It is true that in this attempt of mine at writing one article a day, there have been moments in which I do not know what I am going to write about. I do what I suppose you and everybody else does when not capable to do what you are supposed to do. I delay. I check my email again, and again. Perhaps even twitter, I try not to check facebook (again). Eventually something pops up, in my mind or in the ongoing flow of information/disinformation that reaches us. And then I write.
Alas, the contrary also happens.
Like today. After a long bike I am finally at home with, oh the luxury, three ideas that can become a page. Today is about choosing. And yet, falling in the known pattern, I open the newspaper, The Guardian to be more precise. The news item titled as this article of mine gets my attention and I read on. And after few lines I know that I will not be able to write about else. It is a pity, in a way, those three ideas were good ones, I think.
So, let me give it to you straight. The public broadcaster of Norway, NRK, has published a compilation of sex positions. You can actually take a look at it, since there are 60 photos, nicely done in black and white, accesible in their website. They are not even confronting, you get normal people getting together in a variety of positions for a variety of sexual contact possibilities. If you click on one photo you get what I suppose is an explanation (I don’t read norwegian and haven’t used google translate, yet) and some keywords, so I suppose that you can even search according to your preferences what would be a fitting position for whatever you decide you are interested upon.
To my convoluted latino mind, what is most noticeable, and perhaps admirable, is the vanilla character of the whole thing. Not all the models (or the positions, actually) let their face be seen, but the ones that are seen, have ample nice smiles. These people are enjoying themselves, friendly with each other. Needles to say, the bodies are as diverse as I imagine are the bodies of people walking by in the center of Oslo. Some fat, some not. Some potbellies, some thick tights. Tattoos or not, long hair, short hair, no hair. I miss people of color, but one could argue that there are not that many people of color in Norway anyway. The elan of the whole thing make me feel that this criticism, which I would raise in pretty much every other situation, is almost besides the point here.
I am pretty sure that the first time I saw a photo of a naked person, it was in a pornographic depiction. My highschool, run by agustinian (catholic) priests was fairly progressive, and yet in the five years of highschool we had one day called sex education, where small videos of a woman and a man masturbating were shown. Interestingly enough, those videos showed us a penis or a vulva being stroked by a hand, and nothing else. I suppose that the intention was to give us the bare facts. I still remember that I appreciated the information that came along (masturbation is ok, sizes and shapes varies and that is ok and few other de-stressing basic facts) but to see a whole person, naked, and making love was beyond that time and place. I suppose, or even better, I know, that the only losers in that lack of information were me and my sexual partners, who had to learn by trying, or by copying the mostly irreal depictions of the porn industry.
Right now I wish I would have grown in Norway.