The Problems With Birthday Sex

Conventional thinking would have it that birthday sex is a cause for celebration.  After all, what’s more individually satisfying than sex, and more self aggrandizing and gratifying than one’s birthday?  The mere thought of combining the two should naturally conjure thoughts of fireworks and reckless breakdancing fits.  As far as that last thought is concerned, maybe it’s just me who gets excited and explodes in to dance moves like: the robot, the schoolcraft, & the cabbage patch (I can’t breakdance, but if I could it would be the ultimate expression of joy).   As a footnote, I have to include that when dancing is inappropriate or space is constrained, I simply Earl Flynn to myself (some of these are regional dances, but visual reenactments may be found via You Tube. Try: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO5hRRr7JWQ or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxvzqbnT4Vk ).

But I digress, getting back on topic, culturally, we celebrate the idea of sex on our birthday.  One’s birthday is a special occasion for a myriad of reasons.  Not only is it an occasion where the individual celebrating the birthday is allowed excessive gluttony and self-serving behavior but others are expected to both cater to and encourage it.  One’s birthday is also a rarity, occurring annually with no exceptions, so it holds a treasured status.  Combine this understanding of accepted birthday behavior with the very concept of sexual intercourse and all sorts of deviance and indulgences (if not prohibited, then simply unpracticed) are added to the field of play. 

Popular music even has a song celebrating such an occasion entitled, “Birthday Sex”, by Jeremih.   The title of the song, like the physical performance, purposely lacks poetry.  It’s egregious in its sense of purpose and general approach towards its craft.  The chorus of the song simply repeats, “birth-day-sex, birth-day-sex, birth-day-sex.”  It is melodic though painfully simple and uncreative.  It drones on at an obnoxious pace forcing its way into consciousness.  Yet again, I digress.

Sex on one’s birthday is an expectation that grows with age.  In one’s youth, sex is far more common and yet, still very new and exciting on a consistent basis.  However, as the brutal harshness and redundancy of everyday life begins to take its toll, one’s birthday in and of itself becomes a refuge.  And on this day of the year when selfishness is virtue, those drunk on the wine of immodesty want the ultimate power, sex.  Yes, sex gives the power to an individual to completely dominate (or allow one’s self to be dominated by) another, physically and/or emotionally.  Without it being explicitly stated, our cultural understanding is that birthday sex should be easily the ultimate sexual experience.  It’s a once-a-year 24-hour free sex pass.

So, what’s wrong with engaging in birthday sex?  What evil lies in engaging your most erotic sexual whims if only once a calendar year?  And should we not find any moral/ethical grounds for choosing an anti-birthday sex stance, where did I develop such an unpopular political leaning?

Well, it should not come as a great surprise that the concept of birthday sex is anathema to me by virtue of its own narcissism.  It is often assumed that such narcissism is normative and all individuals expect the privilege of birthday sex, which is somehow owed through birthright.  In fact, such selfishness is so normative that the very concept of birthday sex becomes cliché through the perspective of age.  It loses its creativity, vigor, and edge in becoming formulaic over the years.  Furthermore, the power dynamic can be contrived and cumbersome.   Finally, the pageantry of birthday sex takes from the sexual performance one of its major positive characteristics, spontaneity ¾or more specifically, the perceived value of being an organic object of affection.

To narrow the scope, I can speak for the married man and long-term boyfriend by acknowledging that the requirement of sex can make it a chore.  Maybe it is more true for women in these situations.  The birthday becomes a physical and emotional obligation.  Sometimes the obligation requires one to perform special sex acts and other times to be bothered to care in some capacity one way or another.  It’s assumed that two people in a relationship want to have wild, deviant, uninhibited, sex.

My conclusion is that birthday sex is a cultural artifact that tends to go overlooked or at least it travels below the radar of common discourse.  Though it may be of tremendous benefit if only as a last rights to sexual intercourse for some monogamous parties, it is largely a single person’s game.  Those who can most appreciate birthday sex in our culture are those who are single or in a short-term relationship.  For them, sex often retains a premium value.  In fact, birthday sex is little more than another excuse to have sex.  The fact that this occasion is due to a birthday establishes that the sex must be special and particularly pleasing to the sexual honoree. 

This typically is not the case for the married and those in long standing partnerships.  The power dynamic of sex between partners shifts and changes in many ways over time.  Birthday sex still has meaning, but what that meaning is will vary from year to year.  History has a way of shaping power relationships, and therefore sex, over time changing perception, passion, and overall drive. 

