(6-96) Few days ago, I saw a program on HBO about sex on-line. There were body piercing, tattooing, caging, and something about blood. Someone actually cuts or let the partner cuts him or herself with sharp thin razor blades for blood; they then lick the blood and act as if it's sexually thrilling. I was both sickened and outraged.

I considered myself from the sixties and liberal. I had my share of sexual experiments. Decades ago, I was the one who took my boyfriend to a strip show. I have read Masters and Johnson, and Marquis de Sade, only to find the farther I go the less satisfied I am.

I recently re-read a sex manual written from ancient China. What struck me the most is the passage discussing about how sex should be performed according to seasonal changes. Sex should be performed most frequently in Spring, and reduced to almost nothing (once a month at most, as the book suggested) in Winter. Why? It suddenly dawned on me that it is deeply related to a common Chinese belief of yin-yang-xiao-zhang and wu-ji-bi-fan which means when yin goes too far yang must die, or when thing goes to the extreme it must bounce back. It is a simple belief of a common phenomena that things often go in cycles.

But I never thought this cliche truth could be applied to sex, and it took me twenty years to come around and recognize it. Think of this, don't we all know that there must be tension building before climax, and there must be quietness before tension building, and when the climax is over, it's back to quietness again. Why then are we so obsessed with the pursuit of climax, and forget about the tension building and the quiet resting period.

I cannot help but point my finger at the pop culture of winning is everything. We only prize the winner, the one who succeeds, and nothing else seems to matter. Hence, in the realm of sex, climax is prized and gets all of our attention. Little do we know that without the proper tension building the climatic stage is simply exhausting and weird.

I often wonder why in the arena of sex we are so dominated by this kind of twisted view of sexual thrills. It almost seems as if we want to prove to be open minded about sex, we will have to embrace the weird. The weirder the better, or else you will be labeled as rigid. We all know drinking is bad, and no where else women have voiced their opinion as successful as the "mothers against drunken driving". But when it comes to sex, we seem to be at a loss about how to tackle the problem. Is body cutting what we really want? Is endless banging what we really want? Why can't we voice our anger against cheap twisted sexual thrills. Why can't we honestly talk about what we really want. If sex is to be swept underneath the carpet it will be exactly the thing that eats through the core of our well-being. The days of letting Dr. Love chit chat about women's sexual needs are over. It is no longer a trendy entertaining social topic. It is a serious subject matter.