten or fifteen minutes every day for closeness with your lovey dovey partner and see what that does for you.

(Deke’s post on sex is over here)

Covering the bases, part 2

All right, we covered first and second base yesterday, with me giving ringing endorsements for Christians to head to first and a pretty strong endorsement for stealing second base if possible at some point in a premarital relationship. Before I cover third base and home plate, though, a quick caveat about second base.

It’s true that I don’t consider it intercourse when you’re doing things like sucking a nipple or letting your kisses drift south of the neck but still staying north of the waistband. I don’t even qualify a “dry hump” as intercourse because the clothing barrier has not been compromised. But even so, it’s a form of gateway intimacy, shall we say? Sure, I think it’s bullcrap when we talk about gateway drugs—hell, I’ve known an awful lot of potheads and I’ve yet to meet one who really has ambitions to do anything but pot, except for a bare handful who do the occasional party once a decade when they score blow or the odd trip with some mushrooms once in a while. When it comes to drugs, people tend to be loyal to their original brand. But with sex, oh, that’s another matter.

It’s relatively easy to keep your wits about you when you stick to necking. But the moment your hands start drifting into bra cups or clothing starts to get unbuttoned, the momentum can be hard to stop. I’m not saying don’t go to second base; I’m just saying that a lot of folks, even with the intention of not having premarital sex, have a hard time not sprinting from second to third and then on to home plate.

So, on to the X-rated bases. How does the Deacon feel about third base, when people are actually handling the goods with hands or mouth or other non-procreative pieces of anatomy?

On the one hand, is it really fornication? I mean, the sexual act at its core is about both intimacy and the potential to create children, so things like oral sex wouldn’t seem to be complete enough sex acts to be fornication. A friend of mine once advised me in college that the gentlemanly thing to do by the first or second date was to be a cunning linguist with the object of your attraction without expecting anything in return (though not refusing return favors either). I took that advice to heart myself, making oral sex a sort of “ultimate kiss” to show I really cared.

On the other hand, if your sexual partner or spouse was sucking another person’s dick or licking someone else’s vagina, wouldn’t you see that as cheating? Certainly, if a married person could claim adultery because of oral sex, that would make it fornication, right?

Plus, there’s the nagging Webster’s definition that says fornication is consensual sexual intercourse between two unmarried people. And sexual intercourse, in turn, Webster tells us, can be either penetration of the Kitty by the Snake or other forms of sexual activity like oral sex, which don’t involve Tab A going into Slot B.

Folks, I think we have to admit to the fact that oral sex, at least, is sexual intercourse. Anal sex, too, most likely, though I’m frankly not all that sure whether anal falls into third-base or home plate territory. I feel a pull toward the latter, but then I wonder, is it all that different whether it’s a mouth or an ass? And so, for the moment, I will tentatively leave the home run as only the penis and vagina finally getting to know one another. So, if you’ve gone there (mouth-to-privates or privates-to-buttocks), you should probably assume you’ve crossed a line into premarital sex even though you haven’t made it to home plate yet. I mean, tasting someone else’s privates is pretty personal. And that back door ain’t nothing casual either.

That being said, I personally find my most spiritually and emotionally intimate sexual contact to be in the act of privates-to-privates sex. So perhaps that’s a sign that traditional intercourse is the only true way you can fornicate because that’s the sacred thing that married folks are supposed to share. Even so, it’s not enough of a sign for me to sign off comfortably on oral or anal being non-fornicative (is that even a word?) actions.

OK, running back to third base for a moment (no doubt because the catcher is chasing me to tag me out, or maybe because I’m really disorganized in my writing today) after getting sidetracked by home plate, I really can’t look at handjobs, footjobs, titjobs and the like as sexual intercourse. I just can’t. It’s sexual, no doubt. But I see it as just masturbation with help from a second party. It’s serious, sure, but fornication? Nah, I don’t see it.

And now, to get to our last area officially, instead of as a side note: Home plate.

I don’t think I need to go into that in any detail, do I? Between this post and the previous post and other posts in the past, I’ve made it clear that that’s a no-no before marriage. Granted, it’s a no-no that most Christians have (or will) say “yes, yes” to—and very emphatically I’m sure. There are certain sins we just don’t shy away from. Murder is pretty easy to pass on. Sex with animals, too, is pretty easy to avoid. But much like gossip, lies, disrespecting our parents and so many others, sex just is too easy (and also too nice) for most of us to pass up.

So, I simply tell you to tell you: Half of third base activity (at least) is likely a big “no” in God’s plan for the unmarried, and home plate is off limits to them, too—officially speaking. Do I really expect very many people to stick to first and second base? Not really. But here’s my advice, if you haven’t already crossed that line in your life:

If you can, and I mean this sincerely as someone who’s been there and kinda wishes he had done it differently—if the two of you can hold out until marriage before you break out the serious stuff, I think you may find that you will have a very special gift to give each other after you’ve traded vows. There are so many other ways to give each other pleasure before then that I think you owe it to yourself to at least consider saving actual intercourse for marriage.