This all brings me back to my point and the genesis of this article.  Last week I was confronted with the ultimatum that is birthday sex and felt the need to balk on the request.  Instantly I was faced with what felt like the rejection of someone else’s natural rights.  But then came the perplexing question of how the violation of someone else’s natural rights could be dependent on my inaction.  The answer was easy, because birthday sex is not a natural right, it’s a cultural practice (& a foolish one at that).  Why should one wait until their birthday to fulfill their sexual desires and engage their sexual imagination?  What exactly is the purpose of making an event out of sex and inhibition when it is so readily available to us? It's a game of power and the illusion of compliance. That is the problem of birthday sex. I, for one, want no parts of it.

The Anticipated Loneliness of the Strip Club

Something about most strip clubs these days bothers me. And no, it isn’t the objectification of the dancers, or the way they prance and grind and pop and swing for dollar bills. I love that shit. That shit is the whole reason that I go to the strip club in the first place. It’s the owners, the designers, the architects of the strip club that usually get it all wrong. And I know what you’re thinking, The premise is simple – men pay to enter, women dance on stage and then come out and try to separate as much money from the men as possible.’ But there’s so much more to it, at least for me. If I could design my own strip club, here are some of the things I would feature:

The Entrance: First off, you have to get the entrance right. It can’t look like you are entering the backalley entrance of some all-night crap-game. No steel doors please. What we need is an entrance, non-descript, but something with a decent lobby to appropriately transition you to the world you are about to enter.

The Lighting: Next, you have to get the lighting right. The worse thing about the strip clubs that I’ve been in (and to be honest, I haven’t been in that many) is that they don’t use the lighting to their advantage to set the mood and tempo of the place. Personally, I feel like the house lights should rise and fall when a new dancer comes out on stage, like the way it does when one goes to the opera, or to see a live play. You have to recognize each woman’s performance as a performance, a three-act play with an opening, climax, and conclusion. As the woman is finishing her dance, the lights would go up (as if to say this act is over) and they would stay up until another dancer is ready to come on stage. So much of sex and sexuality is about picking up on non-verbal cues, about knowing how to read the signals, the signs. Varying the lights would compel the patrons to pay attention even on a subconscious level, and that would help alleviate the biggest downfall of the strip-club (see below).

The Tempo: One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen strip clubs make is not allowing some time to pass between dancers. There have been times when I wanted to go to some owners and tell them: “You know, even a teenagers dick needs to go soft every once in a while”. For god’s sake people, give us five minutes between sets. Let us mill around some, go to the bathroom, get up and get a drink without feeling like we’re going to be missing something. In other words, let the iron cool for a minute before you heat it back up again. I know it seems like a simple concept, but if this doesn’t happen, I think you very likely increase the chance the biggest downfall of the strip-club happening.

The Anticipation: I know I’m going to get a lot of disagreement on this one, but I personally think the strip-club experience would be greatly enhanced if all the dancers didn’t take off ALL their clothes ALL of the time. I think dancers should be prepared to take it all off, but should reserve the right (as part of their professional judgment) to leave the g-string on if they so desire. Frankly, if they feel aren’t getting the enthusiasm (or the tips) they deserve, they should be able to leave it on. Tell the truth, wouldn’t you be more likely to throw dollars at the stage if you though that by doing so you could make something happen?

The Other People: Perhaps Jean Paul Sartre really knew what he was talking about when he said ‘hell is other people’. It certainly is in the strip club. In my perfect world, strip clubs are designed more like opera houses, with a woman on stage below, surrounded on all sides and above by box seats (I know this presents an obstacle to the whole ‘throwing dollars on stage’ thing but we’re really moving away from paper currency anyway). That way, while sitting in my box seat, sending dollars to her via credit card (with her running total of donations flashed on a sign above her head) I could maintain the illusion that I am alone there, in the strip club, with only my melancholy, and a lone dancer taking off (or perhaps NOT taking off) her clothes to comfort me. I certainly can’t speak for anyone else, but the times of my strongest desire to go to the strip club are when I feel the most lonely and detached from the world, and when I am feeling that way, I want to seek out other people who are lonely and detached. And what is the description of a dancer at a strip club if not that? Who are they if not those who have to pretend to pretend to pretend? The truth of the matter is, I don’t go to the strip club to see the dancers, or touch them, or talk to them, I go to the strip club because they are times in my life (hours, days, weeks) when I feel like I am them – just a person going through a series of motions to get paid. And at those times, they are the only people I feel can understand what I’m going through.

The Biggest Downfall of the Strip Club: Boredom, plain and simple. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than that moment of recognition in the club when one asks oneself: “What the hell am I doing here? Isn’t Sportscenter on right now?” And boredom is exactly what happens when one stops being engaged, I dare say, when one stops being surprised by what happens at the strip club. At that to me is the fundamental irony of the strip club. We all know, as humans, that what we crave most is occasional variation, particularly in the realms of sex and sexuality. But most strip clubs these days are an exercise in soul-crushing monotony. Which is funny, because the very thing that most women think men go there to get, something ‘new’, is the very thing that most strip clubs don’t offer.