The Bees Will Eventually Sting the Birds...

Oh the gratuitous sex scene. How you run rampant and free through novels, movies, television series and even ad campaigns. Yes, you are almost as free and wild as Angelinos after an NBA Championship win. You know what I mean. That classic scene.

The man and woman* have just fight and somehow they end up in bed.

Or the man and woman just cried and somehow they end up in bed.

Or the man and woman just met and fell in love instantly and somehow they end up in bed.

Or the man and woman have been apart for an indeterminate amount of time and can barely remember each other and somehow they end up in bed.

Or the man and woman meet in a bar and somehow they end up in bed.

I can go on, but I am sure you get the point.

The mere name "gratuitous sex scene" implies that it is not for the satisfaction of those people involved and actually having the sex, though in most shows they do appear to be having quite a good time, but rather it is for the satisfaction of the reader or audience. We want sex. Or something like it.

As a writer I sat watching a gratuituous sex scene and banged my head on my desk at the layers of Gouda and Cheese-wiz abound. The whisking off of clothes in inhuman effort. (Honestly, not even Superman can do it that slickly in real life). The corny shots and pecks and kisses. And then the unmentionables.

I should make a checklist. Let me see...

___ Man + Women*

___ Candles (mood lighting)

___ Clean surface, usually a bed

___ Clean room, sheets, etc. (because gratuitous sex scenes never have an unmade bed of flannel mismatched sheets and a pile of dirty laundry on the floor).

___ Pecks

___ Unmentionables

___ Grotesque noises that, in the words of Robin Williams, remind some people of Goofy.

And yet, for me the gratuitous sex scene has become entirely un-gratuitous. How I long for a romp, or deluge of sexual desires instead of the neat formula that most books and shows and movies now employ. Is sexual imagination and writing really that dead? Has it really hit its mid-life crisis?

Oh, how I long for a damn grapefruit!**

Or at least something more true to life and original. I mean come on! No one can pull off that move and no one's bedroom is that clean. Unless you're Martha Stewart and I don't even want to let my mind wander down that path at the moment... or ever. And sometimes, sex isn't that gratuitous or freaking amazing every gosh darn time. Sometimes its just, well, sex.

In a world where we, in the literary world at least, praise originality and shun formulaic endeavors I cannot find many books, shows, or movies without some model of the gratuitous sex scene.

Will the absurdity ever end?

An even better question, will we the reader/audience ever want it to end?

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*For simplicity and my sanity I am only mentioning couples as being male + female; however, please apply this to all male + male, girl + girl, and any combination therein couples.

**Attribution is correctly given to Eddie Izzard but I am sure the squirrel he stole it from would like some attribution as well, so here's to the furry fruit-loving rodent.