I see sex in numerous areas of people activity. It's in advertising, entertainment, religion, and law. There are conferences, professional organizations, and academic disciplines devoted to the subject of sex. There are sex magazines, sex journals, sex comics books, sex novels, and sex e-zines. Foucault's assessment of the proliferation of "discourses of sex" in the West in mind, I can't help but wonder at this moment:

...with all this TALK about sex, is our sex any better?

Certainly, I don't think my sex is. I can't remember the last time I had sex with someone and was surprised by something they did sexually. I know there are those among you who would challenge the implicit association that surprise means better sex. In fact, some would argue that familiarity and consistency contribute to the quality of sex. Does someone really want to go into sex fearing it could be hit or miss (no pun intended)? Having a stable partner that you know can deliver over and over again in the same way--in a way that is really pleasureable to you, is obviously appealing. But I'm not talking about situations of ongoing relationship. Those contexts frequently develop larger spheres of relatedness and togetherness and can also drive or undermine sexual inventiveness.

I'm talking here about the sexual scripts we carry with us into the sexual moment. Do you suck dick, eat pussy, lick ass? Do you swallow? Are you into spitting? Do you want things clean or dirty? Smelling sweet or raunchy? Do you usually make the first move or are you the closer? Some would say that all those things depend upon the person. But I wonder how many of those things really depend on the kind of person rather than the person. Do we play to certain kinds of characters differently because of their gender, age, size, level of social desireability, apparent interest in us, economic class, educational level, etc?

I'm asking these questions, not for mere academic exercise but, because I am plagued and belabored by them. Very often, because of the (non)sexual, social persona I project and because of my physical stature, I'm typecasted into the role of a particular character by potential and probable sexual partners. Like so many bad pop fiction storylines, a script, unspoken and unwritten, is constructed that places the two of us, three of us, four of us, or how many are present at the time, within a set of given boundaries that limit possible pleasures.

The gay bois among you are probably saying to yourself right now, "Oh, he's just a 'top' that wants to get fucked." (BTW, ever notice no gay bois ever say, "Oh he's a 'bottom' that really wants to be a top.")And the str8 peoples are probably saying, "He's confused. He probably wants some chick to put on a strap-on and fuck him." Actually, what I'm trying to surface right now comes from a different place of frustration and alienation. Though I have some idea of what I'm talking about, it's still nebulous at the same time. So take this moment with me to be unsure, tentative, and patient with the ambiguity.

Yet even bisexual and versatile, two referential categories representing ambiguity and unrestrictiveness in our common discourse on sexual potentiality, are themselves subject to sexual scripting. Who you should be, what you should be able to do, and why you do it are bounded by the character roles we apply to the categories bisexual and versatile. These character roles both delimit and define the sexual potentiality we expect thereby limiting the sexual possibilities that exist.

But I want to get away from the treatment of sexual scripting through looking at labels like bisexual, versatile, gay, top, trans, man, woman, str8, bottom, etc. because I'm more intrigued by how the sexual scripting is embodied in and inscribed upon our phyiscality (the bodies we project to the world), our physical appearance (what the world projects onto our bodies) and in our performance of sex. I'm struggling to get around this sexual scripting and I'm trying to track its course while I'm invovled in hooking up with someone. Where does the process of sexual scripting begin? Does it start at the moment I find someone attractive? Does it start the moment I know someone finds me attractive? Does it occur the moment of the first touch? Kiss? Lick? Suck?

When do we make up our minds about the sexual potentiality in a sexual relationship? What does an embodied communication of that decision look like?

I acknowledge that I'm not only an object of sexual scripting but I also perform sexual scripting. I've had sex with people to re-make a sexual experience I had in the past. I've also had sex with people to create a fantasy sexual experience that wasn't the reality of the sexual moment. Those were sexual scripts. When I decide what I will do sexually or won't do sexually with someone because of who I've positioned them to be based upon how they appear to me or because of who I've positioned myself to be, I'm sexually scripting. I know this. But I'm also asking myself how I (de)limit the sexual potentiality in my sexual relationships by the sexual scripting that I perform and the way in which I embody those decisions inside of the sexual moment.

As a trained sexologist inundated--because of my deliberately comprehensive participation in sex cultures--with sexual discourses of all sorts, I'm challenged to find the surprise and wonder I desire in the few sexual moments of which I avail myself. In part because of the social proliferation of all things sexual with very little substance in the United States and also in part because of my own struggles with sexual scripting, I find myself bored and stagnated. I'm looking to be surprised, to have my assumptions challenged, to find the disconcerting, yet immensely gratifying plot twist in a sexual story I'm sharing with someone whether it lasts for a couple of hours, one night, or for years.

An interesting discussion and treatment of sexual scripting from a Western, post-modern perspective can be found in William Simon's Postmodern Sexualities