The vulnerability threshold
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 13: The Next Big Thing
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Brigid Delaney
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Brigid Delaney's biography and other articles by this writer
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live." So begins The White Album, Joan Didion's collection of essays about the 1960s. If the ‘60s were about imposing a new narrative on events – constructing a story out of the times (women burning bras, men burning draft tickets, naked couples making love in the mud at Woodstock), then what is the narrative their children impose on their lives?
Growing up in the most rapid era of change means there's little room to absorb events, let alone derive meaning from them. In the early part of this century, only one clear narrative has emerged – terrorism. Whatever we do in our lives – however unconnected it is to the realpolitik – can be interpreted through this prism, the lens greased with fear.
The sexual landscape of the young does not escape. A rise in young marriage rates? A grasping for security and comfort in a time of war and unease. Casual sex on the rise? A symptom of anxiety. A baby boom in New York? It's a post-9/11 thing. An increase in binge drinking and drugs? Blame nihilism – that end-of-days feeling, when every night on the news we're confronted with suicide bombers, terror training camps, ASIO raids, the war in Iraq.
Yet – in bars and clubs, pubs and at parties, through the smoke, the hyper-flirting, sexually aggressive women, confused men, booze and the pills, disco and trance, pop and heavy metal – we come together. Through the dancing and drinking and the sweat and the lust, we come together then disconnect. It's what human beings have always done, but how we do it says something about this age. Later some meaning may be clear. What it is right now – when the moments still have heat in them – is hard to say.
Already we know what this era won't be. In a time of generalised anxiety and fear, a Summer of Love circa 1968 is the stuff of movies. Even the more recent 1988, ecstasy-driven Summer of Love and the rave parties of the early 1990s seem a lifetime ago – the epoch of another, lighter age. Love and sex now have a harder edge. Hooking up – the young person's sexual game of choice – is transactional and cold. The trick is to get your rocks off physically while escaping with minimal emotional impact. The yearning that we have, the deep need to connect, is still there – indeed, stronger than ever – but to express the need to be loved is to risk rejection. It is to make yourself vulnerable. And in the age of anxiety, we have already reached the vulnerability threshold.
I PICK UP THE LATEST ISSUE OF Harper's Bazaar in a Kings Cross newsagency after a cover line catches my eye – "No Sex in the City". The article quotes an American study that found women were having less sex than ever before. Work, a lack of suitable sexual partners and too many things to watch on television were blamed by people interviewed in Sydney, New York and London. The tone was bleak: women preferred to drink expensive cocktails in trendy bars than risk second-rate sex. Men preferred to stay at work, make more money or watch sport with their mates than try to please a demanding woman. One "sexpert" advised that yoga was a good replacement for sex, "as it contained all the physical benefits but with none of the intimacy". Is that what we're scared of?
Beach Road, Hotel Bondi, the first weekend of daylight saving: four chicks are buying rounds of champagne, by the bottle. By the time we are done, everyone has drunk a bottle each, plus the jugs of sangria at the restaurant beforehand.
The women, in their late twenties, agree that alcohol has fuelled the new sexual landscape, but that Australian men – with their reluctance to "behave formally towards women, to ask them on dates" – also tilt the landscape. Heather, a twenty-eight-year-old Brit, says without rancour: "They won't ask you out for dinner, so after you've hooked up – they say ‘See you at the pub next week.' It's a lot looser and more open to interpretation."
Claire, twenty-nine, is seeing Russell, a twenty-five-year-old guy she met at this pub some weeks ago. But it's just sex, she says. She doesn't let him stay the night and resents it when he drops off to sleep in her bed because he snores. "I'm not his girlfriend. I shouldn't have to put up with that," she says.
Russell knows the rules of engagement are stringent. He doesn't call or send flowers or turn up as Claire's date at dinners or parties. They communicate by text and see each other late on Saturday nights after Claire has been out with her friends. She's not sure where Russell lives, but knows it's out in the suburbs – far away from the beach. She suspects that, apart from sexual compatibility, they don't have much in common. It's sex at its most transactional – bodies bared but their true selves assiduously hidden.
Claire doesn't want her heart broken ("again" she says. "I can't go through that again"). This kind of no-frills relationship gives her control – she gets the sex without the messy emotional stuff.
The notion of control has always been tightly bound up with sex. But the children of Baby Boomers are walking an even finer line than usual. Girls are going out in groups and drinking and drugging more than ever. Hard drinking and ingesting so many substances means control is relinquished. Sex drive is up, inhibitions down. In their backless tops, tiny silk camisoles, high heels and tight jeans, they feel sexy. Their mates in a hunting pack pump each other up. They say: "I'll be your wing man" when one goes in for the kill. If the bloke turns out to be a dud, they'll signal or text each other for backup.
But even with your "wing man" nearby, how do you keep control when it's two in the morning and your libido is skyrocketing, inhibitions are gone and one more drink will leave you slumped on the floor? Easy – pash and dash. Like a grown-up version of kiss-chasey, it's popular in nightclubs, bars or pubs where escape is possible thanks to numerous exits and big crowds.
It works like this. The girl sits next to a guy. She might put her hand on his leg. Maybe she'll introduce herself, maybe she won't. She then goes in for a French kiss. Or maybe she brushes up against him on the dance floor. They dirty dance for half a song, then pash towards the end of the third verse.
Then she dashes – makes an excuse that she's going to the loo or the bar, or doesn't bother making an excuse at all. To stay with him – to prolong the moment – is to open all sorts of doors that may entail loss of control.
If she doesn't dash and keeps kissing him, they get increasingly turned on, then move off the dance floor and to a booth, or the couches. Maybe they'll go outside. He'll have her back to the wall and her skirt hitched up. What follows is banal in its timelessness.
"Want to go back to my house?" he asks. "Sure," she says. They kiss in the back of the cab. They fuck on his couch while his housemate sheepishly tiptoes past. She may not want it. Or he may not want it. But in a stranger's house at four in the morning – with too much to drink and the wheels of something set in motion – it is hard to turn back. Even in the heat of it – even when it's really good – both will push back forebodings of the next morning. The awkward sight of new flesh and makeup on the pillow. The way he snores and the odour of his socks. The possibility of parents somewhere in the house. The small talk, exchange of names. The offer of a coffee or a cab. The excruciating pretence at another meeting ("Yeah, I got your number – I'll call you ...") How, in the sharp sunlight, neither can look the other in the eye.
The pash and dash. A coward's way out. Confusing for blokes? Sure. But for young women operating late at night in a full-on sexual landscape, it's the only way to maintain control.