One Generation being Safe about
Sex will change the world forever.
By Kathy Brando, founder
Copyright 2008
Safe sex begins with safe Love. Confusing sex with love is at the root of all the confusion.
Love is a complex recipe, involving the ingredients, the timing, and the enjoyment of its making. Love does not come fast. Never. Love begins with love of self, then proceeds to love of other. Love builds over time, bakes like bread. And love, like bread, comes in many varieties.
“Falling” is Lust. Lust is a necessary ingredient of love, but happens as if it is “ love” in the movies, because in movies time is money. Our culture’s obsession with “’love’ at first sight”, which is really lust, is a good example of just how impoverished our language of love really is.
Truly, we fall in Lust. And in Lust’s throws we are rushed and out of control. It is the very nature of Lust, and we should not judge it too quickly or harshly. Lust is an essential strength from which we build true love. But only if we are able to make Lust real for what it is, our engine of passion, and to find language with which to make it honest, that its power may be transformed into Love.
Underlying any discussion about the difference between Lust and Love is the false assumption that they are opposites. That relationships lie on a continuum from, on the one hand love, in the form of exclusive one-to-one relationships that are loyal and forever, to, on the other hand lust, that is many promiscuous and dangerous excesses of desire.
Let’s instead try to envision a continuum from honesty to deception, in which love is on the one hand, honest, across from betrayal on the other hand, which lead to dangerous excess. Lust is the force, or engine, that drives our desire to interact. Lust fuels the entire spectrum of desire.
A continuum from Honesty to Deception, in which Love and Lust live together on the side of honesty, makes allies of Love and Lust, which is where they must belong if we are ever to get honestly to Sex.
The opposite of Love is Betrayal. Betrayal is the practice of dangerous excess, lust out of control, with/or without awareness of the danger, and the beyond the boundaries created by one’s sphere of social and intimate relationships with which one builds an honest life. Betrayal is dishonest. Betrayal is Promiscuous, even if only done once. It is Lust for Lust’s sake alone. It is exploitive. It is rage, perhaps against our silence about Lust’s appetite. It is dangerous because it proceeds unchecked, without honor. It is selfish while at the same time destructive of self. And in this age, during an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, it is deadly and therefore even potentially criminal.
Sex is the medium of intimate interaction. Sex can and will be a part of relationships of both Love and Betrayal. And as sex is complicated by contagious diseases, we must find a way to separate the concrete mechanics of sex, from the relative experiments with intimacy through Love and Betrayal, lust in balance or out of balance.
You can have your sex, and eat it too. But honesty is a necessary pre-requisite for integrity and safety in the sharing of Love, or Lust, that becomes sex. And honesty about sex requires two tools which we will give you on this site.
1- Communication. Let’s talk about sex before we engage in it. Even the “little” things, like kissing and petting. Sex must always begin with communication and dialogue. And this is not easy. In the movies there is the moment, the first kiss, a convenience, as we have said, for efficient storytelling. Unfortunately, it has become ubiquitous.
2- Safe Sex Equipment: We would like to introduce you to the Safe Sex Kit. In it you will find the tools with which you can practice intimacy with minimal risk. You can experiment with sex while you wait for love to bake.
Safe Sex begins with good humor.
When you play safe, you engage in an act of remaking the beautiful, natural, and ultimately dangerous “natural” process of lovemaking, into a radically updated, safe, and “bionic” experience.
You are about to become a “superhero” of sex. You are about to become a “knight in shining armor” paramour.