You won’t just make God happy. If you truly love each other and stay the course in your life with each other, I think it will make you and your spouse pretty fucking happy, too, in the end.

Covering the bases, part 1

By any definition of the normal rules of engagement around here, I’m overdue to talk about sexual stuff. Miz Pink hijacked my sex-themed schedule with her May 2 post and I haven’t touched anything sexual…I mean, I haven’t covered a sexual topic…myself since April 24. So with more than 10 days since Miz Pink posted and well over two weeks since I have, clearly, I’m not living up to the one-debauched-excursion-a-week rule I set for myself. I’m surprised Sister Mary Malcontent hasn’t already arrived on my doorstep to punish me over that.

So, let me do something special to you…I mean, for you…and steer off my married relations stuff for once. Most of y’all know by now that I don’t think fornication is cool and also that I’ve been guilty of it. Not as often as I would have liked when I was still a young man, but I did it often enough it was a lifestyle decision. So, why not be helpful to all you unmarried folks out there and give you my take on what’s OK for you to engage in…or what might be? You know, instead of just telling you what married folks can do and reminding your “please don’t do the nasty until you put wedding rings on those fingers.”

Even the most sports-deficient person knows that baseball metaphors are the typical way of making analogies for the degree and intensity of sexual exposure you’ve managed to achieve in a date (or in a drunken encounter in the dorm or a random tryst with a sexual addict in the the alley or an empty-office-encounter with the receptionist during the company Christmas party). To whit:

1. First base is the act of making out, which would generally involve French kissing, licking necks, leaving hickies, sucking earlobes, using the tongue as a Q-tip substitute, etc.
2. Second base is the direct fondling, groping or kissing of “special” parts that aren’t by definition actual sexual organs, such as the breast or ass cheeks, or even the stimulation of the other person’s genitals through the clothing. Dry humps would also qualify here, I think, since the clothes stay on. A foot massage is either first base or, more likely, still being in the dugout; but sucking toes definitely puts you into second-base territory.
3. Third base would be the mutual masturbation stuff: fingering a woman (or man, since the anus counts as a finger-friendly destination), giving a guy a handjob, engaging in oral sex, getting off between a woman’s breasts, footjobs, etc.
4. Going all the way (aka “coming home”) is full-on sexual intercourse.

To be honest, I don’t know where to put the act of jacking off in front of each other. I guess if you keep the fluids to yourself and don’t touch each other while you’re doing it, that’s second base…and third base otherwise. As we’ll see tomorrow, I’m really confused where to place anal sex. I mean, I know where the parts need to be placed, I just don’t know whether it’s third base or a home run.

So, we’ll do this over a couple days, and I’ll just go with the first two bases today. Yup, two sexual posts in a row to make up for lost time. I can hear the steam whistling out from Pat Robertson’s ears as I write this. (Even though I’m including a link to the man’s Web site, that’s just for your own educational purposes. I personally think he’s more than a little loony and extreme. He looks like such a nice guy on his homepage, though, doesn’t he?)

So, is first base OK?

Damn, if we can’t get physical somehow while dating, we’re never going to know if we’ve got something going. Hell, yes, first base is OK for the Christian crowd. Yeah, I know, in the really old days, I’m sure everyone was very chaste and never even kissed with closed mouths until after the wedding day (except for the encounters the guys had with the prostitutes when they were bachelors, of course). But when you’re doing arranged marriages and shit, it’s kind of hard for a couple to get time together for that kind of thing, and chances are, they didn’t even know each other well enough to want to. But in the modern day and age, we tend to marry out of love (or really intense lust) and not because of convenience or the need to forge a legacy between two families or whatever else.

So, we need first base. Hell, if you don’t hit first base by the time you get to the end of the second date, well, that probably says something. Either one or both people are way too shy, or there is no chemistry. And I am fully onboard for you to relieve any sexual energies generated during first-base action with some self-relief back at home.

Now, what about second base?

Well, as you can guess, the closer we get to home plate, the more squidgy I’m going to be about endorsing it. But generally speaking, I don’t think that second-base action really crosses the line into true sexual relations. Even with the dry humping thing, you haven’t penetrated anyone, you haven’t shared any special sauce, and the major thing that really sets it aside from a nice masturbation session in your own bed is the fact you may need some dry cleaning services for your clothes really soon.

So, there you have it. Deacon Blue approves everything up to second base. See you tomorrow to talk about the messier (and, honestly, more fun) activities. The Pope would have fits over my endorsements, but the man thinks birth control is sinful, so what the hell does he know?

Please try to keep your clothes on until tomorrow, all you unmarried and horny cats out there…you still don’t know where I stand on third base. Or how often (and you won’t ever know that second factoid).