My first question in an unfamiliar bookstore is, "Where's the sexuality section?" Firstly, it's a great way of gauging the competence of the staff. Do their eyebrows shoot up, when you pose the query? Do they turn a vague shade of pink and start stammering? Do they sneer and sniff? Or do they immediately lead you to the erotica stash without even batting an eyelid? Well, imagine my horror a couple of weeks ago, when I entered a bookstore where I'd actually once given a reading, only to find that there wasn't such a section. Yes, sexuality was banned. I was told it was "a family store".
Where the crap, I might ask, do they think families come from? Are our kids delivered by stork? And if any self-respecting teenager is mature enough to enter such a store in search for a book on, oh I don't know, orgasms, or sexuality, or how to avoid catching herpes or AIDS, presumably they'll be told the very same thing: "We don't talk about condoms, connection and pleasure. You'll just have to abstain until you're old enough to visit Borders."
Holy cow.
As a kid, I was raised in a family that prided itself on old-fashioned values. My parents' furniture was all Victorian-style, as was their morality, they told me. Apparently, in Victorian times, everyone was far purer. A few swift lashes of the whip and only squeaky-clean thoughts, thank you very much. It took me twenty years to start realising that sex wasn't something to be ashamed of, and several more to finally start enjoying the experience. And frankly, if I was the child-rearing type, I'd be a far better parent in my current stage of sexual maturity than I'd ever have been before.
While we're at it, the Victorians were absolutely into sexuality. The sexual underworld was big and brazen, and frankly I find Victorian erotic photos far more arousing than our Playboy equivalents. Plus I recently heard an interview on Susie Bright in which the interviewee had experienced his first orgasm at the age of three. Yes, three.
By the way, there truly was erotica in this store. It was just carefully hidden. Alice Sebold's
The Lovely Bones, the
diaries of Anais Nin, Zadie Smith's
White Teeth... all these books contain erotic scenes. Truth is, sex is all around us for a reason. It's the ultimate human connection, and I argue one of the most productive acts. Whether or not you're conceiving a child, and whether you're in a sexual relationship or simply engaging in solo sex, your world will be more fruitful if you're looking after your sexual self. You'll be more peaceful, calm, forgiving and thoughtful. In short, you'll love more deeply.
And we don't need a sexuality section to prove it.
