Hidden Gem: The Male Libido.

“So, whatever happened to shagging madly in an elevator on whim?”

These are the important questions that keep me awake at night. I have found that in my short time on this planet, there are the things we all love to talk about doing, and then there’s the reality of what most of us actually do.

As a young sexually confused and frustrated girl, I would often spend my afternoons hiding in tall trees, sucking on lemon popsicles and daydreaming about my future trysts.

I would imagine some tall, dark and handsome hotelier whisking me off to Argentina for the weekend, and upon my return, my friends would ask what Buenos Aires is like, and I’d respond in a cool fashion…

(like they do in movies) “Heavens, I wouldn’t know, but the hotel suite was marvellous.” The deeper I delved into my teens, the more graphic and elaborate these fantasies would become, and once I finally lost my virginity, I realized that T.V. and the movies do in fact lie, and my fantasies turned out to be a lot of hot air.

The problem it seems is that the male libido peaks at 18. At 18, most “men” don’t have the means necessary to whisk me away to Buenos Aires for the weekend, nor do they have the stamina, ahem, to “last” all weekend. Quite frankly the idea of shagging an 18 year old for 36 hours straight is painful and uncomfortable at best. But we all do create these vivid fantasies and somehow it drives us to continue searching and seeking for that ‘something’ to fulfill at least part of it.

The best porn I’ve ever seen was at a private screening inside my brain. The closest it’s come to being fulfilled, was a dear boyfriend of mine putting on a Cajun accent as foreplay. (I have a recurring X-Man fantasy featuring Gambit, and while his thought was sweet, somehow the stench of chilli he had just devoured and his protruding beer belly did little to make me forget it is in fact 2 am, and I’m thoroughly annoyed.) My libido, according to “science”, will peak from the ages of 35-45. Hardly seems to be an even playing field. A smart man once said, it’s because “God doesn’t really want anybody to get together.” But thanks to alcohol, we still do. There is much to be said about the great disparity between our wants (fantasies) and what we actually get (reality). How do we decipher the two? Compromise, but still feel like we’re getting something out of the bargain?

Figuring out the difference between fantasy and reality, and how to feel like you’re living somewhere in between, is no cake walk. Suppressing those wants to the point of denial, does nothing for the soul, and buries you deeper and deeper into a reality you never set out to pursue. The bane of our North American existence is our love-hate relationship with sex. We all want it every-which-way, but we’re certainly not going to talk about it. Instead of actually talking about what we really want, we sit around and talk about the things we think we ought to want. Without realizing it, denying our sexuality, our true desires, can lead you down a path to believing those little lies you tell yourself. And eventually something has got to give. After years of repression, women have a strange tendency to turn into ‘types’.

The most common ‘type’ out there is the mom. Devoid of sexuality, the bad haircut, the jeans (my god! the jeans!), and if she’s a ‘cool’ mom, she’ll go out for cosmos once a month ‘with the girls’ (and pretty much annoy every bartender within a 5 mile radius). Men tend recede into escapist fantasies and flirt ferociously with co-workers and young interns while complaining about the other half at home. So why the charade and where is the disconnect? Men seem to enjoy talking about sex, but if you take note of the magazine they read, a lot of the articles have more to do with what males THINK they ought to be talking about, not what really needs to be said.

In our culture, we love to complain about the things we’re not getting, but to go out and actually try to get them, is a rarity. From an honest female point of view, your work is half done: our libidos are increasing exponentially with age! While a weekend in Buenos Aires is out of the question for a good 99% of us, a dinner date with a long-time lover isn’t. Neither is ravaging them on whim in an elevator. A lot of men tend to complain that this sort of behaviour feels forced. Of course it is! But if you think for a second that your girlfriend watching 4 hours of a UFC fight isn’t forced, you’re either kidding yourself, or you wouldn’t be able to tell if she’s faking it anyway. The success of magazines like Playboy, FHM, Esquire et al, is akin to the escapism and little white lies magazines like Cosmo (et al) sell us.

When we are young, we fantasize about exotic trips and lovers, fancy lingerie, scotch and high-class burlesque bars. We wake up one day and realize (for most of us) that our adult realities are anything but. So we read these articles propagating stereotypes of fierce masculinity (and femininity): sexually virile, educated, jazz loving, wine drinking supermen, whose belts always match wingtips. More than anything, the advertising leaves us lacking.

The people in the ads have sex in elevators, but they’re also equipped with fancy shoes, complicated suits, killer smiles and balconies of cleavage worthy of Shakespearean performance. This is creating a counter-culture of us vs. them. Those young free wild things that know what sex is and the rest of us, who try and remember what it felt like to have your heart jump out of your body, to feel your lovers hot breath on the nape of your neck… distant memories of youth. People like “us”, with kids, vans, student debt, relationships in ruts, aren’t’ deserving of that fun, according to advertisers, until we ‘upgrade’ our lives to fit the commercial mould. Only then will we be allowed to feel comfortable with “fun” spur of the moment romps.

I think its time to start a revolution.

Nobody fits the ultra-masculine, super-feminine stereotype. They’re fluffy fantasies, and that’s why they work so well on our bored and domesticated minds. But there is something we can do about it and redeem those heart pounding, inertia inducing, sweaty fantasies. The beautiful thing about free will is we are in charge of our own happiness and the relationships we have can be/will be whatever we want them to be.

Being bored with a lover is a subconscious choice made after years and years of concession. What started out as anticipation of a date, placing perfume in special places, spending hours thinking about a first kiss, the right pair of shoes, over the course of time turns into hours spent thinking about dirty kitchens, phone bills and who is going to take the dog to the vet. Sex eventually falls off the priority list. As adults, our lives become more and more serious.

Sex, in this part of the world, is viewed as frivolous, an afterthought at best. What our society is in denial of is how closely linked GOOD sex with a loving partner is to our happiness. While the strongest of unions aren’t based on rolls in the hay, sex is an active and important part of the equation. We need to take responsibility for our ruts. Shagging one another back into reality. We can all grab our lovers, push them into elevators and take them to heaven, for two (or so) minutes. Because two minutes in elevator heaven are better still than no minutes at all.