61 Frames Per Second by John Constantine Today in Nerve's videogame blog: Golden Axe dresses down to its skivvies. Plus: Spore takes on evolution, reaches a stalemate, and takes evolution out for a beer.
It's been the millennium of monotheism, and monotheism hasn't been good for sex. Neither Christianity nor Islam embraced sex as they might have (despite temptations), and now it seems a bit late. Pity. Chiliast that I am, I suspect that at the stroke of midnight Christ is going to descend atop the Waterford crystal ball in Times Square and begin blighting all us sinners. So, in the interim, we probably want to try to have a good time.
In case I'm wrong and we have a little more leeway — if the kingdom of Christ doesn't begin in Eastern Standard Time, or if the millennium actually starts at its official date next year — maybe it makes sense to make some back-up plans. You never know, we might well survive January 1st, 2000, maybe even January 1st, 2001 or 2002. With that in mind, I thought it best to cast a wandering eye on what is likely to be the nature of sex in the next millennium, embracing its likely offerings, cautioning against its probable pitfalls. No prophet, I, but you can rely on me to do my best.
Technology, that crazy ferret, is always scampering forward. The last millennium brought some important inventions — spermicide, the vibrator, e-porn, safe abortions, the pill, the blanket, the two-headed strap-on — and it's clear the next thousand years are likely to be defined even more by their technological advancements. God is losing out to Sony, as far as I can tell, which makes me wonder what products are up next. Though all predictions of the future are inevitably bound, like imagination itself, to extrapolations or exaggerations of what already exists, we currently have a lot to work with. I envision drugs that let you have sex whenever you want, even if you don't have any reason to, drugs to make sex fun even if there's no point in doing it, and drugs, no doubt, to make sex meaningful even if it involves the previously mentioned drugs. I foresee dolls that are better than humans, videos that are better than dolls, chambers that are better than videos, and death- and childhood-simulators that, for some, will be better than any of the above.
I myself am suspicious of all advancement. Just as I get close to finding my way around the body I was born with, I'll be getting strapped into a wired suit and having electrodes put on my forehead. Just as I try to figure out what combination of lilly, tiger, lilly, tiger my partners really like, I'll be replaced by a 14-speed Vegematic attachment. Just as I'm on the verge having a truly adult relationship multiple decades into my adult life, I'll be able generate a virtual lover tailored to my every whim. Our ability to solve the problems of human psychology, to come to grips with the difficulties of knowing ourselves and each other, languishes far behind our ability to mask the symptoms of these difficulties with drugs and devices. The fundamental issue is that we all need to train ourselves in loving, and my suspicion is that a belief in Sony won't do much more than the belief in God in getting us there.
So my vision of sex in the next thousand years involves the very retrograde idea of returning to the biological body. Although we've explored a zillion new ways of administering pleasure to each other, we've spent less time figuring out how to make ourselves more available to that pleasure. That involves maturation, exploration and communication — things that technology can help us with, as long as we don't hide behind it. My favorite lines of poetry — "I am one who, when love breathes inside me, takes note, and according to the manner that it is spoken within, I seek to express it without" — were written by Dante 700 years ago. Much has happened in those 700 years that we call civilization. I can only hope that the next 700 years of civilization bring us further than the last toward noting and expressing love's soft, hot breath.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jack Murnighan's stories appeared in the Best American Erotica editions of 1999, 2000 and 2001. His weekly column for Nerve, Jack's Naughty Bits, was collected and released as two books. He was the editor-in-chief of Nerve from 1999 to 2001, before retiring to write full time and take seriously the quest for love.
