Writing about sex

I had one of those world-smashing conversations the other day. You know the ones. About SEX. When basically your parents have decided you’re old enough to talk like adults together, only not before they’ve said, ‘Now then, Matthew,’ like Jimmy Saville, or as if I’ve done something terrible, like forgetting to put an apple core in the bin, and then they start talking about SEX, like they’ve ACTUALLY had it, and as if to say YOU AREN’T AN ANDROID AFTER ALL.

Basically there was a very interesting article in the Sunday Times Magazine about Suzanne Portnoy, a writer who writes about boffing everybody, and some other stuff, like being single and forty-something, and then some more about boffing everybody. Whatever, anyway.

I didn’t think much of any of it, really, because each to their own, but she’s monumentally smart and knows exactly what she’s doing, and that’s good too – just like how I regard the explosion, post Sex and the City, of writing like it, as a good thing also. And regardless of the content, I felt the journalist, one Lesley White, was a very good writer. So well done, Lesley White – you kept me interested in precisely the way Friends doesn’t.

So afterwards I’ve read it and we’re sitting about, having our nice Sunday and everything quaint like that, and a bit later my mum suddenly chirps up after reading it herself, quite sincerely, and with her eyebrows cocked too, with, ‘Matt, do you think you could ever write about sex?’

So I kind of sat there opposite her, creaking away atop my stool, with my mug of fennel tea and a rollie hanging out of my face, like I do, and then I said, ‘I don’t really know, Mum,’ which is pretty much where the conversation ended.

But interestingly the question’s racked me ever since. I mean, could I do it? Mentioning all those flopping boobies and long stodgy widges and all of that? And what would I even write about? How middle-aged I’m not actually? What possible angle is left to pursue? And how would I write about it?

And today it struck me; oddly while I was wearing a fleece and cleaning out the inside of a car.

It struck me that I can’t and couldn’t and won’t ever write about sex. Because if I were ever to write a story about sex it’d probably start with a line like,

‘It was settled. Geoffrey had a psychic penis and there was no question.’

Which isn’t terribly romantic, is it?

Because I think my problem with sex – and inherently my problem with writing about sex – is that it’s such an unendingly ridiculous pastime anyway. Because I’m not sure I’d be able to get past the simple fact that if ever you catch a glimpse of your shadows on the wall while you’re doing it, or maybe in the corner of a badly-adjusted mirror or something, you just kind of end up thinking: What on Earth am I doing to this person?

So that’s what I think about sex writing.