Do We Have a "Predetermined Number of Sexual Opportunities"--to use or lose?

Lovelies:

Ah, spring. Love--or at least lust--seems to be in the air. While I was out jogging yesterday, I can't tell you how many couples I saw kissing on park benches, or swinging hands as they strolled water-side, or suddenly stopping as the sun began to set because they just could not wait any longer to embrace. There was, too, a young girl--in an argyle sweater, little jacket, short skirt and high-tops with a pony tail on top of her head--who almost got hit by a fleet of cars as she crossed six lanes of traffic, so excited was she to reunite with her lover, waiting on the sidewalk. When she reached him, she jumped into his arms, wrapping her bare legs around his waist with a giggle; then he marched off down the street with her. All of this gives me the feeling that everyone is celebrating the beginning of the new season by getting it on.

Which is perhaps a long way of saying I have sex on the brain.

Case in point: Yesterday, I purchased some daffodils that were tightly closed. I put them into water. A few hours later, as their heads began to swell--just hinting at the yellow inside, without yet bursting into the full glory of flower--I could think of nothing but ... the birds and the bees, shall we say?

All of this got me thinking about a passage from the novel I recently finished reading, Love in the Time of Cholera. The protagonist--the leading male--manages to be both a romantic (who pines for the lost sweetheart of his youth all his life) and a nymphomaniac. He thinks: "... nothing one does in bed is immoral if it helps to perpetuate love." (Which is to say, I think, that as long as you have true feelings of passion and fondness for a person you bring to your bed, and you treat both your sexual playmate and yourself with respect, sex will not be a bad thing. Maybe I agree with that.) He also believes that "one comes into the world with a predetermined allotment of lays, and whoever does not use them for whatever reason, one's own or someone else's, willingly or unwillingly, loses them forever."

This is an interesting way to come at the question of so-called "casual sex"--don't you think? In fact, perhaps this is the mindset of most proponents of casual sex. (Speak up, you guys: Is that true?) It makes sex into a beautiful celebration of humanity, sexuality, sensuality and the moment.

I'm not saying that we should always go into sex thinking of it only as a purely aesthetic pleasure ... and I'm not saying we shouldn't be very careful about STDs (and pregnancies) ... and I'm not saying it's easy to be in a situation where both people are in agreement about how to approach the sexual opportunity. But perhaps if we could all understand that in some situations, sex can be nothing more--and nothing less--than a chance to have a particularly rich and intimate experience with another human being; a chance to glorify a moment ... maybe we'd all be sexually a bit better adjusted?

Or, at least, maybe I would be.

xxx!

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