As getting to “safe” is dependent upon a dialogue between two people in “lust”…. between two people in a headlong rush… between two crazy people, hungry people, appetizing people, that is delicious to each other… seductive to each other…
Since you intend to replace this “mad rush”, with a dialogue, and since each dialogue begins with someone’s monologue, and this monologue feels like the most important thing you have ever spoken, but since it feels like the most “ridiculous” idea as well… to interrupt, to slow, to engage, to negotiate… well…
Your monologue needs to be endearing, entertaining, and delicious… you are suggesting replacing urgency with care… ridiculous!!! You are suggesting replacing the touch of human skin with a “sexual superhero suit”, the touch of human flesh with a soft clean layer of gloves… You are suggesting that your lover watch, and help, as you stop the “mad rush” to adorn yourself, you are suggesting taking the ultimate responsibility of, post orgasms, getting up to clean up, wash, dry, and cloth again, before returning to each other to cuddle and “collapse” in each other’s arms…
In order to accomplish this new “ritual”, a greater sense of integrity than you may have ever felt before, built upon a greater level of transparency and honesty than you may have ever felt before, you must prepare yourself for the greatest “monologue” ever delivered, by you, to the most demanding audience you will ever face, your lover who wants you, wants you now, and is as willing as you are to cast all caution to the wind…
Your monologue, you the lover who has done your homework, the lover who is thinking about the health of future generations, you who has made the connection between this one act of impossibly delicious, and inexplicably irrational, desire… this act of pheremones, and hormones, this chemical soup, this outrageous urgent need… you are the one about to relate it to the future evolution of our species, of the survival of our families, to the health of our next generations, even if…
AND ESPECIALLY BECAUSE…
You, we, have no intention of making them now…
That we admit that we are engaged in the purely human, though essentially animal based, creature like, act of making love for making love’s… pleasuring and being pleasured…
And yet not separate from the proposition that sex is ultimately reproductive… totally tied to the notion that we will be better partners with the “co-parents” of our real children if we are better lovers… and that being better lovers means practice…
And that we intend to practice, now, right now with this inviting, attractive, pleasing, irresistible, sweet, delicious, willing and inviting, person whom, essentially, we hardly know…
Well for this monologue, humor is recommended. For here is the heresy you are about to propose, in a nutshell:
We are going to replace the “natural”, or rather, “conventional” flow:
- Lust, desire, attraction…
- Public meeting/ romantic seduction…
- Private encounter.
- Touching, caressing, sweetness…
- Kissing, lips, tongues, wetness…
- Removing clothes, wandering hands
- Hands-on genitals, wetness
- Mouths on genitals, wetness
- Interruption!! Calling for the Condom!!
- The placing of the Condom.
- Sex!!
- Orgasm!!
- Collapse!!
- Interruption!! Removal and disposal of the condom!!
- Possibly repeat steps 4 to 14, and possibly multiple times. We are athletes after all!
- Fall into a deeply intertwined rapture, leaving all caring for another day… actually for tomorrow morning, but let’s not go there until then… for now to sleep the dreams of “angels”
Before offering up our new “safe”, “intelligently designed”, sex flow, “sexual superhero” experience, let me point out that you have already learned about “Interruptions!!!”
Thanks to HIV/ AIDS we have had to make the “life and death” decision to include Condoms in our “natural flow”, condoms being not natural at all, but we have done it, however grudgingly, we stop to put them on, and we stop to take them off…
and sex still works out just fine, thank you very much, I will have that Condom, and we will include it, because that’s the way it is, has to be…
There you have already done the hard work. You have integrated Interruption into the sexual experience, and still had your adventure, and your orgasms, your lust, and perhaps even some love…
Now you are about to learn how to turn Interruption into High Art, into tantalizingly patient tools for respecting your partner, for praising your partner, for praising life, and love, and children, who inevitably lurk in the background of every sexual experience, whether you are choosing to create them or not, they are there, and need your respect as well…
So your sexual super secret powers lead you to this new, “intelligently designed” flow…
- Lust, desire, attraction…
- Public meeting/ romantic seduction…
- Private encounter.
- Touching, caressing, sweetness…
- Interruption!! Conversation, Negotiation!!
- DRY Kissing, lips, NO tongues, NO wetness… save wetness for the FUTURE!!
- Interruption!! Discussing the implications of clothing removal!! Recommitting ourselves to safety!!
- Removing clothes, wandering hands to DRY places. Practicing gloves, wrap, and Condoms, with hands and mouths in/on safe/dry places.
- Interruption!! Calling for the Gloves!! Placing the Gloves on Hands!!
- Hands-on genitals, safe wetness
- Interruption!! Calling for the food wrap!!
- Mouths on genitals, safe wetness
- Interruption!! Calling for the Condom!!
- The placing of the Condoms and the Safe Sex Suit.
- Sex!!
- Orgasm!!
- Collapse!!
- Interruption!! Removal of the suit and condoms, clean up of the suit, hands, and genital areas of both partners, and disposal of the condom!!
- Possibly repeat steps 4 to 14, and possibly multiple times. We are athletes after all!
- Fall into a deeply intertwined rapture, leaving all caring for another day… actually for tomorrow morning, but let’s not go there until then… for now to sleep the dreams of “angels”, real “angels”, having protected each other, our integrity, our health, and the health of future generations.
You are now a safe sex superhero!! And you had fun with every step of the process. You had to have had fun, or it would never have worked. You have engaged in an act of revolution, of evolution, of consciousness, of intelligent design. You have had your cake and eaten it too. And you will live to love another day, in safety, and health, perhaps again with this partner, perhaps to love another partner, but with the freedom to experiment and grow as a sexual being without putting your partners or your future children at risk from your learning process.
Perhaps you will stay with this partner and become her mate. Perhaps you will move on to other partners. Either way, you have done no harm.