| I have no sex words.
Rather, I have sex words, but not the ones I sometimes
need.
Yesterday, I spent a couple hours with Shawna Thomas,
a 20-year old in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. She clerks
at the town’s art supplies shop and 10 minutes
after I whooshed in, we were talking about sex. I
plunged into sex chat partly because I’m a writer:
it’s my business to be curious. And I did it
because I’m human and sex is a part of life.
I don’t know why she did it. Most 20-year
olds won’t sit with a stranger and chat about
sex. Perhaps Shawna is precocious or braver than most.
Or perhaps it’s because she’s knows she’s
mortal in a way that eludes most 20-year olds: she
knows it in her gut. Shawna has ovarian cancer and
cancer in her kidneys, so she feels how ephemeral
life is. I suspect that she doesn’t want to
wait to discuss those things that matter to her, that
matter to all of us, because she might not ever be
40. Or even 30.
But we had insufficient words. You see: we didn’t
want the face-to-face equivalent of a 900 call.
She didn’t first grrr-purr, “Talk dirty
to me, McKy.”
And she didn’t say, for I’m more than
twice her age, “As an older woman, can you pontificate
about sex? Please, as befits this dreadfully serious
topic, employ clinical nomenclature. Use those polysyllabic
words that thicken the tongue.”
So we talked about our naughty bits and the naughty
bits of boys, but it didn’t feel naughty.
It felt awkward.
It was awkward partly because, sex-wise, we’re
all guitar strings tuned a few turns too tight. Although
I’d rather have some info about a car in a commercial,
we are awash in pics of pecs and lush lips, just so
more sedans, soda, and prescriptions can be sold.
Sex sells, but it comes at the cost of perpetual agitation.
At the start of each day, I have one chance of avoiding
sexual provocation to purchase something: I must stay
in bed with my comforter over my head.
And Shawna and I were also awkward, because in America,
words and actions instruct us to loathe our bodies.
The sites of life, the vagina and the nipples
and the penis, are deemed dirty.
But it was mostly awkward because we lack the language.
Sure, we knew the clinical words. We had vulva, which
sounds like vulgar, and vagina, which rhymes with
angina.
Then there’s scrotum, which sounds
so vile, independent of meaning, that if I’m
ever cornered by a bear, I’m gonna shout, “Scrotum!
Scrotum!”
And that bear will run.
Then there are the slang words. Some are gastronomical,
descriptive and funny. For the vagina, there’s
pink taco and pie. For the penis, there’s the
pork sword and the baloney bayonet.
Some of the slang words make me wonder. For the
vulva and vagina, there’s an “oo”
phenomenon. For the vulva, there’s coochy, cookie,
and cooter. For the vagina, there’s poontang
and poozle. Is this because the site of life makes
us go “Oooo!”? Or is it coincidence?
Then there are the witty (creepy?) ones, like beaver
cleaver for penis, and the vain ones, like pocket
rocket for penis.
There are the silly slang words too, like hooters,
knockers, melons, titties, and ta-tas for breasts.
And there are the crude ones, like the c-word.
Sex has room for funny, curious, witty, silly and
crude words, for sex can be funny, curious, witty,
silly, and crude, but sex can be tender too. So where
are the tender words, the words that honor the sites
of life, the words they give glory to them?
Sex is not so serious and holy that we should bump
bones not to Barry White, but to the Mormon Tabernacle
Choir. I think pink taco is a hoot, just like I think
schnoz and bum, as slang for nose and buttocks, are
hoots too.
Sex slang-wise, I’m not humor averse. Humor
helps us. It buys us time to engage the monstrous
meanings of life, death and sex. But when it comes
to sex, remnants of our tittering 9-year old selves
remain. Once, in a Harvard Kennedy School of Government
classroom, I suggested that sex be considered as an
element of group dynamics. What did those scholars,
aircraft carrier captains, mayors and U.N. diplomats
do? They lunged for humor. They quipped and chuckled,
believing it’s better to laugh than blush.
Likewise, we distance our discomfort with silly
phrases like lap taffy, which is slang for penis.
Again, humor has its place. It’s a powerful,
wonderful tool, but discussing sex with tenderness
has its place too—and we need tools of tenderness,
sex terms of tenderness.
Some couples construct their own phrases, such as
Love Muffin, which is interchangeable as slang for
vulva or a pet name for a poodle, or Mr. Happy, which
works both as slang for penis or as a clown handle.
I suggest a sexual nomenclature dedicated to tenderness.
What word depicts, with all due honor, the intricate,
delicate and tight topography of a vulva? Perhaps
plush for vulva or, for a phrase that both honors
and describes, how about fertile valley for vagina?
Or the tropics?
The penis is a marvel too and thus deserves marvelous
jargon and not just jargon that makes us titter, such
as wedding tackle, or jargon that makes a man swagger,
such as trouser snake, but words that revere the complex
plumbing that shifts the shape of a penis. The penis
is a wonder, so why not wonder for a phallic descriptor?
All I know is that I’ll be talking to Shawna
soon and when I do, I want the proper words, for life
is short and uncertain for all of us, and I want words
that tender all due honor to the sites of life and
ecstasy.
Katie
McKy is the author of It
All Began With a Bean, which answers a child's
true query: "What would happen if everyone in
the world passed gas at once?" Her work can be
found regularly on Raw Story weekends.
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