Sex Uncontaminated

Days later and Jenny’s warmth still glowing inside, a slow intoxicating burn like a single malt. Today in the gym, pushing iron, feeling strong and alive and unfrustrated.

In the background, hyping music, running machines pounding, clanking of weights, grunts of weightlifters. The gymgoers absorbed into their idea of themselves and how they want to look, ceaselessly glancing into mirrors. Me, I feel like an exception, I’m doing it for the intrinsic pleasure of the physical exertion, no need for objectives or transformations or suchlike nonsense.

Lying back, getting ready for the bench press, squaring my shoulders. Setting a medium weight. Ten reps, three sets. Taking the strain. Starting. Thinking, these people in this gym, I wonder how they think about sex, I wonder if they immerse into it, or if like now they’re over-aware of themselves, imposing an irrelevant reference on a simple physical activity.

One set down, a brief rest, two to go. Restarting. What irrelevant reference? Well, those grooved by advertising and media and surrounding culture, you run on a machine and in your mind the television cameras pan as you break the Olympic tape, you have sex and in your mind you’re the witty star of some Hollywood romcom. The mistaking of something for something else, as draining of vitality as it is possible to be.

Okay, final set. Yet the pollution of life by irrelevant references, nowhere more extreme than in sex, specifically, sex contaminated by claims of ownership. You have sex, so you have rights. Lazy cultural grooves. As in marriage. The principal right being that the other person doesn’t have sex with anyone else. The claim made regardless of repercussions. Such repercussions including the certain debilitation of sexual vitality consequential on the imposition of rights.

Yes, that’s what makes Jenny so precious. The physical experience alone, free of bonds and claims and rights. She unchained by me, I by her. No superimposition of extraneous references. Twenty minutes of extreme bliss, distilled.

Finishing the set, resting. Grabbing some weights for flys. Still feeling wonderful. Jenny, that twenty minutes, that’s what I paid for, but I think what you gave me will last forever.