I like to know every detail of my friend’s sexual lives. (What a shocker, huh?) I have asked many of them, most actually, at one time or another, if I could watch them having sex. They always laugh as if I’m joking. I tell them I’m not, then they take me seriously, freeze for a moment, laugh some more, and say No.

It happened often in my life that men (and a woman or two) wanted to watch me and my partner (each of the 4 of them) do the deed, and I can count the total number of times I said yes on one hand. Being watched was never my thing. So I get it.

But I also want to watch everyone shower, pick their noses, fight with each other (especially about the things that truly, truly hurt), accept or reject their fears, check out their poop before flushing (as we always do) and wash, peel and chop vegetables for a big dinner salad. 

 The way we do these things, and how we feel about the doing of them as we do them, reveals character. Much more than what we say. And especially if we don’t know anyone is watching, which is why there is nothing more defeating to an actor than self-consciousness. Because it distorts the way we do. 

And nothing drives us in a more primary way than lust. Or lack of it.  

The reason I love the idea of watching almost anyone having sex is that sexual behavior contains the core truth of who we are. (My God! wouldn’t it be fantastic to have a camera in the bedroom of Barak and Michelle Obama?! Or in almost any nursing home in America, where women outnumber men, like, 12 to 1? Apparently many old-folks homes are fervid looney-bins of lust. Disgusting you say? Well, hotness is not much of a factor in my interest, I have a more anthropological view of the nasty.) 

Human beings can’t get off unless we connect to something real. Something that really floats the boat, regardless of gender, age, or orientation. And sexually, what’s real in that moment can be the deepest soulful kind of intuitive lust-driven love (that would be at the far left end of the scale), or, a need for a complete sexual negation of the other person (which is all the way on the far right end). Of course there are millions of permutations in between, but the core truth of who we are lies right between our legs.

How shallow! How sad! How male! say the 70s feminists (and all their unfortunate disciples), and a whole host of other sexually disconnected folk whose sexual lives exist mainly in their own heads. Show me an unhappy marriage and I’ll show you a sex life that doesn’t meet the physical or emotional needs of either partner, and is laden with unconscious, lust-defeating behavior. Show me an actor who isn’t in touch with his or her own sexual response, and I’ll show you an actor who fakes almost everything.

The only industry in America which boasted steep, ever-climbing revenues throughout this entire Bush-driven debacle of an economy is Pornography.

Art (which, importantly, includes porn) tells the truth about life as it is, and as it should be. (Politics: No. Jimmy Carter told the truth about the coming Energy fiasco in the 70s, and nobody wanted to hear it. Ronald Reagan, a.k.a. Pollyanna, followed, and ushered in the disastrous era of the giant gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle with his preposterous and self-serving trickle-down economics, and everybody wanted to hear it.)

Why is SEX the driving force behind almost everything? Well, men run almost everything, for one thing, but sex is really about the only thing I can think of that gets better the more you give up control of it. Women get that because their bodies are designed for surrender. Which doesn’t mean they can’t have a great time taking the lead, but I have never met one woman in my life that enjoyed being on top until she knew her man could take charge of her first and get her off by forcing her to submit. (And by forcing her I mean of course with her enthusiastic permission.)

All the men I ever slept with who were dreadful in the sack were stuck on the same issue: control. They either insisted on having it, or insisted on giving it up. Both of which are total bores. What makes sex sizzle, and then keeps it sizzlin over time is an ebb and flow of the chemistry of control between the partners.

As mostly a lifelong homo, I was known as a “top”. I really didn’t like having the other guy’s hardon up my ass. But it was a lot of fun when he threw me down, and urgently impaled himself on mine. I was technically still “on top” being inside him, but in those moments of demanding self-impalement, he was running the show. I knew how it was going to end, but seeing how we were going to get there together was half the fun.

I also had lots of sex where penetration was not on the menu. For me, ass play only resulted (with a few thrilling exceptions, granted) from deeper love feelings, wanting to be joined with the other person. I understood completely when everyone was freaking out during the Clinton era that young women all over the country were confirming Monica and Bill’s assertion that without insertion it really wasn’t sex. I’d still call it sex, but to me kissing is much more intimate that cock sucking. I’d classify playing the skin flute more as mutual masturbation, with hands and mouths.

Pleasuring the female orally is a much more complex and ambitious undertaking, as we all know (or at least all of us who have pleasured both sexes). And the payoff is not only much more potentially explosive with the ladies, but much longer lasting. When I was pleasuring women, my rule of thumb was Just Keep Going Until She Begs You To Stop. Otherwise, I could never tell when it was over, and neither, it seemed, could she, most of the time, which, to me, was amazing and envy-making

But back to the boys I went. I surrendered control of my desire.

The actor must be fully capable of switching on his or her own sexual response without any help from the fellow actor. Of course it’s easier to play a love scene with a person you’re really attracted to, but you’re being paid to make us believe, not to get your own rocks off. (If you can do them both at once, Salute!) But, this is why so many actors who choose the confines of an unfulfilling monogamous relationship, or choose the closet, for fear of being exposed as gay, make a tragically misguided choice. They cut off their ability to feel real desire in their lives, and so, are forced to pretend it in their work. As they don’t really know any better, the pretense feels real to them. But what about the audience?