Talke Talks: Sex and the Texas

Howdy from Texas, dear readers,

Do you, like many newspaper readers, shy away from the infamous summer slump? I hope not, because today’s column is intended to correspond exactly to this slippery category – trivial, trite and voyeuristic. Carrie Bradshaw from “Sex and the City” once wrote about fries in her sex column when she had nothing exciting to say about her love life; for me it’s the other way around. I write about food all the time and when I don’t have anything to say about it, it’s about sex. Unfortunately, the life of a columnist in Texas is not always full of exciting or intellectual topics. Is the election debate exciting or intellectual? I do not think so. Then something about Texas sex. And there’s a lot to be said about that.

It’s starting unprotected, with one of the highest teenage birth rates in the US. And now that abortion has been banned, that rate is likely to rise. And it continues unprotected with the highest rate of sexually transmitted diseases in the country. They often seem to spread through cheaters: It’s not for nothing that there are Facebook groups in our region called “Are we dating the same guy?” in which bigamous and trigamous guys are exposed by posting photos. I always wonder which American man has so much energy to fool several women at once when US dating is so time and money intensive. But then I remember: What the ex-president can do, any John can do too. Maybe even a Joe. And a hunter anyway.

Abstinence, so popular among strict Christians, could help lower both rates in Texas. Legends say that young Mormons practice so-called soaking to keep themselves “pure” until marriage. Everything that is commonly introduced in traffic is introduced, but without carrying out any further movements. And no, this is not a tantric ritual. A third Mormon, located under the bed, is involved in the coital vibrations via mattress shaking in order to avert sin from the couple: a chaste ménage-à-trois, so to speak. But this in-out method is not “pure” either, because with it you can both become pregnant and get chlamydia unprotected (and we can confidently assume this status given the debility of everyone involved). The more pious version of soaking is called “Levi Lovin” because you keep your Levi’s on for decency. How poetic!

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However, abstinence is safest when practiced alone. But there are hurdles there too. A friend recently complained that some porn channels he valued were blocked and he now needed a VPN connection to stream them. As if he lived in Russia or China! Texas just declared war on the major porn channels to protect minors from consuming them. You could also start by properly educating children at school, but the hyper-conservative parents would certainly have something to object to, since in Texas schools the motto is: “Abstinence first!” But these parents could also be sinners themselves: it is said on Tiktok , some married hardcore Christians are “soft swingers” (i.e. don’t swing all the way, just a little, maybe with jeans).

And what is the situation in the liberal states, where education and contraception are much less taboo? Much better, but also not without American absurdities: For example, students at the University of Chicago demanded free supplies of the “morning after pill,” rapid HIV tests and even nap wipes for a pro-Palestine demo this spring on social media! That sounds less like political commitment than like Carrie Bradshaw’s friend Samantha Jones: “I’m prosexual, I’ll try anything once.”