WRITINGS:
RICHARD BOTTO
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July / August 2002
The Renaissance
of Casual Sex
None of the people in my office are sleeping together. At least none that
I know of. But recent history says it will happen. The lure of an office
fling, the pure fantasy value, has been well documented for years. In
fact, one popular survey had sleeping with your boss as the number two
most popular fantasy for women, right behind sleeping with a stranger.
And now we're smack in the middle of a hot, steamy summer, you can multiply
the sexual tension by pi.
But it occurred
to me after reading Sean Carter's piece on sexual harassment in this
issue that the topic is not the hot button it once was. So I did some
research and sure enough, the number of sexual harassment cases since
1999 has decreased while the amount of people having office affairs
is on the rise.
The reason? Two
words… one name… Bill Clinton.
Although Clinton is gone, the jacuzzi removed from the Oval Office and
the stay in the Lincoln Room no longer charged by the hour (extra for
clean sheets), America still embraces Slick Bill's nonchalance toward
sexual relations. It takes years, sometimes decades for a presidency
to define itself, but if the Reagan years were all about capitalism
and gross excess, the Clinton years were all about casual sex and gross
use of props. If you think I'm kidding about the last part, ask Cigar
Aficionado how much they enjoyed the Ken Starr hearings.
And who doesn't
want sex, but who the hell has the time? Using Clinton as an example
(sorry Bill, but there isn't a better Exhibit A on the planet), here's
a guy whose libido was clearly in overdrive, whose marriage was obviously
not going to be profiled in the Penthouse Forum and who had an entire
country to run. Really, in retrospect, did the midnight rendezvous surprise
any of us? Did anyone truly believe him when he said that he "did
not have sexual relations with that woman?"
What I think Clinton
was saying when he uttered those words, and Bill, feel free to write in
and correct me if I'm wrong, was this - I'm the leader of the free freakin'
world… I have fanatics hoarding nuclear weapons 5,000 miles away,
Republicans looking to hang me by my testicles and a wife who hasn't seen
them in 10 years, let me worry about what I do with my hour break. And
I think to some level, people respected that. Why?
Because maybe people
didn't publicly condone his actions, but privately they understood.
Because had the law allowed Clinton to run for a third term, he would
have won by a landslide. You know it and I know it.
Think about it,
Monica Lewinsky did not scream sexual harassment. To the contrary, she
embraced the fact that she had casual sex with the President of the
United States even if he didn't believe that her mouth on his willy
(pun intended) constituted a sexual act.
And so as Americans
try to make sense of what exactly constitutes sexual behavior, we just
keep having more of it… and it's not just in the workplace - it's
everywhere - and more often than not it is entered into with the agreement
of no consequence, the outcome determined before the act performed.
Just the way Bill
taught us.Enjoy the Issue,
Enjoy the Issue,
Richard Botto,
Editor in Chief / CEO of RAZOR Magazine - The Definitive Men's Lifestyle Magazine
www.razormagazine.com
